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[[Freud]]'s discovery of the [[unconscious ]] is centrally linked to the study of [[female ]] [[sexuality]]. In [[listening ]] to the [[hysterics]], Freud gave [[them ]] a [[voice ]] and attributed a [[meaning ]] to what they said. As Juliet Mitchell noted, [[feminist ]] movements have tended to equate what Freud said [[about ]] the hysterics and his [[other ]] female [[patients ]] as prescriptions for patriarchal domination of [[women ]] rather than [[understanding ]] his writings as an [[analysis ]] of women's [[position ]] in patriarchal societies.Feminist movements, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, were hostile to [[psychoanalysis]], as they viewed it as a major factor in the oppression of women. The issues that feminists challenged in psychoanalysis centered on Freud's formulations of the differentiation between the [[sexes]], in [[terms ]] of the [[association ]] of [[masculinity ]] with [[activity ]] and femininity with [[passivity]]; Freud's emphasis on the [[existence ]] of [[penis ]] [[envy ]] in women; female [[masochism]]; and the emphasis on the [[role ]] of the [[father ]] as opposed to feminists' reassessment of the [[mother]]-daughter [[relationship]].Simone de Beauvoir's <i>La deuxieme sexe</i> (1949) and Betty Friedan's <i>The [[Feminine ]] Mystique</i> (1963) both viewed psychoanalysis as regarding women as inferior and as defining them only with reference to men. Then in the 1970s [[another ]] wave of feminist writings, such as Kate Millet's <i>[[Sexual ]] [[Politics]]</i> (1970), Shulamith Fire-stone's <i>The [[Dialectic ]] of Sex: The [[Case ]] for Feminist [[Revolution]]</i> (1970) and Germaine Greer's <i>The Female Eunuch</i> (1970), called for changes in [[society ]] that would [[help ]] to eliminate sexual inequality. Mitchell's <i>Psychoanalysis and [[Feminism]]</i> (1972) was a marker in the recovery of psychoanalysis, by explaining its revolutionary understanding of women.From a very early [[stage]], psychoanalysis maintained that the [[psychic ]] [[reality ]] of sex had to be distinguished from the [[anatomical ]] reality, that there was no one-toone correlation between [[biology ]] and [[psychology]]. Men and women are not physically or socially "made" as [[male ]] or female but become such.Initially, however, Freud assumed a symmetry in the [[development ]] of what he called the [[Oedipus ]] [[complex]]. It was only in an essay written in 1925 that Freud distinguished between the [[psychosexual ]] [[history ]] of boys and girls and recognized the importance of the pre-[[oedipal ]] [[phase ]] in which boys and girls [[love ]] the mother, and both have to relinquish her in favor of the father (1925j). The [[girl ]] has to move from loving her mother to loving her father, whereas the boy gives up his mother with the understanding that he will later have a [[woman ]] of his own. In this [[model]], boys [[identify ]] with their fathers as their [[masculine ]] [[identity ]] is established. The little boy learns his role as the heir of his father. The little girl, on the other hand, has to identify with her mother while at the same [[time ]] abandoning her as a love [[object ]] and turning to her father instead. For Freud this turning away from the mother is based on [[frustration ]] and the disappointment that she cannot [[satisfy ]] her mother, and is accompanied by hostility.The importance of the "[[pre-oedipal]]" relationship with the mother has been more fully discussed since Freud's time. More recently interest in the [[nature ]] of female identity can be found in the works of Ethel Person, Irene Fast, and Jessica [[Benjamin ]] in the [[United States]], as well as in the works of Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, Catherine J. Luquet-Parat, Maria Torok, and [[Joyce ]] McDougall in [[France]].In the 1920s a controversy took [[place ]] over the [[perception ]] of femininity. If for Freud [[libido ]] is identical in the two sexes, for the [[English ]] [[School]], feminine libido is specific. Karen Horney and Ernest [[Jones ]] participated in a series of interchanges and opposed Freud's views by putting forward a "positive" view of [[female sexuality]], not linked to an [[idea ]] of a [[lack]]. For Jones, femininity's development is linked to [[instinctual ]] [[constitution]]. In debate with him, Freud asserted that Jones profoundly misunderstood the fundamental nature of sexuality and that Jones had returned to a [[biological ]] reductionism. Mitchell has pointed out that the Freud-Jones controversy shifted from the question of what distinguished the sexes to what each sex has that is specific to it alone.Developments in [[psychoanalytic ]] [[theory ]] in England, with the school of [[object relations]], led to an emphasis on the mother-[[child ]] [[dyad]], and on [[motherhood]]. Psychoanalytic [[work ]] from an early stage concentrated on [[primitive ]] states in infancy, and progressively attention was paid to the impact of these primitive states on [[transference]]. Melanie [[Klein]]'s theory carried on Freud's shift in the emphasis from the father to the mother and the mother's importance for [[children ]] of both

