De Beauvoir on Freud
The tremendous advance accomplished by psychoanalysis over psychophysiology
lies in the view that no factor becomes involved in the psychic life
without having taken on human significance; it is not the body-object
described by biologists that actually exists, but the body as lived by the
subject. Woman is a female to the extent that she feels herself as such.
There are biologically essential features that are not a part of her real,
experienced situation: thus the structure of the egg is not reflected in
it, but on the contrary an organ of no great biological importance, like
the clitoris, plays in it a part of the first rank. It is not nature that
defines woman; it is she who defines herself by dealing with nature on her
own account in her emotional life.
An entire system has been built up in this perspective, which I do not
intend to criticise as a whole, merely examining its contribution to the
study of woman. It is not an easy matter to discuss psychoanalysis per
se. Like all religions Christianity and Marxism, for example
it displays an embarrassing flexibility on a basis of rigid
concepts. Words are sometimes used in their most literal sense, the term
phallus, for example, designating quite exactly that fleshy projection
which marks the male; again, they are indefinitely expanded and take on
symbolic meaning, the phallus now expressing the virile character and
situation in toto. If you attack the letter of his doctrine, the
psychoanalyst protests that you misunderstand its spirit; if you applaud
its spirit, he at once wishes to confine you to the letter. The doctrine
is of no importance, says one, psychoanalysis is a method; but the success
of the method strengthens the doctrinaire in his faith. After all, where
is one to find the true lineaments of psychoanalysis if not among the
psychoanalysts? But there are heretics among these, just as there are
among Christians and Marxists; and more than one psychoanalyst has declared
that 'the worst enemies of psychoanalysis are the psychoanalysts'. In
spite of a scholastic precision that often becomes pedantic, many
obscurities remain to be dissipated. As Sartre and Merleau-Ponty have
observed, the proposition 'Sexuality is coextensive with existence' can be
understood in two very different ways; it can mean that every experience of
the existent has a sexual significance, or that every sexual phenomenon has
an existential import. It is possible to reconcile these statements, but
too often one merely slips from one to the other. Furthermore, as soon as
the 'sexual' is distinguished from the 'genital', the idea of sexuality
becomes none too clear. According to Dalbiez, 'the sexual with Freud is
the intrinsic aptitude for releasing the genital'. But nothing is more
obscure than the idea of 'aptitude' that is, of possibility
for only realisation gives indubitable proof of what is possible. Not
being a philosopher, Freud has refused to justify his system
philosophically; and his disciples maintain that on this account he is
exempt from all metaphysical attack. There are metaphysical assumptions
behind all his dicta, however, and to use his language is to adopt a
philosophy. It is just such confusions that call for criticism, while
making criticism difficult.
Freud never showed much concern with the destiny of woman; it is clear that
he simply adapted his account from that of the destiny of man, with slight
modifications. Earlier the sexologist Marañon had stated that 'As specific
energy, we may say that the libido is a force of virile character. We wil
say as much of the orgasm'. According to him, women who attain orgasm are
'viriloid' women; the sexual impulse is 'in one direction' and woman is
only half way along the road. Freud never goes to such an extreme; he
admits that woman's sexuality is evolved as fully as man's; but he hardly
studies it in particular. He writes: 'The libido is constantly and
regularly male in essence, whether it appears in man or in woman.' He
declines to regard the feminine libido as having its own original nature,
and therefore it will to him like a complex deviation from the human libido
in general. This develops at first, he thinks, identically in the two sexes
each infant passes first through an oral phase that fixates it upon
the maternal breast, and then through an anal phase; finally it reaches the
genital phase, at which point the sexes become differentiated.
Freud further brought to light a fact the importance of which had not been
fully appreciated: namely, that masculine erotism is definitely located in
the penis, whereas in woman there are two distinct erotic systems: one the
clitoral, which develops in childhood, the other vaginal, which develops
only after puberty. When the boy reaches the genital phase, his evolution
is completed, though he must pass from the auto-erotic inclination, in
which pleasure is subjective, to the hetero-erotic inclination, in which
pleasure is bound up with an object, normally a woman. This transition is
made at the time of puberty through a narcissistic phase. But the penis
will remain, as in childhood, the specific organ of erotism. Woman's
libido, also passing through a narcissistic phase, will become objective,
normally towards man; but the process be much wore complex, because woman
must pass from clitoral pleasure to vaginal. There is only one genital
stage for man, but there are two for woman; she runs a much greater risk of
not reaching the end of her sexual evolution, of remaining at the infantile
stage and thus of developing neuroses.
While still in the auto-erotic stage, the child becomes more or less
strongly attached to an object. The boy becomes fixed on his mother and
derises to identify himself with his father; this presumption terrifies him
and he dreads mutilation at the hands of his father in punishment for it.
