Freud and Feminism
Author(s): Maeve Nolan and Kathleen O'Mahony
Source: Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 76, No. 302 (Summer, 1987), pp. 159-168
Published by: Irish Province of the Society of Jesus
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30090854
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FREUD AND FEMINISM
Maeve Nolan and Kathleen O'Mahony
Maeve Nolan is a psychotherapist working in Dublin and
Kathleen O'Mahony is a psychotherapist working in Mullingar.
n 1900 Dora dismissed Freud, her analyst, for failing to
understand her a woman. Since then countless feminists have
dismissed him in a similar fashion for similar reasons. Puzzled by
Dora's rejection Freud grappled with the riddle of femininity but
it was over twenty years before he committed himself to writing on
the subject by which time he himself had predicted a feminist revolt.
His description of women as more vain, more jealous, more
dependent, more submissive and less moral, less active and less able
to love than men was indeed far from friendly and bound to provoke
a negative response. While this rather alarming description of women
is often remembered the fact that he was a600g the first to raise
the issue of feminine sexuality is as frequently forgotten. Freud's
misogyny is stressed while the fact that he allowed the hysteric to
speak is overlooked.
Pschoanalysis And Feminism
Juliet Mitchell, dissatisfied with a purely economic understanding
of the position of women was one of the first feminists to recognize
the relevance of pyschoanalysis to the question of femininity. In her
defence of Freud she stressed the need to search beneath the
superficial description to reclaim the more radical aspects of
psychoanalysis. `The fact that Freud personally had a reactionary
ideological attitude towards women in no way affects his science
it wouldn't be a science if it did' she claims'.
The potential usefulness of a dialogue between psychoanalysis and
feminism is suggested by their com600 aims. Both deal with
sexuality, challenge the status quo and seek to penetrate behind the
surface of consciousness and society to understand and undermine
resistance to change. Psychoanalysis is a potentially useful tool for
understanding the full complexity of subjectivity and sexuality
essential to feminism. It helps explain femininity, how it comes into
being and how we internalize it. Psychoanalysis is descriptive and
evaluative, not prescriptive and dogmatic and far from seeking to
Studies Summer 1987 159
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delimit woman's role it takes full account of the contradictions
inherent in it.
Arising from his attempts to hear what the symptom of the hysteric
had to say Freud concluded that femininity was neither easily
achieved nor maintained. The very existence of a women's move
ment is evidence that sexual divisions are not fixed and unchanging
and that femininity is difficult for many women. Feminism is based
on the belief that existing sexual divisions can be subverted and
revised while psychoanalysis provides an account of how those
divisions came to be in the first place. By focusing on unconscious
processes it helps explain the deep-rootedness of gender divisions
and their persistence despite superficial changes in sex roles. It is
of relevance to all women bombarded by conflicting, confusing and
inconsistent images of femininity and to all who seek to change the
stereotype of women as passive, submissive and emotional. Freud's
fundamental question `what is it to be a woman?' is even more
relevant in a world where the options are becoming increasingly
complex. Any attempt at a reply must take account of both the
unconscious and the conscious dimensions.
Subjectivity And Sexuality
To understand and even to criticize psychoanalysis it is necessary
to appreciate the con300tion of the subject on which it is based. From
the time of Descartes' `I think therefore I am' the human individual
has been conceived of as unitary, non-contradictory and rational,
a self-directed actor in his own affairs. Freud's essential insight was
to undermine this con300tion of a coherent subject by placing the
unconscious at the core of subjectivity. This is not subjectivity with
its usual connotation of personal bias and emotionality but
subjectivity taken to mean the condition of being a subject with a
conscious and unconscious dimension. This unconscious dimension,
the truly revolutionary core of Freud's thought, faces extinction under
the weight of the logic of a rational man.
