Women have always had a deeply ambivalent relationship with psychoanalysis. As dismissed patients (Dora), extruded analysts (Horney), or exploited thinkers (Spielrein) women being women caused controversy within the field. Psychoanalytic ideas about women are so entrenched in our culture that many who enter the clinical world as practitioners have stayed away from Freud and psychoanalysis. It’s hard to believe this, in the intellectual psychoanalytic bubble that is our world. But for those of us who teach in other contexts, or have conversations about our profession, psychoanalysis is often received with suspicion or irrelevance. It is not clear which reaction is worse.
In our role as faculty and supervisors, we have been dedicated to the education of all who might listen about the vibrancy of our field and the possibility of transformation psychoanalysis offers. But even when we are most successful in our mission, we run into a snag: People don’t like what psychoanalysis has said about women. Psychoanalysis has struggled with its ideas about women, about who we are, how to work with us, and how to respect and encourage what we want. The psychology of women has been an ongoing puzzle, as though women are uniquely challenging, almost recalcitrant. And so, women’s relationship to psychoanalysis has been guarded.
While classical psychoanalysis can be applauded for putting subjectivity, gender, and sexuality on the map, it was a skewed contribution, fraught with biased hypotheses. The understanding of women—their bodies, their minds, and their psychic reality—seemed mysterious and elusive. Gender and sexuality were organized into binaries, and women’s motivational needs were described as deeply embedded reactions to deficit. Plainly, it was a phallocentric view. For a century, psychoanalytic ideas about women’s ambition and assertion were understood, to varying degrees, in terms that pathologized, minimized, and disparaged. Women who spoke out, who sought authority and leadership, paid a price. Women’s ambition was understood through a tightly held lens. Even now, the two words, “leadership” and “women,” are rarely paired in any meaningful way in our psychoanalytic literature. Despite these painful shortcomings, women have been drawn to psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytic process, as clinicians, as theory builders, and as patients. And thankfully, much has occurred since these beginnings. We believe contemporary psychoanalysis is in a better position to address “what women want,” by asking women, rather than deciding who women are.
In the aftermath of the 2016 election and in the midst of the #MeToo movement, the experience of women, as leaders and activists, has become central. It is crucial for psychoanalysis to revisit its understanding of women, including its contributions and misguided claims. Many of us have engaged in challenging dialogue, generating ideas about how psychoanalysis can play a leading role in deepening the discussion. Partnering in these efforts, APsaA has shown a greater interest in the role of the social third and its impact on individual psyche, as well as dyadic and group experience. Though many of our colleagues value distinct perspectives on a one-person or two-person model, room has been made for intersubjectivity and its relationship to a social field. Indeed, we may be at a tipping point that will lead to innovative ideas about gender, women, leadership, and their relationship to power.
Our interest in this subject is more than academic. This is personal. It is from this perspective that we would like to address a sobering story about our legacy, the arc of our APsaA Discussion Group on Women, and our thoughts about the contribution of contemporary psychoanalytic ideas.
To look back is to bathe in nostalgia and naiveté. The tech industry was booming, and the business schools seemed overrun with opportunities for young female entrepreneurs. It looked like women’s advancement in the corporate world would be an inevitable outcome of the expanding economy. So vast was the surge, it appeared women would ascend in sectors like academics, medicine, government, politics, and media. The numbers women brought to the economy—in population, consumer interest, and profit trends—were too high to ignore if a company were to survive. The greatest challenge, it appeared, was to find a way to alter the systemic structure so the layer of the hierarchy, the leadership layer, reflected congruence with the gender numbers at other levels.
As two mid-career psychologists, coming of age in the 1960s, and trained in the ‘80s by feminist pioneers of women’s psychological development, we were at the intersection of psychological theories that emphasized women’s so-called special skills—empathy and connection as well as the uncovering of long hidden instances of sexual trauma. We noticed when women entered the workplace, their aspirations would hit a frustrating dilemma: impossible expectations at the intersections between male definitions of success and the wish for family, competition, and bullying from male colleagues, and the entitlement for equal power in an organization.
Discrimination showed up as a sidebar. In the workplace, there was little focus on inclusion or difference. Identity and relationships were largely represented in an absence of multiplicity: Gender binaries and heteronormativity were standards, with little discussion of sexual orientation or how individuals who did not conform played a part in the social fabric. There was silence regarding harassment and discrimination, though in the privacy of our offices we learned of ongoing violations and exploitation that occurred in the still largely male dominated structures. The feminist struggles for equality seemed to be regarded as irrelevant, even outdated. At mid-career, we decided to become psychoanalysts. Our institute in Boston included an impressive and influential presence of women, and a troubling backstory.