Thus the castration complex springs from the Oedipus complex. Then
aggressiveness towards the father develops, but at the same time the child
interiorises the father's authority; thus the superego is built up in the
child and censures his incestuous tendencies. These are repressed, the
complex is liquidated, and the son is freed from his fear of his father,
whom he has now installed in his own psyche under the guise of moral
precepts.' The super-ego is more powerful in proportion as the Oedipus
complex has been more marked and more rigorously resisted.
Freud at first described the little girl's history in a completely
corresponding fashion, later calling the feminine form of the process the
Electra complex; but it is clear that he defined it less in itself than
upon the basis of his masculine pattern. He recognised a very important
difference between the two, however: the little girl at first has a mother
fixation, but the boy is at no time sexually attracted to the father. This
fixation of the girl represents a survival of the oral phase. Then the
child identifies herself with the father; but towards the age of five she
discovers the anatomical difference between the sexes, and she reacts to
the absence of the penis by acquiring a castration complex she
imagines that she has been mutilated and is pained at the thought. Having
then to renounce her virile pretensions, she identifies herself with her
mother and seeks to seduce the father. The castration complex and the
Electra complex thus reinforce each other. Her feeling of frustration is
the keener since, loving her father, she wishes in vain to be like him;
and, inversely, her. regret strengthens her love, for she is able to
compensate for her inferiority through the affection she inspires in her
father. The little girl entertains a feeling of rivalry and hostility
towards her mother. Then the super-ego is built up also in her, and the
incestuous tendencies are repressed; but her super-ego is not so strong,
for the Electra complex is less sharply defined than the Oedipus because
the first fixation was upon the mother, and since the father is himself the
object of the love that he condemns, his prohibitions are weaker than in
the case of his son-rival. It can be seen that like her genital
development the whole sexual drama is more complex for the girl than for
her brothers. In consequence she, may be led to react to the castration
complex by denying her femininity, by continuing obstinately to covet a
penis and to identify herself with her father. This attitude will cause her
to remain in the clitoral phase, to become frigid or to turn towards
homosexuality.
The two essential objections that may be raised against this view derive
from the fact that Freud based it upon a masculine model. He assumes that
woman feels that she is a mutilated man. But the idea of mutilation
implies comparison and evaluation. Many psychoanalysts today admit that
the young girl may regret not having a penis without believing, however,
that it has been removed from her body., and even this regret is not
general. It could not arise from a simple anatomical comparison; many
little girls, in fact, are late in discovering the masculine construction,
and if they do, it is only by sight. The little boy obtains from his penis
a living experience that makes it an object of pride to him, but this pride
does not necessarily imply a corresponding humiliation for his sisters,
since they know the masculine organ in its outward aspect only this
outgrowth, this weak little rod of flesh re them only with indifference, or
even disgust. The little girl's covetousness, when it exists, results from
a previous evaluation of virility. Freud takes this for granted, when it
should be On the other hand, the concept of the Electra complex is very
vague, because it is not supported by a basic description libido. Even in
boys the occurrence of a definitely genital Oedipus complex is by no means
general; but, apart from very few exceptions, it cannot be admitted that
the father is a source of genital excitation for his young daughter. One
of the great problems of feminine eroticism is that clitoral pleasure is
localised; and it is only towards puberty that a number of erogenous zones
develop in various parts of the body, along with the growth of vaginal
sensation. To say, then, that in a child of ten the kisses and caresses of
her father have an 'intrinsic aptitude' for arousing clitoral pleasure is
to assert something that in most cases is nonsense. If it is admitted that
the Electra complex has only a very diffuse emotional character, then the
whole question of emotion is raised, and Freudianism does not help us in
defining emotion as distinguished from sexuality. What deifies the father
is by no means the feminine libido (nor is the mother deified by the desire
she arouses in the son); on the contrary, the fact that the feminine desire
(in the daughter) is directed towards a sovereign being gives it a special
character. It does not determine the nature of its object; rather it is
affected by the latter. The sovereignty of the father is a fact of social
origin, which Freud fails to account for; in fact, he states that it is
impossible to say what authority decided, at a certain moment in history,
that the father should take precedence over the mother a decision
that, according to Freud, was progressive, but due to causes unknown.
"It
could not have been patriarchal authority, since it is just this authority
which progress conferred upon the father"
,
as he puts it in his last
work.
Adler took issue with Freud because he saw the deficiency of a system that
undertook to explain human life upon the basis of sexuality alone; he holds
that sexuality should be integrated with the total personality. With Freud
all human behaviour seems to be the outcome of desire that is, of
the search for pleasure but for Adler man appears to be aiming at
certain goals; for the sexual urge he substitutes motives, purposes,
projects. He gives so large a place to the intelligence that often the
sexual has in his eyes only a symbolic value. According to his system, the
human drama can be reduced to three elemental factors: in every individual
there is a will to power, which, however, is accompanied by an inferiority
complex; the resulting conflict leads the individual to employ a thousand
ruses in a flight from reality a reality with which he fears he may
not be able to cope; the subject thus withdraws to some degree from the
society of which he is apprehensive and hence becomes afflicted with the
neuroses that involve disturbance of the social attitude. In woman the
inferiority complex takes the form of a shamed rejection of her femininity.
