Petits garçons devenus grands

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féminisme, George Makari, Karen Horney, Sigmund Freud

Grâce à Revolution in mind, la très recommandable histoire de la psychanalyse écrite par George Makari, je découvre l’existence de Karen Horney, une psychanalyste allemande  (« arguably the first great female psychoanalytic theoretician ») qui a semble-t-il inauguré  la critique féministe des théories freudiennes, en particulier de la fameuse (et fumeuse) « envie du pénis ».

« In this formulation we have it assumed as an axiomatic fact that females feel at a disadvantage in this respect of their genital organs, without being regarded as constituting a problem in itself—possibly because to masculine narcissism this has seemed too self-evident to need explanation. Nevertheless, the conclusion so far drawn from the investigations—amounting as it does to an assertion that one-half of the human race is discontented with the sex assigned to it and can overcome this discontent only in favorable circumstances—is decidedly unsatisfying, not only to feminine narcissism but also to biological science. »

Karen Horney, On the Genesis of the Castration Complex in Women

J’aime particulièrement ce passage qui se situe à al fin des quelques pages que George Makari consacre à Karen Horney :

« She openly stated that the entire edifice of psychoanalytic theory had tended to neglect female psychology, since its theoreticians were male. Horney bluntly compared the fantasies of little boys about girls with psychoanalytic theories of feminine development and concluded there was little difference. »

George Makari,  Revolution in Mind, HarperCollins, p.381

Psychopathologie de la vie intellectuelle des psychopathologistes (2)

Étiquettes

Carl Gustav Jung, George Makari, Sigmund Freud

« As Freud and Jung were digging in the lost fields of human prehistory, it became clear that their joint search was not amicable. The polite nature of their letters could not hide the tension. Distressed, Emma Jung wrote to Ferenczi in Budapest, asking for his advice but imploring him not to say a word to the Professor. Ferenczi immediately forwarded Emma’s letter to Freud, along with a draft of his own response. After reading Ferenczi’s harsh reply, Freud asked Ferenczi to strike (the German was streichen) all references to Freud’s displeasure with Jung’s paper on libido and his turn to astrology. Ferenczi did as he was told and mailed off his response to Zurich. He proudly reported to Freud that he had carried out the Professor’s orders and made sure to touch on (streifen) Jung’s turn to astrology and the libido paper. Upon rereading Freud’s letter, a horrified Ferenczi realized his blunder. But the letter was already in the mail. Freud angrily castigated Ferenczi for his “false obedience,” a humiliation that plunged Ferenczi into a self-analysis.

George Makari, Revolution in Mind, HarperCollins, p. 272

« The double-talk did not prevent an explosion between the two men [Freud & Jung]. All they needed was a spark, which arrived in the form of a Freudian slip. Jung wrote Freud to deny that he wanted to leave the movement, but by mistake he wrote: “Even Adler’s cronies do not regard me as one of yours.” He meant to write not one of “yours” but one of “theirs.”
Freud could not resist pointing to the revealing error. Furious, Jung shot back: “your technique of treating your pupils like patients is a blunder. In that way you produce either slavish sons or impudent puppies.” […] As a final gesture, Freud denied Jung’s accusation that he treated colleagues as patients and proposed the two men break off all personal communications. On January 6, 1913, Jung agreed. »

ibid. p. 279