Castration anxiety

Anxiety due to fantasized danger or injuries to the genitals and/or body. This fear is most intense in children ages 4–6 years but continues unconsciously through life and may be precipitated by everyday events that have symbolic significance and appear to be threatening, such as loss of a job, or an experience of ridicule or humiliation.


The fear of harm from fathers assumed to be felt by boys during the Oedipus conflict.


Unrealistic fear of injury to or loss of the sexual organs, sometimes the result of guilt over forbidden sexual desire or some threatening experience; in children the fear often involves being hurt by a parent (for boys, the father; for girls, the mother) because of one’s sexual feelings toward the parent of the opposite sex.


Anxiety about the possibility of injury to or loss of the testicles or ovaries.


 


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