It is not the lack of the penis that causes this 'complex, but rather
woman's total situation; if the little girl feels penis envy it is only as
the symbol of privileges enjoyed by boys. The place the father holds in
the family, the universal predominance of males, her own education
everything confirms her in her belief in masculine superiority. Later on,
when she takes part in sexual relations, she finds a new humiliation in the
coital posture that places woman underneath the man. She reacts through
the 'masculine protest': either she endeavours to masculinise herself, or
she makes use of her feminine weapons to wage war upon the male. Through
maternity she may be able to find an equivalent of the penis in her child.
But this supposes that she begins by wholly accepting her role as woman and
that she assumes her inferiority. She is divided against herself much more
profoundly than is the male.
I shall not enlarge here upon the theoretical differences that separate
Adler and Freud nor upon the possibilities of a reconciliation; but this
may be said: neither the explanation based upon the sexual urge nor that
based upon motive is sufficient, for every urge poses a motive, but the
motive is apprehended only through the urge a synthesis of
Adlerianism and Freudianism would therefore seem possible of realisation.
In fact, Adler retains the idea of psychic causation as an integral part of
his system when he introduces the concepts of goal and of fiality, and he
is somewhat in accord with Freud in regard to the relation between drives
and mechanism: the physicist always recognises determinism when he is
concerned with conflict or a force of attraction. The axiomatic
proposition held in common by all psychoanalysts is this: the human story
is to be explained by the interplay of determinate elements. And all the
psychoanalysts allot the same destiny to woman. Her drama is epitomised in
the conflict between her 'viriloid' and her 'feminine' tendencies, the
first expressed through the clitoral system, the second in vaginal erotism.
As a child she identifies .self with her father; then she becomes possessed
with a feeling of inferiority with reference to the male and is faced with
a dilemma: either to assert her independence and become virilised
which, with the underlying complex of inferiority, induces a state of
tension that threatens neurosis or to find happy fulfilment in
amorous submission, a solution that is facilitated by her love for the
sovereign father. He it is whom she really seeks in lover or husband, and
thus her sexual love is mingled with the desire to be dominated. She will
find her recompense in maternity, since that will afford her a new kind of
independence. This drama would seem to be endowed with an energy,
dynamism, of its own; it steadily pursues its course through any and all
distorting incidents, and every woman is passively swept along in it.
The psychoanalysts have had no trouble in finding empirical confirmation
for their theories. As we know, it was possible for a long time to explain
the position of the planets on the Ptolemaic system by adding to it
sufficiently subtle complications; and by superposing an inverse Oedipus
complex upon the Oedipus complex, by disclosing desire in all anxiety,
success has been achieved in integrating with the Freudian system the very
facts that appear to contradict its validity. It is possible to make out a
form only against a background, and the way in which the form is
apprehended brings out the background behind it in positive detail; thus,
if one is determined to describe a special case in a Freudian perspective,
one will encounter the Freudian schema behind it. But when a doctrine
demands the indefinite and arbitrary multiplication of secondary
explanations, when observation brings to light as many exceptions as
instances conformable to rule, it is better to give up the old rigid
framework. Indeed, every psychoanalyst today is busily engaged after his
fashion in making the Freudian concepts less rigid and in attempting
compromises. For example, a contemporary psychoanalyst [Baudouin] writes
as follows: 'Wherever there is a complex, there are by definition a number
of components ... The complex consists in the association of these
disparate elements and not in the representation of one among them by the
others.' But the concept of a simple association of elements is
unacceptable, for the psychic life is not a mosaic, it is a single whole in
every one of its aspects and we must respect that unity. This is possible
only by our recovering through the disparate facts the original
purposiveness of existence. If we do not go back to this source, man
appears to be the battleground of compulsions and prohibitions that alike
are devoid of meaning and incidental.
All psychoanalysts systematically reject the idea of choice and the
correlated concept of value, and therein lies the intrinsic weakness of the
system. Having dissociated compulsions and prohibitions from the free
choice of the existent, Freud fails to give us an explanation of their
origin he takes them for granted. He endeavoured to replace the
idea of value with that of authority; but he admits in Moses and
Monotheism that he has no way of accounting for this authority. Incest,
for example, is forbidden because the father has forbidden it but
why did he forbid it? It is a mystery. The super-ego interiorises,
introjects commands and prohibitions emanating from an arbitrary tyranny,
and the instinctive drives are there, we know not why: these two realities
are unrelated because morality is envisaged as foreign to sexuality. The
human unity appears to be disrupted, there is no thoroughfare from the
individual to society; to reunite them Freud was forced to invent strange
fictions, as in Totem and Taboo. Adler saw clearly that the castration
complex could be explained only in social context; he grappled with the
problem of valuation, but he did not reach the source in the individual of
the values recognised by society, and he did not grasp that values are
involved in sexuality itself, which led him to misjudge its importance.
