The fear that damage may come to these valued organs is called castration anxiety. According to Freud, it is at this stage that the boy experiences strong genital strivings for his mother and a death wish for his father, which are conceptualized in the Oedipus complex. When the boy discovers the absence of a penis in girls, this discovery serves to confirm the danger of castration in himself as a retaliation for the forbidden sexual wishes toward his mother. It is probably generally accepted that under castration anxiety, boys at the phallic stage are liable to experience irrational fears of damage to the penis. During recent years, a great deal of criticism has been directed at routine infant circumcision.
Some critics regard it as medically unnecessary.
Others believe it to be a barbaric relic and potentially dangerous. This increasing criticism of routine infant circumcision, however, and the psychoanalytic concern regarding circumcision performed during the phallic phase have not stimulated an investigation into the long-term emotional impact of circumcision. No one seems to have asked the circumcised men how they feel about their circumcised conditions. The population of adult males who were circumcised as children is small. Men, I'm conducting research on the long-term emotional impact of circumcision, particularly on men who experienced the operation as a child, but after infancy.