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Post by monica on Nov 27, 2015 16:17:37 GMT
I have just written a long entry on here only to have it crash on her, so I am only going to repeat it in briref.
Yes, psychoanalysis is sexist if taken from Freud's point of view - that women were, effectively, incomplete men.
Karen Horney turned a lot of his ideas upside down, focusing on women's psychology, and suggesting that men had womb envy in that they could not bear children, and so had to make do with proving themsleves and making a name for themselves. This still makes it sexist.
Given what we know about sexuality, and that it is not an either/or thing, but more of an either/or/and and is determined by a whole host of factors which we still don' tunderstand medically or neurologically, I think there's room for further psychoanalytic theorising and exploration because if psychoanalysis does explain sexuality, it has to explain it as it is in reality. And if it can do that, then no, it's not irredeemably sexist.
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Post by eccentric on Dec 1, 2015 19:27:18 GMT
Freud's rhetoric impeaches women as “the problem” so yes freudian psychoanalysis is sexist, it's inventor was sexist and quite obviously had no understanding of female sexuality beyond as Monica says thinking that women are 'incomplete men' I wonder though how Freud's theories would have looked had he not been born in victorian times, he was upper middle class and male and arrogantly thought he knew about everyones perspectives despite a difference in class, culture, religion and race. He was a drug addict, he abused his women patients, he was profoundly Eurocentric and misogynistic. He was, in part, a product of his era but does this excuse abuse? Although he did have some rather controversial attitudes towards sex, he wasn't completely off the mark when it came to other theories. There is however another school of thought that proposes that Freud has never been the enemy of feministsSome say that his scientific drive overcame his chauvinistic tendencies and desires and, consequently, he was able to listen to women and to hear the voice of the feminine 'hysteric'. The theory of hysteria is apparently not an insult toward women because Freud’s theory of hysteria developed indirectly in response to his regard for and respect of women Some consider that Freud should be considered one of the first western male feminist thinkers with the approach that he took in the practice of psychoanalysis. Paul Verhaeghe thinks that Freud was one of the first medical practitioners to listen to 'women’s discourse', therefore, the psychoanalysis that emerged from his analysis of hysteria is not a silencing of women but rather a recognition of the significance of woman’s language.
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