Freud Essay Research Paper Sigmund Freud was

Freud Essay, Research Paper

Sigmund Freud was the first of six children to be born into his middle class,

Jewish family. His father was a wool merchant, and was the provider for the

family. From the time Freud was a child, he pondered theories in math, science,

and philosophy, but in his teens, he took a deep interest in what he later

called psychoanalysis. He wanted to discover how a person?s mind works, so he

began to explore the conscious and unconscious parts of one?s psyche.

Freud?s parents and siblings were directly involved in allowing him to pursue

this unexplored area of psychology. He was given his own room so that he could

study his books in silence, and was only disturbed when it was time to eat.

Freud eventually married Martha Bernays. She was cooperative and completely

subservient to her husband. She was simply filling a role that the society

during that time insisted was proper for all women. Freud himself derived his

attitudes toward women and his beliefs about the roles of individual sexes from

personal experiences in the strict culture of the time. In the middle to late

eighteen hundreds, Central European society distinguished clearly between the

roles of men and women. Cultural norms dictated that men be responsible for work

outside of the home, and the financial well being of the family, while the

women?s responsibilities were in the home and with the children. With these

specific gender roles came the assumption of male dominance and female

submission. Females were pictured as serene, calm, creatures that were lucky to

have the love and protection of their superior husbands. It is in this form of

the family where most children first learn the meaning and practice of

hierarchical, authoritarian rule. Here is where they learn to accept group

oppression against themselves as non-adults, and where they learn to accept male

supremacy and the group oppression of women. Here is where they learn that it is

the male?s role to work in the community and control the economic life of the

family and to mete out the physical and financial punishments and rewards, and

the female?s role to provide the emotional warmth associated with motherhood

while under the economic rule of the male. Here is where the relationship of

superordination-subordination, or superior-inferior, or master-slave is first

learned and accepted as "natural." -John Hodge: Feminist Theory P.36

Philosophical definitions of women, written about by male philosophers, share

warped views that were the result of the cultural times and places from which

they originated. The view that women are somewhat "less" than men in

many respects, began with the philosophies of Aristotle in the fourth century

BC. Since Aristotle was one of the most influential philosophers of ancient

Greece, he had a widespread impact on the thinking of many people. Christian

theologians in ancient Europe rediscovered his theories. Aristotle believed that

a woman?s part in conception was to supply the container in which the seed,

planted by the male, grows. Aristotle said, "We should look on the female

as being as it were a deformity, though one which occurs in the ordinary course

of nature." Although we know now that Aristotle was mistaken in his

biological interpretation of the female gender, his philosophies had a long-term

impact on the perception of women from a non-biological perspective. A few

philosophers, such as Plato (427-347 BC), Condorcet (1743-1794), and John Stuart

Mill (1806-1873) had opinions that opposed Aristotle and inherently supported

women?s rights, but females are still struggling to prove to the opposite sex

that we are not "defective men." In fact, women were seen as inferior

since the time of Aristotle and throughout Freud?s lifetime because they did

not have penises. It seems that it could also be argued that men lack the

clitoris and instead have an elongated and inefficient organ of a similar kind.

These two points depend, of course, on point of view, but the ancient

philosophers did obviously not take the female point of view into consideration.

A vast amount of Aristotelian views are present in Freud?s beliefs. The

biological "reasons" given by the ancient philosophers for specific

social roles are somewhat incomplete. It seemed fairly logical for women to have

the natural role of caring for children because she gives birth to them, but

there was no biological explanation for the assumptions that women were less

important as human beings, of lesser worth, naturally passive, or should be

ruled by men. Simply because women give birth to babies, it has somehow been

assumed that we are confined to roles as mothers and as caretakers. These

conclusions were not drawn from biological observations, but from numerous

western thinkers throughout history who made enormous mistakes in their

reasoning about women. Freud was puzzled by members of the opposite sex and

therefore did not attempt to logically study them and come up with objective

theories regarding a woman?s psyche in general. He instead concentrated on the

development of a woman?s mind up to adulthood at which point he could no

longer understand it. "And now you are already prepared to hear that

psychology too is unable to solve the riddle of femininity?In conformity with

its peculiar nature, psycho-analysis does not try to describe what a woman is

?that would be a task it could scarcely perform- but sets about inquiring how

she comes into being, how a woman develops out of a child with a bisexual

disposition." Sigmund Freud stated this in his book titled

"Femininity" which was published in 1933. From an early age, Freud was

critical of the feminist argument for equality between the sexes. He thought

that it was "absurd" to think that a married woman could earn as much

money as her husband, because her domestic responsibilities should take up all

of her time and energy. Those who challenge Freudian theory of gender roles

belong largely to the ever growing and highly vocal members of the feminist

movement. Something that has been a problem in the feminist movement is the

inability to define feminism, and in turn define the goals of the movement.

"Women came together in the women?s liberation movement on the basis that

we were women and all women are subject to male domination. We saw all women as

being our allies, and all men as being the oppressor. We never questioned the

extent to which American women accept the same materialistic and individualistic

values as American men. We did not stop to think that American women are just as

reluctant as American men to struggle for a new society based on new values of

mutual respect, cooperation, and social responsibility."-Feminist Theory.