As psychoanalysts, we know that legacy matters. we also know that legacy can be difficult to hold in mind. Malkah Notman and Nancy Chodorow have written about the leadership history of women psychoanalysts, which offers much for us to consider. In her article, “Is There a War on Women in Psychoanalysis? The Disappearance of a Group of Women Leaders,” Notman explores the history of women leaders at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (BPSI), particularly the question of what happened following the 1950s and 1960s, a robust time for women psychoanalysts.
During this first wave, Greta Bibring was a central figure as chair of the Beth Israel Department of Psychiatry (1946-1965). A full professor, Bibring was one of many women analyst leaders at BPSI that also included Helene Deutsch and Elizabeth Zetzel. First wave female leaders at BPSI were largely World War II European immigrants. In contrast to the post-World War II stereotypes of the stay-at-home mothers, these pioneers “led active lives” in the public domain, according to Notman. Many of them were directly connected to Freud and the beginnings of psychoanalysis, perhaps assuming leadership as an “entitlement or inevitability.”
This first generation de-emphasized gender difference and attributed their success to merit (Chodorow, 1989). They were important, connected, and upper-class immigrants who had experienced less discrimination in pursuit of medical education and more openness to a woman’s working life. However, their seemingly genderless presentation directly conflicted with the feminist and essentialist ideas that emerged in American psychology and culture of the 1970s. To some degree, essentialism may have been a reaction to the more neutral comportment of the first wave of leaders. Either way, casting women leaders as genderless or as possessing essential characteristics (unique and different from male characteristics) had its limitations.
Looking back, we wonder what these powerful women analysts thought of their predecessor, Karen Horney, who in 1926, had courageously challenged Freud’s ideas about psychological development, and offered a powerful, female perspective. Their relative silence and seemingly genderless presentation is at odds with Horney’s theory, as well as her personal character and professional manner. It was not until two decades later, the 1990s, when psychoanalytic gender theory and our understanding of women’s experience of desire, ambition, and leadership changed profoundly.
According to Chodorow, the first wave of powerful women analysts were not particularly responsive to reports of discrimination. This might shed light on the relative silence of the generation of female analysts who followed them. We might consider the following: Did the silence of the next generation (late 1960s and 1970s) contribute to a culture that turned a blind eye to sexual exploitation? The latter might speak to complicity between men and women in positions of power (within a masculine power structure), one that disenfranchises potential women leaders in our profession. Such silence is not unlike the subtle forms of misogyny that persist in our current culture and is relevant given the current #MeToo movement. However, the relative silence seems to have had complicated determinants.
After interviewing many of BPSI’s first wave women, Chodorow cautioned against assuming they were gender blind. Instead, she suggests they experienced a different “form of consciousness” or “salience” in response to gendered situations that were of interest to the 1970s American feminist researchers:
I came to see that my ideas, as well as those of my interview subjects, were rooted in our different social and cultural conditions, that differences in women’s interpretations of a situation may be understood not only in terms of structural categories like class and race but also historically, culturally, and generationally.
In Notman’s 2015 account of BPSI women analysts, she notes a disappearance of female leadership, during the late ‘60s and ‘70s for complex reasons. After 1958, the BPSI culture could not support women leaders, because there were so few women in the organization. BPSI (and other institutes) required an M.D. in order to apply for training, but women were attending medical school in low numbers (6-7 percent). In addition, male dominance in the hierarchy at BPSI meant biased nomination practices, and that of the few women who were at BPSI, only a tiny number, or none at all, would be nominated into leadership roles. Notman also notes that there were outdated attitudes and structures that impacted pregnant candidates. Finally, we might add, there was a robust group of female psychologists and social workers who might have sought training, had conditions been more hospitable.
… there has been little study of the psychology of leadership, of women who strive for leadership, of activism and … in understanding the clinical needs of women who aspire.
Notman points out the absence of women leaders at BPSI occurred at a time when psychoanalysis and female leadership intersected with the women’s movement, historical shifts in American culture, and the ambivalent relationship of psychoanalysis to women and power. The story of BPSI’s female leadership opens for consideration the complex relationship between power and gender, and larger institutional or social power structures. Until the 1980s, psychoanalytic training at BPSI (and other institutes) was biased toward the medicalization of psychoanalysis, which meant a favoring of white, male heterosexual physicians. The impact was gender, racial, and sexual orientation bias and discrimination. Notman and Chodorow’s contributions help us to hold in mind this reality, including the complex determinants that have been so binding.
