Psychoanalytic
and gender feminists believe “women’s way of acting is rooted deep in women’s
psyche.” For the psychoanalytic
feminist, the ideal “human person is a blend of positive feminine and positive
masculine traits.”
The Roots of Psychoanalytic Feminism: Sigmund Freud
Contrary
to popular belief in his time that children are “sexless” (sexuality-less),
Freud argued that children were quite sexual and, in fact, experienced three
sexual stages of infancy: oral, anal, and phallic. During the last of these stages, the “child
discovers the pleasure potential of the genitals and either resolves or fails
to resolve the so-called Oedipus and castration complexes.”
*Dictionary
definition of Oedipus complex – the
positive set of feelings of a child toward the parent of the opposite sex and
hostile or jealous feelings toward the parent of the same sex that may be a
source of adult personality disorder when unresolved.
Freudian
theory proposes that a male child wants his mother sexually, yet noticing that she
and other creatures alike have no penis, he assumes they have been castrated by
his father, and for fear of being castrated himself, chooses not to compete
with his father and act upon his desire, but rather detaches himself from his
mother. He instead begins to develop a
“superego…the son’s internalization of his father’s values, it is a
patriarchal, social conscience.”
The
female child’s first love object is also her mother. The child soon notices that she lacks a
penis, as does her mother, and she becomes envious of the penis. “Disgusted by the sight of her mother, the
girl turns to her father to make good her lack.
The girl tries to take her mother’s place with her father. At first the girl desires to have her
father’s penis, but gradually she begins to desire something even more precious
– a baby, which for her is the ultimate penis substitute.”
Penis
envy, according to Freud, leads woman to shame, vanity, narcissism and more
such immoralities that are in direct contradiction of the male “superego, which
gives rise to the traits marking a civilized person.” Thus a woman’s lack of penis is causal of her
inferiority as a sex in a society driven by men’s fear of castration which
motivates his tendency to civilize and “become obedient rule-followers whose
‘heads’ always control their ‘hearts.’”
Standard Feminist Critiques of Freud
Critiques
of Freud “argued women’s social position and powerlessness relative to men had
little to do with female biology and much to do with the social construction of
femininity.”
Alfred
Alder. Men and women are alike “born
helpless.” Inferiority and/or
powerlessness “are the sources of our lifelong struggles against feelings of
overwhelming impotence.” Alder says that
the “patriarchal society is sick,” and that is the reason why or why not any human
is able to empower their “creative selves.”
Karen
Horney. “Women’s feelings of
inferiority originated not in women’s recognition of their ‘castration’ but in
realization of their social subordination.”
Horney suggests that women are believing the lie ingrained in them by
men that they like being feminine. The
healthy woman then is one who will move beyond her femininity to create an
“ideal self that will include masculine as well as feminine traits.” “As soon
as women learn to view themselves as men’s equals, society will have little if
any power over them.”
Clara
Thompson. “Male authority causes women
to have weaker egos than man do.” The
cross-cultural tendency of societies to favor male superiority is the impetus
of women’s self-hatred and inferiority.
“Thus, the transformation of legal, political, economic, and social
structures that constitute culture is a necessary step in the transformation of
women’s psychology.”
The Feminist Cases for and Against Dual Parenting
Advocates
of dual parenting focus on the discrepancy
in levels of parental investment/nurture between father and mother as
being the key ingredient to women’s societal oppression. During the pre-Oedipal stage, a child sees
his or her mother in her weaknesses and shortcomings, thus creating an
unwarranted preconception of female inferiority in the infantile mind, whereas
the father is seen but little, his shortcomings are hidden, and therefore he
represents strength, power, and flawlessness.
Dorothy
Dinnerstein. People have a “tendency to
blame women for everything wrong about ourselves” because it is mother who
bears us, raises us, and presides over us.
Out of this tendency comes six “gender arrangements;” unspoken rules and
ideas that humans live by that facilitate women’s oppression. With the implementation of dual parenting
(and simultaneous dual enterprising) gender roles and arrangements may be
forgotten. Man will no longer be the
sole “mighty world-builder” or breadwinner, nor will woman be the sole
nurturer, or “mother-goddess” answerable to anything that goes wrong.
Nancy
Chodorow. Male children separate
themselves from their first love object after recognition of otherness from her
and fear of his father’s wrath. He seeks
identification with men as the realization of power and prestige, while the female
child dotes on her first love object in “narcissistic
over-identification.” This pre-Oedipal
development molds children’s understanding of society and gender roles.
“For
Chodorow the measure of difference between males and females is how connected
they are to their mothers, whereas for Dinnerstein it is how separate they are
from their mothers.”
Critiques of Dinnerstein, Chodorow, and Dual Parenting.
Critics
of dual parenting emphasize “psychological rather than social” influences on
women’s oppression. They say, also, that
“women’s biology as well as psychology equips women to perceive their infants’
needs so as to better serve them [than men].
Another critique includes the idea that “to insist that dual parenting
is the solution to human malaise is to elevate men once again to the status of
‘saviors.’”
Toward a Feminist Reinterpretation of the Oedipus Complex
“As
[Juliet] Mitchell understood Freud’s theory…it demonstrates how social beings
emerge from merely biological ones.”
However, “because men no longer need to exchange women in order to
create society, Mitchell speculated the Oedipus complex might now be otiose.”
(futile)
“[Sherry]
Ortner theorized that because gender valences are historical accretions, the
can be exchanged; and with their transformation, the Oedipal process can be
freed from its current patriarchal agenda.
There is, in other words, no law that “maleness” and “femaleness” must
be understood in one and only one way or that “maleness” must be privileged
over “femaleness.”
Mitchell’s
main idea is that gender roles and their symbolism are ingrained “very deep in
the human psyche.”
