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Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A Radical Reassessment of Freudian Psychoanalysis
In 1974, at the height of the women's movement, Juliet Mitchell shocked her fellow feminists by challenging the entrenched belief that Freud was the enemy. She argued that a rejection of psychoanalysis as bourgeois and patriarchal was fatal for feminism. However it may have been used, she pointed out, psychoanalysis is not a recommendation for a patriarchal society, but rather an analysis of one. "If we are interested in understanding and challenging the oppression of women," she says, "we cannot afford to neglect psychoanalysis." In an introduction written specially for this reissue, Mitchell reflects on the changing relationship between these two major influences on twentieth-century thought. Original and provocative, Psychoanalysis and Feminism remains an essential component of the feminist canon.
496 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
33 people are currently reading
1415 people want to read
About the author
Juliet Mitchell
35 books55 followersJuliet Mitchell, FBA (born 1940) is a British psychoanalyst and socialist feminist.
Mitchell was born in New Zealand in 1940, and moved to England in 1944. She attended St Anne's College, Oxford, where she received a degree in English, as well as doing postgraduate work. She taught English literature from 1962 to 1970 at Leeds University and Reading University. Throughout the 1960s, Mitchell was active in leftist politics, and was on the editorial committee of the journal, New Left Review.
She was a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge and Professor of Psychoanalysis and Gender Studies at Cambridge University, before in 2010 being appointed to be the Director of the Expanded Doctoral School in Psychoanalytic Studies at Psychoanalysis Unit of University College London (UCL).
She is a retired registrant of the British Psychoanalytic Council.
(from Wikipedia)
Mitchell was born in New Zealand in 1940, and moved to England in 1944. She attended St Anne's College, Oxford, where she received a degree in English, as well as doing postgraduate work. She taught English literature from 1962 to 1970 at Leeds University and Reading University. Throughout the 1960s, Mitchell was active in leftist politics, and was on the editorial committee of the journal, New Left Review.
She was a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge and Professor of Psychoanalysis and Gender Studies at Cambridge University, before in 2010 being appointed to be the Director of the Expanded Doctoral School in Psychoanalytic Studies at Psychoanalysis Unit of University College London (UCL).
She is a retired registrant of the British Psychoanalytic Council.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
June 12, 2016
There are biological, chemical, anatomical, and of course social differences between the sexes. In her brilliant and seminal landmark study, Psychoanalysis and Feminism, Juliet Mitchell asks how it is that beyond all of these factors that structure sexual difference, this difference almost always gives way to inequality and the oppression of women. This question becomes more urgent for us, in our modern times, when the factors that would tie women to the time-consuming roles of child-rearing and family cohesion are no longer as strong. We have the means to create equality (and the laws to guarantee it), and yet sexual difference seems to settle in people’s minds always as a hierarchy of the weaker and the more dominant sex. Mitchell's question is why we seem to be fully capable of living with and making sense of difference – sexual difference being the first encounter with difference that all human beings will be part of – but fail to understand this difference in a way that does not places the gender into a hierarchical structure, with one being not simply other but also better or more powerful than the other. Why is it that gender is experienced as a difference that makes one of the two genders superior to another? There seems to be a kind of conservatism inherent in the very construction of sexual difference, which Mitchell called a kind of underwater tow that makes progress regress on matters of gender equality despite massive social economic and legal changes.
