You are browsing the archives of phallic.

A while ago we alerted you, dear readers, to knowledge that already lay waiting deep in your subconscious: the buildings we inhabit, vehicles we travel in and weapons we fight with are loaded with repressed sexual symbolism.
Well, as you’ve likely noticed the visual punditry can be extended to foods. Yes, many have made dirty jokes [...]

As we’ve reported in previous editions of our weekly psychoanalysticle Freudian Fridays, phallic forms are among the most potent and clearly legible symbols of power in our patriarchal capitalist society. Though it’s strategically dangerous to represent phallic power with an actual penis (which is perpetually vulnerable and, by and large, not that impressive), elongated objects [...]

Looking over this year’s Best Picture nominees at the Oscars, one legendary female character archetype – the phallic mother – looms large in The Reader and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (is Harvey Milk a proxy phallic mother to the gay rights movement in Milk? discuss). We’ll therefore be taking this edition of our [...]

Some time ago, in an earlier edition of our weekly psychoanalysticle Freudian Fridays, we looked at some of the most overt, excessive and unsubtle phallic monuments built by man. While the need to put power, potency and might into concrete (and steel and glass) expression smacks of typical late-capitalist chauvinism, it would be a mistake [...]

As we all disperse towards our favored holiday partying and wintering places, our weekly psychoanalysticle Freudian Fridays asks that you keep your eyes open for gratuitous instances of the most familiar form in modern architecture: the phallus.
As Freud tells us constantly, every human activity that isn’t sex is the direct result of displaced sexual impulses, [...]