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Bronze Height: 10.4 cm 
This solid-cast figurine of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war,
raises her left hand to hold a spear, now lost, and in her right
carries a patera or libation bowl. On her head she wears a helmet
of Corinthian type, and on her breast the head of Medusa. The bronze
was one of Freud's favourite pieces, and occupied pride of place in
the centre of his desk. It was smuggled out of Austria in 1938 by
Marie Bonaparte, when the fate of Freud's collection seemed uncertain.
This figure, and Freud's manifest attachment to it, illustrates
Freud's commitment to a construction of female sexuality in terms of
its relation to a male norm. Athena is a masculinized female whose
phallic omissions are obvious: her spear is missing, the Medusa on
her breastplate displays no snakes-neither does she possess a phallus
herself. In the last half century, Freud's construction of the female
gender in terms of the lack of a phallus has been much debated and
revised.
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