Sexuality most certainly plays a considerable role in human life; it can be
said to pervade life throughout. We have already learned from physiology
that the living activity of the testes and the ovaries is integrated with
that of the body in general. The existent is a sexual, a sexuate body, and
in his relations with other existents who are also sexuate bodies,
sexuality is in consequence always involved. But if body and sexuality are
concrete expressions of existence, it is with referene to this that their
significance can be discovered. Lacking this perspective, psychoanalysis
takes for granted unexplained facts. For instance, we are told that the
little girl is ashamed of urinating in a squatting position with her bottom
uncovered but whence comes this shame? And likewise, before asking
whether the male is proud of having a penis or whether his pride is
expressed in his penis, it is necessary to know what pride is and how the
aspirations of the subject can be incarnated in an object. There is no
need of taking sexuality as an irreducible datum, for there is in the
existent a more original 'quest for being', of which sexuality is only one
of the aspects. Sartre demonstrates this truth in L'Ètre et le
néant, as does Bachelard in his works on Earth, Air, and Water. The
psychoanalysts hold that the primary truth regarding man is his relation
with his own body and with the bodies of his fellows in the group; but man
has a primordial interest in the substance of the natural world which
surrounds him and which he tries to discover in work, in play, and in all
the experiences of the 'dynamic imagination'. Man aspires to be at one
concretely with the whole world, apprehended in all possible ways. To work
the earth, to dig a hole, are activities as original as the embrace, as
coition, and they deceive themselves who see here no more than sexual
symbols. The hole, the ooze, the gash, hardness, integrity are primary
realities; and the interest they have for man is not dictated by the
libido, but rather the libido will be coloured by the manner in which he
becomes aware of them. It is not because it symbolises feminine virginity
that integrity fascinates man; but it is his admiration for integrity that
renders virginity precious. Work, war, play, art signify ways of being
concerned with the world which cannot be reduced to any others; they
disclose qualities that interfere with those which sexuality reveals. It
is at once in their light and in the light of these erotic experiences that
the individual exercises his power of choice. But only an ontological
point of view, a comprehension of being in general, permits us to restore
the unity of this choice.
It is this concept of choice, indeed, that psychoanalysis most vehemently
rejects in the name of determinism and the 'collective unconscious'; and it
is this unconscious that is supposed to supply man with prefabricated
imagery and a universal symbolism. Thus it would explain the observed
analogies of dreams, of purposeless actions, of visions of delirium, of
allegories, and of human destinies. To speak of liberty would be to deny
oneself the possibility of explaining these disturbing conformities. But
the idea of liberty is not incompatible with the existence of certain
constants. If the psychoanalytic method is frequently rewarding in spite
of the errors in its theory, that is because there are in every individual
case certain factors of undeniable generality: situations and behaviour
patterns constantly recur, and the moment of decision flashes from a cloud
of generality and repetition. 'Anatomy is destiny', said Freud; and this
phrase is echoed by that of Merleau-Ponty: 'The body is generality.'
Existence is all one, bridging the gaps between individual existents; it
makes itself manifest in analogous organisms, and therefore constant
factors will he found in the bonds between the ontological and the sexual.
At a given epoch of history the techniques, the economic and social
structure of a society, will reveal to all its members an identical world,
and there a constant relation of sexuality to social patterns will exist;
analogous individuals, placed in analogous conditions, will see analogous
points of significance in the given circumstances. This analogy does not
establish a rigorous universality, but it accounts for the fact that
general types may be recognised in individual case histories.
The symbol does not seem to me to he an allegory elaborated by a mysterious
unconscious; it is rather the perception of a certain significance through
the analogue of the significant object. Symbolic significance is
manifested in the same way to numerous individuals, because of the
identical existential situation connecting all the individual existents,
and the identical set of artificial conditions that all must confront.
