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The debate between [[psychoanalysis]] and [[feminism]] has been long and acrimonious.
Although it begins with the discussions of the so-called [[phallic stage]] of [[development]] that took place in the 1920s and 1930s, it took on a new importance in the 1970s as questions of [[gender]] and its reproduction came to the fore.
In ''[[The Feminine Mystique]]'', [[Friedan]] argued that [[psychoanalysis]] was one of the major sources of the mystique of her title, which persuaded women to collude in their own domination by men.
[[Beauvoir]], for her part, had already describe psychoanalysis as encouraging or even engineering a social conformity that was detrimental to women's interests.
Feminists agreed that [[psychoanalysis]] was part of the [[ideology]] of [[patriarchy]].
However, far from being a prescription for patriarchy, psychoanalysis offered a theory of patriarchy and gender that could contribute to the liberation of women.
[[Freud]] states that 'anatomy is destiny' and explains the little girl's 'sense of inferiority' in terms of the [[narcissism}narcissistic]] wound inflicted by her realization that she does not have a [[penis]].
Elsewhere [[Freud]] argues that, whilst [[psychoanalysis]] cannot describe 'what a woman is,' it can helpt to elucidate 'how she comes into being, how a woman develops out of a child with a bisexual disposition.'
Despite this claim, Freud's writings are full of metaphors of darkness and obscurity that help to turn [[femininity]] into a '[[dark continent]] which is almost impossible to understand.
The Freudian notion of [[penis envy]] was the central issue in the early debates over the [[phallic phase]], or that stage in [[psychosexual development]] in which children of both [[gender]]s believe in the existence ofonly one genital organ.
Feminists found this emphasis on [[penis envy]] which defined women as incomplete males very offensive.
The girl's realization that she does not have a [[penis]] leads her to conclude that she once had one but has been castrated, and she then embarks on the long process of feminization which will lead her to transform her [[wish]] for the [[penis]] into a [[wish]] for a [[child]].
The [[psychoanalysis]] that so offended many feminists was in fact vulgarized or revisionist version of Freud.
[[Lacan]]'s '[[return to Freud]]' offered a solution.
[[Lacan]]'s main contributions to the debate are the concepts of the [[symbolic]], the [[phallus]] and the [[name-of-the-father]], which do move the discussion away from the [[biologism]] of [[Freud]]'s remarks about anatomy and destiny.
They also create new problems.
It is difficult to find precedents for the use of 'phallus'' rather than 'penis' in [[Freud]], adn the link that is established by [[Lacan]] between the [[phallus]] and access to the [[symbolic]] is vulnerable to [[Derrida]]'s accusation of [[phallogocentrism]].
The importance acribed to the [[name-of-the-father]], for its part, can be seen as rearguard action against the greater emphasis that is placed on mothering by [[Klein]], [[Winnicott]] and others.
Whilst elements of [[Lacanian psychoanalysis]] have become an essential part of certain forms of feminism, critics such as [[Irigaray]] argue that both its basic epistemology and its practices are inherently masculinist.
[[Category:Sexuality]]
[[Category:Feminist theory]]
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
[[Category:Jacques Lacan]]
[[Category:Postmodern theory]]
[[Category:Feminist theory]]
[[Category:Culture]]
[[Category:Sexuality]]
