Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-258) and index.
1. The riddle of femininity. Freud's two theories of femininity. Metapsychology and the two 'spatial' topographies. Psychical reality: time lost. Memory guide -- 2. The riddle's repression. Freud's three papers on femininity, female sexuality, and the 'Great Debate'. Subsequent developments. The second debate. Freud's last words -- 3. The division of attention. The Studies on hysteria. The divergence from Breuer. Constructed inertia. The defence of repression -- 4. The involution of the drives. The analogy theory and the libido. The quantitative factor. The unclear origins of the drives. Involution: femininity and the 1911 theory of the ego. Hypothesizing -- 5. The original superego. Freud and the Superego. Freud and Klein. Love and Hate. Masochism -- 6. Conclusion: the riddle again.
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The 'riddle of femininity', like Freud's reference to women's sexuality as a 'dark continent', has been treated as a romantic aside or a sexist evasion rather than as a problem to be solved. In this first comprehensive study, Teresa Brennan suggests that by placing these ideas in the context of Freud's work as a whole, we will begin to understand why femininity was such a riddle for Freud. Brennan argues that by turning to Freud's work and his concrete questions about femininity, a psychical state which occurs in men and women alike, the problem is clearly a soluble one, provided that Freud's concern with energy is taken into account. The real riddle of femininity is as much a problem for thinking about physicality as a problem for the subject who suffers from what Freud described as 'femininity's negative effects on curiosity, intelligence and activity.
Interpretation of the flesh.
0415074487
Freud, Sigmund,1856-1939-- Contributions in psychology of femininity.