Women's Studies 3050  

Psychoanalytic Feminism

Do we perform our gender or does it perform us? How important is sexual difference and the “bodily imaginary”? How important is symbolic gender in the social construction of subjectivity? Of sexuality? How does gender connect to sexuality? Regarding the Agency/Structure question, how does the psychoanalytic theory of the split self allow for agency, and for challenging psychological/symbolic patriarchal structures? 

Psychoanalytic feminists believe that women's psyche is deeply affected by past experiences, thus shaping their future lives. Kate Millet attacked Freud in her influential second wave text Sexual Politics, and described psychoanalysis as irredeemablely patriarchal. Yet with the 1976 publication of Juliet Mitchell's Psychoanalysis and Feminism, some feminists began to reevaluate this position.

This perspective focuses on the differences in the ways of knowing, understanding, and perceiving the world created by the patriarchy. While proponents of this strand of feminism tend to reject biological determinism, psychoanalytic feminism is often considered essentialist, as it focuses on the unique female nature. This is to say that men and women are fundamentally different. Whether criticized as essentialist or not, this strand does not limit women to the sphere of work or of home. Rather, it emphasizes the emotional connections that evolve in all daily social interactions.

The Roots of Psychoanalytic Feminism: Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud's developmental theory on the maturation of boys and girls has been a topic of much concern to many feminists. According to Freud, females suffer an Oedipus Complex that is much different than the male counterpart. Freud believed that the difference in the manner which the Oedipus Complex is experienced is associated with a woman's lack of a penis and leaves her scarred with narcissistic traits, vanity, and shame. Due to this absence of a penis, women experience discontent for themselves and feel personally defective as human beings.

Although many have found this theory of maturation to be sexist in nature, some feminists believe Freud can be a highly useful tool when reinterpreted to reject these ideals known as biological determinism.

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Rejecting Freud's Biological Determinism

Unlike Freud's belief that biology determines an individual's future, Alfred Adler and Horney believed that gender identity, behavior, and sexual orientation are a result of experiences and not biology. Even though these feminist psychologists believed the lack of a penis was influential on a young woman's life, it was simply because society empowers men and not because women felt themselves to be defective.

Adler

According to Alfred Adler, men and women are equal because both sexes are born helpless. Biology, in Adler's opinion, is not absolute destiny to one's life, but rather a way to shape oneself. While Freud believed that women were neurotic because of inadequacies caused by the lack of a penis, Adler believed patriarchy has suppressed women's attempts to overcome infantile helplessness.

In 1912 Adler published his book, The Neurotic Constitution, in which he further developed his main concepts. He called his psychologic system "Individual Psychology," a term which is sometimes misunderstood. It refers to the indivisibility of the personality in its psychologic structure. His next book, Understanding Human Nature, which comprises lectures given at the Viennese Institute for Adult Education, is still on the required-reading list of some American high schools.

After returning from war duty in 1918, Adler founded several child guidance clinics in Vienna. These were soon visited by professionals from abroad, stimulating the development of similar clinics in other countries.

Horney

Perhaps the most important contribution Karen Horney made to psychodynamic thought was her disagreements with Freud's view of women.  In many ways, Horney was well ahead of her time and although she died before the feminist movement took hold, she was perhaps the theorist who changed the way psychology looked at gender differences.  She countered Freud's concept of penis envy with what she called womb envy, or man's envy of woman's ability to bear children.  She argued that men compensate for this inability by striving for achievement and success in other realms.

 In her mind, women were symbolically castrated by the patriarchal society because it denied women the power a penis represents. Women in this system are forced into feminine roles and then forced to enjoy the subordinate position they have taken in society. According to Horney, as soon as women begin to see themselves as men's equals, society will no longer hold this power over them.

She deviated from orthodox Freudian analysis by emphasizing environmental and cultural, rather than biological, factors in the genesis of neurosis. Anxiety, she held, is created by anything that jeopardizes a person's means of gaining security. The neurotic's rigid adherence to his safety devices protects him in some ways but renders him helpless toward other possible dangers. To further her work based on these beliefs, she founded (1941) and became dean of the American Institute of Psychoanalysis. Her works include The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937), Self-Analysis (1942), Our Inner Conflicts (1945), and Neurosis and Human Growth (1950).

Millett

Kate Millet's Columbia University Ph.D. dissertation was published as Sexual Politics (1970). This groundbreaking, bestselling analysis of female oppression placed her at the forefront of the women's movement.  Millett did not so much find difficulty in Freud himself, but rather neo-Freudian therapists who claimed male sexual aggression is rooted in biology, with the penis being the power-giving structure envied by women. These neo-Freudian therapists do not interpret women's ability to give birth as a powerful event. Rather, they see birth as an attempt to possess a substitute penis. Millet's political works also include The Prostitution Papers (1973) and The Politics of Cruelty (1994)

Mitchell

Juliette Mitchell is a New Zealand-born British feminist, best known for her book Psychoanalysis and Feminism. Freud, Reich, Laing and Women (1974) which tried to reconcile psychoanalysis and feminism at a time when many considered them incompatible.

Chodorow

According to Nancy Chodorow, contemporary psychoanalytic feminism begins with its dismissal and the feminist challenge of it. Chodorow was active during the second wave of feminism. She began a study in the early eighties of surviving second-generation women analysts, women who had trained from 1920-1940 titled: Seventies Questions for Thirties Women: Gender and Generation in a Study of Early Women Psychoanalysts. It was a contribution to the growing literature in feminist methodology, reflecting upon gender consciousness among 70's feminists and their foremothers, addressing the cultural and psychological context in which different women ask questions.

Chodorow defines psychoanalysis as "the method and theory directed towards the investigation and understanding of how we develop and experience unconscious fantasies (that form psyche, self, identity) and how we construct and reconstruct our felt past in the present."

(See: http://www.cornellcollege.edu/womens_studies/resources/theory/psychoanalytic.html)

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