The Feminine Mystique

Friedan does not question the “genius of [Sigmund] Freud’s discoveries” or his contributions to American culture, but she does question the application of his theories to contemporary women and argues that those theories have contributed to the problem that has no name.

Freud’s concept of the superego freed men from their sense of social obligation, but he helped to “create a new superego” which insisted that women conform to “an old image” that denied them an “individual identity.”

Freud’s concept of penis envy became very popular, not only among psychoanalysts, but also among sociologists, educators, magazine writers, and advertisers, who applied the theory (which Freud had invented to describe “a phenomenon” that he had observed among middle-class Victorian women in Vienna) “as the literal explanation of all that was wrong with American women.”

Despite his brilliance, Freud was a product of his own culture and could not escape from the standards of that culture. He also lacked an understanding of other cultures. Standards of behavior which he believed were natural have been shown “by modern research” to be the result of “specific cultural causes.” He and his patients lived in a time of sexual repression, which also partly explains Freud’s preoccupation with sex as the underlying cause of all “psychological phenomena.”

Freud also had the habit of defining psychological problems in physical terms. This made the problem seem more “real” and “scientific.” Though he saw the psychological problems clearly, he made them more concrete by borrowing terms from literature and physiology, such as “penis envy” or the “Oedipus complex.” This caused confusion among “lesser thinkers.”

By the 1940s, social scientists and psychoanalysts had begun to reinterpret Freud’s ideas, but not his views on femininity. His views were the results of the culture of Victorian women, which saw women as “childlike dolls,” and his Jewish family, in which his father had established authoritarian rule and his mother was “docile.” His mother gave excessive attention to his needs, at the expense of his sisters.

Freud believed that women were to be ruled by men and thought that their “sickness” led them to envy men. His letters to his future wife, Martha, mirror the attitude of Torvald to his wife, Nora, in A Doll’s House. He insisted that he would let her rule the house, but he scolded her for visiting women who were “less than demure” around men. His mixture of “chivalry and condescension” was evident, too, in a letter in which he condemned John Stuart Mill’s views on female emancipation.

Freud, in his private life, was rather disinterested in sex. Some biographers have described him as “puritanical,” which explains his tendency to “[see] sex everywhere.”

Freud expected his wife, Martha, to identify with him completely. Later, he agreed that she should only be the “loved one,” meaning that she took on the role of an adored object who existed for his comfort. He did not expect her to have any opinions or ideas of her own. Their marriage was “conventional,” but not passionate. Martha was devoted to Freud’s needs, but did not expect to “[share] his life as an equal.”

Freud was also interested in women of “a masculine cast,” women who were more obviously intelligent and independent than Martha, but he had no erotic interest in these women.

Freud developed the theory of penis envy from the notion that women observe their lack of a penis in childhood and do not accept the absence “lightly.” The girl wants, for a long time, to obtain something like the penis. Her desire for a penis could lead her to pursue “an intellectual career,” which is an attempt to fulfill the repressed wish. Conversely, boys who observe a girl’s absence of a penis develop “the castration complex,” or fear of losing their masculinity.

When the girl’s self-love is undermined by her understanding that the boy is “better-equipped,” the value of all women, including her mother, reduces in relation to that of men. This can lead to sexual inhibition, or neurosis, or a desire to pursue activity that is more “characteristic of the male,” or an acceptance of “normal femininity,” which replaces the wish for a penis with the desire for a child.

Freud only saw women in relation to their sexual relationship with men. His theories pay little attention to the development of “the ego, or self.” He did not realize that society’s denial of education and independence prevented women from growing and attaining their full potential; he could only attribute their “yearning for equality” to “penis envy.”

Freud’s popularizers used pseudo-science to emphasize the notion that women could not attain happiness through male avenues of achievement. “Normal femininity” was achieved when a woman renounced all her own active goals to identify herself through the goals and activities of her husband or her son.

Many American women found it impossible to argue with the theories and accepted that their lack of fulfillment must have been due to penis envy. Freudian theory became a new American ideology which “cast suspicion on high aspirations of the mind and spirit,” particularly concerning women.

America became the new center of the psychoanalytic movement. “Freudian, Jungian, and Adlerian analysts” emigrated from Berlin and Vienna to practice. Other fields, including sociology, education, and anthropology, absorbed pseudo-Freudian ideas.

Girls who grew up actively playing sports and studying geometry “were told by the most advanced thinkers” that they should revert to a Victorian model of femininity. The new message was justified by Freud’s theories, which “kept them from questioning the feminine mystique.”