Mitchell published Psychoanalysis and Feminism in 1974, at a time when feminists largely discredited Sigmund Freud’s theories as being part and parcel of the patriarchy. Mitchell argued that psychoanalysis can provide critical insights into the way in which we think about and experience, often unconsciously, sexual difference as a type of difference that organizes people into two genders which do not have equal standing. Especially in today's world, when there so much progress made in terms of equality of rights, why is it that the family remains to be thought of as the still center of a moving world? (The continuing debates about single-parent homes, career women’s responsibility toward their children, and same-sex parents are symptoms of this tendency to think of the family as a nuclear unit). Why is it that women tend to have to fight for their equality with every generation? Why does progress in gender relations not get established once and for all? How is this idea that the difference between the sexes is really a difference in their claim for social equality transmitted? Mitchell focuses on the generational transmission of a certain kind of thought about concepts like masculinity and femininity. It is unlikely that human infants are born with the conception of what it is to be a female or male. But how does the process by which children pick up the unconscious signals of what sexual difference is? Why do young boys and girls start having very specific ideas about gender, even when their home or school environment promote a message of gender equality? Freud surmised that "unless psychical processes were continued from one generation to another, if each generation were obliged to acquire its attitude to life anew, there would be no progress in this field and no development." Mitchell's book focuses on this idea of how the culture transmits its values as if unconsciously to the next generation. People pick up a lot more than what they are taught to when they grow up, and not all of this can simply be explained as the workings of ideology (which a Marxist analysis would do). The importance of psychoanalysis is that human beings can feel and know certain things without these feelings being rooted in reality. Freud was able to show that people can have guilt feelings without having committed a crime. His work allows us to think about how people acquire knowledge of the difference between the sexes even if within their actual experience (if they raised by ardent feminists, for instance) nothing points to the fact that women should occupy an inferior social position.
Mitchell argues that Freud allows us to see why gender conservatism persists in the face of change, and why it is just so difficult to achieve equality for the sexes. There seems to be something at the root of our conceptions of gender that is far more insidious, or unconscious, than explicit social messages (what we would consider education or ideology).
In Psychoanalysis and Feminism, Mitchell ultimately turns to the anthropological study of kinship patterns to understand how gender difference turns up as a hierarchical relationship in almost all societies. The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, in Mitchell’s account, is tremendously important for showing how the unconscious is structured like a language, but Lacan did not allow for the possibility of historical change in the construction of sexual difference. For Lacan, the child’s understanding of sexual difference takes place in a location removed from historical conditions and context. One must turn to later thinkers like Joan Copjec for an analysis of how even in that pre-linguistic developmental space, there might be a possibility for change. For an understanding of how young boys and girls differentiate themselves from their parents, but in this process of differentiation end up reproducing (in ways that both Freud and Lacan found inevitable, but that feminists want to change and disrupt) the hierarchical gender roles that they have a chance to overcome, one must turn to Jessica Benjamin's work.
Mitchell's explanation of Freud is useful in the following way. Freud gave us the tools to understand how young boys and girls develop and accept the gender roles of society. Let’s assume his analysis is correct. Then Freud would give us the tools (the concept of the unconscious, drives, etc.) to change the way this conception of sexual difference happens. Or, if Freud's analysis is incorrect (due to his own sexism or the limitations of his historical situation), then we could at least find out the process which really happens, and why it still results in the perpetuation of the patriarchy. In both cases, whether Freud is right or wrong, psychoanalysis opens up a way to think of human development as creating a possibility for gender difference to not be one of hierarchies, but simply a distinction.
Mitchell published Psychoanalysis and Feminism in 1974, at a time when feminists largely discredited Sigmund Freud’s theories as being part and parcel of the patriarchy. Mitchell argued that psychoanalysis can provide critical insights into the way in which we think about and experience, often unconsciously, sexual difference as a type of difference that organizes people into two genders which do not have equal standing. Especially in today's world, when there so much progress made in terms of equality of rights, why is it that the family remains to be thought of as the still center of a moving world? (The continuing debates about single-parent homes, career women’s responsibility toward their children, and same-sex parents are symptoms of this tendency to think of the family as a nuclear unit). Why is it that women tend to have to fight for their equality with every generation? Why does progress in gender relations not get established once and for all? How is this idea that the difference between the sexes is really a difference in their claim for social equality transmitted? Mitchell focuses on the generational transmission of a certain kind of thought about concepts like masculinity and femininity. It is unlikely that human infants are born with the conception of what it is to be a female or male. But how does the process by which children pick up the unconscious signals of what sexual difference is? Why do young boys and girls start having very specific ideas about gender, even when their home or school environment promote a message of gender equality? Freud surmised that "unless psychical processes were continued from one generation to another, if each generation were obliged to acquire its attitude to life anew, there would be no progress in this field and no development." Mitchell's book focuses on this idea of how the culture transmits its values as if unconsciously to the next generation. People pick up a lot more than what they are taught to when they grow up, and not all of this can simply be explained as the workings of ideology (which a Marxist analysis would do). The importance of psychoanalysis is that human beings can feel and know certain things without these feelings being rooted in reality. Freud was able to show that people can have guilt feelings without having committed a crime. His work allows us to think about how people acquire knowledge of the difference between the sexes even if within their actual experience (if they raised by ardent feminists, for instance) nothing points to the fact that women should occupy an inferior social position.
