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The book Femininity, Desire and Sublimation in Psychoanalysis, single-authored by Elda Abrevaya, is a much needed, long-awaited contribution to the evolution in our understanding and deconstructing of the feminine. It brings together English-speaking and French-speaking theorists, significantly moving the feminine revolution forward. The complexity that Abrevaya brings to the topic, both in theory and in clinical presentation, allows a deepening of thought. The exploration of “sublimation” as crucial to the development of female identity, along with consideration of reproductive technology and the separation of sexual act from conception and motherhood, brings layered nuances to how we think about and work with our female patients.
Abrevaya's end point offers a crucial piece that has been missing from our theory. We are so deeply accustomed to considering the woman's life fulfillment as being directly tied to becoming and being a mother. However, once an individual becomes a mother, we look on women's choices with judgement and prejudice: how much do they work; how much time do they take away from their child; if work is not a necessity, why would work be put before time devoted to family life? Each generation brings shifts to our notions of femininity and female desire. Abrevaya writes about “jouissance,” the passion of the woman, that includes not only the wish for a child, to be a mother, but also importantly the passions much like the “traditional” man: the passion for intellectual work, “In the sense the ability to think and create is essential for a woman's freedom”
(p. 82) and includes the capacity for self-reflection, all considered as feminine attributes. She references Kristeva who notes the overemphasis on pregnancy by the “cultural order.” Abrevaya considers the risk of the idealization of motherhood and the perils that can confine women to a private sphere. She writes about the realm of sublimation: only recently could women work, own property, write,