Louise Braddock, 'Feminism and Psychoanalysis'

I review the relation between the two in terms of a series of critical encounters. These are psychoanalysis' (first) encounter with 'the problem of women' and its evolving theory of female sexuality, feminism's (first) encounter with this theory, feminism's re-evaluation of Freud and its 'critical rapprochement' with psychoanalysis. Not considered here are the subsequent feminist 'linguistic turn' to and critique of Lacan, or the revisionist move into sociology of American 'object relations theory' and its 'deflationary turn'. I do discuss as the last and most recent encounter the 'discovery' of Kleinian theory, in terms of resources that post-Kleinian theory brings to feminism, in particular for moving beyond the distinction between egalitarian feminism and difference feminism to the field of contemporary (psychoanalytic) gender theory.