Symbolism did not come down from heaven nor rise up from subterranean
depths it has been elaborated, like language, by that human reality
which is at once Mitsein and separation; and this explains why
individual invention also has its place, as in practice psychoanalysis has
to admit, regardless of doctrine. Our perspective allows us, for example,
to understand the value widely accorded to the penis.' It is impossible to
account for it without taking our departure from an existential fact: the
tendency of the subject towards alienation. The anxiety that his
liberty induces in the subject leads him to search for himself in things,
which is a kind of flight from himself. This tendency is so fundamental
that immediately after weaning, when he is separated from the Whole, the
infant is compelled to lay hold upon his alienated existence in mirrors and
in the gaze of his parents. Primitive people are alienated in mana, in the
totem; civilised people in their individual souls, in their egos, their
names, their property, their work. Here is to be found the primary
temptation to inauthenticity, to failure to be genuinely oneself. The
penis is singularly adapted for playing this role of 'double' for the
little boy it is for him at once a foreign object and himself; it is
a plaything, a doll, and yet his own flesh; relatives and nurse-girls
behave towards it as if it were a little person. It is easy to see, then,
how it becomes for the child 'an alter ego ordinarily more artful,
more intelligent, and more .ever than the individual'. [Alice Balint] The
penis is regarded by the subject as at once himself and other than himself,
because the functions of urination and later of erection are processes
midway between the voluntary and involuntary, and because it is a
capricious and as it were a foreign source of pleasure that is felt
subjectively. The individual's specific transcendence takes concrete form
in the penis and it is a source of pride. Because the phallus is thus set
apart, man can bring into integration with his subjective individuality the
life that overflows from it. It is easy to see, then, that the length of
the penis, the force of the urinary jet, the strength of erection and
ejaculation become for him the measure of his own worth . [I have been told
of peasant children amusing themselves in excremental competition; the one
who produced the most copious and solid faeces enjoyed a prestige unmatched
by any other form of success, whether in games or even in fighting. The
faecal mass here plays the same part as the penis there is
alienation in both cases.]
Thus the incarnation of transcendence in the phallus is a constant; and
since it is also a constant for the child to feel himself transcended that
is to say, frustrated in his own transcendence by the father we
therefore continually come upon the Freudian idea of the 'castration
complex'. Not having that alter ego, the little girl is not
alienated in a material thing and cannot retrieve her integrity. On this
account she is led to make an object of her whole self, to set up herself
as the Other. Whether she knows that she is or is not comparable with boys
is secondary; the important point is that, even if she is unaware of it,
the absence of the penis prevents her from being conscious of herself as a
sexual being. From this flow many consequences. But the constants I have
referred to do not for all that establish a fixed destiny the phallus
assumes such worth as it does because it symbolises a dominance that is
exercised in other domains. If woman should succeed in establishing
herself as subject, she would invent equivalents of the phallus; in fact,
the doll, incarnating the promise of the baby that is to come in the future
can become a possession more precious than the penis." There are
matrilineal societies in which the women keep in their possession the masks
in which the group finds alienation; in such societies the penis loses much
of its glory. The fact is that a true human privilege is based upon the
anatomical privilege only in virtue of the total situation. Psychoanalysis
can establish its truths only in the historical context.
Woman can be defined by her consciousness of her own femininity no more
satisfactorily than by saying that she is a female, for she acquires this
consciousness under circumstances dependent upon the society of which she
is a member. Interiorising the unconscious and the whole psychic life, the
very language of psychoanalysis suggests that the drama of the individual
unfolds within him such words as cotnplex, tendency, and so on make
that implication. But a life is a relation to the world, and the
individual defines himself by making his own choices through the world
about him. We must therefore turn towards the world to find answers for
the questions we are concerned with. In particular psychoanalysis fails to
explain why woman is the Other. For Freud himself admits that the
prestige of the penis is explained by the sovereignty of the father, and,
as we have seen, he confesses that he is ignorant regarding the origin of
male supremacy.
We therefore decline to accept the method of psychoanalysis, without
rejecting en bloc the contributions of the science or denying the fertility
of some of its insights. In the first place, we do not limit ourselves to
regarding sexuality as something given. The insufficiency of this view is
shown by the poverty of the resulting descriptions of the feminine libido;
as I have already said, the psychoanalysts have never studied it directly,
but only in taking the male libido as their point of departure. They seem
to ignore the fundamental ambivalence of the attraction exerted on the
female by the male. Freudians and Adlerians explain the anxiety felt by
the female confronted by the masculine sex as being the inversion of a
frustrated desire. Stekel saw more clearly that an original reaction was
concerned, but he accounts for it in a superficial manner. Woman, he says,
would fear decoration, penetration. pregnancy, and pain, and such fear
would restrain her desire but this explanation is too rational.
Instead of holding that her desire is disguised in anxiety or is contested
by fear, we should regard as an original fact this blending of urgency and
apprehension which is female desire: it is the indissoluble synthesis of
attraction and repulsion that characterises it. We may note that many
female animals avoid copulation even as they are soliciting it, and we are
tempted to accuse them of coquetry or hypocrisy; but it is absurd to
pretend to explain primitive behaviour. patterns by asserting their
similarity to complex modes of conduct. On the contrary, the former are in
truth at the source of the attitudes that in woman are called coquetry and
hypocrisy. The notion of a 'passive libido' is baffling, since the libido
has been defined, on the basis of the male, as a drive, an energy; but one
would do no better to hold the opinion that a light could be at once yellow
and blue what is needed is the intuition of green. We would more
fully encompass reality if instead of defining the libido in vague terms of
'energy' we brought the significance of sexuality into relation with that
of other human attitudes taking, capturing, eating, making,
submitting, and so forth; for it is one of the various modes of a bending
an object. We should study also the qualities of the erotic object as it
presents itself not only in the sexual act but also to observation in
general. Such an investigation extends beyond the frame of psychoanalysis,
which assumes eroticism as irreducible.
