Feminist Responses to Freud through the “Equality vs. Difference” Debate: Revisiting Beauvoir, Irigaray and Mitchell

Abstract

Freudian psychoanalysis has long been a matter of debate among feminists,and usually criticized for biological determinism. While discussingthe Freudian framework, feminists have also been discussing how to definea female subject and the age old “equality vs. difference” discussion.This study discusses critical feminist responses to Freud whichdemonstrate the intricacies of the “equality vs. difference” debateamongst different strands of feminist theory. This article analyses threediverse lines of argument regarding psychoanalysis and the equality vs.difference debate by focusing on the works of Luce Irigaray, Simone deBeauvoir and Juliet Mitchell. Beauvoir and Irigaray both criticize theFreudian approach for taking “the male” as the real, essential subject.However, whereas Beauvoir sides with an egalitarian feminism, Irigaraydefends underlining the difference of female sexuality. Juliet Mitchell,on the other hand, defends Freudian psychoanalysis through the argumentthat psychoanalysis actually offers a way to understand how theunconscious carries the heritage of historical and social reality. Accordingly,what Freudian psychoanalysis does is to analyze, rather than tolegitimize, the basis of the patriarchal order in the unconscious.