Notes on Psychoanalysis and Feminism
"Mind Mother" by Judith Kegan Gardiner (1985)

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Intro

• What are the two basic analogies used by psychoanalytic criticism?
• MIND--> the literary text is structured like the human mind and can be understood in the same ways.
• text is the product of a human mind
• Literary text has same functions of conscious and unconscious
• MOTHER --> all relationships  (btw characters, btw author and reader) are charged with emotions based in childhood
• object-relations theory
• everything about us is grounded in early childhood
• reminder that the feminine is a crucial element in all our psyches
• What is the basic task of psychoanalysis?
• to reveal what is going on in the unconscious
• to describe the basic structure and function of the human mind (id, ego, superego)
• to delineate the developmental processes by which we become adults (oral, anal, genital, latency)
• What aspects of literature do PA critics focus on?
• the author (psychobiogrpahical studies)
• characters (psychoanalyze characters; look for relationships with author, within text; motivations)
• the audience (the reader's relationship to text, to the author, the characters)
• the text itself as a symbolic structure (parallel between dream interpretations and literary interpretation)
• How do feminist PA theories relate to Freud?
• revise Freud's view of infantile development, especially the development of female children (instead of Electra Complex where girls want pensies and accept the idea of babies as a substitite and all little girsl are in love with their fathers etc., they say girls like boys want to bond with the mother.  And girls aren't forced to separate so much from her, so girls think relationships are really important and have more fluid ego boundaries.  Girls DO want their father's POWER..
• Girls want babies because they are socialized to be mothers and caretakers, not becasue of anatomical disappointment
• The oral phase -- and consequently the bonding between mother and child -- is more important than the Oedipal phase
• What is the problem with the idea of the "female subject" ?
• post-structuralism-- question whether egos, identities, unified selves really exist or if they are just a product of language
• Anglo-American feminist tend to resist this idea of the "disappearance of the subject" beacuse they think historically women have not had a chance to really establish their identities yet, so it is too soon to take it away.

Freud

• What are the three Freudian ideas most important to literary critiics?
• the unconscious
• the idea that a lot of what we do is caused by repressed desires, many of which are sexual and many of which come from our earliest childhood
• the unconscious manifests itself symbolically -- in all kinds of metaphors
• What is Freud's account of female development?
• How do feminist criticis re-read Freud?
• List some of the ways that critics traitionally use PA to read literature.
• Describe how feminist Shakespeare critics use Freud.
• thinking about comedies as wish-fullfilment and tragedies as nightmares
• Ask questions about what is not there
• recurrent structural patterns in the plays have social and psychological meaning
• How do feminist Shakespeare critics change the way Freud is used?

The Psychology of Oppression (Feminism's influence on feminist lit crit)

• List some of the spcifically feminist concerns of literary critics.
• Virginia Woolf-- psychology of women living under patriarchy
• Gilbert & Gubar
• social victimization --
• ANGER--women not allowed to be angry, so invent images of unconscious rage
• concern with rape, incest, battery, pornography
• social double binds-- outward conformity and inner deformity
• "compulsory heterosexuality"

Jung and Piaget

• Which of Jung's ideas are most useful for feminist critics? What are some of the dangers of his apporach?
• useful: idea of unviersal bi-sexuality-- that all of us have parts of our psyches that are opposite gender... Fits in with 70's ideals of androgyny
• Dangerous because it tends to essentialism, absolute male and female characteristics in psyche.  Compulsory heterosexuality.
• Describe Carol Gilligan's ideas about gender.  How could these be used in literary criticism?
• Gilligan thinks that….

Post-Freudian Psychoanalysis

• What is the basic concept underlying post-freudian psychology?  --
• gender is not just biological; it is also (mostly?) social
• Ego-Psychology and Identity theory: focuses the development of the individual (Bildungsroman)
• transference and counter-transference theory: reader-response 
• Theories of narcissism-- the "gaze"

Object-Relations Theory –

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Feminist Psychoanalytic Theories

• What are the basic ideas that feminist PA theory is based on?
• children establish gender identity much earlier
• its more society than biology  (Dinnerstein)
• relationships beetween women (influence theory--> female tradition)
• What are their major revisions to Freud?
• Reject biologicl/ essentialistic explanation of gender diffs (anatomy is NOT destiny)
• Gender diffs have social causes
• Mother is primary, but boys and girls relate to mother differently
• Dorothy Dinnerstein
• Mermaid and Minotaur—women asscoiated with childish sense of mother as all-powerful
• Nancy Chodorow
• Reproduction of Motheringr—women are socialized to mother (seek intimacy, more flu8id ego boundaries)
• What is the basic image of women in feminist PA derived from object-realtions theory?
• How do these theories relate to literary criticism?