The gains and losses that come with women's liberation - Essay Example

However, it is no secret that Freud has been much criticized on many points, and his theory of femininity has been among targets of such criticism. This fact does not really demote the value of Freudian insight, and I think that study of his views on femininity and the opposing ideas of other scholars can give us a better comprehension of the subject of study itself. In this regard, let us undertake a closer examination of Freud's theory of femininity, and try to see what objections to it were offered by Karen Horney, an outstanding theorist of psychology, and Simone de Beauvoir, a famous French existentialist philosopher.

One of the tasks that Freud set before psychoanalysis was to explain how a woman develops from a child with initial bisexuality. The very method of psychoanalysis developed by Freud was in essence a psychological therapy that was dealing with interpretation of dreams, free association, and with investigation of displacement of feelings in relation to other people in order to uncover unconscious and repressed motives, conflicts, and anxieties of people and liberate their psychic energy. Besides, Freud viewed the period of childhood as an extremely important developmental stage that to a large degree defines and determines our personality. . For one, according to Freud, women develop a greater attraction to narcissism which becomes a decisive factor in the psychological development of girls and begins to influence them in such a way that for women it becomes more important to be loved than to love.

As one of the hidden reasons of this developmental tendency Freud offers the concept of penis-envy, which describes an unconscious feeling of sexual inferiority that women have in relation to men. Due to this complex that challenges the physical vanity, women tend to highly estimate their charms, in this way compensating for their sexual inferiority dictated by penis-envy. Freud also thinks that another unconscious manifestation of perceived genital deficiency of women is represented by the sensation of shame that is traditionally considered to be a feminine quality.

In an intricate twist of reasoning, he suggests that female feeling of shame in its later period of development in women can even be linked with the invention of weaving and plaiting, which are arguably among few inventions introduced by women. Now, Freud theorizes that the unconscious motive behind the mentioned techniques is the attempt to mimic through artificial adherence of threads the natural phenomenon of the growth of the pubic hair that hides the genitals. Another essential characteristic of women in accordance with Freuds theory of femininity is seen in a marriage after the birth of the first child.

At this point, when a woman who had previously been a daughter becomes a mother herself, she may reinforce the previously opposed identification with her mother. This event may in its turn attract libido to itself that may work to repeat the