Being silenced is traumatic, whether by forces from without or within. Having no voice against abusers or repressors, no voice for anger, sadness, or for all of the things that have hurt. That is the most poisonous deterrent to creativity on all levels. And, of course, that creates rage. But what is the most potent weapon against those silencing forces? Being able to Speak out. Or, Yell. Yet some women can; some can't.
This is the psychoanalyst's job: to give voice to all that has been silenced; to free the imprisoned voice inside our patients; to be a “background object” (Grotstein, p. 369) for gaining the courage to rage. That is why Arlene Kramer Richards' paper with its title, Rage and Creativity, is necessary. The two are inveterate partners. They must be.
In Rage and Creativity: How Second Generation Feminist Thought Collective Influenced Psychoanalysis, Arlene takes us through the history of a feminist movement that arose out of women's rage. The history of women coming out of silence. The misunderstandings. The threat to the “powers” that both were and are still looming. Along with the inevitable backlash in attempts to re-impose silence and control. We see it now. And, we see the fighting back. Arlene has given us an important task:
“Feminists now are advocating socializing girls as non-conforming with the larger society's patriarchal standards, thinking against the grain, being self-centered, abrasive, and strong. Will psychoanalysts accept such a stance (italics mine)? Are we ready to think of our patients as successful when they are rebellious? Are we able to see strong willed, non-conformist women as our achievements rather than “ball-busters?” Can we use the influence of these modern feminists to create a new vision of our own
work? As one who has achieved a partial and limited success in doing this, I am hoping we can.“
I think we can. As a thought collective here in the new International Journal of Controversial Discussions Vol. 3, we have the forum to do so. Thank you for this challenge, Arlene. More than ever, it is important to be creative in our current world-order of COVID-19, imposing new restrictions and frustrations. Yet, how can a woman be creative if not in touch with rage? If she can't use aggression to push boundaries of an old guard to move into something new (whatever that old guard might be within the outer world or in one's mind)—with a voice to do so. We must honor the angry voices.
Arlene gives us a thorough history of the power of anger. The power of Second Wave Feminism. Anger gets things done. Anger frees women (and men) from somatic disorders (; Van Der Kolk, 2014), depression, panic, torments of the soul (Ferro, 2015), the psychological symptoms of being silenced. Anger is necessary. Today the power of its necessity is witnessed in what seems to me a Third Wave of Feminism: the #Me Too movement. Yes, it is about sexual abuse and misconduct. And, it is also about not being seen or heard. About a history of being too afraid or ashamed to speak. Keeping sadness and rage locked into a numbing prison. Gone dead inside.
We've discovered the ways victimized women have been silenced. How powerful that silencing is. How it has sent women into hiding. And just how terrified they are to break down those walls of silence . Yet we've also seen women get angry. How #Me Too (a phrase of awareness created in 2006 by Tarana Burke) caught fire and became a Movement in 2017. We've seen how life-affirming anger can be.
A movement that began as a counter-insurgency to the Trump presidency's war on women, might we call #Me Too the start of a Third Wave of Feminism? It certainly is a thought collective. One formed when Rose McGowan and other women came forward to speak out against the abuses of Hollywood Producer Harvey Weinstein. When Alyssa Milano called out for women who had also been assaulted to tweet “#Me Too”
(Geisler, 2019). Giving many who have been silenced since childhood or early adulthood the courage to join in and speak up. Starting an unmistakable viral roar (Geisler, 2019). Yes, a collective does help.
In , Patricia Douglas didn't have such a collective. A dancer, and only 20 years old at the time, Patricia was courageous enough to speak out about sexual abuse by Hollywood studio moguls at MGM. MGM didn't listen. She went to the Culver City police. MGM owned the police. She tried telling her story to the media. MGM owned the papers: “The power MGM had is unimaginable today. They owned everyone—the D.A., the L.A.P.D. They ran this place.” (Shewfelt, P. 10). Patricia was silenced (Shewfelt, 2017). That was then. This is now. Women scream: “NO MORE.”
These women refuse to be oppressed. Have the courage to speak out. Get elected. Get predators like Harvey Weinstein convicted. We are hearing women. Outspoken women like The Squad: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. A Pressley tweet says: “We are more than four people … our squad includes any person committed to creating a more equitable and just world.”
Arlene calls for us to have that same commitment. We know how to listen. Freud taught us about that. But listening isn't enough. We must support the anger and aggression that needs to be spoken and lived. As Eltahawy (2019) says: “I believe all girls are born with that pilot light of anger (p. 15) … angry women are free women (p. 35).” Anger is not “a sin.”
We can't afford to be complacent; to let the old powers (of, shall we call it, the white male patriarchy?) pull us backwards. We can't allow women's voices to be taken from them in control over their bodies, reproductive rights, gender and racial equality, or in any repressive attempts to silence them. Even in the Kleinian world (much of which I agree with and respect), aggression and anger are at risk of being equated with destructiveness. We must say, “No” to that idea as well. To put it mildly—aggression and anger are good. They are part of the forces that work to give women (and all those who have been oppressed) their voices. The power to speak out.
