Feminism and Its Discontents: A Century of Struggle with Psychoanalysis

This is an excellent historical overview of feminism as it developed in the United States, specifically in its engagement with the then-new perspectives of Freud's system of understanding. The major feminist figures, their views, and the backdrop of the times in which they acted upon the cultural and political stage, are all well-presented. The original enthusiasm of many feminists for psychoanalysis and for Freud is made clear by the author. That the process of disenchantment took place over a span of decades and closely corresponded to major revisions of Freudian psychoanalysis by the "neo-Freudians," is similarly made plain. The author is to be commended for laying out this history in a very methodical and accessible fashion. Beyond providing information, this book has a major deficit: the author cannot bring herself to baldly state that feminism and feminists have come to be rife with major contradictions, though she usually presents their views well enough. (A noticeable exception is her labeling Camille Paglia an 'antifeminist', with no definition or proof provided to bolster this characterization.) The last sentence in the book is apparently supposed to act as an adequate summary: that whatever else one may say, ideas clearly matter. This is as weak as it is revealing...for if *that* is the product of having laid out a welter of irreconcilable positions and perspectives that are all to be called 'feminist', then one has displayed ideas in such a state that their "mattering" consists of nothing more than sisterly dissonance. Once again--this is a book well worth reading, notwithstanding the author's wish to gloss over the chaotic and jumbled state of contemporary feminist theory. Useful as a history, it does nothing to resolve feminism's apparent intellectual dead end, a cul de sac wherein the author has had to admit that feminists even disagree as to whether there is such a thing as 'woman'.

As a male I now appreciate feminism more than ever. Buhle is rich in recording women's movements from 1909 to date. Particularly interesting is how most men grow into jerks--and stay that way--and why women's power is so far reaching into men's lives that it is--that it shows us--everyday.