Topics in Feminist Intellectual History: Psychoanalysis and Feminism (HON 407)

Instructor: Kathleen Merrow

Course Content
Our focus in this course will be the issues surrounding questions of gender identity. We will approach this by looking at the feminist reception of the work of Freud, and examining the complex relationship between psychoanalysis and feminism. We will first read basic texts of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan on the topic of feminine sexuality, locating both in their respective historical contexts. We then spend time reading key texts in the history of the feminist critique of Freud’s work in order to develop the basis for a comprehensive understanding of the basic issues involved in a feminist appropriation or rejection of a psychoanalytic understanding of gender and sexual difference. Our approach here will also be historical, and focus upon texts by feminist analysts situated within the two major debates about feminine identity in psychoanalysis, the first in the 1920s and 30s and the second in the 1970s. Our interest will be in the ways the substance of those debates raise questions about sexual identity today. We also read Foucault’s work on the modern discourse of sexuality as a way to think about the institutional function of psychoanalysis in its historical context.

Required Texts
Sigmund Freud: Three Essays on Sexuality and Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria
Judith Butler: Gender Trouble
Michel Foucault: The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1

In addition
Readings as listed in the syllabus are available for photocopying through the PSU library's Reserve Desk (see syllabus for call numbers and titles). These will include readings from: Karen Horney, Melanie Klein, Helen Deutsche, Joan Rivere, Jacques Lacan, Juliet Mitchell, Nancy Chodorow, Luce Irigaray, and Hélène Cixous.

Detailed schedule information
Contact me for a copy of the complete syllabus with dates for reading and writing assignments.