Feminism and Psychoanalysis: A Discussion of Arlene Kramer Richards' “Rage and Creativity”

Arlene Richards has provided us with an interesting opportunity and challenge to think about how the second wave of feminists (post World War II) has influenced psychoanalytic thinking. As a starting point, she outlines the history of the movement and suggests its two major thrusts: equality for women and the recognition and valorization of women's differences from men.

I will begin my discussion of Richards' paper by a reflection on the early days of psychoanalysis, more than a half century before these social movements emerged. Following her lead, I will use the concept of penis envy as a way to organize my thoughts about the changes wrought by the feminist movement on psychoanalysis. Freud's theories about women and female development reflect the science and belief systems of his era and milieu—Vienna at the turn of the nineteenth century. From the beginning, these theories have been subject to critique from within and outside of psychoanalytic circles. Even then, many of the women who became psychoanalytic pioneers and studied under Freud, along with a few men, voiced their differences, modifications and objections to his views about women. Three of the most influential voices were Karen Horney, Melanie Klein, and Clara Thompson. In particular, Horney (1924, 1926, 1933) was astonishingly ahead of her times in her understandings of female development. She argued against Freud's insistence that little girls did not know they had vaginas—a thesis connected with his theories that positioned penis envy and a sense of lack as central to female psychosexual development. She also articulated other aspects of the way females felt about their bodies that rested on different assumptions, namely that females' psychology should be understood not in terms of terms of lack and inadequacy, in comparison to males' bodies. She asserted that her male colleagues were biased in their over-valuation of the

penis, reflecting little boys' fears and fantasies. She argued further that penis envy was originally a passing phase in early female development, only to become significant as a possible defensive reaction later in the oedipal phase, a point taken up years later by Grossman and Stewart (1976). That is, a girl's wish to be a boy fights off fearful fantasies of vaginal injury from penetration from the father's penis. She also saw the wish for motherhood as primary in little girls, not as a substitution for a wished for penis, as Freud has suggested. Thus, her views anticipated later theoretical developments around ideas of primary femininity—an early explicitly feminine sense of self and body not simply the negative of masculinity. Melanie Klein (1928), I think, in emphasizing the importance of the early oral phase and the pre-oedipal period, indicated that girls have a dominant feminine instinctual disposition and that penis envy originates secondarily from oral envy of the maternal breast and mother's body and its contents. Children of both sexes share these phantasies. Thompson's ideas (1941, 1942) can be read as a reaction against the Freud's views of women as biologically destined. She described the cultural forces that affect women's attitudes toward themselves and their roles in society, including attitudes toward marriage, childbearing, genitals, and sexuality. She described herself and her female contemporaries as being in a period of transition, thus anticipating the feminist movements to come.

As the century proceeded, the feminist movement began to swell within and without psychoanalysis. The ideas from the feminist movement in the US, Britain, and France, as described by Richards, infused energy and new ways of thinking into the psychoanalytic thinking of the time. I believe that psychoanalytic feminists themselves, often with roots in other disciplines were influential voices in the over-all movement. Examples are Julia Kristeva, from linguistics and philosophy; Juliet Mitchell, from English studies and Nancy Chodorow, from sociology.

As Richards points out, the argument against the idea that penis envy and reactions to it are “bedrock” in a female's psychology has led to and is related to many other aspects of contemporary psychoanalytic understandings about female development. Grossman and Stewart discussed the differing conceptualizations and meanings of penis envy in contemporary thinking, stressing its different defensive functions and roles in development. While many child analysts write about their observations

of penis envy in little girls, they speak of it differently: as accompanying other feelings more in line with a primary sense of femaleness. For example, Yanof (2000) asserted that the personal meaning of a girl's femininity can reflect whatever the girl perceives herself to have or to lack. Similarly, Wilkinson (1991) writes about penis envy as a temporary narcissistic reaction to sexual differences, reinforced if males are given preference in the family or in patriarchal societies. It has to be said, however, that in certain psychoanalytic theoretical frameworks and parts of the world the concepts of penis envy or castration hold a more complex position. For example, it seems to me that Lacan finds it hard to account for female subjectivity without the concept of lack, symbolized by the phallus. I would be interested to hear what other colleagues from around the world have to say about this in these discussions.

