Thirty unresolved psychodynamic questions pertaining to feminine psychology
Chessick, R.D.
American Journal of PsychoTherapy 42(1): 86-95
1988
ISSN/ISBN: 0002-9564 PMID: 3354726 Document Number: 325186
Enormous and important advances have been made in the psychoanalytic understanding of feminine psychology since Freud's pioneering suggestions, but the field remains highly controversial and is rapidly changing-a sign of the health and vigor of psychoanalytic investigation that is now opened up on the subject. Infant research is also making a significant contribution, as is the accumulating clinical knowledge from the treatment of women, adolescent girls, and children. New approaches such as the psychology of the self and the "feminist" point of view have forceds a refreshing reassessment of the subject and a reappraisal of the objections that were raised to Freud's formulations even in his own time. Most clearly, his notions (1) that the little girl developed in a similar fashion to the little boy until the oedipal period and (2) of the centrality of penis envy to the entire psychic development of the normal woman, are hardly tenable in the light of our subsequent understanding of the preoedipal period as it has emerged from the various approaches since Freud's day. Many unanswered but exciting and interesting questions remain however, ranging from Lacan's claim of "return" to his idiosyncratic reading of the "early Freud," basing the distinction between male and female entirely on linguistic issues of the symbolic order on the one hand, and a biologically based view postulating inborn gender differentiation appearing at birth on the other, with various combinations of nature and nurture viewpoints in between these extremes. Answers to these questions, as they emerge, will profoundly influence the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy.