On the Relation Between Feminism and Psychoanalysis

Abstract or Introduction

In her article “Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression”, Bell Hooks claims
that the major problem within feminist discourse is the “inability to either arrive at a
consensus of opinion about what feminism is or accept definition(s) that could serve
as points of unification”. Without agreed upon definitions, feminism lacks a sound
foundation on which to construct a theory or engage in overall meaningful praxis.
Presumably it is also due to this internal vagueness in definition that feminism
turned to other, more or less related, schools of thought such as Marxism, science
studies or psychoanalysis in order to stabilize itself in the academic world.
From all liaisons with the above mentioned (and many other) analytic fields that feminism
entered, I find psychoanalysis to be the most natural, as feminism, for all its
difficulties in definition, explicitly aims to end sexist oppression4. In order to do so, it
needs to closely analyse sex, sexes, and gender(s), for which it lacks a methodological
apparatus of its own. Whereas in other disciplines that feminists have tried to reshape
for their purposes (i.e. sciences more concerned with societal problems, such as
politics) the argument for gender neutrality or irrelevance can be more easily sustained
by traditionalists, the advantages of a feminist psychoanalytic approach are
substantial, as Nancy Chodorow5 argues: [...]