Jacques Lacan, in his return to Freud, stresses the need to rescue
the unconscious which has been under threat as a result of the
American appropriation and dilution of psychoanalysis. American
ego-psychology with its emphasis on the strength of the ego as an
agency of adaptation forces the unconscious and the subject into
an ever-diminishing role. In contrast, Lacan like Freud sees the
unconscious as the true psychical reality, the source of conflicts and
contradictions which constantly undermines the subject's necessarily
precarious sense of self. For Lacan rational self-determination is
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impossible and the ego is only ever a fragile structure based on an
illusion. Subjectivity then is not pre-given. It is not a role waiting
to be learned and neither is it determined by biology. Above all it
is not the Self with a stable sense of identity. Rather it is constructed,
precarious and constantly under threat. It is never final. It has to
be painfully assumed at a cost, the only alternative being psychosis.
Sexuality is central to subjectivity because it is always a sexed
subjectivity which is produced. `No human being can become a
subject outside the division into two sexes. One must take up a
position as either a man or a woman ,2 writes Juliet Mitchell.
The Oedipus Complex is that point at which the child takes up
its position as masculine or feminine. It is the crucial moment in
the construction of gendered subjectivity when the long-recognized
anatomical distinction between the sexes is finally given a psychical
significance. It was Si600e de Beauvoir who said, `one is not born
but becomes a woman; and it is psychoanalysis which gives an
account of that process of becoming. Yet the relationship between
Freud and feminism has always been difficult. Feminism has largely
rejected psychoanalysis ex300t in France where a Lacanian
interpretation of Freud is seen as potentially useful. The contrast
between the `French Freud' and the `American Freud' accounts for
the hugely different emphasis in each country. While American
feminists speak of the oppression of women and the raising of
consciousness, French feminists are more likely to speak of the
repression of women and the exploration of the unconscious,
specifically of the feminine unconscious. More fundamentally, what
is at issue is the distinction between an ego and a subject. An ego
requires strengthening, a subject can only become aware of its own
fragility and inherent contradictions. But let us clarify Freud's
position before examining the feminist reaction to it.
Freud's Position
Although Freud's writings on sexuality are dense and difficult the
following is an attempt to summarize them. Freud uncovered
childhood sexuality and initially saw no need to separate it into male
and female. Little boys and little girls simply grew up to be men and
women. The Oedipus Complex was taken to be the moment at which
the child resolves his desire for the parent of the opposite sex by
identifying with the same-sexed parent. The boy child was always
taken as the model, and the path of his desire was spelled out from
the beginning. He was presumed to desire his mother naturally and
to be in rivalry with his father as a result. These feelings were
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repressed due to their impossibility and to the absence of real
satisfaction. Thus the Oedipus Complex was seen as a developmental
process which faded away due to inevitable disappointment and
frustration. The little girl's development was thought to be a similar
parallel process although by 1924 Freud had realized that his
knowledge of female sexuality was `unsatisfactory, incomplete and
vague'
With the discovery of the phallic phase the dissolution of the
Oedipus Complex was finally understood. Children at the phallic
phase know only one kind of genital, the male one. For the boy it
is the fear of castration combined with his narcissistic interest in his
genitals which is the motive force for the dissolution of the Oedipus
Complex. The threat of castration seen as emanating from the father
provides the impetus for the child to give up his desire for his mother
and identify with his father.
This view of a phallic phase com600 to both sexes, however,
immediately put the little girl's Oedipus Complex into question. It
became clear that there was only one relevant sexual organ, that the
mother was the first love object for both sexes and that the girl's
Oedipal desire for the father could no longer be regarded as natural
and normative. The boy's first love object was maintained while the
girl's had to change from her mother to her father, a transition she
found often tortuous, definitely circuitous and sometimes even
impossible. Once again by treating the male as the norm the female
was overlooked and the greater complexity and obscurity of her
Oedipal conflict only belatedly came to light.
Essentially, then, the castration complex gives psychical
significance to the fact of sexual difference and it means different
things for each sex. For the boy it abolishes his Oedipal conflict while
for the girl it brings it about. For the boy there is a sharp distinction
between his pre-Oedipal and Oedipal phases and from the beginning
his development is more logical and more linear. The girl's Oedipus
Complex is never shattered in the same way as the boy's and her
pre-Oedipal relationship with her mother remains an active disturbing
element in her psyche.