I will outline a few of these critical conceptual arenas related the changes in psychoanalytic change of thinking about penis envy as bedrock (Freud, 1937):

1. Primary femininity: Many of the newer ideas cluster around the idea of primary femininity; that is, that there is an early sense of femaleness tied both to body and to identifications. As mentioned above, these ideas originated in the contributions by Horney, followed by Jones (1927, 1933), who also regarded girls' femininity as primary. Jones accepted the importance of early receptive wishes based on an awareness of early vaginal sensations and believed that the phallic phase in girls is defensive. Later, Stoller (1968, 1976) referred to the term “primary femininity” in his studies of the development of core gender identity and disorders of gender identity. He argued that femininity was primary in the sense of embryology and for both females and males primary in another sense, in that the first object of identification for the infant is female, the mother. Elise (1997) and Kulish (2000) offered contemporary critiques of the concept.

   Included here are a myriad of other ideas about the importance of a girl's uniquely female body. Noteworthy is the influential contribution from Bernstein (1990) who elaborated early female genital anxieties: fear of access, of penetration, and of diffusivity. Many others followed along these lines. Kulish (1991) explored the meanings of the clitoris, not in terms of a miniature penis as postulated by Freud, but as an organ

   Page 109

   of female sexual pleasure; Balsam (1996) pointed out how the body-to body comparisons that a little girl makes with her mother contribute to her primary sense of herself as a female; Richards (1992, 1996) explicitly elaborated her ideas about girls' experiences and conflicts about genital experiences in the context of primary femininity. (Earlier Mayer had proposed another primary feminine genital anxiety, with one foot still in more traditional views, traditionally labeled “female castration anxiety”, which involved the feared loss or closing of the genital opening, and allied fears of the loss of openness as a trait of the personality.) I think that these kinds of female genital anxieties are more comparable to castration anxiety than is rape, as Richards suggests. Rape is a horrible reality that has been with us for centuries and in all societies, whereas castration anxiety is a psychic As far as I know, castration except in certain situations in past eras is not a horror men routinely endure in real life.

Kulish and Holtzman (2008) re-examined the formulations about the female oedipal phase as first proposed by Freud and argued that it was not analogous to the male oedipal stage in many crucial ways. They proposed a name change as well—as the “Persephone Phase” to better

describe its unfolding and dynamics, its characteristic themes and preoccupations, and its typical conflicts and defenses.

On examination of this burst of writings about female psychology and body influenced by feminist thinking, I would say that most fall into the category of asserting the differences, whether essential or a product of the environment, between females and males. The French feminist and analyst Irigary (1994) has built her work on the idea of difference; she attacks the “myth of symmetry” which supposes that the females' bodies and minds are symmetrical with males' and thus in these differences are defined as inferior and flawed. She then uncovers the uniquely feminine hidden from view by this blind spot. In many ways, however, such writings that assert the differences in the sexes have paradoxically paved the way for ideas that more generally erase the differences.

The wave of thought has moved from generalities based on a binary model —“he has” and “she has not” to an appreciation of individual differences, and the complexity and non-linearity of gender development. Chodorow (1978, 1994), for example, whose work was revolutionary in the sense in showing that females' sense of gender arises from a reproduction of mothering and is generally marked by relatedness, now emphasizes individual differences: sexualities, femininities and masculinities. Kristeva (2004) speaks of pluralities of versions of femaleness. Thus the arc in psychoanalytic feminism has moved from difference to individuality and ultimately to certain notions of equality. From the emphasis on identification in the formation of gender which accounts for observed sexual differences, the next theoretical jump has been to the complexity of these identifications, and the multifaceted make–up of female and male identifications that go into an individual's gender identity.

