You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Dr. Chodorow's The Power of Feelings is an important theoretical contribution to an experience-based approach to psychoanalysis. There are three general aims of the book: (1) to critique psychoanalysis as a natural science and as an explanatory, general theory of the person; (2) to introduce anthropological approaches to psyche and culture, and integrate them with psychoanalysis; and (3) to explore the establishment of feelings as the subjective, intermediary point of contact between psyche and culture. Psychoanalysts, particularly of an interpersonal or relational bent, will appreciate Chodorow's dialogue with feminist and anthropological theorists, who privilege the socio-politico-cultural, and her dialogue with psychoanalysts, who privilege psychic dynamics. The culmination of her effort is a re-visioning of how psychoanalysis understands the relationship between subjectivity and reality.
The book's first section addresses psychoanalysis and feminism. Chodorow presents recent relational formulations on how psyche exists and how psychoanalysis is best understood as a theory of the personal. She challenges more deterministic formulations of development, and she has us consider transference, projection, introjection, and fantasy as specialized postures for creating personal meaning.
The second section reconciles gender within Chodorow's foundation of understanding. Gender presents a unique analytic problem; it is both a biological given and a psychically shaped phenomenon. Chodorow convincingly establishes it as a creation of inextricable personal, emotional, cultural, and clinical influences.