Psychoanalysis and Feminism a Radical Reassessment of Freudian Psychoanalysis

By Juliet Mitchell

Book Overview

In 1974, at the height of the women's movement, Juliet Mitchell shocked her fellow feminists by challenging the entrenched belief that Freud was the enemy. She argued that a rejection of psychoanalysis as bourgeois and patriarchal was fatal for feminism. However it may have been used, she pointed out, psychoanalysis is not a recommendation for a patriarchal society, but rather an analysis of one. "If we are interested in understanding and challenging the oppression of women," she says, "we cannot afford to neglect psychoanalysis." In an introduction written specially for this reissue, Mitchell reflects on the changing relationship between these two major influences on twentieth-century thought. Original and provocative, Psychoanalysis and Feminism remains an essential component of the feminist canon.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465046088
• ISBN13: 9780465046089
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

An excerpt

I just wanted to give an excerpt from this book so that interested buyers can read the main ideas and have a better idea of the author's purpose. This excerpt is from the Introduction: "The greater part of the feminist movement has identified Freud as the enemy. It is held that psychoanalysis claims women are infereior and that they can achieve true femininity only as wives and mothers... I would agree that popularized Freudianism must answer to this description; but the argument of this book is that a rejection of psychoanalysis and of Freud's works is fatal for feminism... If we are interested in understanding and challenging the oppression of women, we cannot afford to neglect it."In general this is an important work for anyone interested in Feminism or Psychology to read. The points that Mitchell makes are applicable for anyone in these fields.