The fact of sexual difference gives reality to the castration complex
and accounts for the child taking up a position as masculine or
feminine. In this sense anatomy is destiny. However masculine and
feminine do not automatically correspond with biological sex and
in this sense anatomy is not destiny. According to Freud `pure
masculinity and femininity remain theoretical constructs of uncertain
content' .3
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Lacan's Re-Reading of Freud
That the possibility of castration was to be taken in a metaphorical
and not in a literal sense was apparent, though insufficiently stressed,
in Freud's work. It is Lacan who clearly spelled it out and gave it
a new emphasis. Freud never clearly differentiated between the
phallus and the actual penis. Lacan's careful re-reading of Freud helps
to clarify Freud's position by stressing the essentially symbolic nature
of the phallus. The phallus as symbol is radically different from the
penis as organ and as such is not possessed by either sex. Freud was
of course aware that boys do not lose their penis and girls cannot
have one and an accurate reading of Freud demands that the penis
be understood in a symbolic sense. The castration complex is related
to the loss of the phallus and whether or not girls have a knowledge
of the vagina or boys experience `womb envy' is entirely irrelevant.
Both sexes are confronted with a lack, and the fact of sexual
difference poses an enigma to both. Both have to assume this lack
within themselves and by so doing enter the world of law, of language
and of culture, the Symbolic Order in Lacanian terms.
Lacan writes, `Ladies and gentlemen will be henceforth two
countries towards which each of their souls will strive on divergent
wings and. between which a truce will be impossible since they are
actually the same country and neither can compromise on its own
superiority without detracting from the glory of the other'4. The
differential entry of the boy and girl into culture must have huge
implications for their future progress.
Thus sexuality is not some innate, natural characteristic given at
birth and assumed unproblematically. With the recognition of sexual
difference in the castration complex cultural laws impose themselves
on the lawless, limitless desires of the child. The illusion of unity
and omnipotence is abolished and the child assumes his or her
subjectivity. The full entry of the child into the symbolic order hinges
on the notions of Difference and of Lack and it is the phallus which
signifies this difference. However while Freud and Lacan insist on
the notion of sexual difference the very idea of difference has been
the focus of conflict for women.
Difference
While Freud stressed the production of sexual difference other
analysts focused on female sexuality independently of the distinction
that created it. The arguments within psychoanalysis in the 30s about
female sexuality have become known as the Freud -Jones debate.
In their eagerness to counteract Freud's perceived prejudices and
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phallocentrism writers like Ernest Jones, Karen Homey and Melanie
Klein challenged Freud's biologism and sought to define a separate
but equivalent process of development for the female child. Freud's
notions of masculine libido and penis envy were counterbalanced
with feminine libido and womb envy and the emphasis shifted to
what each sex had of value belonging to it alone.
While the con300t of femininity based on a feminine libido may
appear superficially less negative and more attractive than one based
on castration it ultimately reduces to an exclusively biological theory
with the implication that woman's position is inevitable. These writers
thus perpetuated what they had set out to correct. While recognizing
a biological distinction between the sexes they argued for similar lines
of psychic development and concluded that men and women were
born not made. Implicitly or explicitly they believed that by describing
separate lines of development for males and females beginning at
birth the whole question of sexuality would in time become
redundant. In seeking to eliminate sexuality as a problem they failed
to grasp the centrality of sexuality to subjectivity. The question of
sexuality in whatever guise will and must continue to be posed to
us all.
Following a total silence from within psychoanalysis after the great
debate in the 30s the question of female sexuality was raised again
by feminist writers in the 70s. Like the analysts before them the
feminists rejected the centrality of the phallus and called upon social,
economic and historical factors to be substituted for Freud's
biological ones.