Our society functions on the social norms set throughout history and a complete

revolution would be chaotic. All we are searching for is some degree of

appreciation for accomplishments of the past, present, and future. The feminist

struggle is a continuous and difficult one, but people who actually call

themselves feminists are not the only ones fighting to disprove certain aspects

of Freudian theory and socially determined gender roles. Many critics challenge

Freudian views of women?s roles, female sexuality, and sexual equality. Mary

Daly is just one of the hundreds of members of the feminist movement. Her

theories do not attempt to seclude any specific group of women by race or class,

but they attempt to focus on creating a "counter culture" (a

woman-centered world in which participants have little to no contact with men).

She wrote a book entitled Beyond God and Father, in which she encouraged women

to give up "the securities offered by the patriarchal system." In

response to Daly, Jeanne Gross stated: Creating a counter-world places an

incredible amount of pressure on the woman who attempted to embark on such a

project. The pressure comes from the belief that the only true resources for

such an endeavor are ourselves. The past, which is totally patriarchal, is

viewed as irredeemable?If we go about creating an alternative culture without

remaining in dialogue with others (and the historical circumstances that give

rise to their identity) we have no reality check for our goals. We run the very

real risk that the dominant ideology of the culture is re-duplicated in the

feminist movement through cultural imperialism. The problems occurring in the

feminist movement are directly related to the problem that women seem to be

having with coming to an understanding on the approach to use when striving to

gain our equality. Sexist oppression is of primary importance not because it is

the basis of all other oppression, but because it is the practice of domination

most people experience, whether their role is that of discriminator or

discriminated against. The feminist movement is the driving force behind any

attempt at changing the all too common picture of the social barrier existing

between the sexes. "The significance of the feminist movement (when it is

no co-opted by opportunistic, reactionary forces) is that it offers a new

ideological meeting ground for the sexes, a space for criticism, struggle, and

transformation. The feminist movement can end the war between the sexes. It can

transform relationships so that the alienation, competition, and dehumanization

that characterize human interaction can be replaced with feelings of intimacy,

mutuality, and camaraderie." ?Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center The

feminist movement was virtually non-existent during most of the lifetime of

Sigmund Freud. He made clear his views on a woman?s role in society, but he

was unable to explain the behavior of women. He resorted instead to studying the

development of females from their childhood through adulthood in an attempt to

figure out their complicated psyche. Freud?s research was conducted on

strictly middle-class whites during the early twentieth century. We are a

society that has always had clear delineation between childhood, adolescence,

and adulthood. It is in the stage of childhood in which Freud believes that

female development is distinguished from that of the males. The breakdown of

development into various stages is unique to our specific culture. In most other

cultures, there is only one transition that takes place in life and that is the

one from childhood to adulthood. This "graduation" of sorts occurs

immediately after the child hits puberty. According to Freudian theory, the

significant turning point in psychosexual development for gender identity occurs

at about the age of three. For the first three years of life, pleasure is

centered on oral gratification such as sucking a bottle or breast for milk. The

person who provides this to the child is the main object of the baby?s love

and affection. The child develops a sense of trust as a result of this

relationship. This is the called the oral stage because there is a fixation that

the child has to always have something in its mouth. The next stage is the anal

stage. Struggles around issues such as toilet training, and a sense of

self-control and control of the environment characterize it. The three-year-olds

shift of focus to the sexual organs as the source of pleasure is labeled the

phallic stage of psychosexual development. It is at this stage that girls notice

that men and boys have penises, and they don?t. We, according to Freud,

recognize that without this organ, we cannot "possess" the mother (our

original love object) the way a man can, especially our fathers. This

recognition leads girls to develop a sense of inferiority and the desire for a

penis, which Freud called Penis Envy. At the same time, boys notice that girls

and women do not have penises, and this leads the boy to believe that the girls

were somehow denied them, or they had them taken away. Freud concluded that this

created a sense of anxiety in boys because they are afraid of losing their

penises. Freud labeled this the Castration Complex. He also argued that girls

blame their mothers for our "inferior anatomy," and therefore turn our

affections to our fathers in an effort to attain the desired object. By

contrast, boys desire to marry their mothers and replace their fathers. Freudian

theory labels this the Oedipus Complex (named after the Greek myth about

Oedipus, who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother). When they

learn that they cannot "possess" their mothers because their rivals

are bigger and stronger, they fear that their fathers will punish them for

feeling this way by castrating them. Boys get over the Oedipus Complex rather

quickly and they seek a new love interest and identify with the father. Girls

identify with their mothers reluctantly, because this identification does not

help us achieve what we are wishing for during the phallic stage. The critics of

Freud?s ideas about female development can be divided into two groups. The

first group questions whether or not these psychological events actually take

place. Because these are psychologically developed and not physically developed,

there is no way to tell if they actually exist because they cannot be observed

directly. Since there is no proof or test of the unconscious process, or even of

the unconscious, some argue that these theories can not be considered

scientific. The second group includes a number of Freud?s students. They do

not directly attack the psychoanalytic approach but they disagree with the basic

Freudian formulation of female development. Dorothy Dinnerstein, a psychologist

who has written about the development of gender roles, says: I am disturbed,

like the other radical critics of our gender arrangements, by the sexual bigotry

that is built into the Freudian perspective. But I am disinclined to let the

presence of that bigotry deflect my attention from the key to a way out of our

gender predicament that Freud, in a sense absent-mindedly, provides.

Feminists? preoccupation with Freud?s patriarchal bias, with his failure to

jump with alacrity right out of his male Victorian skin, seems to me wildly