Description
Book SynopsisPsychoanalysis and Women, Volume 32 of The Annual of Psychoanalysis, is a stunning reprise on theoretical, developmental, and clinical issues that have engaged analysts from Freud on. It begins with clinical contributions by Joyce McDougall and Lynne Layton, two theorists at the forefront of clinical work with women; Jessica Benjamin, Julia Kristeva, and Ethel Spector Person, from their respective vantage points, all engage the issue of passivity, which Freud tended to equate with femininity. Employing a self-psychological framework, Christine Kieffer returns to the Oedipus complex and sheds new light on the typically Pyrrhic oedipal victory of little girls.
Section III broadens the historical context of contemporary theorizing about women by offering the personal reminiscences of Nancy Chodorow, Carol Gilligan, Brenda Solomon, and Malkah Notman. A final section, dedicated to women who shared psychoanalysis, features historical essays on Ida Bauer (Freud's Dora), Anna Freud, Dorothy Burlingham, Edith Jacobson, and Therese Benedek, along with Linda Hopkins's revealing interview of Marion Milner. Of special note is Marian Tolpin's examination of three women - Bauer, Helene Deutch, and Anna Freud - who helped shape Freud's notion of the femail castration complex, and Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's exploration of how two women - Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham - developed parent-infant observation.
Psychoanalysis and Women is an extraordinary chronicle of the distance traveled since Freud characterized women's sexual life as the dark continent. The contributors vitalize a half century of theory with the lessons of biography, and they broaden clinical sensibilities by drawing on recent developmental, gender-related, and socio-psychological research. In doing so, they attest to the ongoing reconfiguration of Freud's dark continent and show the psychoanalytic psychology of women to be very much a revolution in progress.
Table of ContentsPart I. Psychology of Women: Clinical.McDougall, The Psychoanalytic Voyage of a Breast-Cancer Patient. Layton, Relational No More: Defensive Autonomy in Middle Class Women. Part II: Psychology of Women: Theoretical.Benjamin, Deconstructing Femininity: Understanding "Passivity" and the Daughter Position. Kristeva, Some Observations on Female Sexuality. Kieffer, Selfobjects, Oedipal Objects, and Mutual Recognition: A Self-Psychological Reappraisal of the Female "Oedipal Victor." Person, Something Borrowed: How Mutual Influences Among Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Straights Changed Women's Lives. Part III: Psychoanalysis and Women: Personal Narratives.Chodorow, Psychoanalysis and Women: A Personal Thirty-Five-Year Retrospect. Gilligan, Recovering Psyche: Reflections on Life-History and History. Solomon, Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A Personal Journey. Notman, Being a Woman Analyst from the 1960s into the Next Century: Some Reflections. Part IV: Women Who Shaped Psychoanalysis.Tolpin, In Search of Theory: Freud, Dora, and Women Analysts. Young-Bruehl, Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham at Hempstead: The Origins of Psychoanalytic Parent-Infant Observation. Schroeter, Muehlleitner, & May, Edith Jacobson: Forty Years in Germany (1897-1938). Schmidt, Therese Benedek: Shaping Psychoanalysis from Within. Hopkins, Red Shoes, Untapped Madness, and Winnicott on the Cross: An Interview with Marion Milner.