Sexuality of necessity involves difference, yet in a world where
difference is not neutral and is taken to mean superior and inferior
it is natural to attempt to eliminate it. When it has been used t
defend inequality and oppression it is difficult to think of difference
without thinking of it either aggressively or defensively. The notion
of difference has been problematic for women who resist being
positioned as the negative side of difference, as an inverted image,
as man's Other, his repressed, his unconscious for whom her
difference preserves his own `natural' superiority.
Typically the feminine has been defined as opposite to the
masculine thus placing the two sexes at opposite ends of a pola
dimension and raking woman complementary to man. The problem
then is that opposition must be rigidly maintained and `normality'
comes to mean either end of a spectrum. Because of the precarious
nature of sexual identity and its consequent vulnerability the tendency
is to turn to the other in an attempt at completion. In essence the
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male is taken as the norm and the female functions to complete him.
Femininity pleases men because it makes them feel more masculine
by contrast.
Many feminists have rejected both the notion of difference as
essential and of any simple complementarity and have attributed
their unequal position to the maintenance of difference. Their
reaction to psychoanalysis can best be explained with reference to
this notion of difference. Reactions within feminism have swung from
denial of difference to celebration of difference and the real challenge
now is to achieve equality in difference.
Denial Of Difference
Stemming from the belief that female difference was the cause of
their oppression early feminist writers sought to minimize or deny
difference. In a world where difference was being vehemently denied
there was no room for uncomfortable psychoanalytic insights into
the nature of subjectivity and sexuality. Women were keen to develop
a strong sense of identity, and psychoanalysis with its emphasis on
a split subject of uncertain identity was not appealing.
Women sought to deny difference and to compete with men on
equal terms but in seeking to eliminate difference they too started
from the distinction into masculine and feminine. Androgyny was
advocated, a har600ious blend of masculine and feminine which
would allow women to compete in a male world. If female difference
was the cause of oppression then it made sense to argue for an
amalgam of masculine and feminine. By doing so, however, it sought
to put back together what had been split apart by culture and did
not get beyond the association of some traits with masculinity and
some with femininity. The androgynous ideal meant in fact that
women too could exercise masculine qualities and compete on equal
terms in the work place. The reverse side of the coin, while desirable,
was not sufficiently stressed and once again masculine values were
held up as the norm and as worth striving for. Androgyny perpetuated
the association of certain traits with masculinity and some with
femininity and a negative view of female traits. In their denial of
difference these early writers rejected femininity as an imposed
limitation and an unwelcome de600stration of difference. The
feminine ideal which served to perpetuate difference was rejected
and there was much intolerance of departure from a feminist norm.
Even feminist accounts influenced by psychoanalysis ultimately
denied the necessity for difference. One of the most popular
psychoanalytically based accounts of sexual difference is that of
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Nancy Chodorow. Rather than outrightly denying difference she
sought to explain it in terms of divergent experiences during the pre
Oedipal period. Because girls did not need to differentiate themselves
sharply from their mothers they retained a greater capacity for
empathy and a greater sense of relatedness and connection. Male
identity depended on a sharp differentiation from the mother which
created a greater sense of independence and autonomy. Although
ostensibly an account based on psychoanalysis, Chodorow virtually
ignores the unconscious dimension by suggesting that sexual
inequality would disappear and that change could be effected by
men learning to become `equal' parents. She thus denied the need
for difference and by focusing on social change and denying psychical
differences her theory reduces to a sociological one.
Celebration Of Difference
Early feminists sought to forge a new strong sense of identity through
consciousness-raising (based on a Freudian con300t!). It allowed
women to speak their difference from men and emphasized ego
strength, assertiveness and standing up for one's rights. It seemed
as if one only had to change attitudes to change the world and, given
the need for political action, the idea of an autonomous and coherent
female self was obviously desirable. However it became clear that
personal consciousness was not the firm foundation it had been taken
to be. In order to explore the absence of real change despite liberal
reforms and superficial social change it became necessary to under
stand women's acquiescence in, as well as her resistance to, her female
role. As patriarchy was not a conscious conspiracy devised by men
to rule the world its power could not be understood without taking
the unconscious into account. Consciousness-raising had highlighted
the contradictions inherent in women's experience of themselves and
suggested the need to understand their production. With time,
differences formerly viewed as defects came to be celebrated as
possible sources of strength.