Mitchell argues that Freud allows us to see why gender conservatism persists in the face of change, and why it is just so difficult to achieve equality for the sexes. There seems to be something at the root of our conceptions of gender that is far more insidious, or unconscious, than explicit social messages (what we would consider education or ideology).
In Psychoanalysis and Feminism, Mitchell ultimately turns to the anthropological study of kinship patterns to understand how gender difference turns up as a hierarchical relationship in almost all societies. The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, in Mitchell’s account, is tremendously important for showing how the unconscious is structured like a language, but Lacan did not allow for the possibility of historical change in the construction of sexual difference. For Lacan, the child’s understanding of sexual difference takes place in a location removed from historical conditions and context. One must turn to later thinkers like Joan Copjec for an analysis of how even in that pre-linguistic developmental space, there might be a possibility for change. For an understanding of how young boys and girls differentiate themselves from their parents, but in this process of differentiation end up reproducing (in ways that both Freud and Lacan found inevitable, but that feminists want to change and disrupt) the hierarchical gender roles that they have a chance to overcome, one must turn to Jessica Benjamin's work.
Mitchell's explanation of Freud is useful in the following way. Freud gave us the tools to understand how young boys and girls develop and accept the gender roles of society. Let’s assume his analysis is correct. Then Freud would give us the tools (the concept of the unconscious, drives, etc.) to change the way this conception of sexual difference happens. Or, if Freud's analysis is incorrect (due to his own sexism or the limitations of his historical situation), then we could at least find out the process which really happens, and why it still results in the perpetuation of the patriarchy. In both cases, whether Freud is right or wrong, psychoanalysis opens up a way to think of human development as creating a possibility for gender difference to not be one of hierarchies, but simply a distinction.
March 2, 2014
So far, the book has offered a pretty good critical reading of Freud's work on the unconscious and sexuality, in line with the work of Jacqueline Rose. In addition, the lengthy crititique of Reich and Laing, while a bit dated, are interesting explorations into a couple significant thinkers for the new left and their limitations in comparison to Freud. The material on feminist thinkers could have been expanded, but the critiques are useful. The book ends on an oddly structuralist note, trying to combine the work of Freud, Lacan, Engels, and Levi-Strauss, and invites the sort of critiques that generally have plagued Levi-Strauss' work. Still, an overall interesting read.
October 15, 2022
A lot of interesting analysis that by nature of a "introductory" subject has to run through a lot of ideas quickly (there's a ton that I think calls for expansion) but as a jumping off point I think it's rather good
November 12, 2017
I apologize if this review isn't an eloquent and witty essay. I went from liking this book to feeling eh about it at the end. I liked part one immensely, it went downhill after page 120. As expected from a psychoanalyst, Mitchell has an excellent grasp on Freud. She neatly weaves his various theories/essays into an easily decipherable summary (part one felt like a giant summary). This is excellent for readers who aren't familiar with Freud's work and/or misunderstand it. Ex. The popular misconception that Freud theorized the Electra complex, when in fact, it was Jung. I agree with Mitchell's initial thesis that psychoanalysis is necessary for feminism and not an "enemy." That's about it. At least to me, she doesn't really provide a thorough analysis, back up her claims nor make a compelling argument. It's more like she lists people, says they're wrong and/or confused, puts a quote by them and says they're wrong AGAIN. Spending 85 pages saying Reich is wrong wrong wrong and wrong isn't really necessary, it can be slimmed down. At times, it felt like she was making ad hominem arguments. The random dry jokes she makes in the middle of an argument doesn't help either.
