Helene Deutsch
Encyclopedia
Helene Deutsch (October 9, 1884 – March 29, 1982) was an Austria
n-American
psychoanalyst
and colleague of Sigmund Freud
. She was the first psychoanalyst to specialize in women.
, then Austrian Galicia. Her father had been educated in German, but Helene (Rosenbach) was sent to private Polish-language schools. Her love of Polish literature continued throughout her life, and she identified intensely with Poland and insisted on her Polish national identity.
Deutsch studied medicine and psychiatry in Vienna
and Munich
, before she became a pupil of Freud. As his assistant she was the first woman to concern herself with the psychology of women. Following a youthful affair with the socialist leader Herman Lieberman
, she married Dr Felix Deutsch in 1912, and after a number of miscarriage
s they eventually conceived a son, Martin. In 1935 she fled Germany, immigrating to Cambridge, Massachusetts
, in the United States. Her husband and son joined her a year later, and she worked there as a well-regarded psychoanalyst up until her death in Cambridge in 1982.
personalities who 'seem normal enough because they have succeeded in substituting "pseudo contacts" of manifold kinds for a real feeling contact with other people; they behave "as if" they had feeling relations with other people...their ungenuine pseudo emotions'. More broadly, she considered that 'the "generally frigid" person who more or less avoids emotions altogether...may learn to hide their insufficiencies and to behave "as if" they had real feelings and contact with people'.
It has been suggested that it was 'Helene's tendency to love by identifying herself with the object, then experiencing that love as betrayed and running to the next object...[that] she herself explored in her various studies on the "as if" personality'. Indeed, Lisa Appignanesi
has written that 'her memoir sometimes fills one with the sense that she experienced her own existence to be an "as if" - living her life first "as if" a socialist in her identification with Lieberman; "as if" a conventional wife with Felix; "as if" a mother...then "as if" a psychoanalyst in the identification with Freud'.
'in feminist circles...her name tarnished with the brush of a "misogynist" Freud whose servile disciple she is purported to be'. In 1925 she 'became the first psychoanalysts to publish a book on the psychology of women'; and according to Paul Roazen
, the 'interest she and Karen Horney
showed in this subject prompted Freud, who did not like to be left behind, to write a number of articles on women himself'. In his 1931 article on "Female Sexuality", Freud wrote approvingly of 'Helene Deutsch's latest paper, on feminine masochism
and its relation to frigidity (1930), in which she also recognises the girl's phallic activity and the intensity of her attachment to her mother'.
In 1944-5, Deutsche published her two-volume work, The Psychology of Women, on the 'psychological development of the female...Volume 1 deals with girlhood, puberty, and adolescence. Volume 2 deals with motherhood in a variety of aspects, including adoptive mothers, unmarried mothers, and stepmothers'. Mainstream opinion saw the first volume as 'a very sensitive book by an experienced psychoanalyst....Volume II, Motherhood, is equally valuable'. It was, however, arguably 'Deutsch's eulogy of motherhood which made her so popular...in the "back-to-the-home" 1950s and unleashed the feminist backlash against her in the next decades' - though she was also seen by the feminists as 'the reactionary apologist of female masochism, echoing a catechism which would make of woman a failed man, a devalued and penis-envying servant of the species'.
As time permits a more nuanced, post-feminist
view of Freud, feminism and Deutsch, so too one can appreciate that her central book 'is replete with sensitive insight into the problems women confront at all stages of their lives'. Indeed it has been claimed of Deutsch that 'the ruling concerns of her life bear a striking resemblance to those of women who participated in the second great wave of feminism in the 1970s: early rebellion...struggle for independence and education...conflict between the demands of career and family, ambivalence over motherhood, split between sexual and maternal feminine identities'. In the same way, one may see that 'to cap the parallel, Deutsch's psychoanalytic preoccupations were with the key moments of female sexuality: menstruation, defloration, intercourse, pregnancy, infertility, childbirth, lactation, the mother-child relation, menopause...the underlying agenda of any contemporary women's magazine - an agenda which her writings helped in some measure to create'.
'.
Deutsch was wary accordingly of any 'rigid adherence to the phantom of "Freudian Method", which, as I now realize, I must regard as an area of research ' and not as 'a complete, learnable entity which can be taught by thorough and regular drilling'. She herself however was 'one of the most successful teachers in the history of psychoanalysis...her seminars were remarkable experiences for students, and her classes were remembered as spectacles'.
Verlag, Leipzig/Wien/Zürich, 1925 (Neue Arbeiten zur ärztlichen Psychoanalyse No. 5). Translated to English in 1991, ISBN 978-0-946439-95-9.
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n-American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
psychoanalyst
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
and colleague of Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
. She was the first psychoanalyst to specialize in women.
Life
She was born in PrzemyślPrzemysl
Przemyśl is a city in south-eastern Poland with 66,756 inhabitants, as of June 2009. In 1999, it became part of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship; it was previously the capital of Przemyśl Voivodeship....
, then Austrian Galicia. Her father had been educated in German, but Helene (Rosenbach) was sent to private Polish-language schools. Her love of Polish literature continued throughout her life, and she identified intensely with Poland and insisted on her Polish national identity.
Deutsch studied medicine and psychiatry in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
and Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, before she became a pupil of Freud. As his assistant she was the first woman to concern herself with the psychology of women. Following a youthful affair with the socialist leader Herman Lieberman
Herman Lieberman
Herman Lieberman was a Polish lawyer and socialist politician.-Life:Lieberman was born into a Jewish family in Galicia, then part of Austro-Hungary. In 1907–14 and 1917–18, he was a member of parliament in Vienna.He was a Legionnnaire in World War I, and a leader of the Polish Socialist Party...
, she married Dr Felix Deutsch in 1912, and after a number of miscarriage
Miscarriage
Miscarriage or spontaneous abortion is the spontaneous end of a pregnancy at a stage where the embryo or fetus is incapable of surviving independently, generally defined in humans at prior to 20 weeks of gestation...
s they eventually conceived a son, Martin. In 1935 she fled Germany, immigrating to Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, in the United States. Her husband and son joined her a year later, and she worked there as a well-regarded psychoanalyst up until her death in Cambridge in 1982.
The "as-if" personality
'Her best known clinical concept was that of the "asif" personality, a notion that allowed her to spotlight the origin of women's particular ability to identify with others'. Deutsch singled out schizoidSchizoid personality disorder
Schizoid personality disorder is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of interest in social relationships, a tendency towards a solitary lifestyle, secretiveness, emotional coldness, and sometimes apathy, with a simultaneous rich, elaborate, and exclusively internal fantasy world...
personalities who 'seem normal enough because they have succeeded in substituting "pseudo contacts" of manifold kinds for a real feeling contact with other people; they behave "as if" they had feeling relations with other people...their ungenuine pseudo emotions'. More broadly, she considered that 'the "generally frigid" person who more or less avoids emotions altogether...may learn to hide their insufficiencies and to behave "as if" they had real feelings and contact with people'.
It has been suggested that it was 'Helene's tendency to love by identifying herself with the object, then experiencing that love as betrayed and running to the next object...[that] she herself explored in her various studies on the "as if" personality'. Indeed, Lisa Appignanesi
Lisa Appignanesi
Lisa Appignanesi is a British writer, novelist, and campaigner for free expression. She is president of the writers’ organization English PEN. Her latest book is All About Love: Anatomy of an Unruly Emotion...
has written that 'her memoir sometimes fills one with the sense that she experienced her own existence to be an "as if" - living her life first "as if" a socialist in her identification with Lieberman; "as if" a conventional wife with Felix; "as if" a mother...then "as if" a psychoanalyst in the identification with Freud'.
On women
'Helene Deutsche, who was to make her name with her writings on female sexuality' became paradoxically something of an Aunt SallyAunt Sally
thumb|right|312px|A drawing from the 1911 edition of Whiteley's General Catalogue.Aunt Sally is a traditional throwing game. The term is often used metaphorically to mean something that is a target for criticism...
'in feminist circles...her name tarnished with the brush of a "misogynist" Freud whose servile disciple she is purported to be'. In 1925 she 'became the first psychoanalysts to publish a book on the psychology of women'; and according to Paul Roazen
Paul Roazen
Paul Roazen was a political scientist who became a preeminent historian of psychoanalysis.Roazen studied at Harvard University and in Chicago and Oxford. Later he returned to Harvard. The subject of his dissertation was Freud's political thinking...
, the 'interest she and Karen Horney
Karen Horney
Karen Horney born Danielsen was a German-American psychoanalyst. Her theories questioned some traditional Freudian views, particularly his theory of sexuality, as well as the instinct orientation of psychoanalysis and its genetic psychology...
showed in this subject prompted Freud, who did not like to be left behind, to write a number of articles on women himself'. In his 1931 article on "Female Sexuality", Freud wrote approvingly of 'Helene Deutsch's latest paper, on feminine masochism
Masochism
The word masochism could refer to:*Sadomasochism*Self-defeating personality disorder...
and its relation to frigidity (1930), in which she also recognises the girl's phallic activity and the intensity of her attachment to her mother'.
In 1944-5, Deutsche published her two-volume work, The Psychology of Women, on the 'psychological development of the female...Volume 1 deals with girlhood, puberty, and adolescence. Volume 2 deals with motherhood in a variety of aspects, including adoptive mothers, unmarried mothers, and stepmothers'. Mainstream opinion saw the first volume as 'a very sensitive book by an experienced psychoanalyst....Volume II, Motherhood, is equally valuable'. It was, however, arguably 'Deutsch's eulogy of motherhood which made her so popular...in the "back-to-the-home" 1950s and unleashed the feminist backlash against her in the next decades' - though she was also seen by the feminists as 'the reactionary apologist of female masochism, echoing a catechism which would make of woman a failed man, a devalued and penis-envying servant of the species'.
As time permits a more nuanced, post-feminist
Postfeminism
Post-feminism is a reaction against some perceived contradictions and absences of second-wave feminism. The term post-feminism is ill-defined and is used in inconsistent ways...
view of Freud, feminism and Deutsch, so too one can appreciate that her central book 'is replete with sensitive insight into the problems women confront at all stages of their lives'. Indeed it has been claimed of Deutsch that 'the ruling concerns of her life bear a striking resemblance to those of women who participated in the second great wave of feminism in the 1970s: early rebellion...struggle for independence and education...conflict between the demands of career and family, ambivalence over motherhood, split between sexual and maternal feminine identities'. In the same way, one may see that 'to cap the parallel, Deutsch's psychoanalytic preoccupations were with the key moments of female sexuality: menstruation, defloration, intercourse, pregnancy, infertility, childbirth, lactation, the mother-child relation, menopause...the underlying agenda of any contemporary women's magazine - an agenda which her writings helped in some measure to create'.
On technique
'In a 1926 paper...- a paper which Freud later cited - she emphasizes that intuition, the analyst's ability to identify with the patient's transference fantasies, is a potent therapeutic tool', proving herself thereby a forerunner to much later work on the analyst's ' free-floating responsiveness...as a crucial element in his "useful" countertransferenceCountertransference
Countertransferenceis defined as redirection of a psychotherapist's feelings toward a client—or, more generally, as a therapist's emotional entanglement with a client.-Early formulations:...
'.
Deutsch was wary accordingly of any 'rigid adherence to the phantom of "Freudian Method", which, as I now realize, I must regard as an area of research ' and not as 'a complete, learnable entity which can be taught by thorough and regular drilling'. She herself however was 'one of the most successful teachers in the history of psychoanalysis...her seminars were remarkable experiences for students, and her classes were remembered as spectacles'.
Works
- Psychoanalysis of the Sexual Functions of Women, Internationaler Psychoanalytischer
Verlag, Leipzig/Wien/Zürich, 1925 (Neue Arbeiten zur ärztlichen Psychoanalyse No. 5). Translated to English in 1991, ISBN 978-0-946439-95-9.
- The Psychology of Women, Volume 1: Girlhood, Allyn & Bacon, 1943, ISBN 978-0-205-10087-3.
- The Psychology of Women, Volume 2: Motherhood, Allyn & Bacon, 1945, ISBN 978-0-205-10088-0.
- Neuroses and Character Types, International Universities Press, 1965, ISBN 0-8236-3560-0 .
- Selected Problems of Adolescence, International Universities Press, 1967, ISBN 0-8236-6040-0.
- A Psychoanalytic Study of the Myth of Dionysus and Apollo, 1969, ISBN 0-8236-4975-X .
- Confrontations with Myself, Norton, 1973, ISBN 978-0-393-07472-7.
- The Therapeutic Process, the Self, and Female Psychology, 1992, ISBN 978-0-393-07472-7.
Further reading
Marie H. Briehl, "Helene Deutsch: The Maturation of Woman", in Franz Alexander et al. eds., Psychoanalytic Pioneers (1995)External links
- Helene Deutsch Papers.
- Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
.