We applied to BPSI for its rigorous training, academic values, and psychoanalytic provenance. The lawsuit that led to the acceptance of non-M.D.s from the practice of psychoanalysis was long past. The infusion of psychologists and social workers, mainly women, seemed to suggest that questions regarding status and qualifications were resolved. Though remnants of exclusion continue, in the representation of training analyst requirements, there has been progress. Gender studies, the prolific writing from women who are analysts, and the obvious presence of women in many leadership capacities are now common. But there remains an absence. Despite increasing numbers of women in leadership roles, there has been little study of the psychology of leadership, of women who strive for leadership, of activism and of the role psychoanalytic practitioners may play in understanding the clinical needs of women who aspire.
During the past seven years, we have led an APsaA Discussion Group: “Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women and Their Experience of Competence, Ambition, and Leadership.” Our goal has been to explore women’s experience of agency, resilience, and the capacity to lead. We hoped these efforts would also open up more understanding about the systemic and structural issues that contribute to our persistent boundary violations. The 1990s had brought the
deconstruction of gender and sexuality—a seismic shift for gender theory. Although we recognized this as an important and necessary change, we wanted to address aspects of female experience that seemed to have gone missing as it was subsumed under gender and sexuality. The relative silence about women seemed ironic given that psychoanalytic candidates are primarily women who wished to become contributors and leaders in our field. It was also perplexing given that women’s issues were in the forefront of national and global concern. Although our initial discussion groups involved the traditional format of clinical case presentation followed by discussion, we began experimenting with how to make our topic more personal and relevant. First, we turned to the narratives of women analysts, their personal histories, and their definitions of ambition. In the run up to the 2016 election, we felt compelled to address Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, specifically her leadership, and the hostility and divisiveness her presence engendered. When Clinton was defeated, we feared our discussion group would become a wake, or worse. We went forward. Our DSG was held one day before the Inauguration and two days before the January 2017 Women’s March. With the help of our discussant, Adrienne Harris, what evolved instead was a rich discussion of mourning, of schisms, of misogyny—and the complexity of our responses to powerful women.
As we have engaged many of our colleagues to think with us about what it means to be a woman psychoanalyst and to work with women who aspire to leadership roles, political events have collided with our inquiries. It is not possible to look at leadership without considering the recent presidential election and the wave of female activism that has resulted. We expected Hillary Clinton, and what we got instead was #MeToo, the pussy hat project, and Emma Gonzalez. As we have explored the topics of ambition and leadership, we have struggled with the ongoing questions in our own field: our history of silencing women who have been outspoken, our boundary violations, our sexism.
The historian Mary Beard, in 2017, wrote that, in ancient times, “public speaking” was the purview of men, that any woman who spoke in public was by definition, “not a woman.” While the ancient times of which Mary Beard writes are long past, there are still ways in which the perpetuation of myths about women speaking up, speaking out, and leading are examined with unusual filters of criticism, asperity, and doubt. As psychoanalysts, we must ask to what extent has our field perpetuated embedded perspectives regarding women, and how can we commit to the undoing of the stereotypes and the damage. We continue to note, with wonder, the infrequency with which the words “women” and “leadership” are paired in any meaningful way in our psychoanalytic literature, and the long reach of our psychoanalytic history—a history that continues to have an impact on discussions about women who lead or about any woman being who she wants to be.
Where the Bechdel-Wallace test is a way to note the frequency with which women are engaged in conversation with each other about a topic unrelated to a man or boy, we propose a psychoanalytic test of ourselves to find a way to discuss women and leadership without talking about penis envy, men’s fantasies of women as leaders, or women’s compensatory needs.
We should expand our clinical sensitivities to women whose fantasies, aspirations, and motivations include a desire to have impact beyond the dyad or the family.
We need to engage in conversations about women and leadership in a way that addresses the theoretical and clinical deficits that come from psychoanalysis, not the other way around. We need to think about this, adjust our filters and get more comfortable when women speak out.
We should speak out ourselves, and continue to challenge the embedded bias that may not be immediately, consciously, available to us—in our work with our women patients, or in our own professional communities where women’s voices are still inhibited and silenced. We should expand our clinical sensitivities to women whose fantasies, aspirations, and motivations include a desire to have impact beyond the dyad or the family. We should become adept in our ability to recognize patients whose imaginations include the development of a personal mission. We should be able to identify, activate, and nurture women who aspire to such roles. We should commit to describe women with words that include courageous, resilient, creative, and daring. In this way, psychoanalysis can be part of a contemporary movement, one that has learned from its complex history: where women can count on psychoanalysis to understand, nurture, and support—and embrace the authority that women must have in our vulnerable world.
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