Jessica Benjamin

The history of the psychoanalytic movement has involved a considerable development from Freud's first articulation of the nature of female sexuality and of gender difference. The consensus of contemporary analytic thought probably sees more of social reality and less of biological fact in the differences Freud noted. Even so, such differences must be accounted for. What reality gave plausibility to Freud's belief that “The repudiation of femininity must surely be a biological fact, part of the great riddle of sex.”?4 Much effort has gone into showing how this repudiation is not a biological but a social fact. Yet it can hardly be said that indeed we have fully explained this, indeed great, riddle. Perhaps the most comprehensive and articulate explanation of gender difference as a social fact to date has been offered by Nancy Chodorow's The Reproduction of Mothering.

What distinguishes Chodorow's account of the repudiation of femininity is the selection of one social fact above all others; the fact of women's universal confinement to and monopoly of mothering. Drawing upon a wide range of psychoanalytic writings and empirical research, Chodorow is able to show how the distinctive ways in which children of each gender resolve the earliest issues of identification and separation are not simply mediated by the discover of anatomical difference. Rather, the actual relationships between women, men, and young children, structured as they are by the fact of women's mothering are decisive to the establishment of gender differences.

Not only the starting point with regard to social reality, but also the normative view of development distinguishes Chodorow's interpretation of gender difference. Psychoanalytic thought, implicitly and subtly, generally proceeds from the assumption that male development is normative. Chodorow does not simply reverse male priority, but removes the issue to a different terrain: “All people have the relational basis for parenting if they themselves ar