Nancy Chodorow

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Psychoanalysis
Concepts Psychosexual development Psychosocial development (Erikson) Unconscious Preconscious Consciousness Psychic apparatus Id, ego and super-ego Libido Drive Transference Countertransference Ego defenses Resistance Projection Denial Dreamwork
Important figures Karl Abraham Alfred Adler Michael Balint Wilfred Bion Josef Breuer Nancy Chodorow Max Eitingon Erik Erikson Ronald Fairbairn Paul Federn Otto Fenichel Sándor Ferenczi Anna Freud Sigmund Freud Erich Fromm Harry Guntrip Karen Horney Edith Jacobson Ernest Jones Carl Jung Abram Kardiner Heinz Kohut Melanie Klein Jacques Lacan Ronald Laing Margaret Mahler Jacques-Alain Miller Sandor Rado Otto Rank Wilhelm Reich Joan Riviere Isidor Sadger Ernst Simmel Sabina Spielrein Wilhelm Stekel James Strachey Harry Stack Sullivan Susan Sutherland Isaacs Donald Winnicott
Important works The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) The Ego and the Id (1923)
Schools of thought Self psychology Lacanian Jungian Object relations Interpersonal Reichian Relational Intersubjective Ego psychology
Training Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis British Psychoanalytic Council British Psychoanalytical Society Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research International Psychoanalytical Association World Association of Psychoanalysis
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Nancy Julia Chodorow (born January 20, 1944) is a feminist sociologist and psychoanalyst.^[1] She has written a number of influential books, including The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (1978);^[2][3][4] Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory (1989); Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities: Freud and Beyond (1994); and The Power of Feelings: Personal Meaning in Psychoanalysis, Gender, and Culture (1999). In 1996, The Reproduction of Mothering was chosen by Contemporary Sociology as one of the ten most influential books of the past 25 years.^[2][4]

She is widely regarded as a leading psychoanalytic feminist theorist^[5] and is a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association, often speaking at its congresses.^[6] She spent many years as a professor in the departments of sociology and clinical psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.^[7] She retired from the University of California in 2005, and later went on to teach Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance.^[8]

Early life and education

Born on January 20, 1944 in New York, New York^[9] to a Jewish family. Her parents were Marvin and Leah Chodrow. Her father was a professor of applied physics^[10][11] Chodorow graduated from Radcliffe College in 1966. There she studied under Beatrice and W.M. Whiting Her work focused on personality and cultural anthropology now classified as prefeminist work.^[12]

In 1975, she received her PhD in sociology from Brandeis University.^[13] Under the instruction of Philip Slater, Chodorow was influenced to focus her studies on the unconscious phenomena of psychoanalytics.^[14] Following her PhD, she also received clinical training at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute from 1985 to 1993.^[8]

Chodorow was married professor of economics, Michael Reich; they had two children, Rachel and Gabriel.^[9] In 1977, they separated.^[15]

Ideas

As she argues in her book The Reproduction of Mothering (1978; 2nd ed., 1999), Chodorow sees gender differences as compromise formations of the Oedipal complex. She begins with Freud’s assertion that the individual is born bisexual and that the child's mother is its first sexual object. Chodorow, drawing on the work of Karen Horney and Melanie Klein, notes that the child forms its ego in reaction to the dominating figure of the mother.^[16] The male child forms this sense of independent agency easily, identifying with the agency and freedom of the father and emulating his possessive interest in the mother/wife. This task is not as simple for the female child. The mother identifies with her more strongly, and the daughter attempts to make the father her new love object, but is stymied in her ego formation by the intense bond with the mother. Where male children typically experience love as a dyadic relationship, daughters are caught in a libidinal triangle where the ego is pulled between love for the father, the love of the mother, and concern and worry over the relationship of the father to the mother. For Chodorow, the contrast between the dyadic and triadic first love experiences explains the social construction of gender roles, the universal degradation of women in culture, cross-cultural patterns in male behavior, and marital strain in the West after Second Wave feminism. In marriage, the woman takes less of an interest in sex and more in the children. Her ambivalence towards sex eventually drives the male away. She devotes her energies to the children once she does reach sexual maturity.

Honors and awards

• Distinguished Contribution to Women and Psychoanalysis Award, from the American Psychological Association (April 2000)
• L. Bryce Boyer Prize, from the Society for Psychological Anthropology, for her book The Power of Feelings (November 2000)
• Traveling Women Scholar Award, from the American Psychological Association (2007)
• Jessie Bernard Award for Women in Society for "The Reproduction of Mothering" (1979)

See also

• Feminism and the oedipus complex

Further reading

• Chodorow, Nancy (1997), "The psychodynamics of the family", in Nicholson, Linda, The second wave: a reader in feminist theory, New York: Routledge, pp. 181–197, ISBN 9780415917612.

Notes

External links

• International Psychoanalytical Association