The War against Women in Psychoanalytic Culture: Introduction to the Section

Freud is the father of psycho analysis. It had no mother.

—Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch

The phrase “the war against women” refers to the overt and stealth global prejudice against women that aims to subjugate them. Freud was not immune to this prejudice, as can be seen in those late-nineteenth-century Victorian views about sexuality that helped to shape his conceptualizations of gender. Despite the fact that many of these antediluvian views have been overturned, some continue to live on in the contemporary psychoanalytic scene. This introduction provides an overview of the contributions in this section, which explore how the war quietly or openly insinuates its way into our psychoanalytic culture. The offerings will undoubtedly appeal to the readership, whether one's interest concerning the war leans toward considering a contemporary recontextualization of foundational tenets within the psychoanalytic setting, which directly affect women; how it appears within the domain of the consulting room; third-wave feminism's reach into theory and practice; or forms of institutional and organizational prejudice on the local and national levels, including the field of child analysis.