An idea-laden work about the ongoing 20th-century dialogue in
America between psychoanalysis and feminism. Buhle (American
Civilization/Brown Univ.) focuses more on feminism, covering a
dazzling spectrum of thinkers and polemicists, ranging from
Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Barbara Ehrenreich, with admirable
clarity and succinctness. Her reach in terms of American (and, in
the closing chapter, French) classical, neo-, and post-Freudian
writing by women and men on women's psychosexual development is
equally impressive, extending from the eloquently outspoken
"culturist" pioneer Karen Homey to the contemporary Lacanian Julia
Kristeva. She is particularly strong on the "feminine mystique" era
of the 1940s and '50s, when mainstream American psychoanalysis took
a decidedly conservative, antifeminist turn. Now and then, Buhle
overinterprets or misinterprets a text, such as Betty Friedan's
statement in The Second Stage that "To deny the part of one's being
that, through the ages, has been expressed in motherhood . . . is
to deny one's personhood as a woman." And toward the book's end,
Buhle neglects the influential contributions of Norman O. Brown.
Yet few scholars would attempt a comprehensive intellectual history
on such a charged topic. Buhle has done so in this informative
scholarly feat. (Kirkus Reviews)
With Sigmund Freud notoriously flummoxed about what women want, any
encounter between psychoanalysis and feminism would seem to promise
a standoff. But in this lively, often surprising history, Mari Jo
Buhle reveals that the twentieth century's two great theories of
liberation actually had a great deal to tell each other. Starting
with Freud's 1909 speech to an audience that included the feminist
and radical Emma Goldman, Buhle recounts all the twists and turns
this exchange took in the United States up to the recent American
vogue of Jacques Lacan. While chronicling the contributions of
feminism to the development of psychoanalysis, she also makes an
intriguing case for the benefits psychoanalysis brought to
feminism.
From the first, American psychoanalysis became the property of
freewheeling intellectuals and popularists as well as trained
analysts. Thus the cultural terrain that Buhle investigates is
populated by literary critics, artists and filmmakers, historians,
anthropologists, and sociologists--and the resulting psychoanalysis
is not so much a strictly therapeutic theory as an immensely
popular form of public discourse. She charts the history of
feminism from the first wave in the 1910s to the second in the
1960s and into a variety of recent expressions. Where these paths
meet, we see how the ideas of Freud and his followers helped
further the real-life goals of a feminism that was a widespread
social movement and not just an academic phenomenon. The marriage
between psychoanalysis and feminism was not pure bliss, however,
and Buhle documents the trying moments; most notably the "Momism"
of the 1940s and 1950s, a remarkable instance of men blaming their
own failures ofvirility on women.
An ambitious and highly engaging history of ideas, "Feminism
and Its Discontents" brings together far-flung intellectual
tendencies rarely seen in intimate relation to each other--and
shows us a new way of seeing both.
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