This book discusses the problems of the sexual life of woman throughout the duration of her sexual maturity, i.e., from the beginning of puberty onwards. It reports all the new insights into the mental life of woman in her relations to the reproductive function, with the aid of the analytic method.
Choice Recommended Read This thoroughly revised new edition updates Sheila Greene's original transformative account of the psychological development of girls and women and the central role of time in shaping human experience. Greene critically reviews traditional and contemporary theoretical approaches – ranging from orthodox psychoanalysis to relational and post-modern theories – and argues that even those that claim to focus on development have presented a view of women's lives as fixed and determined by their nature or their past. These theories, she believes, should be rejected because of their inherent lack of validity and their frequently oppressive implications for women. Essential but often neglected insights from the more compelling developmental and feminist theories are woven together within a theoretical framework that emphasizes temporality, emergence and human agency. The result is a liberating theory of women's psychological development as constantly emerging and changing in time rather than as static and fixed by their nature, socio-cultural context and personal history. Updated for a new generation of readers, The Psychological Development of Girls and Women will continue to be essential reading for students and researchers in the psychology of women, developmental psychology and women's studies.
In the long and passionate debate within psychoanalysis over the theory of female sexuality, which has spanned more than a century and reached no definitive conclusion, a pattern of non-acceptance of ideas, their disappearance and then re-emergence later is a continually repeating one. The Anatomy of the Clitoris shows how this happens, using a comprehensive guide to the literature. The time is right culturally to explore this further usingclinical material as illustration. The central aim of this book is to introduce recent innovative redrawing of female anatomy appearing in the scientific literature to psychoanalysis.
Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
Why has the female body been marginalised in psychoanalysis, with a focus on female problems and pains only? How can we begin to think about body pleasure, power, competition and aggression as normal in females? In Women's Bodies in Psychoanalysis, Rosemary Balsam argues that re-tracing theoretical steps back to the biological body's attributes is fruitful in searching for the clues of our mental development. She shows that the female biological body, across female gender variants and sexual preferences, including the 'vanished pregnant body', has been largely overlooked in previous studies. It is how we weave these images of the body into our everyday lives that informs our gendered patterning. These details about being female free up gender studies in the postmodern era to think about the body's contribution to gender – rather than continuing the familiar postmodern trend to repudiate biology and perpetuate the divide between the physical and the mental. There are four main areas explored: • clinical contributions on female development • assessments of past and present psychoanalytic theories in relation to the body • inner portraits of gender building blocks • a conscious and unconscious focus on the potentially procreative female body. Women's Bodies in Psychoanalysis will be of particular interest to psychodynamic, psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic practitioners, teachers, students, feminist academicians, college undergraduates, graduates and faculty in women's studies and gender studies. Rosemary Balsam is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine; Staff Psychiatrist, Yale University Student Mental Health and Counselling Services; Training and Supervising Analyst, Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis.
Individuals sometimes derive sexual pleasure from submission to cruel discipline. While that predilection was noted as early as the sixteenth century, masochism was not codified as a concept until 1890. According to John K. Noyes, its invention reflected a crisis in the liberal understanding of subjectivity and sexuality which continues to inform discussions of masochism today. In essence, it remains a political concept. Viennese physician Richard von Krafft-Ebing coined the term masochism, based on the work of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Noyes analyzes the social and political problems that inspired the concept, suggesting, for example, that the triumphant expansion of European colonialism was in part animated by an ambivalence in masculine sexuality. Noyes documents the evolution of the concept of masochism with scenes in literature from John Cleland's Fanny Hill through Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs and Pauline Reage's Story of 0. Analysis of Freud's vastly influential rereading of masochism precedes an exploration of the work of his successors, including Wilhem Reich, Theodor Reik, Helene Deutsch, and Karen Horney. Noyes suggests that the thematics of feminine masochism emerged only gradually from an exclusively male concept.