Furthermore, I shall pose the problem of feminine destiny quite otherwise:
I shall place woman in a world of values and give her behaviour a dimension
of liberty. I believe that she has the power to choose between the
assertion of her transcendence and her alienation as object; she is not the
plaything of contradictory drives; she devises solutions of diverse values
in the ethical scale. Replacing value with authority, choice with drive,
psychoanalysis offers an Ersatz, a substitute for morality the
concept of normality. This concept is certainly most useful in
therapeutics, but it has spread through psychoanalysis in general to a
disquieting extent. The descriptive schema is proposed as a law; and most
assuredly a mechanistic psychology cannot accept the notion of moral
invention; it can in strictness render an account of the less and
never of the more; in strictness it can admit of checks, never of
creations. If a subject does not show in his totality the development
considered as normal, it will be said that his development has been
arrested, and this arrest will be interpreted as a lack, a negation, but
never as a positive decision. This it is, among other things, that makes
the psychoanalysis of great men so shocking: we are told that such and such
a transference, this or that sublimation, has not taken place in them; it
is not suggested that perhaps they have refused to undergo the process,
perhaps for good reasons of their own; it is not thought desirable to
regard their behaviour as possibly motivated by purposes freely envisaged;
the individual is always explained through ties with his past and not in
respect to a future towards which he projects his aims. Thus the
psychoanalysts never give as more than an inauthentic picture, and for the
inauthentic there can hardly be found any other criterion than normality.
Their statement of the feminine destiny is absolutely to the point in this
connection. In the sense in which the psychoanalysts understand the term,
'to identify oneself' with the mother or with the father is to alienate
oneself in a model, it is to prefer a foreign image to the spontaneous
manifestation of one' own existence, it is to play at being. Woman is
shown to us as entice by two modes of alienation. Evidently to play at
being a man will be for her a source of frustration; but to play at being a
woman is also a delusion: to be a woman would mean to be the object, the
Other and the Other nevertheless remains subject in the midst
of her resignation.
The true problem for woman is to reject these flights from reality and seek
fulfilment in transcendence. The thing to do, then, is to see what
possibilities are opened up for her through what are called the virile and
the feminine attitudes. When a child takes the road indicated by one or
the other of its parents, it may be because the child freely takes up their
projects; its behaviour may be the result of a choice motivated by ends and
aims. Even with Adler the will to power is only an absurd kind of energy;
he denominates as 'masculine protest' every project involving
transcendence. When a little girl climbs trees it is, according to Adler,
just to show her equality with boys; it does not occur to him that she
likes to climb trees. For the mother her child is something other than an
'equivalent of the penis'. To paint, to write, to engage in politics
these are not merely 'sublimations'; here we have aims that are
willed for their own sakes. To deny it is to falsify all human
history.
Thus the fate of woman and that of socialism are intimately bound up
together, as is shown also in Bebel's great work on woman. 'Woman and the
proletariat,' he says, 'are both downtrodden.' Both are to be set free
through the economic development consequent upon the social upheaval
brought about by machinery. The problem of woman is reduced to the problem
of her capacity for labour. Puissant at the time when techniques were
suited to her capabilities, dethroned when she was no longer in a position
to exploit them, woman regains in the modern world her equality with man.
It is the resistance of the ancient capitalistic paternalism that in most
countries prevents the concrete realisation of this equality; it will be
realised on the day when this resistance is broken, as is the fact already
in the Soviet Union, according to Soviet propaganda. And when the
socialist society is established throughout the world, there will no longer
be men and women, but only workers on a footing of equality.
Although this chain of thought as outlined by Engels marks an advance upon
those we have been examining, we find it disappointing the most
important problems are slurred over. The turning-point of all history is
the passage from the regime of community ownership to that of private
property, and it is in no wise indicated how this could have come about.
Engels himself declares in The Origin of the Family that 'at present
we know nothing about it'; not only is he ignorant of the historical
details: he does not even suggest any interpretation. Similarly, it is not
clear that the institution of private property must necessarily have
involved the enslavement of women. Historical materialism takes for
granted facts that call for explanation: Engels assumes without discussion
the bond of interest which ties man to property; but where does this
interest, the source of social institutions, have its own source? Thus
Engels's account remains superficial, and the truths that he does reveal
are seemingly contingent, incidental. The fact is that we cannot plumb
their meaning without going beyond the limits of historical materialism.
