Freud's Women - Softcover

Appignanesi, Lisa; Forrester, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0753819163 ISBN 13: 9780753819166

Publisher: W&N, 2005

Synopsis

A groundbreaking book which explores the impact of women on the development of Freud's ideas.

No modern writer has affected our views on women as powerfully as Sigmund Freud. And none has been so virulently attacked for both his theories of femininity and for his alleged elevation of personal prejudice to universal pronouncement.

FREUD'S WOMEN examines that bold collaboration with his female patients which made psychoanalysis as much their creation as the young Viennese doctor's. It explores Freud's family life, his relations with daughter Anna, his 'Antigone', and his friendships with his followers. From the writer and turn of the century 'femme fatale', Lou Andreas Salome, to the socialist feminist, Helene Deutsch, early theorist of femininity, to Princesse Marie Bonaparte, who moved from couch to royal court with amazing facility and became head of the French psychoanalytic movement, Freud's women friends and pupils were extraordinary.

About this title

Review:

First published in 1992, Freud's Women quickly established itself as an invaluable study of the women who peopled Freud's world--women who, as relatives and friends, patients and disciples, helped him to found the new discipline of psychoanalysis. Lisa Appignanesi and John Forrester tell a fascinating and complicated story with great flair: Freud's Women is as scholarly as it is readable, moving between biography and theory to chart the intellectual history of psychoanalysis.

As the authors point out at the beginning of this study, when it comes to the "woman question", history has often taken the form of a trial (of Freud, of psychoanalysis). This revised edition of the book stays with the four key themes used to organise the authors' discussion ("The Freud Family Romance", "Inventing Psychoanalysis", "A Woman's Profession", "The Question of Femininity"), concluding with a new "Summing Up" which takes up the recent "assaults" on Freud launched by, amongst others, Frederick Crews and Peter Swales. In the wake of the so-called "Memory Wars"--wars which reopened discussion about the origins of psychoanalysis at the same time as questioning Freud's views on the "reality" of child sexual abuse--the culture of psychoanalysis, its claims to individuality and privacy, have been increasingly under attack.

Against the commonplace that psychoanalysis--as both theory of mind and therapeutic practice--is "in crisis", Appignanesi and Forrester offer a balanced and intelligent account of the vicissitudes of Freud's theory of femininity and the different ways in which "his women"--from 'Dora' to Joan Riviere, from Lou Andreas-Salome to Helene Deutsch--have worked with, and against, that theory to support the insights of a remarkable discipline.--Vicky Lebeau

Book Description:

A groundbreaking book which explores the impact of women on the development of Freud's ideas.

About this edition

• Publisher: W&N
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0753819163
• ISBN 13: 9780753819166
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 576