sexes. For her, the relationship of the child to the mother's [[body ]] shaped subsequent emotional [[life]]. Particularly, the relationship to the [[breast ]] is crucial in the child's early experiences. Klein's [[concepts ]] of introjective and projective [[identification ]] are metaphors for the [[bodily ]] [[processes ]] of taking in and expelling. According to Klein, the little girl believes her mother' s body contains everything that is desirable, including the father's penis. As a consequence the little girl is filled with [[hatred ]] towards her mother and wishes to attack and rob the [[inside ]] of her body. She is then filled with a persecutory [[anxiety ]] of "having the inside of her body robbed and destroyed." In 1928 Klein argued that it was the [[deprivation ]] of the breast rather than the discovery of the lack of penis that turned the little girl away from the mother towards the father. Later she downplayed the child's original envy of the breast and wrote about an essentially heterosexual [[drive ]] in little girls. Klein's views on this early relationship between mother and [[baby ]] had an impact on some of the early writings on femininity in the British society, such as the work of Joan Riviere and [[Sylvia ]] Payne.Progressively [[psychoanalysts ]] from all the groups in the British Society, inspired by the works of Klein, Donald [[Winnicott]], Marjorie Brierly and Wilfred Bion, have emphasised the connection between primary [[affective ]] development and object relations. One can trace these themes throughout the writings of Marion Burgner and Rose Edcumbe, Egle Laufer, Dinora Pines, Dana Breen, Joan Raphael-Leff, and Rosine Perelberg. In a more [[recent ]] collection presenting work of the [[three ]] [[schools ]] of psychoanalysis in the British [[Psycho]]-Analytical Society, Raphael-Leff and Perelberg stress the primitive tie to the mother and its manifestations in transference and [[countertransference]].American feminists have perceived psychoanalysis as reproducing patriarchal inequalities. Nancy Chodorow is one of the most well-known writers in the United States on the relationship between psychoanalysis and feminism. <i>The Reproduction of Mothering; Psychoanalysis and the [[Sociology ]] of [[Gender]]</i> (1978) introduced the work of Winnicott, W. Ronald Fairbairn, and Harry Guntrip to American readers. Chodorow emphasizes the development of the [[self ]] in relation to [[others]], stressing the pre-oedipal relationship between mother and child. She views the function of mothering as creating an asymmetrical relationship between boys and girls. The girl has more permeable boundaries in the relationship with the other because of having been mothered by someone of the same gender. Girls are themselves, therefore, more committed to mothering. Boys, in contrast, develop a [[sense ]] of self in opposition to the mother and establish more rigid boundaries. The masculine sense of self is more [[separate]].Jean Baker [[Miller ]] and Carol Gilligan, from the interpersonal school of analysis, emphasize women's attributes of relatedness, [[empathy ]] and nurturance which are viewed as devalued in the male-dominated [[culture]]. These interpersonal theoreticians stress [[cultural ]] emphases on different attributes for men and women and are less concentrated on the [[internal ]] [[world ]] of unconscious phantasies and internal object relationships.Jessica Benjamin in <i>Bonds of Love</i> (1988) sees both boys and girls as [[looking ]] to the father for confirmation of themselves. While the boy's identity is confirmed by the father, the girl in contrast has her identification with the father's [[power ]] denied, and he becomes the object of her [[ideal ]] ego. This prevents her from having a "[[desire ]] of her own," and her longing for the father becomes tinged with masochism. Issues of power and submission are located in the sphere of relationships.Chodorow has argued that what all these authors have in common, in spite of their differences, is the emphasis on the qualities of the "self in relation" (or [[denial ]] of relation). She suggests that this view radically breaks with an essentialist view of gender and moves towards a view that perceives masculinity and femininity in a [[contingent]], relationally constructed context. These schools, however, end up by constructing a more fixed view of femininity and masculinity than Freud, who basically