Many contemporary psychoanalytic writings about the role of culture and the formation of gender echo the ideas and ideology of equality proposed by the second wave of the feminist movement. These psychoanalytic theorists have up-ended Freud's early theories about gender (a term which he did not use as such). I am thinking about Freud's famous equation of passivity with femininity and activity with masculinity (1937). Freud, here, was speaking of attitudes and positions which could be observed in both men and women on a continuum. These ideas were obviously influenced by the cultural surround as Schafer (1974) pointed

out: “What is problematical is the patriarchal bias in Freudian conceptualization and emphasis, a bias involving taken-for-granted models of masculine and feminine roles in our society” (p. 468).

These ideas were advanced by Fast's influential (1979) on the earliest development of gender through differentiation from an original undifferentiated state. She argued that both little boys and little girls react to their first perceptions of differences in gender as narcissistic injuries. Harris (2005), who wrote that gender is socially constructed, contributed significantly to contemporary psychoanalytic thinking which rejects the idea of fixed and inborn feminine or masculine attributes.

Those psychoanalysts since Thompson who have emphasized the role of culture, in the form of patriarchy, on development echo the feminist movement's call for equality for women. Take Benjamin (1988), for example, who illuminates how women, under patriarchy, cannot find a model for, or a road to, the formation of a robust subjectivity. She is one of many psychoanalytic theorists who have pointed to the restraints on gender roles and the formation of rigid gender identities enforced by patriarchy. Analysts have argued that these restraints affect men and boys as much as women and girls. The insistence in the importance of penis envy in the formation of a girl's sense of herself is matched by an over-evaluation of phallic prowess and power in the identity of boys. Diamond (2015) speaks of the overvaluation of phallicity that both individuals and psychoanalytic theory places in considerations of masculinity. Corbett (2001a) points to the deleterious and misguided effects of the insistence on “normal” phallic measures of masculinity for boys and men. In speaking of rigid versus more open gender identities, Corbett (2001b) privileges mental freedom as the guideline for mental health. Moving away from the emphasis on castration and phallic concerns in men by psychoanalysis, Fogel (1998) articulates the notions of inner bodily aspects of male experience, usually labelled as “feminine”.

As the decades passed, psychoanalysts and gender theorists writing from a psychoanalytic perspective have deconstructed gendered polarities. Instead of two magnetic poles pulling masculine aspects to one pole and feminine to the other, gender configurations have come to be pictured now as points anywhere on many intersecting lines to be combined in any one individual in millions of ways. Thus, the conception of gender

viewed in dichotomous attributes such as active/passive, has shifted to multiple complex gender formations—to be viewed via a turning kaleidoscope rather than a fixed microscope.

Finally, in psychoanalytic institutions themselves, in the training programs, the societies, and the associations, the feminist movement's call for equality for women can be seen concretely in the number of women who are leaders of the field in all aspects. When I began my training, 50 years ago, in my own institute there were few female candidates, only one female training analyst, and none of the leaders were women. Similarly at the American Psychoanalytic Association I saw a sea of older (white) men in leadership. As a candidate, I joined a workshop at the meetings of APsaA called “Problems for Women in Training”, formed by and run by the indomitable Helen Meyers from New York. I was astounded by what greeted me—a women in the corner nursing her baby, a packed room, run in a non-authoritarian manner, with everybody talking, interrupting—so much energy. The group was full of ideas which were put into action: research, such as Elizabeth Mayer's that showed conclusively that women analysts were not referred male patients in statistically significant numbers; the huge undertaking of the annotated bibliography edited by Eleanor Schuker and Nadine Levinson of psychoanalytic writings about women (1991); a mentor program to send female analysts around the US to give presentations and do consultations. In that workshop the women encouraged everyone who came to speak, and to speak up elsewhere, to write, to progress in our training and embrace our aspirations. It was one of the most significant experiences of my career. Many of the women I met there have become lifelong friends. I am sure my experience is not unique and that similar support groups were born in psychoanalytic circles across the world. These circles have reverberated from the world-wide feminist circles described by Richards.