I'm aware that this was published in 1974, so I'm not surprised that the content is a bit outdated. However, the grandiose title and what's printed on the back is a bit annoying. I personally wouldn't consider this "a radical reassessment," "provocative," nor "an essential component of the feminist canon" in contemporary Western society because it needs major updates and more nuanced arguments. Also, I get that touching on various disciplines is the "cool" thing to do in academia, but it would've been better if Mitchell left Anthropology alone because it seems like she doesn't know much about it. Anthropologists would cringe at her generalizations, universals, "matriarchy," and etc. In the end, Mitchell makes a grandiose claim, "It is a question of overthrowing patriarchy." This impossibility makes it kinda difficult to accept and ultimately hurts her argument(s).
Overall, I would recommend the first 120 pages of this book. The rest, ehhhh.
(I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, please take it as constructive criticism. Luv ya Julie)
I'm aware that this was published in 1974, so I'm not surprised that the content is a bit outdated. However, the grandiose title and what's printed on the back is a bit annoying. I personally wouldn't consider this "a radical reassessment," "provocative," nor "an essential component of the feminist canon" in contemporary Western society because it needs major updates and more nuanced arguments. Also, I get that touching on various disciplines is the "cool" thing to do in academia, but it would've been better if Mitchell left Anthropology alone because it seems like she doesn't know much about it. Anthropologists would cringe at her generalizations, universals, "matriarchy," and etc. In the end, Mitchell makes a grandiose claim, "It is a question of overthrowing patriarchy." This impossibility makes it kinda difficult to accept and ultimately hurts her argument(s).
Overall, I would recommend the first 120 pages of this book. The rest, ehhhh.
(I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, please take it as constructive criticism. Luv ya Julie)
February 3, 2023
First of all, I would say a qualified criticism of marxism for this work. By considering the issue of women's oppression within the forms of production, he deals with it by separating the capitalist economic style and the socio-ideological style of the patriarchy, opposing the marxist interpretation that accepts it as a class and connects the recipe for liberation only with the idea of the realization of the revolution. I would say that this is exactly the starting point of the book. While making this distinction, he went through psychoanalysis pioneered by Freud and shows us the realm of illusions we have fallen into with very beautiful definitions and criticisms.
In this sense, Mitchell has introduced a terrific analysis as follows: “ideology and the known mode of production are interdependent, neither one can be reduced to the other, nor the rules used to govern one can be used to govern the other. When analyzing today's Western society, we are interested (as elsewhere) in two autonomous areas: capitalism in the economic sense and patriarchy in the socio-political. The interdependence between them is found in the specific expression of Decisively expressed ideology.”
Patriarchy (that is, socio-political) considers the field under four main headings. Sexuality, Socialization of children, Production, Reproduction...
In these four main titles, which are related to each other, three titles outside of production are related to the social role attributed to women. That is why our author considers family and production relations separately. In this context, she is very distant from both liberal feminist thought, radical feminist thought and socialist feminist thought. Because none of them has taken a realistic step for the liberation of women.
Mitchell used Freudian psychoanalysis to investigate the situations of women exposed to patriarchal decay and used Psychoanalysis for the purpose of analyzing the patriarchal structure of thought. Already at the beginning of the theses of the book, he predicts that first of all it is necessary to get rid of the psychological spiral of patriarchy, and in doing so, it is necessary to use the ways of Psychoanalysis.
In this sense, our author has put forward a very different and sonorous approach to women's struggle. Personally, it was a book that I read with great pleasure because I think that my fellow men, who are working hard for the "male" profile that the patriarchy wants, should be subjected to psychological treatment.
In this sense, Mitchell has introduced a terrific analysis as follows: “ideology and the known mode of production are interdependent, neither one can be reduced to the other, nor the rules used to govern one can be used to govern the other. When analyzing today's Western society, we are interested (as elsewhere) in two autonomous areas: capitalism in the economic sense and patriarchy in the socio-political. The interdependence between them is found in the specific expression of Decisively expressed ideology.”
Patriarchy (that is, socio-political) considers the field under four main headings. Sexuality, Socialization of children, Production, Reproduction...
In these four main titles, which are related to each other, three titles outside of production are related to the social role attributed to women. That is why our author considers family and production relations separately. In this context, she is very distant from both liberal feminist thought, radical feminist thought and socialist feminist thought. Because none of them has taken a realistic step for the liberation of women.
