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.

Related articles

  • Freud en de archeologie

    Download full Text

  • Freud and the Haizmann Affair

    In 1923 Freud published an essay on the application of psychoanalysis to a case of demonic possession and liberation through exorcism in baroque Austria. For the psychoanalyst working with archival material, it is a matter of rediscovering neurotic ailments under a different rubric. According to Freud, the story of Christoph Haizmann clearly contains a truth which is dear to him, namely, the father conceived as devil. In this polemical text, aimed at Charcot's heirs, exorcists from the 17th century emerge…

  • Freud and the Metaphors of Writing

    In this paper, our point of departure is Plato's Phaedrus-dialogue, in which the role and meaning of writing for memory are assessed, focusing special attention on Plato's evaluation of writing. The use of writing-metaphors in elaborating the model of the psychic apparatus in a number of Freud's texts is also discussed. Relying on Derrida's interpretation (1967), the Project (1950c [1895]) is our starting point and the Note on the Wonder-block of 30 years later rounds off the discussion. Tracing Freud's…