If Freud Were A Woman

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

It must be borne in mind that when little Phyllis was growing up and being brought up in Vienna in the middle of the 19th century, women were considered more superior beings than men, due to their ability to bear children. This belief in the superiority of women was so strong that it was perceived by everyone as an immutable fact. In this regard, such a phenomenon as "uterine envy" was very common among the vast majority of men.

Either way, belief in the natural right of women to dominate men lay at the very foundation of Western civilization. Without a grain of doubt, with an air of authority, women could declare that although a man may try to express himself in art, he will never become a great artist, sculptor, musician, poet, since he is deprived of the creative principle, expressed in the presence of a viviparous womb. Because he also had only castrated, flawed breast, unable to nourish and nurture. A man could only become a home cook, but he cannot be a great cook, nutritionist, winemaker or spice inventor. He does not have a subtle sense of the product, an understanding of the nuances and shades of food. He is deprived of the very instinct of feeding that lies at the heart of culinary creativity.

Thanks to the practice of childbirth, women used medical care more often and more thoroughly, for the same reason the health care system focused on gestation and childbirth. In this regard, it made no sense to encourage men to practice medicine, to become therapists, surgeons, researchers, although no one forbade them to work in low-paid, non-professional fields of medicine as service personnel.

Even men were allowed to model their own clothes at the risk of their complete failure. When they invented fashion themselves, their imaginations did not go beyond the realization of their own complex in relation to the uterus and female genitals. Their models were endless repetitions of female sexual symbolism. For example, a triangular cut in men's jumpers and sweaters evoked associations of a female pubis. The knot of the tie followed the outline of the clitoris, and the bow tie was nothing more than the clitoris erecta. Using Phyllis Freud's terminology, let us call this phenomenon "representation."

Lacking personal experience in matters of birth and non-birth, the choice between conception and contraception, being and not being, as women did throughout their childbearing period, men had an extremely low level of understanding of the concepts of justice and ethics. Because of this, they could not become good philosophers, since philosophy just deals with the concepts of being and non-being, plus everything between these poles. Of course, men also had a low ability to make decisions about life and death, which explained (and perhaps still explains) their absence at the level of decision-making in jurisprudence, law enforcement, the army and other similar fields.

In addition to the viviparous womb and nursing breast, the ability of women to menstruate was the most important proof of their superiority. Only women are capable of emitting blood without injury or death. Only they rose from the ashes like the Phoenix bird every month; only the female body is in constant resonance with the pulsating universe and with the rhythms of the tides. Not included in this lunar cycle, could men have a sense of time, rhythm and space?

How could men in Christian churches serve the cult of the Blessed Virgin, the daughter of the Heavenly Mother, without having the physical embodiment of Her monthly death and Resurrection from the dead? How, in Judaism, could they worship the ancient Goddess of the Matriarchy without possessing Her sacrificial symbols, embodied in the Old Testament of the Mothers? Insensitive to the movements of the planets and the revolving Cosmos, how could men become astronomers, naturalists, scientists - or anyone, after all?

One could easily imagine men as artisans, decorators, devoted sons and sexual companions (provided, of course, a certain skill, since abortion, although allowed, was still painful and avoided; frivolous fertilization could entail punishment in the form of a prison conclusions). Phyllis Freud once came up with a brilliant theory that outstripped the practice of neurology in the 19th century. The strongest impetus for its creation was not at all phrases like "envy of the uterus" or "anatomy is fate." No, these truths have already become part of the culture. The subject of interest and treatment for Phyllis was testiria - a disease characterized by uncontrollable emotional paroxysms, incomprehensible physical symptoms, and mainly observed in men, so that most experts assumed that the disease was associated with male testicles (testes). Although testiric men were often described as sexually perverse, pretentious, and incurable, some therapeutic methods were still in vogue. Therapies ranged from simple water treatments, bed rest, mild electroshock or a healthy lifestyle, spa treatments to circumcision, testicular removal, penis moxibustion, and other measures that now seem draconian. But in some cases they have been more or less successful in relieving testiric seizures. In any case, they were a product of their time.

In Paris, Phyllis Freud was among hundreds of women who attended lecture halls to attend demonstrations of hypnotic sessions, a new technique for treating these mysterious unconscious symptoms targeting male testicles.

