Feminism and the Oedipus complex
Encyclopedia
In Freudian Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...

, gender development is due to issues related to castration in the Oedipus Complex, and is controversial in Feminism because of the nature of Freudian castration. Classical Freudian psychoanalysis posits that, because women lack the visible genitals of the male, they feel they are "missing" the most central necessary for gaining narcissistic value, and therefore they develop a sense of gender inequality
Gender inequality
Gender inequality refers to disparity between individuals due to gender. Gender is constructed both socially through social interactions as well as biologically through chromosomes, brain structure, and hormonal differences. Gender systems are often dichotomous and hierarchical; binary gender...

 and penis envy
Penis envy
Penis envy in Freudian psychoanalysis refers to the theorized reaction of a girl during her psychosexual development to the realization that she does not have a penis....

. In his late theory on the feminine, Freud recognized the early and long lasting libidinal attachment of the daughter to the mother during the pre-oedipal stages. Feminist psychoanalysts have often struggled with the concept of the Oedipus Complex and the significance of the real, imaginary and symbolic phallus, and have reached different conclusions about it. Some generally agree with Freud's major outlines, making only a few modifications to it while mainly contributing to pre-Oedipal thinking. Others, however, reformulate Freud's theories more rigorously.

Hélène Deutsch

Hélène Deutsch
Helene Deutsch
Helene Deutsch was an Austrian-American psychoanalyst and colleague of Sigmund Freud. She was the first psychoanalyst to specialize in women.- Life :...

 (1884–1982) was one of Freud's first female pupils and the first analyst who made an integral, chronological study of woman's psychological development. In short, Deutsch claims that women have a passive-masochistic sexuality, they are born for reproduction and their development must be seen as different from the development of men.

Deutsch sees the female development as exceedingly difficult and tortuous, because at some point she must transfer her primary sexual object choice from her mother to her father (and males), if she is to attain her expected heterosexual adulthood. According to Deutsch, the girl blames her father, not her mother, for the lack of a penis; thus, she stops identifying with her father and masculinity. Because of this relationship with her father, she develops libidinous
Libido
Libido refers to a person's sex drive or desire for sexual activity. The desire for sex is an aspect of a person's sexuality, but varies enormously from one person to another, and it also varies depending on circumstances at a particular time. A person who has extremely frequent or a suddenly...

 fantasies of being raped. Thus, the rape fantasy is universal and non-pathological, a key part of female sexuality. Meanwhile, the girl identifies herself with her mother through the wish for an ‘anal child
Anal stage
The anal stage, in Freudian psychology, is the period of human development occurring at about one to two years of age. Around this age, the child begins to toilet train, which brings about the child's fascination in the erogenous zone of the anus...

’. When she recognizes her failure, a decline to the pre-genital stage
Genital stage
The genital stage in psychology is the term used by Sigmund Freud to describe the final stage of human psychosexual development. This stage begins at the start of puberty when sexual urges are once again awakened. Through the lessons learned during the previous stages, adolescents direct their...

 takes place: a wish for the earlier active (phallic) clitoris. Masochistic tensions in the girl prevail and she longs to be castrated by her father. The desire for a child also becomes masochistic.

Nancy Chodorow

Nancy Chodorow
Nancy Chodorow
Nancy Julia Chodorow is a feminist sociologist and psychoanalyst. She has written a number of influential books, including The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender ; Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory ; Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities: Freud and Beyond ;...

 noted that Freud believed that males possess physical superiority and that a woman’s personality is inevitably determined by her lack of a penis. Like Freud, but for different reasons, Chodorow emphasizes that the female Oedipal crisis is not resolved completely, unlike the male crisis: a girl cannot and does not completely reject her mother in favour of men, but continues her relationship of attachment
Attachment theory
Attachment theory describes the dynamics of long-term relationships between humans. Its most important tenet is that an infant needs to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for social and emotional development to occur normally. Attachment theory is an interdisciplinary study...

 to her. The strength and quality of her relationship with her father are completely dependent upon the strength and quality of her relationship with her mother. Chodorow claims that most women are genitally heterosexual, but they have other, equally deep relationships with their children and with other women, as a result of the primary relationship with the mother. Thus, a girl represses neither her pre-Oedipal nor her Oedipal attachment to her mother nor her Oedipal attachment to her father. This means that she grows up with more ongoing preoccupation with internalized object relationships and with external relationships. Because a girl does not have to repress her pre-Oedipal and Oedipal attachment to father and mother, she reaches a more relational sensibility than boys. Chodorow illustrated this through studies suggesting that men love (and fall in love) romantically, where women love and fall in love sensibly and rationally.

