Pyschoanalysis and Feminism

“Psychoanalysis and Feminism is a brave and important book, and its influence will not be confined to feminists.”—New York Review of Books

“For me personally, and for many others I know, Juliet Mitchell’s Psychoanalysis and Feminism was a game changer, for the brilliance with which it made the case for Freud’s writing as an indispensable part of feminist thought. At a time when the question of how to understand human sexuality is being so hotly debated, Mitchell’s intervention could not be more pertinent today.”—Jacqueline Rose

In 1974, at the height of the women's movement, Juliet Mitchell shocked her fellow feminists by challenging the entrenched belief that Freud was the enemy. She argued that a rejection of psychoanalysis as bourgeois and patriarchal was fatal for feminism. However it may have been used, she pointed out, psychoanalysis is not a recommendation for a patriarchal society, but rather an analysis of one.

With an introduction written specially for the forthcoming reissue of this classic text, Juliet Mitchell reflects on the changing relationship between these two major influences on twentieth-century thought. Original and provocative, Psychoanalysis and Feminism remains an essential component of the feminist canon.