This spectacle closed in Freud's mind with the case of testiria, which she heard about in Vienna. Neurology colleague Dr. Ressa Josephine Breuer shared her success in alleviating testiric symptoms by stimulating the patient to recall any painful experiences in early childhood with which the symptoms could be somehow causally related, first with the help of hypnosis, then in a conversation, the method free associations. This method was further developed and was called "talking cure".

When Freud began to practice in her Viennese apartment, hypnosis and "conversation healing" came together in her courageous quest to heal testiria. The symptoms she observed included depression, hallucinations, and a whole host of ailments - from paralysis, debilitating headaches, chronic vomiting and coughing, difficulty swallowing - to a whole range of testiric seizures, false pregnancies, and self-inflicted injuries, which included Kuvade (couvade) or incisions in the skin of the penis as an extreme form of uterine and menstrual envy, which was seen as mimicking female functions.

As Freud worked, first in the technique of hypnosis, and then increasingly using psychoanalysis (the new scientific name "treatment through conversations"), she theorized about what could be the cause of testia. Since testiria was especially common among men between the ages of adolescence and early twenties, Freud conjectured that household, parenting, sexual services, sperm production, and other aspects of the natural male life sphere no longer brought them mature satisfaction. Since some young people also indulged in the dangerous practice of masturbation, they became the target of many neuroses and sexual dysfunctions per se. Among older, more rebellious, or intellectual men, the problem of too much womb envy to be attractive to their wives was also relevant. Finally, there were such husbands who were married to women who were not very disposed to sexual gratification, who, for example, used interrupted intercourse rather as a method of contraception, or out of simple indifference and neglect.

The supreme degree of gratitude on the part of the patients was understandable. Phyllis Freud was not only a rare woman listening to men. She took everything they said quite seriously. Moreover, she made their revelations the subject of her outstanding theories and even science. Freud's progressive attitude, however, caused a hostile attitude towards her by masculinists, who accused her of androphobia.

As a young woman, Phyllis even translated Harriet Taylor Mill's Emancipation of Men into German, a treatise on male equality that less enlightened women have never read. She later supported the idea that men can become psychoanalysts too, provided, of course, that they subscribe to her theory, just as some female analysts did. (Freud certainly disapproved of the modern school of equality, which requires a "male story" and other special treatment).

I’m sure if you carefully studied every clinical case that Freud described, you appreciated the true depth of her understanding of the opposite sex.

Freud prudently understood everything she had heard about testiric men; that they are sexually passive as well as intellectually and ethically passive. Their libido was internally feminine, or as she called it in her ingenious scientific language for a lover, "a man has a weaker sexual instinct."

This was confirmed by the mono-orgastic nature of the man. No serious authority has disputed the fact that women, being multiorgastic, are more adapted for pleasure, and therefore are natural sexual aggressors; in fact, "envelopment" is a legal term for sexual intercourse, and it was an expression of this understanding in terms of activity-passivity.

The concept itself reflected the microcosm. Think about it. A large egg does not waste energy and waits for sperm, and then simply envelops the infinitesimal sperm. As soon as the sperm disappears in the egg, it is, figuratively speaking, eaten alive - similar to how a female spider eats a male. Even the most quixotic male liberal will agree that biology leaves no room for doubt that dominance is inherent in women.

However, Freud was intrigued not by these biological processes, but by a psychological collision, for example, how men turned into incurably narcissistic, anxious, fragile, weak, whose genitals are so insecure and fragile heaped up and visibly exposed. The absence of a uterus in men and the loss of everything except rudimentary mammary glands and useless nipples was the end of a long evolutionary path towards a single function - sperm production, its propelling and ejection. The woman is responsible for all other reproductive processes. Women's behavior, health, and psychology govern pregnancy and birth. Since time immemorial, this disproportionate division in influence on reproduction has not been balanced between the sexes. (Freud realized in her theory the consequences of this in the form of fear of castrated breasts in women. A woman looking at a flat male breast with her strange, alien, as if extraneous nipples, fears deep down in her soul that she will return to this state of castrated breasts).

Finally, the physiological fact of having a penis. This confirmed the original bisexuality of human beings. After all, life begins in the female form, in the womb or elsewhere (explanation of the fact of residual nipples in men). The penis has a significant number of nerve endings, as does the clitoris. But in the course of evolution, the penis acquired a dual function: urine excretion and sperm release. (Indeed, during the feminine, masturbatory, clitoral developmental stage of boys before they see the female genitals and find their penises vulnerable and grotesque compared to the compact and well-protected clitoris, the penis will acquire a third, albeit immature, function of masturbatory gratification.). All this ends in suffering from a functional overload of the organ. The most obvious, daily and nightly (even many times a day and more than one night) outlet for this residual clitoral tissue, which is the penis, is clear. The men were forced to urinate through their clits.

