Being a Woman Analyst from the 1960s into the Next Century: Some Reflections

Psychoanalytic ideas about the psychology of women have changed significantly in the last 40 years. During this time there have also been major developments in psychoanalysis as a whole. These changes have been in response to multiple social forces, among them the impact of the women's movement, which brought criticism of psychoanalysis and also brought more women into the professions, including into psychoanalysis. More women entering the field in turn generated more scholarship about women and shifts in points of view, with more attention to women's experiences seen “from the inside.” These have influenced theory. My perception is that psychoanalysis has been slower to change than some other academic fields and slower to integrate data from the social sciences and biology. There are also geographic differences in which theories are preferred. Americans more than Europeans have favored certain concepts such as “gender identity” as a way of understanding gender rather than constructing femininity primarily on an anatomical basis or generalizing about “sexuality” (Birksted-Breen, 1996).

My own experience reflected some of the same developments. I graduated from the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute in 1966. During my training there were many ideas that I did not find convincing, not only related to theory about the psychology of women. Teaching was often doctrinaire and rigid. Other theoretical positions such as the lack of attention to the effects of social and cultural forces in personality development, considering them “sociology” rather than “truly psychoanalytic” I also found problematic, although the power of psychoanalytic ideas remained exciting. There was not a great deal of support for expressing these views unless one wanted to shift psychoanalytic training to other institutes, which brought other problems. My psychoanalytic connections and emotional