The universal refusal : a psychoanalytic exploration of the feminine sphere and its repudiation

285 Pages·2011·0.746 MB·English

by  Schaeffer, Jacqueline, Freud, Sigmund, Alcorn, David

THE UNIVERSAL REFUSAL

THE UNIVERSAL REFUSAL
A Psychoanalytic Exploration
of the Feminine Sphere and its
Repudiation
Jacqueline Schaeffer
Translated by David Alcorn
First published in 2011 by
Karnac Books Ltd
118 Finchley Road
London NW3 5HT
Copyright © 2011 by Jacqueline Schaeffer
The right of Jacqueline Schaeffer to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13: 978-1-85575-843-8
Typeset by Vikatan Publishing Solutions (P) Ltd., Chennai, India
Printed in Great Britain
www.karnacbooks.com
To Justine

CONTENTS
PREAMBLE xi
PREFACE xiii
Beyond the phallic dimension: the female sex organ
ABOUT THE AUTHOR xix
PART I: REPUDIATING THE FEMININE SPHERE
(THE SPHINX AND HER FORLORN SOUL)
EPISTLE TO THE READER
Repudiating the feminine sphere—
a great riddle? 3
CHAPTER ONE
Freud and the “repudiation of femininity” 15
CHAPTER TWO
The “internal foreign body” 25
vii
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER THREE
The difference between the sexes 33
CHAPTER FOUR
The “lover-for-ecstatic-pleasure” 55
CHAPTER FIVE
Clinical examples 77
CHAPTER SIX
The witch-hunt (a tale of hatred of the feminine sphere) 95
IN CONCLUSION 111
PART II: PRELUDES TO THE FEMININE SPHERE
CHAPTER SEVEN
Horror feminae, or non-dangerous de-liaisons 117
CHAPTER EIGHT
“The Sleeping Beauty”—the advent of the feminine
sphere in girls 129
CHAPTER NINE
The tenant: the vagina on lease from the anus 145
CHAPTER TEN
Rubies abhor red: hysterical relationships
and counter-cathexes 153
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Hysterical identification and projective identification 181
CHAPTER TWELVE
From narcissistic to traumatic seduction
(when the siren meets the snake) 191
CONTENTS ix
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I love you”: words of betrayal or words betrayed? 201
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The family album: reality-testing
and remembering—re-finding the object 207
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Gradiva: representations of the feminine sphere 215
POSTSCRIPT
Refusal of the feminine dimension and the object 231
René Roussillon
REFERENCES 245
INDEX 255