Thank you Nancy for getting the point of the whole discussion in such a clear-headed and personal way. One way of characterizing the issue of feminism is in terms of the Mind-Body problem. How do we know what we are? Does the body lead the mind? Or does the mind create the body image? Do minds matter absolutely? How does the body impact on the mind and how does the mind impact on the body? After reading your account of discovering your cervix, I recalled the mirror showing my vulva and thinking it awesome and wanting to celebrate it. Such experiences change the way we think.
So it appears that the mind structures the body. Descartes' view was just that: Asking the question implies the answer. Crudely put: “I think, therefore I am.” An adolescent patient wrestling with his identity told me a joke. “An airline stewardess asks Descartes, ‘Would you like a drink?’ Descartes says: ‘I don't think…’ Poof. He's gone.” Since empirical science has addressed this question, thinking has gone in the direction that the brain, not the mind, is what directs the body. But the mind is the workings of the brain. No brain; no mind. So we touch electrodes to parts of the brain and the mind produces memories. We induce pain in the right hand; the left side of the brain produces electrical current. We smile at a newborn infant, the part of the brain that will light up when he smiles lights up at the sight of the mother's smile.
When we look at a part of the body that produces pleasure, we feel good about ourselves. Pain, pleasure, and relatedness are all part of the function of the brain. On the other hand, we lose someone we love; tears come and fall. The brain is affected by our experience of loss. Our pity for an innocent man choked to death by police engenders rage. The rage engenders fear in politicians. And so it goes with interconnections at every level, including body, brain, mind, social interaction. Intellectual
understanding and emotional meaning of events is mediated by what other people think and what other people want us to think. In this sense, science is a conversation among scientists and what we want to be true is shaped by the ideas and opinions of the scientists we respect.
What we think in psychoanalysis has undergone a profound change since the inception of second generation feminism. The conversations among feminists outside of psychoanalysis affected the conversations within our field. The experiences of our own bodies overruled the ideas of male analysts. Your profound tracing of your own experience in the process of becoming a leader in the analytic conversation, in print and in person, has led me to understand a similar process in myself and in our female analytic collective.
In this regard, the establishment of IPTAR, the Contemporary Freudian Society, analytic training centers in several cities across the country, and the formation of Division 39 of the American Psychological Association, CIPS, and other institutions for the development and refinement of psychoanalytic thinking have given our field a new vibrancy as they have established groups thinking about analysis, practicing it, and promulgating its ever-changing ideas.