Freud, Anna, and the Problem of Female Sexuality

Abstract

Freud has been criticized for his failure to understand and write about femininity in ways that reflect the place of women in society. Indeed, although from the outset he worked with highly intelligent, articulate women analysands, his discussion of female sexuality was convoluted and did not take his clinical observations into account. His views of female sexual development focused on a picture of girls as defective boys. This article suggests that much of Freud's problem in understanding femininity was related to his relationship with his youngest child, daughter Anna (1895–1982), who was a part of psychoanalysis from her earliest childhood through her adult years, when she became his analysand and protégée, and later his guide and support. An admirer of Sophocles' drama Oedipus the King, Freud wrote of Anna as his Antigone. Reviewing Sophocles portrayal of Oedipus and Antigone, we show the parallel between this drama and that in Freud's own life through his own old age in exile from Vienna in London. … a natural predilection usually sees to it that a man tends to spoil his little daughters, while his wife takes her son's part. (S. Freud, 1900, p. 258) Unfortunately we can describe this state of things [the child's sexual theories] only as it affects the male child; the corresponding processes in the little girl are not known to us. (S. Freud, 1923, p. 142)