Psychoanalysis

Feminism and psychoanalysis are strange bedfellows. On the one hand, psychoanalysis has justified gender&s;s persistence along with the patriarchal social structures that impose it. It bases its analysis on the male body and the fear of castration while also deeming women&s;s desire as a mental illness. On the other hand, it is the first theory of embodied subjectivity, allowing the subject to be described as conflicted, uncertain, and indeterminable (i.e., somewhat “free” from the domination of the Symbolic that organizes social life) and giving the subject tools for resisting the oppressive codes of patriarchal power. This chapter looks at debates within feminist theory over whether psychoanalysis ought to be refused as the enemy of feminist values or whether it offers a freeing picture of subjectivity that always fails to adapt itself to social imperatives. Examined here are writings by Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Melanie Klein, Jean Laplanch, Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clément, Noëlle McAffee, Jacqueline Rose, Amy Allen, Juliet Mitchell, Jane Gallop, and Mari Ruti.