Helene Deutsch: A Life in Theory

Thompson, Nellie L.

doi:10.1080/21674086.1987.11927178

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Perhaps the most well known, and most widely criticized, classic psychoanalytic writings on women and mothers are those of Helene Deutsch (for example 1933, 1945). As Thompson (1987) stresses, "Evaluations of Helene Deutsch's work on female psychology almost invariably focus on her idealization of motherhood and on her attribution of narcissism, passivity, and masochism to the 'feminine' woman" (p. 317). In other words, the "truly feminine" woman lacks aggression.…”

Section: Review Of the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Mothers' Ambivalence With Their Babies and Toddlers: Manifestations of Conflicts With Aggression

Hoffman

2003

J Am Psychoanal Assoc

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper the author continues his study of conflicts over aggression in women, discussing the implications for contemporary theories of feminine psychology of observations of mothers in parent/child groups with their infants and toddlers. Many mothers experience conflicts over aggression (both in themselves and in their children) and become intolerant of their ambivalence toward their children. The author suggests that this observation provides an avenue that allows an integration of psychoanalytic ideas about maternity and childrearing with psychoanalytic understandings of women's conflicts about achievement in the social realm outside the home. In both roles, difficulties mastering conflicts with aggression may cause women to struggle profoundly, and to experience problems, in successfully negotiating their important life goals, whether the goals refer to their roles as effective mothers or their roles as effective individuals in the social sphere outside the home. Some women may demonstrate these difficulties in one sphere or the other, some in both, and others in neither. The author suggests on the one hand that we need to eliminate the concept of normality when considering the activities of women, and on the other hand that we need to normalize the omnipresence of ambivalence in the psychology of women.

show abstract

Section: Review Of the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Mothers' Ambivalence With Their Babies and Toddlers: Manifestations of Conflicts With Aggression

Hoffman

2003

J Am Psychoanal Assoc

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Before putting forth her own ideas, she spends ten pages reviewing and approving of Freud's previous theory (Freud, needless to say, did not reciprocate). Here, in her submission to an almost religious authority and her implication that Freud is infallible, but not in the method or content of the theory itself, is the premodernism (a premodernist submission that Freud, in spite of his ostensible commitment to science, was not averse to in his followers) that we find in much of the early writing on women, especially in writings by women who were themselves analyzed by Freud (see, e.g., Bertin [1982] on Bonaparte; Deutsch [1973] on herself; Roazen [1985] and Thompson [1987] on Deutsch;and Young-Bruehl [1988] on Anna Freud).…”

Section: Why Early Psychoanalytic Gender Theory Is Not Premodernmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender On the Modern-Postmodern and Classical-Relational Divide: Untangling History and Epistemology

Chodorow

2005

J Am Psychoanal Assoc

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This essay considers the historical periodization and epistemology of psychoanalytic thinking about gender. Overlapping historically with feminism itself, psychoanalytic thinking about gender has two periods of efflorescence, the 1920s and 1930s, and the contemporary period beginning in the 1970s. Two divides have characterized our gender thinking, the modern-postmodern and the classical-relational. From the early theorizing of the 1920s and 1930s until around the early 1990s, most psychoanalytic thinking about gender should be considered modernist, as it draws on traditional views of scientific evidence and holds more universalistic and dichotomized conceptions of men and women. In the contemporary period, although postmodernism tends to be associated with relational psychoanalysts and modernist thinking with classical analysts, the divisions overlap. The author argues that considering any psychoanalytic theory as "premodern" is misleading: from its inception, psychoanalysis formed part of modernism.

show abstract

“…391-406;2001, pp. 161-177;Thompson, 1987b;Young-Bruehl, 1994), but we are nowhere near encompassing the contributions of the early women psychoanalysts operating in different countries. 5 The reality that many gifted women were drawn to psychoanalysis constitutes one of the most significant elements of S. Freud's legacy.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…391–406; 2001, pp. 161–177; Thompson, 1987b; Young-Bruehl, 1994), but we are nowhere near encompassing the contributions of the early women psychoanalysts operating in different countries 5…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A case for a “middle-way career” in the history of psychology: The work of pioneering psychoanalyst Marjorie Brierley in early 20th century Britain.

Shapira¹

2021

History of Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Historians often focus on the most famous or radical, prolific theoreticians among psychoanalysts, thereby at times reproducing the self-centered biases of their subjects rather than providing a useful critique. I offer instead a revisionist view of this history of psychology, arguing that we should pay more attention to a variety of middle-way actors who combined diverse forms of often-dismissed labor that included practice, editorial, and administrative work, and who tried to find a less rigid theoretical middle ground to toil. These middle-way actors were often women and although scholars have commented on the prominence of women in the early societies of psychoanalysis, we have not conducted adequate research on all these early active members and their roles. This article presents an example of such an actor, Marjorie Brierley (1893Brierley ( -1984, one of the first women psychoanalysts in Britain who made unique, yet unresearched, varied contributions-intellectual and non-intellectual-to the famous interwar debate on femininity and to organizational and clinical work. If we are to fully understand the establishment, cultivation, and maintenance of the flourishing field of psychoanalysis in the early 20th century, we must account for the work of women like her.

show abstract

Helene Deutsch: A Life in Theory

Cited by 6 publications

References 2 publications

Mothers' Ambivalence With Their Babies and Toddlers: Manifestations of Conflicts With Aggression

Mothers' Ambivalence With Their Babies and Toddlers: Manifestations of Conflicts With Aggression

Gender On the Modern-Postmodern and Classical-Relational Divide: Untangling History and Epistemology

A case for a “middle-way career” in the history of psychology: The work of pioneering psychoanalyst Marjorie Brierley in early 20th century Britain.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About