It cannot provide solutions for the problems we have raised, because these
concern the whole man and not that abstraction : Homo oeconomicus.
It would seem clear, for example, that the very concept of personal
possession can be comprehensible only with reference to the original
condition of the existent. For it to appear, there must have been at first
an inclination in the subject to think of himself as basically individual,
to assert the autonomy and separateness of his existence. We can see that
this affirmation would have remained subjective, inward, without validity
as long as the individual lacked the practical means for carrying it out
objectively. Without adequate tools, he did not sense at first any power
over the world, he felt lost in nature and in the group, passive,
threatened, the plaything of obscure forces; he dared to think of himself
only as identified with the clan: the totem, mana, the earth e group
realities. The discovery of bronze enabled man, in the experience of hard
and productive labour, to discover himself as creator; dominating nature,
he was no longer afraid of it, and in the faceof obstacles overcome he
found courage to see himself as an autonomous active force, to achieve
self-fulfilment as an individual.'
[footnote:] Gaston Bachelard in La Terre et les
rêveries de fa volonté makes among others a suggestive study of the
blacksmith. He shows how man, through the hammer and the anvil, asserts
himself and his individuality. 'The blacksmith's instant is an instant at
once well marked off and magnified. It promotes the worker to the mastery
of time, through the forcefulness of an instant' (P. 142); and farther on:
'The man at the forge accepts the challenge of the universe arrayed against
him.'
But this accomplishment would never have been attained had not man
originally willed it so; the lesson of work is not inscribed upon a passive
subject: the subject shapes and masters himself in shaping and mastering
the land.
On the other hand, the affirmation of the subject's individuality is not
enough to explain property: each conscious individual through challenge,
struggle, and single combat can endeavour to raise himself to sovereignty.
For the challenge to have taken the form of potlatch or ceremonial
exchange of gifts that is, of an economic rivalry and from
this point on for first the chief and then the members of the clan to have
laid claim to private property, required that there should be in man
another original tendency. As we have seen in the preceding chapter, the
existent succeeds in finding himself only in estrangement, in alienation;
he seeks through the world to find himself in some shape, other than
himself, which he makes his own. The clan encounters its own alienated
existence in the totem, the mana, the terrain it occupies; and when the
individual becomes distinguished from the community, he requires a personal
incarnation. The mana becomes individualised in the chief, then in each
individual; and at the same time each person tries to appropriate a piece
of land, implements, crops. Man finds himself in these goods which are his
because he has previously lost himself in them; and it is therefore
understandable that he places upon them a value no less fundamental than
upon his very life. Thus it is that man's interest in his property becomes
an intelligible relation. But we see that this cannot be explained through
the tool alone: we must grasp in its entirety the attitude of man wielding
the tool, an attitude that implies an ontological substructure, a
foundation in the nature of his being.
On the same grounds it is impossible to deduce the oppression of woman from
the institution of private property. Here again the inadequacy of Engels's
point of view is obvious. He saw clearly that woman's muscular weakness
became a real point of inferiority only in its relation to the bronze and
iron tool; but he did not see that the limitations of her capacity for
labour constituted in themselves a concrete disadvantage only in a certain
perspective. It is because man is a being of transcendence and ambition
that he projects new urgencies through every new tool: when he had invented
bronze implements, he was no longer content with gardens he wanted
to clear and cultivate vast fields. And it was not from the bronze itself
that this desire welled up. Woman's incapacity brought about her ruin
because man regarded her in the perspective of his project for enrichment
and expansion. And this project is still not enough to explain why she was
oppressed; for the division of labour between die sexes could have meant a
friendly association. If the original relation between a man and his
fellows was exclusively a relation of friendship, we could not account for
any type of enslavement; but no, this phenomenon is a result of the
imperialism of the human consciousness, seeking always to exercise its
sovereignty in objective fashion. If the human consciousness had not
included the original category of the Other and an original aspiration to
dominate the Other, the invention of the bronze tool could not have caused
the oppression of woman.
No more does Engels account for the peculiar nature of this oppression. He
tried to reduce the antagonism of the sexes to class conflict, but he was
half-hearted in the attempt; the thesis is simply untenable. It is true
that division of labour according to sex and the consequent oppression
bring to mind in some ways the division of society by classes, but it is
impossible to confuse the two. For one thing, there is no biological basis
for the separation of classes. Again, the slave in his toil is conscious
of himself as opposed to his master; and the proletariat has always put its
condition to the test in revolt, thereby going back to essentials and
constituting a threat to its exploiters. And what it has aimed at is its
own disappearance as a class. I have pointed out in the Introduction how
different woman's situation is, particularly on account of the community of
life and interests which entails her solidarity with man, and also because
he finds in her an accomplice; no desire for revolution dwells within her,
nor any thought of her own disappearance as a sex all she asks is
that certain sequels of sexual differentiation be abolished.
