Feminist Synthesis Essay

CRITICISMS The above mentioned theories have been criticized by many feminists. ‘Feminists have found Freud to be not only enraging, but intriguing in assessing whether his claims are accurate descriptions of sex roles and the reproduction of patriarchy’. Following are some of the critiques –
Luce Irigaray, in her books ‘The Sex Which is Not One and Speculum of the Other Woman, sees psychoanalysis as problematic as ‘it reduces sexual difference to sexual oneness in a phallocentric society’. She further claims that psychoanalysis limits desire for women and destroys the relationships between women, beginning with the mother/daughter relationships (as noted during the oedipal stage). According to her one of the problems of Freud’s psychoanalysis is that he compares boys and girls completely on a male model during the phallic stage (seeing clitoris in the same light as the penis). An example of this could be that Freud describes Oedipus complex only in terms of males and talks nothing about Electra complex. Not only this, Irigaray also criticizes Freud for assuming sameness between boys and girls, however many of the egalitarian feminists did not see it as a problem.
Another feminist, Karen Horney also criticizes Freud’s theory of ‘penis envy’. She countered this

Thus, giving a different kind of meaning to his theories. She does not criticize Freud, rather uses his theories to understand how one can analyze and challenge the patriarchal structures of the society by employing psychanalysis. She uses Freud’s psychanalysis to see how a woman becomes a woman in the patriarchal society, something that even Simone De Beauvoir also talks about in her book, The Second