In Freud the center of all identities is gender identity and gender differentiation. For Freud all gender identities happen along what he terms as “castration complex”, which he later termed as the death instinct, or the annihilation of the life force. In Freudian schema, growth and development is due to the housing of the libido in different body parts. For Freud, the libido is a psychical energy, of which there is no physical correspondence. This psychical energy or life force occupies different body parts at different stages of development. First, there is the anal stage, where all the energy is housed in the mouth. All pleasure is concentrated in the mouth and pleasure is obtained via sucking. Then the libido moves to the anal region and pleasure is obtained via passing of the feces. In the first two phases, according to Freud, there is no gender differentiation. Everyone has all the possibilities and desires. Gender identity and differentiation come in the third stage, the Genital stage, via Castration Complex. At this stage, the biological boy gets the idea that his organ of pleasure will be cut off unless he stops masturbating and giving up his desire for the Phallic mother. Who is the Phallic mother? It is a mother in fantasy who nurtures and feeds but also has the Phallus. So, to preserve his phallus, the little boy gives up his desire for infinite and unlimited pleasure and consolidates his male identity, that is, prevents castration of his phallus. He is now the male, the possessor of Phallus. As his conscious identity is born, his unconscious is also born. For desire does not go away, it merely gets repressed. So, the unconscious desire for infinite and unlimited pleasure, the desire for the Phallic mother goes to the unconscious. Thus, the unconscious is born.
With the little girl the story is more complex. During the genital stage, she discovers that she is already castrated and a little of the phallus, the ultimate organ of pleasure, the clitoris, is left. At the same time she undergoes a psychic “castration”, that the Phallic Mother, who is the first object of desire for both the little boy and girl, is not a phallic mother, that she does not have the phallus to give. So the little girl starts hating mother and goes to father to get the phallus. She accepts Father’s beating, rape, torture to get the organ of pleasure. Ultimately, when she does not get it, she settles for her “biological destiny”. She suppresses her “original desire” for the phallus to a desire for a baby from a father or father substitute, gives up clitoral masturbation, and discovers a new “organ”, the bloody wound, the vagina. So, the desire for a baby is a substituted desire, according to Freud, for the original desire for the phallus, the whole. If she does not accept her biological destiny, then she develops two “abnormal identities”, frigidity and homosexuality. She tells herself, since she cannot have as much pleasure as the boy, in the absence of the phallus, she wont have any pleasure at all or homosexuality, the fantasy that father has given her the phallus.
Thus, we see that for Freud all identities are formed with their “other”, just as the conscious mind is born, so does the unconscious that houses all the repressed desires. The purpose of the “Talk therapy” of Freud is to let the client speak in a safe place with only the therapist, who does not sit face to face, but outside of the gaze of the client, as the client speaks. The repressed desires of the client rise to a conscious level without censorship. It is to be noted that in speaking there is sometimes silence, which Freud calls resistance. There is stuff that is so painful and dug in the unconscious that they refuse to come up.
Now, let us apply this to the partition trauma in the Indian Sub-continent. This, like the vagina, is an open wound that has not healed. Further, so far there has been resistance in talking about it. Some films like RItwick Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara and Komal Gandhar have talked a little, but not the actual genocide and ethnic cleansing of Hindus during the creation of Pakistan out of India. Why is this resistance to speak about the abuse that happened to Hindu identity? Because of resistance to bring up in the consciousness of the nation and Hindus as it is too painful and, it hurts their masculinity. For by de Phallus zing the nation, by castrating a part, Hindu masculinity comes under question.
