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This 5 page paper examines some of the criticisms that have been leveled at Sigmund Freud by feminists, Marxists and postmodernists. Bibliography lists 4 sources.
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5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVCriFre.rtf
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seem extreme and implausible to many people. This paper considers the criticisms leveled at him by feminists, Marxists and postmodernists. Discussion Feminist criticisms of Freud center largely, it seems, on
his interpretation of almost every problem as stemming from problems with human sexuality. Feminists find Freuds insistence on certain concepts, penis envy for one, as being at the root of
many womens psychological problems a sexist and threadbare philosophy. One of the earliest feminist critics of Freud was Karen Horney, who was one of Freuds contemporaries. She worked in Europe
at the same time as Freud, Jung and Adler, three of the greatest minds in the field of psychoanalysis, and yet, despite the field being male-dominated, she was "able to
make her voice heard (Horney, Karen Clementine, 2007). Horney differed from Freud in several vital respects, despite the fact that she is often called a "neo-Freudian" (Horney, Karen Clementine,
2007). Freud believed that neurotic persons were made ill "by forces beyond their control in the subconscious," but Horney felt that the people labeled "neurotic" were simply "attempting to make
their lives bearable. She called their symptoms a means of interpersonal and intrapsychic control and coping" (Horney, Karen Clementine, 2007). They clashed on the meaning of "culture," as well, which
Freud saw as "the necessary bulwark for survival pitted against the primitive desires of the id," and Horney saw as the basic problem (Horney, Karen Clementine, 2007). Culture provided those
environments that frustrated peoples emotional needs "and created hostility, fear, and insecurity, leading to neurosis" (Horney, Karen Clementine, 2007). Horney also clashed with Freud on one point that is still
debated today: Freud and others believed that only skilled psychoanalysists could help patients; Horney believed patients could help themselves (Horney, Karen Clementine, 2007). Doctors today are not entirely sanguine about
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