Something Borrowed: How Mutual Influences among Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Straights Changed Women's Lives and Psychoanalytic Theory

The first major revolution in psychoanalytic theory moved it from a predominantly one-person psychology (drive theory) to a psychology that incorporated a two-person perspective, whether in the form of interpersonal relations, object relations theory, or intersubjective theory. In recent years, a number of psychoanalysts have introduced, or rather reintroduced, an important additional perspective— the culturalist point of view. Although the cultural perspective has old and honorable roots in psychoanalysis, having been prefigured in the writings of Kardiner, Ovesey, Rado, Fromm, Horney, and others, some psychoanalysts have been loathe to bring it into contemporary psychoanalytic theory, fearing that it would detract from a necessary emphasis on inner life and the unconscious. Yet the fact is that not only lived experiences but also cultural material infuse our intrapsychic lives, shaping our desires, reframing our fantasies, and becoming part of preconscious mental content.

Throughout life, we employ fantasy envelopes or narratives that are shaped not just by our earliest longings and experiences but also by our exposure to fantasy material. In addition to real events and bits of family history, favorite fairy tales and stories become part of a child's psychic reality, available for incorporation into fantasy. Because fairy tales carry messages that children incorporate into future scenarios of gratification, they become conduits through which children come to express their personal dreams and fantasies (Bettelheim, 1976).