The aim of Dr. Notman’s paper is to reexamine the issue of female aggression. The text clearly forms part of an enterprise of scrutinizing traditional Freudian and post-Freudian ideas of feminine development that are seen as being dominated by masculine constructions. More specifically, the author takes pains to show that forms of feminine aggression are generally described in terms of their conversion into the passivity, masochism, and caretaking that are seen as the proper goal of womanhood. This position, which is the dominant one, has had the effect of making women themselves experience as “bad” any form of aggression that would enable them to assert their individuality as women, as opposed to enabling them to serve others. The main argument of the paper is, therefore, that social stereotypes, which tend to channel feminine aggression toward serving others, have a major symptomatic effect, namely to diminish women’s self-esteem.
Two clinical examples are presented to illustrate the difficulty women have in not considering as bad any steps they take in their own interests (especially separation from their partners). The author emphasizes the role played by a maternal ego ideal, itself undermined by the mother’s self-devaluation, in the formation of what is so often the woman’s feeling of incompetence and inadequacy, and in the fragility of her self-esteem. Parental responses, which differ according to the parent’s sex, therefore play a decisive role in the construction of an ego ideal that devalues the girl’s active efforts when these are made solely on her own behalf.
The ideas presented in this paper raise a number of questions in a very stimulating way. These questions will be sketched briefly here and will be developed further in the discussion.
On one particular issue, an extremely important one—the woman’s feeling of inadequacy and incompetence, with its depressive forms—I would like to propose a different reading of the genesis of this symptomatic conflict. Dr. Notman basically says that the dominant cultural models of feminine roles have given rise, in classical psychoanalytic theory, to an ad hoc model of feminine development. This model is characterized by a channeling of aggression into masochism, passivity, motherhood, unobtrusive service to others, and, finally, the stigmatization of aggression as such.
Dr. Notman goes on to say that the transformation of social roles that has increasingly mobilized practical aggression in the area of women’s social proficiency has led to a growing discrepancy between their social activity and the function of an ego ideal modeled on parental ideals.
I would like to say right away that it is really very hard to disagree with this picture, this general description. We certainly find these ingredients in many of the classic psychoanalytic contributions to the theory of what is supposed to be femininity. But I would hasten to add that these are not the only ingredients, since from at least 1920 on, these questions have been, continuously, the subject of urgent and remarkably acute critical discussion by women analysts and by men as well. So I am presupposing agreement on the general description, and I would like to focus directly on the central point of the paper—aggression—and on the way Dr. Notman establishes a relationship between psychoanalytic theory and empirical findings concerning the evolution of the status of women (findings that I likewise see as uncontroversial).
A first point in the discussion of this schema obviously concerns the very nature of aggression. Dr. Notman attempts to set a high value, contrary to the established view, on a “constructive aggression,” and, in fact, to undertake a reexamination of aggression in general in psychoanalytic theory. I would tend to go along with her here. This general reconsideration of aggression aims to resolve one of the implicit paradoxes of the dominant view, which comes down to an aspect of the double standard, of what, in the dominant discourse, is concealed under a pseudo-universality. For it is certainly true that aggression is perceived, at one and the same time, as globally negative in both sexes yet as positive in men and stigmatized in women. In other words, the double standard is more forgiving towards masculine aggression (both natural and cultural) than towards feminine aggression (as being unnatural?). What would be natural in the case of women is the masochistic turning of aggression against the self! This is spelled out in Freud.
I would therefore propose for consideration the following hypothesis. Perhaps we may conjecture that if aggression is, officially, solely destructive, this is in order to exorcise the ghost of aggression coming from women, aggression which would originally be a reaction to domination itself. “It is bad” means “it is bad in the Other (feminine sex), because it can challenge the position from which I (patriarchal system) declare it to be bad.” But we have to see where this leads, and here I would distance myself from Dr. Notman’s concept of a sort of “good feminine aggression” in a functional sense. It is not really enough to redefine an act of aggression as nondestructive and to enable women to benefit from it as do men, who have traditionally kept aggression for themselves. Because isn’t it true that, were we to do so, we might fail to recognize a fundamental fact—namely that, of the forms of aggression being considered, the aggression that sets men and women against each other is definitely not the least? In other words, instead of defining a generally neutral aggression, or one that from now on will be shared by both sexes, it would probably be more critical to look at the generality of the aggression between men and women. That is more unpleasant, to be sure, but all the same it is the basic question.