Can we, this psychoanalytic thought collective, following Arlene's lead, be a part of a Third Wave of Feminism? One in which women are standing up and shouting: “Time's Up”—to the forces that try to shut them down. Our work can and must support them. Because rage is the only way to release creativity from its prison of silence.
Arlene aptly writes in her 1999 paper, Freud and Feminism: A Critical Appraisal: “Sigmund Freud invented psychoanalysis as the art and science of listening. He was a listener who tried to hear and who worked hard at making sense of what he heard, and he listened to voices that in his day received very little attention, the voices of women … he broke ranks even further with the men of his time by listening especially to women” (P. 1213). Even more importantly, in contrast to the later misunderstanding and misuse of Freud's ideas, Freud considered women—equal.
Yet, and Arlene makes this very clear in Rage and Creativity, equality isn't enough. Today, we as psychoanalysts are faced with an even bigger challenge than psychoanalytic and feminist misunderstandings of Freud. Arlene addresses this challenge clearly: allowing women their rage and aggression. Allowing each a voice.
Whether Freud was wrong about penis envy, the castration complex, the realities of child sexual abuse, or feminine sexuality, he did (as Arlene points out, p. 1232, ) foster and support women's creativity. It was important to him. He gave women voices; he published them; he cited their ideas; he was a champion of women. Sure, he made his mistakes. But he did teach us to listen. We can do better. Women do want and need to be heard. Yet just as equality is not enough, it's not enough to listen.
We are the first responders, the ones on the front line. When rage is finally unleashed towards us in the transference, let's not shrink away or defend ourselves, even if our intentions are misunderstood. Let's take that anger in, embrace it, encourage it, explore those misunderstandings (real or imagined). Let's understand the rage—its roots. We are the testing ground. We can make anger safe. Justifiable. Rage isn't wrong. It's not a monster. In fact, anger can set our patients free. And even more, as psychoanalyst Paul Williams says about his own traumatic childhood
in his deeply affecting and honest book, The Sixth Principle, “Anger will keep me alive.”
Privileging anger, helping our patients see that it is necessary, normal, and not “ball-busting,” is one of the important calls to action in Arlene's Rage and Creativity paper. But can we go further and, once again, ask ourselves: what else do women want?
Freud's obscurely cited question: “What does a woman want?” is traced by Ernest Jones to a conversation with Marie Bonaparte. These are Freud's musings, tinged with (I would say) more than an ounce of humility: “The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?‘” (Jones, 1953, p. 421). Isn't this an important question for each of us to ask, if we are to help the frightened and silenced women in our consulting rooms come out of hiding?
Here are some things I've witnessed in my own work: For their feelings not to be too much. For their anger not to “destroy.” Not to be put into the repressive boxes of theory, assumptions, or diagnoses. Help speaking truth to power, including the oppressive, shaming, voices in their own minds. To get free of obligation, of “shoulds,” and self-hate. To be seen, known, and accepted. For exactly who they are. Including their differences.
It's true: women are both equal to and different than men. But, perhaps even more important, each woman is different. Different histories. Hurts and needs taking different forms. Each woman's own individual versions (their truths) must be seen and heard. This is the value of psychoanalytic work. To find that woman, that frightened little girl, the one who's been hiding deep inside… for a very long time. One who's been afraid to raise her head, her hand, to expose her anger, to be visible. We can offer this. To see her, not in the shame she fears, but in the realities (and richness) of who she really is. We can lend a voice. Reach out a hand.
In Rage and Creativity, Arlene tells us how feminism (and psychoanalysis
too) must “correct Freud's idea that difference is dangerous because it can be used invidiously to justify lesser opportunities for women than for men” (P. 8). In fact, as we see in the different voices of Second Wave Feminism, of #Me Too, of all of us as respondents to Arlene's paper, in the different voices of psychoanalytic thinkers: difference, again, to put it mildly, is good. Difference offers complimentary perspectives. And, best of all, a dialogue that supports understanding and change.
Psychoanalysis is a thought collective. A patient and analyst are a thought collective too. Arlene highlights these facts. We exchange ideas. In doing so, we hear that patient's individual voice; filling out the picture of who she is. We find the silenced one inside. Help our patients speak that quieted voice, yell it out, fight for what they believe, use their aggression for change, and rage for their own creative thinking.
We can all say #Me Too—to taking out our microphones and speaking truth to the powers that try to suppress us and take us over. We can stand up to those shaming voices in our minds. We can help our patients do just that. This is what the Women's Movement started. This is what psychoanalysis, Freud's talking cure, is truly all about. Yes, we can all say to silence, “NO MORE.”