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.
This volume discusses Freud's relations with women in his personal and professional life and how they influenced the development of his theory of sexuality.
Freud's mother believed that he was destined for fame and gave him the feeling about himself that fostered greatness. Freeman and Strean suggest that perhaps Freud's competition with his sisters prevented him from acknowledging that if a
girl has been the indisputable favorite of her mother, she, too, can keep for life “the confidence of success that induces real success.”
Freud's childhood desire to know all his mother's thoughts and feelings seems to have led him to make the request of his wife that she tell him all of her thoughts and feelings. This same request of his patients would, of course, become a cornerstone of “the talking cure.” However, the authors state, “One of Freud's limitations as a therapist, which emerged particularly in his work with Helene Deutsch, was his reluctance to help patients feel the hatred which they transferred toward him from their parents.”
The authors believe “that the defensive operations he used to protect and preserve his idealized vision of his mother from invasion by his deep hostility toward her left their mark on his theories of psychosexual development and on his notions of womankind. He loved and cherished women, but he also feared them and, at times, showed contempt for them. Thus, his unresolved ambivalence toward women affects several of his psychoanalytic theories of feminity.”
Freeman and Strean go on to say that “he was the one to point out the power of ambivalence, the mixed feelings of love and hate that exist in all of us. In Freud's life, his love and respect for women far outweighed his repressed hatred.”
The authors suggest that Freud showed women the way to sexual and emotional freedom, thus leading the way to emancipation.