This kind of aggression is admittedly difficult to define clearly. And yet it is represented on a large scale by the proven forms of misogyny, the hatred of women, the modalities of which are as numerous and variable as their bases are constant. Curiously enough, it seems to be more difficult to admit the intensity and the importance of feminine aggression aimed at men, aggression that attacks their virility in all the forms—and they are innumerable—in which it is vulnerable to castration. What is astonishing is the circumspection surrounding a phenomenon as widespread as feminine antiphallic violence. Perhaps it is as though the silence—including the silence of men themselves—were part of an effort to ward off danger.
To look at this issue from another vantage point, isn’t it clear that so-called love relationships between men and women, far from being idyllic romances, are the site of a permanent struggle—and are so to the point where we may wonder whether it isn’t this mutual aggression that constitutes the bond? But it is the case that Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalytic theories have never taken the least interest in what is, nevertheless, in the foreground of daily life. This is so not because the unconscious stakes are more profound than the everyday scene, but because up to now the psychoanalytic theory of the relations between the sexes has juxtaposed the descriptions of two autistic sexed positions without paying attention to their interactive strategies. And yet these just happen to be what is most important for men and women!
Moreover, the clinical examples Dr. Notman provides illustrate this point, since it is not the aggression linked to social competence/competition that creates the symptom, but precisely the aggression that has to do with the relationship to a man. For this very reason, the question of so-called feminine aggression cannot be separated from the aggressive behavior of men themselves.
Let us approach the same problem in a different way, examining it more directly from the point of view of psychic conflict as such. What about the metapsychological reference points that come into play in a conflict where aggression is involved? Dr. Notman describes the nastiness of the patient, tracing it back to anger at disappointing partners, and, beyond them, to disappointing parents. The dearth of satisfaction she gets from her partner serves as punishment for her feeling of having abandoned or having been mean to her mother. This is the nub of the psychic conflict of daughter and mother. From then on, it seems that Dr. Notman discards the classical theory of the daughter’s oedipal struggle with her mother, the main point of which is that the mother has not given her the penis, in favor of another view of the conflict. As Dr. Notman sees it, this latter conflict has to do with the opposition between the girl’s attachment to the preoedipal mother and the struggle for separation and individuation. Such a conflict is exacerbated when the mother experiences herself as devalued.
This is certainly true, but the whole question here is to know what meaning to give to a critique of the classical Freudian concept of penis envy. I see no reason why we should not question the total explanatory power of the theory of penis envy in the analysis of psychic conflict in the girl. This critique has been carried out successfully by many authors. But can we, if we view this as a negative theory of femininity, replace it with a positive one? We are aware that this new positive version, based on self-esteem and separation-individuation with regard to the mother, is itself just as totalizing. In other words, even if the reference to penis envy needs to be reinterpreted—and I would grant this—it nevertheless has the value of an attempt at formulating those major aspects of psychic conflict that involve sex, sexual difference (différence).
To be sure, in order to get beyond a situation in which views like Dr. Notman’s are set in an imaginary opposition to the most extreme phallocratic theories of penis envy, another problem arises. Classical views have neglected this direction, what I would call sexual dispute (différend), that is, the complex strategic relations between sexuated beings as sexuated. I mentioned an aspect of these relations in connection with misogyny and feminine hatred of men (which can eventually become the full-time activity of so many women in our societies). But I want to be careful to separate the two aspects of the question, and perhaps to accord more importance to the second point, although they are both connected.
An initial line of questioning would be as follows: Can we agree that the very question of the daughter’s separation from her mother is bound up with the fact that the mother cannot be entirely reduced to her maternal function—that the mother represents an object of desire for a man and perceives herself as a desiring subject (and one who desires a man)? This is, after all, what we find in Dr. Notman’s case example. The point is that the difficulty in breaking away from a man is not the simple repetition of the difficulty of becoming autonomous from the mother. As she subtly notes, one of the paradoxical ties of the patient to the man is that he loves her “for some strange reason.” Now this “strange reason” (which is the man’s) cannot be reduced just to the punishment/reparation function for which the patient uses it. It points discreetly to the complexity of the relationships of desire between a woman and a man-all the more so because the issue goes back to the previous generation for the mother, who must surely have maintained a relationship of desire with the patient’s father. I would like to hear some more about this.
This point brings up a general topic for discussion. What are the implications and the consequences, as far as analytic treatment is concerned, of focusing exclusively on the supposed preoedipal relationships while setting aside the structural relations of desire? In other words, isn’t the fundamental question for a woman—as for a man—to know under what conditions she will accede to the possibility of desire, and in particular, among other relations, to a relation of desire with someone of the opposite sex? The conditions for this access are defined by the manner in which she traverses the field of desire in which she is at the same time object and subject of parental desires before she herself can desire a man and accept being the object of his desire.