Mitchell used Freudian psychoanalysis to investigate the situations of women exposed to patriarchal decay and used Psychoanalysis for the purpose of analyzing the patriarchal structure of thought. Already at the beginning of the theses of the book, he predicts that first of all it is necessary to get rid of the psychological spiral of patriarchy, and in doing so, it is necessary to use the ways of Psychoanalysis.
In this sense, our author has put forward a very different and sonorous approach to women's struggle. Personally, it was a book that I read with great pleasure because I think that my fellow men, who are working hard for the "male" profile that the patriarchy wants, should be subjected to psychological treatment.
February 28, 2014
This is a very well written and clear account of psychoanalysis and feminism. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in either theoretical approach. However, I found the chapters on Reich fairly ungenerous, although that might be warranted. I also wasn't quite clear on how the end of the book, which outlined a path for feminism in the future, fit in with the book as a whole.
May 14, 2016
Not an easy read, nevertheless, Mitchell did a great job on the sexuality chapter and her explanation of the castration complex, Oedipus complex, and how it's linked behind all neuroses. Highly recommended book.
July 6, 2020
The title of the book immediately drew me in, but can't say the same of the content after getting started. The 3/4 of the book consists mainly of theoretical elements of psychoanalysis, starting with the basics of psychoanalysis and then going through specifics with different authors such as Reich, Laing and a main focus on Freud of course. Halfway through the book, I really felt like I was reading a book on psychoanalysis alone, the feminism part being either absent or mentioned here and there very briefly. It was only towards the end that an actual discussion on feminist issues was brought up, with a critique of patriarchy and capitalism that I much appreciated, I finally felt like this book made some sense! Because the psychoanalysis is explained here in a way that needs a good basis of knowledge on psychoanalysis to be able to keep up with the book; it could have been more accessible. But for me the main positive aspect of reading this book was that it gave me a whole different perspective on Freud and his supposed sexism. Indeed, in what was the most (or sole) exciting part of the book for me, Mitchell goes through different feminist authors' points of view about Freud and makes it clear that a lot of conclusions some of these authors arrive to are mainly based on misconceptions or misunderstandings of Freud's writings about women psychology.
Definitely not an easy read, with a lot of elements that could be better explained, but still worth it.
Definitely not an easy read, with a lot of elements that could be better explained, but still worth it.
July 16, 2025
Trods den kritik Freuds psykoanalyse har haft, bevises den gang på gang i vores samfund og kultur. Jeg mener at denne bog er undervurderet i forståelsen for kvindebevægelsen, patriarkatet og psykoanalysen, da den udviser en nærliggende forståelse for både Freuds teorier, og de kulturelle og psykologiske tendenser psykoanalysens betydning har for kvindebevægelsen.
Der er bestemt noget at hæfte sig ved i pointen om at psykoanalysen ikke er et forslag på et samfund, men en analyse heraf. Og selvom de incestuøse teorier vækker (naturligt) opsigt, er Freuds teorier skabt i udgangspunkt i det underbevidste, hvilket er en vigtig pointe for at forstå psykoanalysens relevans.
Mitchell udviser heriblandt en velgennemført research af Freuds praksis, og kommer med relevant og velargumenteret kritik af Freuds kritikere, men også til tider Freud selv.
Der er bestemt noget at hæfte sig ved i pointen om at psykoanalysen ikke er et forslag på et samfund, men en analyse heraf. Og selvom de incestuøse teorier vækker (naturligt) opsigt, er Freuds teorier skabt i udgangspunkt i det underbevidste, hvilket er en vigtig pointe for at forstå psykoanalysens relevans.
Mitchell udviser heriblandt en velgennemført research af Freuds praksis, og kommer med relevant og velargumenteret kritik af Freuds kritikere, men også til tider Freud selv.
December 4, 2025
Juliet Mitchell was one brave woman. When most feminists at that time were busy spitting on Freud as a misogynistic cocaine head, she (convincingly) argued that feminism should not do without psychoanalysis. It is psychoanalysis that offers a descriptive (and NOT normative) theory of patriarchy that both accounts for psychic internalisation as well as societal systems. Not always the most fun or exciting to read, but a pivotal (and I believe the first) ever English work so explicitly combining psychoanalytic theory with feminist theory. Which is super cool, because even the work of Judith Butler is super indebted to Lacan and the notion of desire (especially their early work, but even the performativity of gender stuff relies on a Lacanian notion of any form of sexual identity being a masquerade).