There was no doubt an evolutionary reason for the grotesque enlargement and public exposure of the penis, as well as its net effectiveness due to insecurity. Although the nerve endings in the female clitoris remained extremely sensitive and carefully anatomically protected, the exposed male versions of the same nerve endings have evolved over time into a protective, insensitive epidermis - a fact that deprives men intense, radiating pleasure throughout the body that only the clitoris can provide. A decrease in sex drive and a decrease in the ability to orgasm followed inevitably as night gives way to day.

As Phyllis Freud established in her widely recognized and influential clinical studies, male sexuality only matures when pleasure moves from the penis to a mature and more appropriate area: fingers and tongue. (Translator's note: this is an allusion to Sigmund Freud's reasoning about female sexuality. According to Freud, the orgasm experienced by a woman when the clitoris is stimulated outside of sexual intercourse is infantile, immature and neurotic. Sexual release achieved during intercourse, the so-called vaginal orgasm, unlike clitoral, is a manifestation of mature sexuality).

Freud remarked brilliantly: since every orgasm in a multiorgastic woman is not accompanied by fertilization and pregnancy, this rule also applies to men. Their sexual maturity can be measured by their ability to achieve release in a non-procreative manner. Immature penile orgasms should give way to reliefs achieved with tongue and finger manipulation. In her Masculinity, as well as in other works, Phyllis Freud wrote very unequivocally: “In the clitoral phase in boys, the penis is the leading erogenous zone. But this, of course, could not continue. The penis must surrender its sensitivity, and at the same time its meaning, to the lingual and digital orgasm, that is, "linguistic" and "digital"."

An eminent thinker like Phyllis Freud, listening to her male patients with symptoms of testiria in her first twelve years of practice, made one critical mistake, the unraveling of which could elevate the doctrine of Freud's theory.

The error is quite understandable. Freud noted that many of the symptoms of testiria in her male patients were too severe to be regarded as a consequence of the still all too common trauma of masturbation (which, however, was significantly less common among men due to their weak sexual instinct) or as a result of childhood observation of a “power struggle” in a war of the sexes between parents (in which the mother destroyed a defenseless father). These symptoms could not have originated either from fantasies of testiric deceit, or as a hereditarily acquired "stain" of insanity, as some of her colleagues believed. On the contrary, she began to notice that currents of uncontrollable fear - even testirical paroxysms, when patients seemed to be fighting invisible enemies - seemed like enigmatic puzzles that, when carefully unraveled, suggested scenes of sexual distress in childhood (usually inflicted by family members or other adults on whom the child was totally dependent). In addition, these test symptoms were only triggered by something in the patients' present environment, something that was part of the repressed memories. Finally, the symptoms abated or disappeared as soon as the buried memories resurfaced in consciousness.

One day, suddenly, an inspiration struck Phyllis. These scenes are true! As she wrote: “In fact, these patients never spontaneously repeat their stories, and even during treatment they never reproduce this kind of scene in full. Only the patient succeeds in realizing the connection between the physical symptoms and the sexual experiences that preceded them, under the energetic pressure of the analytic procedure, when again terrible resistance ensues. Moreover, memories have to be "pulled" out of them drop by drop, and until they reach the level of awareness, they become the prey of emotions that are difficult to deal with."

Needless to say, the rampage of testiric men was a significant departure from matriarchal wisdom. Phyllis Freud, however, felt she was on the right track. Perhaps this discovery, to which she was going - exactly what, as she wrote, could lead her to "eternal glory" and "a certain prosperity." Finding out the reasons for Testiria could be the key to the glory of Alexandra the Great, to glory no less than the glory of Hannibal, which she felt was in store for her. This new theory, which explains the causes of testia, she gave the name "seduction theory", apparently implying a subtle reference to "premature sexual experience" rather than the assumption that very young men were complicit in their sexual offenders. On the contrary, she defended the veracity of her patients in personal letters, professional reports and articles.

