#UsToo, Sigmund

I am writing in the spirit of #MeToo to bear witness to damage that has been done to a subset of women I have known personally in my thirty years of practice as a psychoanalyst, who felt pressured by the value placed on sexuality in the cultural milieu of the 1960s and, 70s and in the psychoanalytic circles they came to for help. I am also writing because I think these women's stories offer a window into ways the mid-to-late-twentieth-century sexual revolution was experienced differently in various parts of the United States. This inquiry is part of a larger project, where I have been exploring ways to bridge cultural divides that block collaboration on a humanitarian political agenda.

In the 1950s mainstream psychoanalytic theory held that we resolve issues with dependency early, so as to be able to emerge capable of autonomy and sexual pleasure. The healthiest patients were seen as those who struggled with derivatives of Oedipal conflict; others might or might not be analyzable. In this cultural and therapeutic milieu, women who functioned well in a number of areas but who struggled with sexual arousal often believed that their erotic difficulties were causing their emotional problems. Where sexual experience and freedom were privileged over attachment and other emotional needs, these women found themselves confused and alienated from themselves — both sexually and, sometimes, in terms of a basic sense of self. At the turn of the century, Freud saw the inhibition of sexual outlets as the primary cause of neurosis, the overvaluation of sexual acts, and the failure to recognize the importance of human interconnection, which became out of line when Freud abandoned his seduction theory. The early Freudian view does not fit with our contemporary understanding of physio-emotional needs and with what we now know about how sexuality works. Nevertheless, the notion of sexual inhibition as the root of psychiatric difficulty had entered the popular imagination, and for decade