"I can be a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister and a woman without having periods." This book explores two of the oldest and most important symbols of all time: menstruation and secondary amenorrhea. Women of menstruating age commonly experience secondary amenorrhea – a cessation of periods – but most people have never heard of the term, nor do they realise what it represents. Danielle Redland’s curiosity as to why this is posits that menstrual conditions need to be decoded, not just simply treated. Surveying menstruation and Secondary Amenorrhea (SA) principally from a psychoanalytic perspective, with sociocultural, historical, political and religious angles also examined, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women, Menstruation and Secondary Amenorrhea draws secondary amenorrhea out of the shadows of its menstruating counterpart, and explores how narratives of womanhood and statehood dominate. Chapters on blood ideology and war amenorrhea, on Freud’s treatment of Emma Eckstein and on the psycho-mythology of Pygmalion, present the reader with visions beyond patriarchy towards more thoughtful ideas on the feminine, challenging assumptions about gender, identity and what is deemed "good" for women. Rich in clinical examples, the book locates menses and their cessation at the heart of personal experience and examines psychosomatic phenomena, the link between psyche and body and the value of interpretation. From the author’s own analysis to a variety of cases linked to hysteria, anorexia, stress, trauma, abuse, helplessness and hopelessness, individual stories and narratives are sensitively recovered and carefully revealed. This refreshing example of multi-layered research and psychoanalytic enquiry by a new, female writer will be of great interest to psychologists, psychotherapists, healthcare and social work professionals and readers of gender studies, history, politics and literature.
Helene Deutsch was one of the most famous psychoanalysts to emerge from Freud's immediate circle in Vienna. Best known for her writings on female psychology, she was also one of the great teachers of psychoanalysis. As the founding president of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Training Institute, she confirmed her stature in the history of psychoanalysis by cultivating a whole younger generation of influential analysts. Deutsch was tolerant and open-minded, both as a theoretician and teacher, but, as Paul Roazen remarks in his introduction, independence and an absence of fanaticism can mean a temporary fading out of influence. For the first time, Deutsch's major professional contributions are brought together for permanent consideration. This volume documents her enduringly valuable exploration of the complexities of the psychology of women's experience. Deutsch remained essentially faithful to the Freudian canon. Nonetheless, and throughout these writings, she developed ideas on the subject of femininity that were often at odds with those of her mentor. Her use of Freud's theories aimed to encourage toleration of human diversity and to modify his model of sexuality according to the particular circumstances of women's lives. It was Deutsch who introduced motherhood as a central concern of psychoanalysis by stressing how the psychological dimension of reproduction was different for men and women and how this uniquely feminine capacity had its effects on the entire psychology of women. The same commitment to human diversity informs her much-misunderstood work on the clinical problems of female sexual dysfunction. While accepting the Freudian goal of sexual gratification, Deutsch argues that sublimation through work was a key value in its own right This is illustrated in "George Sand: A Woman's Destiny," a brilliant early example of psychobiography. This volume of Deutsch's classic papers, several appearing in English for the first time, will be of interest to psychologists, intellectual historians, and women's studies specialists.
This book discusses all aspects of sexuality in women and in particular explores sexual function and dysfunction in a variety of settings, including the different stages of life and a wide range of major diseases and local conditions. The aim is to refocus attention on the needs and sexual realities of women, providing a fresh point of view that will assist gynecologists, sexual medicine physicians, and urologists in delivery of high-quality care and help women themselves to understand and address sexual problems relating to desire, arousal, orgasm, and sexual pain. Psychological aspects of female sexuality and the impacts of the aging process, pregnancy, and childbirth are carefully examined. Extensive consideration is then given to the effects on sexual function of such conditions as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, neurological disease, endometriosis, pelvic organ prolapse, urinary incontinence, reproductive disorders, sexual abuse, and drug abuse. Issues of sexual identity and female dysmorphophobias are also considered. The authors are all experts in the field and have a deep understanding of the complexities of female sexuality.