Freud and Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir's approach to Freud and Psychoanalysis

De Beauvoir, the author of The Second Sex, has examined and analyzed the Freud's idea of femininity and psychoanalysis in her book about women. She has criticized the psychoanalytic point of view of women by Freud due to several reasons. First of all, she believes that biology or anatomy does not determine who we really are; she thinks that "woman is female to the extent that she feels herself as such" (de Beauvoir, 1st paragraph). This brings up the subject of femininity in relation to nature versus nurture. Perhaps the person may not have had the emotional experiences that would have caused her to think that she is female. Rather, she may have felt that she is more "masculine", if you will, in her life. Even without thinking that she is masculine, she just may not think of her as feminine person. De Beauvoir says that these feelings determine who she really is, not biology. In other words, it is more of a choice or nurture, than nature.

De Beauvoir starts her argument by saying that psychoanalysis is a subjective field of study; she mentions that it is basically "flexibility on a basis of rigid concepts" (de Beauvoir, 2nd paragraph), so it could be discussed further and be disputed. In fact, Freud, himself, is shaky with his argument; he does not justify his ideas philosophically, so there is room for arguments. He also has not touched the subject of women extensively. He just modifies his idea about destiny of men to create what he believes to be the destiny of women. Freud does consider that sexuality is developed in both male and female, but "libido" is male's characteristics all the time, not women's.

Also, he thinks that every person goes through the same phases in development to an extent; all the babies go through the oral phase, anal phase and the genital phase. It is at genital phase that the sexes in people make a distinction. According to Freud, male's erotic system is in the penis, and female has two erotic systems, clitoral and vaginal. Girls first go through clitoral phase, and then they move on to vaginal phase after puberty. With boys, they go through two phases within that one system: auto-erotic inclination and hetero-erotic inclination. In auto-erotic inclination, boys are fixated on his mother due to oral phase, and "competes" with their father. They tend to have Oedipus complex, regarding their father as rivals trying to grab mothers' attention. However, by interiorizing the father's authority, they begin to repress all the feelings and become free from the idea.

On the other hand, girls' cases are different; girls are fixated to mothers like boys, but it is a little different from boys. Girls try to identify with their fathers, but they realize that their sexual parts are different. According to Freud, after knowing the difference between men and women, girls believe that they are castrated, and they are saddened by it. Then, they begin to identify with mothers, while sexually attracted to fathers. The girls try to seduce their father and compete with mothers. Slowly, they begin to repress their feelings, just like boys, and become free of these thoughts.

De Beauvoir criticizes this part by saying that Freud is assuming that "woman feels that she is a mutilated man" (de Beauvoir, 7th paragraph), rather than being an entirely new being. He considers women to be subcategory of men, being the human kind. She also argues that most girls do not realize the