Feminist psychoanalysis

[MillyR]

Does anyone have any knowledge of feminist psychoanalysis? I have very little knowledge of psychology in general, although I have read 'Why Freud was Wrong' and 'The New Gnosis.' I have just read Susie Orbach's 'Hunger Strike' in which she combines an understanding of how society conceptualises women's bodies with how women relate to their own bodies, how daughters relate to their mothers and how we treat anorexia.

I found it interesting that she was able to articulate how it feels to be a women and how women respond to those feelings. I suspect thinking about that is useful to all women, not just those who find currently find therapy useful. I was hoping someone who posts in this section would know more about it, and might have some opinions on the basics of feminist thought in this area.

Hi, I'm interested in feminist psychology, don't know much about feminist psychoanalysis specifically, my area of interest has been mainly sexist social constructionism.

You might find this interesting from the feminist e-zine recommended on another thread.

sorry, did you mean feminist psychoanalysis as a subset within feminist psychology? or were you using it in a more general way?

I am interested in both. I will have a look at the link. Thanks Msrisotto.

Dittany, those had been my feelings about it until I read the Orbach book. Now I think that:

1. A lot of the feminist arguments on here, and in wider society, are about things that society does that damage women, not only materially but also in psychological ways. Unless we can articulate how it damages women's minds, it becomes hard to address those arguments other than through issues that are to do with economic or physical health consequences (not that there is a shortage of them).

1. Some women do require mental health treatments. The fact that they require those treatments is frequently a result of misogyny and is therefore political, but that doesn't mean that just because the cause is political that the immediate solution for the individual women can be solely found in political changes. We have to have feminist therapists for those women, and feminist theorists in psychology, or women who have, for example, anorexia will be misrepresented by wider society and treated in a way that is horrific and Victorian.

Orbach did discuss the use of terms - she was saying that none of the terms available - psychotherapy, counselling, treatment - really described what she was trying to do with women, and that there wasn't really a satisfactory term to use.

Psychoanalysis isn't just about Freud though. Sure he founded it but I don't know any psychologists who buy into any of the surely cocaine fuelled tripe about penis envy etc.

It really depends on what kind of psychoanalysis you are talking about(Classical Freudian, French Feminist, Kleinian) etc but you could start with Juliet Mitchell and take it from there.

I used to like Karen Horney, one of the early psychoanalysts. She was a Freudian who accepted some of Freud's stuff, but disagreed with him about sexuality. She didn't believe in the penis envy nonsense. She believed in womb envy, that men were driven to create and invent as a compensation for their inability to create life through giving birth. I read her when I was younger, but nowadays I think that most of psychotherapy is bunkum. However, she does still have some good common sense insights.

I haven't read any feminist psychoanalysis but my take on Freud is:

Misogyny aside, he was brilliant in his work about the ego, the super-ego and the id. I realize this work was not his alone, but what Freud did was attempt to find a way of treating disorders, which we call psychoanalysis.

I think psychoanalysis, as a concept, is very helpful to feminism. I don'T think it depoliticizes women because it traces all problems back to childhood events.

Freud originally wrote a paper about how so many Victorian women had experienced sexual abuse at the hands of family members, such as fathers. BUt it was ridiculed by the 'patriarchy', so he had to re-write it and came to the conclusion that the women hadn't actually been abused, but were just fantasizing about it. He was a product of his time, like Marx (who was also sexist).

My mother is a nutcase. Reading Freud's work has helped me immensely because it helped me put all the jigsaw pieces together. I suspect my mother may have been sexually abused as a child, but there is no way of finding that out. I also believe that her experiences took place because she was a woman. I've found the concept of psychoanalysis helpful because the ultimate point is that nobody is born mad. People used to think women had problems just because they were women, now we know thier "mad" responses are a healthy mind's way of coping with unbearable events.