The celebration of difference, arguably the most exciting and
certainly the most evocative reaction to difference, provides a
com600 ground for American and French feminists. French writers
like Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Helene Cixous, Marguerite Duras
and American authors like Adrienne Rich and Mary Daly all shared
a vision of a separate woman's culture. Far from wanting to eliminate
difference these writers sought to preserve, even exaggerate it. All
struggled with the inadequacy of our language to express women's
experience. They set out to define the feminine, that dark continent
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which threatens to erupt and subvert the Symbolic Order. In
reclaiming difference they focused in particular on women's
physiological richness of experience, thereby tending towards a too
easy equation of the maternal with the feminine.
In France, Lacan's scandalous statement that `woman does not
exist' was taken up as a challenge by those seeking to rescue the
feminine from obscurity. In that woman as `essence, as a natural,
transcultural, transhistorical entity does not exist Lacan was right,
but that the feminine is by definition indefinable, unspeakable and
silent is open to question. In their attempts to disprove it many French
feminists aim to disrupt and subvert Western thought and language
itself while socioeconomic equality is secondary. This retreat into
a feminine world, this `feminism' has been criticized by many as
exclusive, excluding and elitist. De Beauvoir cautioned women against
the dangers of enclosing themselves in their differences and clearly
it is not simply a question of redressing the balance, of bringing in
a female world to counterbalance the male world. An exclusive female
world is essentialist and illusory and no answer to patriarchy.
Ultimately women must struggle to find a place in the symbolic
world.
Conclusion Equality In Difference
The initial rejection and subsequent reappraisal of psychoanalysis
by feminists reflects the early depreciation and later appreciation
of difference within feminism. Sexual difference is inevitable and
the challenge now is to recognize it without seeking to annihilate,
deny, exaggerate or suppress it. For women it is not difference itself
which is the problem but the uses to which it is put. Both
psychoanalysis and feminism stress that women's difference from
men is a result of culture not nature and is therefore open to change.
Female sexuality has been artificially separated from sexuality in
general, masking the fact that underlying the difference between the
sexes is a far more crucial similarity. In analytic terms both are
constructed around a fundamental lack. The repeated asking of `what
is it to be a woman?' provokes the equally essential question of `what
is it to be a man?' Traditional gender identity is limiting for both
sexes and both female and male sexuality cry out for redefinition.
As neither denial nor celebration of difference does justice to human
subjectivity the aim of any such redefinition must be equality in
difference.
Psychoanalysis as an account of the production of sexuality is of
relevance to feminism. By illustrating how the contradictions inherent
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in that sexuality come to be lived feminism must in turn be taken
into account by psychoanalysis. Dora rejected Freud. When she
returned some 600ths later he in turn rejected her and the dialogue
between Freud and feminism came to a premature end. Perhaps now
that the prejudices on both sides have become clearer it is time for
that dialogue to be continued.
Notes:
1. Mitchell, Juliet, Woman's Estate, Penguin, 1973.
2. Mitchell, Juliet, and Rose Jacqueline, (Eds), Feminine Sexuality, Macmillan
Press, 1982
3. Freud, Sigmund, `Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical
Distinction between the Sexes; S.E., XIX, 1925.
4. Lacan, Jacques, Ecrits, Tavistock Publications, 1977.
TAKING THE VEIL
Zip into the honeycomb,
sister; lie jelly coddled
in your hexagon; listen to bees
drilling. bee paths in oxygen, outside,
and the hush of hatchery.
See sun filtered
in mica flakes through wax;
mote-pollened stamens
of light piercing
cracks of the wall.
Lie fallow; few
are chosen for the flight
into the sun's eye,
the disembowelling,
the fall.
ROISIN COWMAN
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