PS30084: Understanding Gender Relations

B. Feminist Perspectives

Psychoanalytic theory and the influence of Freud

** Freud’s Psychoanalytic theory of male and female psycho-sexual development

** Boys and girls seen as psychologically similar in early infancy, through oral and anal stages. Both assumed to have mother as primary love object.

** Development of phallic eroticism/phallic phase late in infancy. Psycho-sexual development of females and males now begins to vary. Clitoris and penis mature as erogenous zones. Physical differences between the sexes begin to have psychological significance.

a) Boys: Oedipus complex

** Boy has phallic desires for primary love object (mother), in direct rivalry with father. Develops belief that girls/women have been castrated, therefore fears father will castrate him. Boy replaces desire for mother with identification with father and is then on path to masculine destiny.

** Castration complex: Penis preferred to clitoris. Boys assume girls have small penis, girls think they’ll grow one later. Realization that girls don’t have penis - boys assume this is result of castration.

b) Girls: Electra complex

** Phallic eroticism assumed to lead to ‘penis envy’.

** Girl discovers that all women lack a penis, and that she was not castrated, but born without penis, and so was her mother. Girl changes attitude to mother, blaming mother. Abandons mother as primary love object, gives up wish for penis and puts in place wish for child: takes on father as primary love object. Launched on path to feminine destiny.

** Psychological sex differences not a direct result of biological sex differences, but how women and men construe their biology, and learn to live with it.

** Women and men seen an ‘naturally’ bisexual in infancy. Psychological sex differences assumed to develop with phallic eroticism. Freud could be sexist and anti-feminist, but not biological determinist or biological essentialist, unlike some post-Freudians.

Psychoanalytic theory and feminism: Feminist critiques of Freud

** Psychoanalysis seen as a male-focussed theory which constructs white, European upper class men as the norm in psychological terms

** Developmental stages define ‘genital sexuality’ of adult (i.e. heterosexual) as mature and ‘normal’

** Freud viewed as sexist (e.g. Freud’s later seduction theory: incest seen as ‘fantasies’; and his concept of penis envy)

** Psychoanalysis viewed as biological determinist theory.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Diverse influences of psychoanalytic theory on feminism

1) Juliet Mitchell (1974): 4 key structures of women’s oppression

· Production (organises work: waged and unwaged)

· Reproduction - of children/species

· Sexuality - systems of heterosexual relations monogamy, marriage.

· Socialisation of children - mother as primary child-rearer.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

· Liberation implies that change necessary in all four structures

· Patriarchy constituted by exchange of women by men in kinship systems and by social construction of ‘biological’ sex differences in terms of this exchange.

· So: Oedipus complex stems from organisation of kinship/family system which locates power in the older male.

· Psychology of masculinity/femininity have their basis in ideologies of ‘sex differences’ which are seen as ‘natural’, and the material organisation of kinship systems in work, sexuality, reproduction and child-care.

2) Nancy Chodorow (1978)

· Focus on ‘womb envy’/mothering. Affects all women, even if not mothers.

· Women’s mothering a key structural characteristic of social organisations of gender as are: sexual divisions of labour; structure of kinship systems; and system of compulsory heterosexuality

· Women’s mothering linked to organisation of production, e.g. distinction between private/public spheres + ideological level: mother seen as arbiter of morality.

· Challenge biological determinism of ‘maternal instinct’ + ‘blaming the mother’ theories of psychology medicine etc.

· Focus on changes brought by industrialisation / capitalism in reproduction of species and of family

· Capitalism removed women’s/children’s work to public (waged) sphere: paid less than men

· Women still do most unpaid housework and mothering: ‘The home is women’s factory’

· Male fear/envy/resentment of women based on institution/ideologies of mothering is central to men’s psychology.

3) Gayle Rubin (1975) anthropologist

· Uses notion of Sex/gender system, which includes:

** ways in which biological sex becomes cultural gender

** sexual division of labour

** social relations for the production of gender and gender-organised social worlds

** rules and regulations for sexual object choice (i.e. the opposite sex)

** concepts of childhood

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

· Draws on concept of Penis envy, following Lacan, in which penis refers to sexual organ, and phallus is seen as symbol of power, esp. men’s power over women. Doesn’t assume that women want power in the literal sense, of penis envy/ castration complex theories, but recognises that male dominance occurs at the symbolic level.

