A contemporary feminist critique of psychoanalysis through Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri
Kathryn M. Blake
Language: English
Pages: 102
ISBN: 2:00143427
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
It can be seen through the writings of such feminist writers as Juliet Mitchell,
Jacqueline Rose and Luce Irigaray; Sigmund Freud’s work on psychoanalysis has offered
feminists challenges, revolutionized theories, and patriarchal targets. Specifically, the
Oedipus complex locates the very psychical reproduction of patriarchy and explains the
structure of sexual roles in Western society. Although Freud had no feminist intent in his
writings, feminists have managed to find his work useful. The dilemma facing
contemporary feminism, which is identified as post-1995 feminism committed to
corporeality and sexual difference, is that psychoanalysis proposes explanations for, but
fails to offer solutions for how to break away, from the reproduction of patriarchy and its
rigid sexual roles. The goal of contemporary feminism is to break away from the
circularity of the Oedipus complex and into new ways of thinking. Anti-Oedipus and A
Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari offer different modes of
thinking and poignant critiques of psychoanalysis. The feminist uses and interpretations
of Deleuze and Guattari by such writers as Elizabeth Grosz, Claire Colebrook and Rosi
Braidotti constitute the most useful move beyond the circularity of the Oedipus complex.
This thesis examines Freud’s writings, particularly those centered on the Oedipus
complex, using an infusion of an earlier generation of feminist critiques, particularly that
of Luce Irigaray. The research focuses on how to live with certain aspects of
psychoanalysis such as the Oedipus complex that are harmful for women, and it develops
new theories that break away from the oedipal triangle. Such critiques and different
modalities of thinking can be found in the writings of Deleuze and Guattari. The writings
of these feminist authors, and the incorporation Luce Irigaray’s work on sexual
difference, have helped to dismantle the circularity and dominance of the Oedipus
complex by introducing a struggle for new ideas related to thinking of difference and
becoming as ways of thinking and living.
Freud understood the unconscious based on his theory of repression. He writes in The Ego and the Id, “We recognize that the Ucs. does not coincide with the repressed; it is still true that all that is repressed is Ucs., but not all that is Ucs. is repressed” (9). For Freud, jokes and other Freudian slips prove that not everything remains repressed, as “normal” resolution of the Oedipus complex should allow. Everything that is in the Unconscious was conscious since it consists of the pre-oedipal,
proliferation of multiplicities and differentiations in their understanding of becoming. In conjunction with Irigaray’s critiques of phallocentrism and theories of sexual difference, feminists have found strong allies and possibilities of challenging the identities formed after the resolution of the Oedipus complex which create an oppositional relationship between the sexes. Braidotti feels it is necessary to think sexual difference with Deleuze and Guattari’s theories and concepts, particularly
type of femininity rather than see sexual difference. Both Irigaray and Deleuze criticize the prevailing understanding of desire which is oedipalized and reduced to lack. For Irigaray, this understanding of desire diminishes women’s organs and reduces women’s sexuality to passivity and reproduction. 85 Psychoanalytic discourse views woman’s desire as the desire for a penis, or its equivalent, a baby son. Women’s desire is limited in this phallocratic framework, their organs are looked upon as
mother and all female relationships for “normal” femininity to occur makes sense in a patriarchal society, where the position of woman is devalued and man is valued. In most cases, the girl will not obtain her father as her love object, thus returning us to Freud’s equation of feces=gift=baby. Having a male child is the equivalent of acquiring the phallus for women. This transition and, in fact, this contempt that must occur amongst women in “normal” femininity supports and enforces the
boys and girls upon this viewing and interprets her feelings instantly into feelings of envy and inferiority. The girl also has three possible outcomes in resolving her Oedipus complex. For the girl, Freud writes that there are three potential resolutions: homosexuality, frigidity and “normal” femininity. The girl upon witnessing the penis may not accept her own “lack,” but believes that she will one day have one, thus maintaining her disavowal rather than denial. Freud describes women who