Of course, Phyllis Freud might not have attempted to investigate or intrude in any way into such painful family relationships. Not without bewilderment, the families of their sons were sent to her. But sometimes evidence knocked on the door. One day, the twin brother of a patient with testiria told Freud that he had witnessed the perverse sexual acts that the patient suffered from. In another case, two patients admitted to being sexually abused by the same person during childhood. In another case, a parent started crying after Phyllis suggested that his child may have been sexually abused. And she, sensitive to suffering, put an end to this discussion, so the parent and the child went home together. Motivated by the importance of her discovery, she began to work on something far more important than any particular intervention: documents were to become the property of the professional community.

Phyllis Freud was well aware that the seduction theory could bring her the glory of the kind that deprives people of sleep, but she continued to hope for the praise and approval of her colleagues, to whom she expounded her theory. However, when her peers' assessment was rather lukewarm, ranging from evasive at best to angry at worst, she was bitterly disappointed.

So, she could keep repeating her stupid and fundamental mistake, if not for the decisive conclusion that prompted her to leave the theory of seduction. Phyllis Freud realized that if she insisted that she was right, she could be a laughing stock, and her family the subject of dishonest assumptions.

The realization followed shortly after her mother's long illness and death. Death had an unexpected profound effect on her. After all, she felt hostility towards her mother, in contrast to the sexually charged love she felt for her adorable and adored father. “The condition of an elderly woman does not oppress me,” she wrote to her friend Wilhelmina Fliess. "I do not wish for a long illness for her …" But after the death of his mother in 1896, Freud wrote: "On one of the dark paths beyond consciousness, the death of an elderly woman deeply shook me."

Many months later, Freud continued to record the stories of her patients sexually abused by perverts.

Building a cherished theory was difficult. In one case, Freud observed: "Testiric headaches with a feeling of squeezing the occiput, temples, and the like, characterize scenes during which the head was held in order to carry out certain actions in the mouth." Freud herself suffered from painful and debilitating pain of the same nature throughout her life. This should definitely have sparked her interest in developing a theory of seduction. The following sentence clearly demonstrates how ridiculous Phyllis could appear if she applied her theory consistently. Freud wrote about her belief that "my own mother was one of these perverse personalities and she is guilty of the testimony of my sister … and several younger brothers." By May 1897, Freud clearly understood that all children feel hostility towards their parents and want them dead: "This death wish for sons is directed at fathers, and for daughters at their mothers." It was not only a convenient and soothing confirmation of her own normalcy, but also the foundation for the discovery of the Electra complex and the lesser Oedipus complex. Freud also soon realized the cause of her own melancholy after the death of her mother. Natural hostility to a parent of the same sex "is suppressed during periods of increased pity for them: during their illness or death."

In August, she traveled to Italy, where her historical introspection began to bear fruit. We do not know what heroic battles Phyllis Freud waged with herself. One manifestation is that her exploratory focus shifted from memory to fantasy, resulting in a highly symbolic and brilliant intellectual interpretation of fantasy as wish fulfillment. Since all boys are in love with their mothers and would like to take their fathers 'place as sexual partners, her patients' "scenes" are easily read as indicating exactly what they would like to experience in reality. And even if it actually happened, it didn't matter, since it was just a fantasy life and a desire for sexual contact with one of the parents. That was what mattered. She no longer needed further research.

By September 1897, Freud had finally gained the ability to renounce seduction theory and did so in a letter to Fliess. The letter became famous. It provided an assessment, analysis and recollection of all struggles with many superficial notions that suffering is inspired by real events, and not by a deep, ongoing struggle that occurs in isolation from reality, in the depths of the psyche. It was “a great mystery that has gradually dominated me over the past few months. I no longer believe in my neuroticism. " She referred to “the lack of complete success in everything that she believed to be true. In fact, in all cases, mothers, not excluding my own, are guilty of perverse behavior. " Finally, this letter contained “a recognition of the unexpectedly frequent occurrence of testiria, with the same reasons and conditions prevailing in each case; there is no doubt that such a widespread perversion of children is not very likely.”Such a conclusion eased her anguish, even if it meant a public rejection of the previously proclaimed concept. Freud was often overly optimistic. Phyllis Freud bravely admitted her past mistakes."I trust these stories and therefore believed that I had discovered the roots of neuroses in the experience of sexual abuse in childhood," she wrote. "And if the reader grins at my gullibility, I cannot reproach him." Translated from English by Dina Viktorova