Luce Irigaray

In Freud's model there is no place for femininity
Femininity
Femininity is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with girls and women. Though socially constructed, femininity is made up of both socially defined and biologically created factors...

 unless it is related to masculinity
Masculinity
Masculinity is possessing qualities or characteristics considered typical of or appropriate to a man. The term can be used to describe any human, animal or object that has the quality of being masculine...

. Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray is a Belgian feminist, philosopher, linguist, psychoanalyst, sociologist and cultural theorist. She is best known for her works Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex Which Is Not One .-Biography:...

, a student of Jacques Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...

, disagrees with the thoughts about the importance of the penis and phallic for women. She hypothesizes that the reason the penis is privileged in Freud’s model is that it is visible. This is also the reason that male sexuality is based, in early Lacanianism, on having (a penis) and female sexuality is based on lack. In Freud’s paradigm, female desire is the desire for a baby to substitute for penis, thus female pleasure is derived from reproduction. Irigaray disagrees: “How can we accept that the entire female sexuality is being controlled by the lack and envy of the penis?” Female sexuality is not solely related to reproduction, but neither is it less valuable in reproduction, and thus it should not hold less social power. Furthermore, she says that Freud is forgetting the mother-daughter relationship. To enter the Oedipus-complex, a girl must hate her mother. Irigaray says this view makes it impossible for a girl to give meaning to the relationship with her mother.

See also

  • Jessica Benjamin
    Jessica Benjamin
    Jessica Benjamin is an American psychoanalyst and feminist.She is currently on the faculty of New York University's Postdoctoral Psychology Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy...

  • Dorothy Dinnerstein
    Dorothy Dinnerstein
    Dorothy Dinnerstein was an American feminist academic and activist, best known for her book The Mermaid and the Minotaur , published in the UK as The Rocking of the Cradle and the Ruling of the World...

  • Francoise Dolto
    Françoise Dolto
    Françoise Dolto , was a French doctor and psychoanalyst, famous for her research on babies and childhood. Dolto revolutionized the field of psycho-therapeutic work with babies and with the mother baby dyad....

  • Anna Freud
    Anna Freud
    Anna Freud was the sixth and last child of Sigmund and Martha Freud. Born in Vienna, she followed the path of her father and contributed to the newly born field of psychoanalysis...

  • Karen Horney
    Karen Horney
    Karen Horney born Danielsen was a German-American psychoanalyst. Her theories questioned some traditional Freudian views, particularly his theory of sexuality, as well as the instinct orientation of psychoanalysis and its genetic psychology...


  • Melanie Klein
    Melanie Klein
    Melanie Reizes Klein was an Austrian-born British psychoanalyst who devised novel therapeutic techniques for children that had an impact on child psychology and contemporary psychoanalysis...

  • Julia Kristeva
    Julia Kristeva
    Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, sociologist, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She is now a Professor at the University Paris Diderot...

  • Jacques Lacan
    Jacques Lacan
    Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...

  • Juliet Mitchell
    Juliet Mitchell
    Juliet Mitchell is a British Psychoanalyst and socialist feminist, who was a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge and Professor of Psychoanalysis and Gender Studies at Cambridge University. In 2010, she's appointed to be the Director of the Expanded Doctoral School in Psychoanalytic Studies at...

  • Griselda Pollock
    Griselda Pollock
    Griselda Pollock is a prominent art historian and cultural analyst, and a world-renowned scholar of international, post-colonial feminist studies in the visual arts. She is best known for her theoretical and methodological innovation, combined with deeply engaged readings of historical and...


  • Joan Riviere
    Joan Riviere
    Joan Hodgson Riviere was a British psychoanalyst, who was both Freud's earliest translator and an influential writer on her own account.-Life and career:...

  • Gender
    Gender
    Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...

  • Gender inequality
    Gender inequality
    Gender inequality refers to disparity between individuals due to gender. Gender is constructed both socially through social interactions as well as biologically through chromosomes, brain structure, and hormonal differences. Gender systems are often dichotomous and hierarchical; binary gender...

  • Feminist theory
    Feminist theory
    Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality...

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