There is no doubt that manifestations of feminine incompetence, passivity, and devaluation are connected to the cultural stereotypes that muzzle aggression in women. But the whole question is precisely to know whether these symptomatic manifestations can be described and analyzed outside of any reference to relations of desire. Dr. Notman shows very well how a woman whose mother feels devalued will experience some difficulty in not rejecting her in order to separate from her—and will feel aggressive, bad. But as I see it, this formulation of psychic conflict leaves in abeyance the following question: What is the role of the mother’s self-devaluation in relation to the patient’s experience of herself as a desiring subject (and not only in terms of social competence whether valued or, especially, devalued)? In other words, the main issue for the mother may be her inability to think of herself as desiring a man. Here we have the essence of her self-devaluation. The mother’s lack, that is, the daughter’s perception of her mother’s devalued position, may be a structural necessity for the girl to become a desiring subject in her own right.
Still another way of making this point, with direct reference to the case example: Is the patient’s problem simply to suppress the discrepancy between the reality of her social competence and the feeling of inadequacy that keeps her attached to an unsatisfactory man? Or is the problem that she needs to be able to take a different approach to relationships with men in general?
Throughout this brief sketch for a discussion, two aspects of the same problem have been delineated. The first could be expressed as follows. Under what conditions can we articulate, in terms of the structural elements of psychic conflict, a valid critical analysis of cultural stereotypes that have been enshrined in psychoanalytic theory, if we grant that these structural elements are necessarily autonomous, transcultural, and transhistorical? (By this I mean that psychic conflicts connected with the demands of sexual and aggressive drives, sexed identifications, and the subject’s access to desire involve cultural constraints elaborated upon by all societies.) How, according to what principle, can we untangle the permanent confusion between these two registers?
The question is, to begin with, theoretically crucial. For otherwise the critique of classical Freudian theory runs the risk of opening up into a psychosociology that, however generous, is incompatible with the solid nucleus of the analytic discovery. I admit that there is a major slippage, a widespread drifting, in the direction of confusing psychoanalysts with psychosociologists and thereby erasing the reality of the manifestations of the unconscious. Apparently anyone at all can decide to call himself a “psychoanalyst” even as he shows utter scorn for the unconscious, the drives, sexuality, and the division of the subject (these being no doubt Freudian, Viennese, European fantasies that are out of date in this time of self-service restaurants for the self?).
But Dr. Notman, of course, knows that it is not by means of such a misrecognition that we can easily resolve the issues that she raises, or, rather, that her patients raise for her. Promoting women’s self-esteem by sustaining the positive side of aggression is a generous goal. But I think we can agree that such a goal should not conjure away the reality of relationships of desire and their connection to aggression. If not, I am afraid we are faced with a paradox. We may well wonder whether the promotion of the ego ideal of self-esteem, and perhaps even the issue of feminine aggression, would not have the following consequence: the question that is fundamental to us as psychoanalysts, namely that of the formation of desire in the girl and the woman, of her entry into the world of desire, would be eclipsed by the preoccupation with helping women to demonstrate their ability and to potentialize a sexually neutral aggression that men have thus far kept for themselves. This amounts to saying that both sexes would become equal in putting desire aside.
I think we can agree on two points. First, that sexual activity and relationships between men and women are in no way incompatible with esteem for oneself and for the other; and second, that they are most certainly not based on such esteem, but—as life would have it—on the possibility of being at the same time a desiring subject and the object of desire.
This brings me to my final point, which is itself twofold. I do not think it is enough, first of all, to present abstractly this tension—indeed, contradiction—that I have been trying to formulate between the question of selfesteem and the question of desire. I think that if, like Dr. Notman’s colleagues in self psychology, she is led to privilege the question of self-esteem and the mother–daughter relation, it is because that is the way in which—if not in and through analysis, then perhaps as a psychoanalyst—she acknowledges both the transformations of the status of women in present-day society and the weight of a thousand years of relentless effort to desymbolize the maternal by assuring the symbolic prevalence of the paternal and reducing woman’s place in the symbolic order to her maternal role. Dr. Notman may be assured that along with other theoretical reference points, analysts in France can share this concern.
But, on the other hand, we may wonder what connection there may be between a certain way of manufacturing feminine identity and the social manufacture of minority identities. (Half of the population as a minority!) Do women have to identify themselves as a minority along with gays, lesbians, immigrant communities, and, no doubt soon, heterosexuals, sadomasochists, and so forth—and while we are at it, borderlines? Or, instead, should we set out, not from the sexual difference alone, but rather from relations between men and women and their mutual alienation?