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Civilization and its Discontents: the position of women. Freud translator of Mill’s “The Enfranchisement of Women”

by | Vol 18 (1) 2000

After the decease of the official translater of Mill’s work, Gomperz entrusted (on the advice of Von Brentano) the translation of Mill’s last volume to Freud, a brilliant yet needy student at that time. One of the essays of that volume – The Enfranchisement of Women – which highlighted the prejudices of the period, was to exercise a revolutionary influence on Freud, without his knowing. The act of translation produced in Freud a theoretical child, that would make him readdress the question of femininity through a new way of listening to his female patients.

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