February 13, 2019
I read this years ago when my companion and later wife was an ardent Freudian. I do not recall well what I though about this work other than it was a strong effort to redeem readings of Freud that established him as reactionary or bourgeois. I still own my little paperback copy from 1975. I have not reread or reviewed it in many years.
The work, nonetheless, is written by a therapist who knows her trade quite well. It is not dully ideological or fatuously political but actually useful.
The work, nonetheless, is written by a therapist who knows her trade quite well. It is not dully ideological or fatuously political but actually useful.
April 29, 2023
This wasn't quite what I was looking for. I wanted a solid Freudian accounting of women, from a feminist perspective. This probably is that, but it is really written for experts, it is extremely hard to follow for someone who is not that acquainted with the psychoanalytic tradition. It feels more like an attempt to "save" psychoanalysis from feminist detractors, which is not something that interests me that much because that debate seems to be spent.
December 21, 2025
Bu kitabın olayı psikanalize feminist eleştiri sanmıştım ama tersine Freud'u feministlere karşı savunma kitabı gibi olmuş. Ha ben de yazara katılıyorum! O ayrı :)
Bilmediğim şeyler öğrendim, okuma listeme BOLCA kitap kattım.
Ama...
Kitabın feminizm bölümü 340'a kadar başlamıyor. Son 100 kusur sayfa yani. Yani...
Hani kitabı okuma AMACIM oydu, o yüzden oraya gelene kadar bir süre ben bu kitabı neden okuyordum diye sorgulamadım desem yalan olur.
Bilmediğim şeyler öğrendim, okuma listeme BOLCA kitap kattım.
Ama...
Kitabın feminizm bölümü 340'a kadar başlamıyor. Son 100 kusur sayfa yani. Yani...
Hani kitabı okuma AMACIM oydu, o yüzden oraya gelene kadar bir süre ben bu kitabı neden okuyordum diye sorgulamadım desem yalan olur.
Want to read
August 8, 2024Freud Museum London yine çok güzel bir etkinlik düzenliyor, etkinlikten önce bu kitaba bir göz atmak istiyorum. İki ay sürem var ama bu aralar yoğun olduğum için etkinlik öncesi bitiremem muhtemelen. Etkinlik linki bu: https://www.freud.org.uk/event/psycho...
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December 12, 2022A deeply interesting exploration of the intertwining of psychoanalytic and feminist theories. Essential reading for those interested in feminism and social reproduction.
March 9, 2024
So thorough - offered me a lot of history that I was unaware of. I really enjoyed this. Quite academic.
August 22, 2024
PERHAPS THE FIRST ATTEMPT TO RECONCILE FREUDIANISM WITH FEMINISM
Juliet Mitchell (born 1940) is a British psychoanalyst and socialist feminist who is the Director of the Expanded Doctoral School in Psychoanalytic Studies at University College London; she has written/edited other books such as 'Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the école freudienne,' 'Selected Melanie Klein,' 'Woman's Estate,' etc.
