Psychoanalysis And Feminism: A Radical Reassessment Of Freudian Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis And Feminism: A Radical Reassessment Of Freudian Psychoanalysis

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. "Juliet Mitchell has risked accusations of apostasy from her fellow feminists. Her book not only challenges orthodox feminism, however, it defies the conventions of social thought in the English-speaking countries... Psychoanalysis and Feminism is a brave and important book, and its influence will not be confined to feminists" -- New York Review of Books Juliet Mitchell , the author of Psychoanalysis and Feminism , is currently a visiting professor in Comparative Literature at Yale University, where she is also a Fellow of the Whitney Humanities Center. She is a university lecturer in Gender and Society at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Jesus College. She lives in London and Cambridge.