I find it really interesting to study Freud’s work because most of it was not only radical for his era, but it is also considered quite radical today. Many events or theories of the past are entities we have become desensitized to in today’s world, but I think Freud’s theories are just as controversial (or even more controversial) today as they were in his time.
I feel absolutely sorry for Dora, mostly because of how her case has been presented. I thought it was intriguing that this case history was compared to a novel during lecture – in fact, as I read the book I found myself thinking that if you took away the psychoanalysis and hysteria part, the family drama that was going on would have made an entertaining novel! I also am interested in Freud’s delivery of it; until lecture I hadn’t thought about how most of this was written from memory. I did notice that Freud kept bringing up ‘memory gaps’ and I think it’s entirely possible he had some gaps of his own.
Freud’s essay ‘Femininity’ is what made me think he was a victim of his time period. He was constantly stating that the female is inferior, not only during sex, but her sex organs are inferior too. The idea that a young girl (or any woman for that matter) would be envious of the male sex organs is absolutely ridiculous to me. Freud’s conjectures on what constitutes masculinity/femininity are, I believe, the outcomes of what was stereotypical during that era. Men would work, while women were supposed to stay home and take care of the children. Women were deemed inferior then and that’s a fact, but considering how private and sacred people’s sex lives were then, who is Freud to say that women were inferior in that environment as well? Sure, he analyzed many patients but if I were being analyzed by him, I don’t think I’d feel pressed to give away all my intimate secrets! And his point about women being truly narcissistic because they only want to be loved – men during that time were supposed to be the breadwinners of the family, and do the best work they could do to support their household. Why then, can’t men be narcissistic? Recognition of their abilities and accomplishments is a form of love too, and I’m sure that men in those days wouldn’t have minded a monetary raise or a compliment once in a while. I’m not usually sassy in these posts, but while reading this particular essay, I found myself thinking, ‘Wow, Freud, what did a woman ever do to you?’ I felt as though he had completely neglected the male personality and psyche in his conjectures. Why do females need such a complicated explanation?
That being said, I still respect his work because it was/is so radical. I think this has been one of our most interesting texts so far, and I’m looking forward to discussing it in class.
One reply on “Freud: A Victim of the Times”
Yes, he certainly does sound like he thinks women are inferior biologically, though I suppose I can kind of see where he’s coming from if he’s focused (as he seems to be) on getting sexual stimulation from one’s genital organs. It might then seem, though I don’t believe this is true, that the bigger the organ, the more sexual pleasure. Or at least, that one might mistakenly think that, so that he could at least plausibly attribute to girl children that thought, even if he thinks himself that it’s a mistaken one (I don’t know what he actually thinks, really, because what he’s ostensibly reporting is what female children think, rather than what he thinks…what leads them to reject their mothers). Part of what seems to be driving this is the need, for reasons I don’t fully understand, for women to move to the vagina as their main area for sexual pleasure. They have have some reason to move to this, and rejection of their “inferior,” “penis-like” organ at least makes sense. He also claims to have gotten this envy of the penis through analysis, from women themselves. I don’t know where exactly that evidence can be found, though.