What is still more serious, woman cannot in good faith be regarded simply
as a worker; for her reproductive function is as important as her
productive capacity, no less in the social economy than in the individual
life. In some periods, indeed, it is more useful to produce offspring than
to plough the soil. Engels slighted the problem, simply remarking that the
socialist community would abolish the family certainly an abstract
solution. We know how often and how radically Soviet Russia has had to
change its policy on the family according to the varying relation between
the immediate needs of production and those of re-population. But for that
matter, to do away with the family is not necessarily to emancipate woman.
Such examples as Sparta and the Nazi regime prove that she can be none the
less oppressed by the males, for all her direct attachment to the
State.
A truly socialist ethics, concerned to uphold justice without suppressing
liberty and to impose duties upon individuals without abolishing
individuality, will find most embarrassing the problems posed by the
condition of woman. It is impossible simply to equate gestation with a
task, a piece of work, or with a service, such as military service.
Woman's life is more seriously broken in upon by a demand for children than
by regulation of the citizen's employment no state has ever ventured to
establish obligatory copulation. In the sexual act and in maternity not
only time and strength but also essential values are involved for woman.
Rationalist materialism tries in vain to disregard this dramatic aspect of
sexuality; for it is impossible to bring the sexual instinct under a code
of regulations. Indeed, as Freud said, it is not sure that it does not
bear within itself a denial of its own satisfaction. What is certain is
that it does not permit of integration with the social, because there is in
eroticism a revolt of the instant against time, of the individual against
the universal. In proposing to direct and exploit it, there is risk of
killing it, for it is impossible to deal at will with living spontaneity as
one deals at will with inert matter; and no more can it be obtained by
force, as a privilege may be.
There is no way of directly compelling woman to bring forth: all that can
be done is to put her in a situation where maternity is for her the sole
outcome the law or the mores enjoin marriage, birth control and
abortion are prohibited, divorce is forbidden. These ancient patriarchal
restraints are just what Soviet Russia has brought back today; Russia has
revived the paternalistic concepts of marriage. And in doing so, she has
been induced to ask woman once more to make of herself an erotic object: in
a recent pronouncement female Soviet citizens were requested to pay careful
attention to their garb, to use make-up, to employ the arts of coquetry in
holding their husbands and fanning the flame of desire. As this case shows
clearly, it is impossible to regard woman simply as a productive force: she
is for man a sexual partner, a reproducer, an erotic object an Other
through whom he seeks himself. In vain have the totalitarian or
authoritative regimes with one accord prohibited psychoanalysis and
declared that individual, personal drama is out of order for citizens
loyally integrated with the community; the erotic experience remains one in
which generality is always regained by an individuality. And for a
democratic socialism in which classes are abolished but not individuals,
the question of individual destiny would keep all its importance and
hence sexual differentiation would keep all its importance. The sexual
relation that joins woman to man is not the same as that which he bears to
her; and the bond that unites her to the child is sui generis,
unique. She was not created by the bronze tool alone; and the machine tool
alone will not abolish her. To claim for her every right, every chance to
be an all-round human being does not mean that we should be blind to her
peculiar situation. And in order to comprehend we must look beyond the
historical materialism that man and woman no more than economic units.
So it is that we reject for the same reasons both the sexual monism of
Freud and the economic monism of Engels. A psychoanalyst will interpret
the claims of woman as phenomena of the 'masculine protest'; for the
Marxist, on the contrary, her sexuality only expresses her economic
situation in more or less complex, roundabout fashion. But the categories
of 'clitorid' and 'vaginal', like the categories of 'bourgeois or
proletarian', are equally inadequate to encompass a concrete woman.
Underlying all individual drama, as it underlies the economic history of
mankind, there is an existentialist foundation that alone enables us to
understand in its unity that particular form of being which we call a human
life. The virtue of Freudianism derives from the fact that the existent is
a body: what he experiences as a body confronted by other bodies expresses
his existential situation concretely. Similarly, what is true in the
Marxian thesis is that the ontological aspirations the projects for
becoming of the existent take concrete form according to the
material possibilities offered, especially those opened up by technological
advances. But unless they are integrated into the totality of human
reality, sexuality and technology alone can explain nothing. That is why
in Freud the prohibitions of the super-ego and the drives of the ego appear
to be contingent, and why in Engels's account of the history of the family
the most important developments seem to arise according to the caprices of
mysterious fortune.
In our attempt to discover woman we shall not reject
certain contributions of biology, of psychoanalysis, and of historical
materialism; but we shall hold that the body, the sexual life, and the
resources of technology exist concretely for man only in so far as he
grasps them in the total perspective of his existence. The value of
muscular strength, of the phallus, of the tool can be defined only in a
world of values; it is determined by the basic project through which the
existent seeks transcendence.
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