indicated that there is a fluidity between masculinity and femininity in both men and women.These views can be contrasted with the major trends in [[French ]] theories on psychoanalysis and feminism, where there is an emphasis on unconscious [[fantasies ]] and desire and an attempt to find a [[language ]] to express the feminine. Among the French psychoanalysts in [[particular ]] there is a view that the discovery of the unconscious in itself reveals the precariousness of identity in the forces of [[fantasy ]] and desire. This is the radical perspective that psychoanalysis can offer to feminism. The impact of Jacques [[Lacan]]'s work pervades the numerous writings, from those who accept basic tenets of [[Freudian ]] theory to those who, like [[Julia Kristeva]], Helene Cixous, Michele Montrelay, Sarah

Kofman, and Luce [[Irigaray]], remained highly critical of psychoanalytic assumptions.Lacan pointed out that the [[distinction ]] between penis and [[phallus ]] is fundamental to Freud's differentiation between biological and psychic reality. The phallus [[exists ]] [[outside ]] anatomical reality and is the [[signifier ]] of the mother's desire. Joël Dor has suggested that the central question of the [[Oedipus complex ]] thus becomes "to be or not to be the phallus," i.e. to be or not to be the object of the mother's desire. The role of the father also becomes symbolic—he represents the [[impossibility ]] of [[being ]] the object of mother's desire. The phallus, unlike the penis, is possessed by nobody (male or female) and represents the combination of both sexes.Chasseguet-Smirgel, McDougall, Torok, Luquet-Parat, Monique Cournut-Janin, and Jacqueline Schaeffer have all argued from a position inside psychoanalysis. Chasseguet-Smirgel indicated her perception that the little girl is aware of the existence of the vagina virtually from the beginning, although she also suggests that this "[[knowledge]]" may be held [[unconsciously]], so that the little girl both [[knows ]] and does not [[know]]. In her various works, "[[penis envy]]" is [[understood ]] as having a defensive function.For many of the French feminist writers the body is the locus of femininity, and numerous writings attempt to [[capture ]] its rhythms (such as [[Luce Irigaray]]'s <i>Ce sexe qui n'en est pas un</i>). In her book <i>Speculum</i> (1974), Irigaray perceives psychoanalysis as unaware of the historical and [[philosophical ]] determinants of its own [[discourse ]] and unable to [[analyse ]] its own unconscious fantasies. Furthermore, being a product of patriarchal society, it cannot analyse what it owes to the mother. She consistently puts forward the view that women in [[patriarchy ]] have no identity as women. She also emphasises the relationship of the little girl to the mother's body. The girl, says Irigaray, "has the mother, in some sense, in her skin, in the humidity of the mucous membranes, in the intimacy of her most intimate parts, in the mystery of her relation to gestation, [[birth ]] and to her [[sexual identity]]."Kristeva relates psychic [[repression ]] to the actual [[structures ]] of language, and describes the pre-oedipal stage as a play of bodily rhythms and pre-[[linguistic ]] exchanges between [[infant ]] and mother. Kristeva refers to what [[Plato]], in <i>Timaeus</i>, called the <i>[[chora]]</i> as the site of the undifferentiated bodily [[space ]] the mother and the child share. Within the Oedipus complex it is the [[symbolic ]] that is dominant; the [[domain ]] of [[unified ]] [[texts]], cultural representations, and knowledge. This distinction between the semiotic and [[the symbolic ]] is retrospective, as it is only through the symbolic that one has access to the semiotic. For Kristeva, [[subjectivity ]] is founded on a constitutive repression of the [[maternal]], the <i>chora</i>, the semiotic, and the abject (liminal states, like pregnancy). Kristeva has been accused of reducing women to the maternal function, but she is also seen as providing a deepening in the understanding of the pre-oedipal.In these French feminist writings, there is a profound [[search ]] for the [[multiplicity ]] which characterizes femininity (as opposed to masculinity), which may be expressed in a language which itself attempts to capture the feminine. In a paradoxical way one may be referred back to Freud's [[thinking ]] about [[hysteria]]. The [[symptoms ]] of the first [[patient ]] of psychoanalysis, [[Anna O]]., included mutism, [[paralysis]], "time-[[missing]]," and gaps in [[memory]]: all expressing interruptions in the domain of a reality which is being denied. Psychoanalysis indicates that sexuality is only created through [[division ]] and discontinuity, although femininity is the side that both represents, and tends to be represented as, the [[negative ]] (of masculinity).