· As a consequence: women’s position seen as psychologically untenable; they have no access to ‘male’ power at any level; women have no penis / phallus; and therefore no active sexuality or choice

· Sex-role socialisation seen as a form of psychic brutality

· Women can acquiesce, repress sexuality, become ’masculine’, or lesbian but whatever they do: resentment.

· Sex/gender system is seen as an ‘apparatus for the production of sexual personality’ and gendered heterosexuals.

· Incest taboo - for boy/men a taboo on sexual desire for certain women (mother, etc.)

For girl/woman: a taboo on desire for all women.

Implications of Freud/psychoanalytic theories for feminism (Sayers, Rubin, Mitchell)

** Feminists should not dismiss psychoanalytic theory out of hand, although Freud, Levi-Strauss etc. can be sexist.

** Equal pay/vote and other reforms not enough to bring about lasting change: sex/gender system ‘has deep psychological roots’, major structural change needed.

** Compulsory heterosexuality = product of kinship system, so ‘liberation’ would remove the concept of ‘gender’ as well as obligatory family forms and sexualities

** Need alternative non-oppressive organisation of sexuality not based around gender/sex

** Lesbianism is not deviance, product of faulty socialisation, abnormal genes or hormones nor ‘different’ sexual preference, but a form of psychological/sexual resistance.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Example of Research influenced by Psychoanalytic theory

Sayers (1997) ‘Boy crazy memories and dreams’: in Ussher (ed.) Body Talk

• According to current research and therapeutic practice, many young people recount their experiences of sex and their changing bodies drawing on themes of connection and disconnection – from themselves and others

• Sayers looks at this process in relation to implications for gender relations and psycho-sexual development

• Sayers draws on the work of Melanie Klein, psychoanalytic theorist and therapist, who explored issues of connection and separation from the mother during birth and infancy

• According to Klein, the mother-baby connection persists into adulthood for girls, so there is less impetus for girls to disconnect or separate psychically from the mother

Sayers’ study:

• Involved accounts (often written and anonymous) of best-remembered recurring dreams from childhood and more recent times, produced by college students, pupils at single-sex state secondary schools and interviews with adults, also memories of childhood and adolescence

• Boys recounted nightmares of being physically disconnected and separated from the mother in early childhood, and memories of loneliness and isolation during puberty

• Boys’ accounts include themes of disconnection between love and hate, or love and sex, and from their own bodies and their sexual desires

• Girls more often recounted nightmares of imprisoning physical connection and closeness involving mother or adult female figures

• Kleinian analysts interpret imagery of maternal figures being killed in dreams as reflecting hatred and fear of the mother and of the adult female body

• Sayers argued that girls seek refuge from these fears in friendships with other girls, or possibly in eating disorders and body dissatisfaction

• Connectedness and disconnectedness is not an inherently gendered process – what Sayers termed ‘boy craziness’ is gendered

‘Boy craziness’ in Sayers’ study:

· ‘Boy craziness’ involves “grandiosely or romantically imagining oneself or others as idealised heroes or gods” (Sayers, 1997)

· Psychoanalysts view this as a means of disconnecting from those women who first mothered us

· Boys in Sayers’s study engaged in ‘boy craziness’ in their recounted dreams/fantasies of being sports stars, boasting of macho achievements, sexual conquests

· Girls also imagined themselves as (male) heroes – or as heroines saved by a prince (eg. fairy tales, Cinderella, etc.)

· Klein argues that girls can feel overwhelmed by intense love and hate for the mother, so try to escape from these feelings by idealising the father/other men in her place

· In Sayers’ study, girls tended to report dreams of romance, but boys also dream of similar themes through ‘boy craziness’

· Feminists seek to expose and challenge the harm done to girls and women by these ‘boy crazy’ images

UGR-FreudFem-lec