She wrote in the Introduction to this 1974 book, "This book has a double and criss-cross purpose. Feminist critics of Freud have not only conflated his theories with those of other, often diverging, analysts and with popularizations, but, with more serious consequences still, have extrapolated his ideas about femininity from their context within the large theories of psychoanalysis." (Pg. xiii-xiv)
She states, "When Freud first formulated the 'castration complex' it explained all there was to know about the difference between the sexes---it defined the girl and made the boy abandon his incestuous wish for the mother. The girl felt totally inferior, because she lacked something, and the boy felt temporarily inferior to his more phallically powerful father. The castration complex ended the boy's Oedipus complex and therewith his infancy. It seemed to lie behind all neuroses, to dominate all dreams and perversions, to account for the social inferiorization of women... and for the glorification of men." (Pg. 75-76)
She says, "It is [Wilhelm] Reich's notion of a sexual revolution, and its contribution then and now to the possible liberation of women, that concerns us specifically." (Pg. 153) She argues, "Reich's crucial misconception of the unconscious as merely the pool of instincts... [is] the cardinal error from which all initial confusion and all his future work stems... it is the nuclear misunderstanding around which all his work revolves... it was this misunderstanding that motivated first his interest in psychoanalysis and later, his own orgonomy. Without such an error, he would never have achieved so much." (Pg. 187) She adds, "Reich perpetually stressed the importance of female sexuality. He saw the passive nature of woman as a pathological product of a society committed to her suppression." (Pg. 199)
She suggests, "Freud was inclined to make quips against feminism. One suspects that the intention was to make the militant women feel that they were vainly, and somewhat madly, tilting at windmills. But... his aloofness has only further infuriated the second wave of feminists who have had the decades of 'the psychological sell' to fan their fury. Freud is target number one..." (Pg. 303) She concludes on the note, "It is not a question of changing (or ending) who has or how one has babies. It is a question of overthrowing patriarchy. As the end of 'eternal' class conflict is visible within the contradictions of capitalism, so too, it would seem, is the swan-song of the 'immoral' nature of patriarchal culture to be heard." (Pg. 416)
This book is of considerable interest---and not merely of "historical" interest---to anyone studying the relationship of Freudianism and modern feminism.
Juliet Mitchell (born 1940) is a British psychoanalyst and socialist feminist who is the Director of the Expanded Doctoral School in Psychoanalytic Studies at University College London; she has written/edited other books such as 'Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the école freudienne,' 'Selected Melanie Klein,' 'Woman's Estate,' etc.
She wrote in the Introduction to this 1974 book, "This book has a double and criss-cross purpose. Feminist critics of Freud have not only conflated his theories with those of other, often diverging, analysts and with popularizations, but, with more serious consequences still, have extrapolated his ideas about femininity from their context within the large theories of psychoanalysis." (Pg. xiii-xiv)
She states, "When Freud first formulated the 'castration complex' it explained all there was to know about the difference between the sexes---it defined the girl and made the boy abandon his incestuous wish for the mother. The girl felt totally inferior, because she lacked something, and the boy felt temporarily inferior to his more phallically powerful father. The castration complex ended the boy's Oedipus complex and therewith his infancy. It seemed to lie behind all neuroses, to dominate all dreams and perversions, to account for the social inferiorization of women... and for the glorification of men." (Pg. 75-76)
She says, "It is [Wilhelm] Reich's notion of a sexual revolution, and its contribution then and now to the possible liberation of women, that concerns us specifically." (Pg. 153) She argues, "Reich's crucial misconception of the unconscious as merely the pool of instincts... [is] the cardinal error from which all initial confusion and all his future work stems... it is the nuclear misunderstanding around which all his work revolves... it was this misunderstanding that motivated first his interest in psychoanalysis and later, his own orgonomy. Without such an error, he would never have achieved so much." (Pg. 187) She adds, "Reich perpetually stressed the importance of female sexuality. He saw the passive nature of woman as a pathological product of a society committed to her suppression." (Pg. 199)
She suggests, "Freud was inclined to make quips against feminism. One suspects that the intention was to make the militant women feel that they were vainly, and somewhat madly, tilting at windmills. But... his aloofness has only further infuriated the second wave of feminists who have had the decades of 'the psychological sell' to fan their fury. Freud is target number one..." (Pg. 303) She concludes on the note, "It is not a question of changing (or ending) who has or how one has babies. It is a question of overthrowing patriarchy. As the end of 'eternal' class conflict is visible within the contradictions of capitalism, so too, it would seem, is the swan-song of the 'immoral' nature of patriarchal culture to be heard." (Pg. 416)
This book is of considerable interest---and not merely of "historical" interest---to anyone studying the relationship of Freudianism and modern feminism.
October 28, 2011
This book analyzes the views of Freud, Reich, and Laing - both comparitivel, in light of their critics and with the author's own assessment and historical overview. Actually, very little of the content is explicitly feminist, or feminist motivated. The result is an enlightening overview of the founders and radicals of psychoanalysis.
My favorite quote: "The unconscious is the way man lives his humanity in harmony and conflict with his particular and historically determined environment."
My favorite quote: "The unconscious is the way man lives his humanity in harmony and conflict with his particular and historically determined environment."
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews