“All observations point to the fact that the intellectual woman is masculinized;

“All observations point to the fact that the intellectual woman is masculinized; in her warm, intuitive knowledge has yielded to cold unproductive thinking.”

― Helene Deutsch, The Psychology of Women, vol. 1, ch. 8 (1944)

That is not what I meant by freedom - it is only "social progress".

The embattled gates to equal rights indeed opened up for modern women, but I sometimes think to myself: “That is not what I meant by freedom - it is only "social progress".”

― Helene Deutsch, Confrontations with Myself, ch. 1 (1973)

Suffragettes prepare to chain themselves to railings: 1909

Helene Deutsch - The First Psychoanalyst to Specialize in Women

Helene Deutsch (October 9, 1884 – March 29, 1982) was one of the most prominent female leaders in psychoanalysis. She was the first woman to lead Sigmund Freud’s Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and she contributed significantly to theory on the psychology of women that expanded the purview of Freud’s male-dominant ideas about women.

Deutsch was born on October 9, 1884, in Przemysla, Poland. Although formal education for women was not possible in late 19th century Poland, Deutsch received private tutoring which enabled her to enroll at the University of Vienna in Austria. Wanting at first to become a lawyer like her father, she considered herself a leader in female liberation. In the early 20th century, medicine was still an exceptional field for women; only seven women entered medical school at the University of Vienna when she was admitted in 1907. After reading Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, she became interested in psychoanalysis. She was impressed by Freud’s theory of infantile sexuality and the unconscious and also his protests against society.

In April 1912, Helene married Felix Deutsch. Following the outbreak of the Great War, Helene experienced the first of many miscarriages. In The Psychology of Women, Helene discussed the concept of spontaneous abortion and miscarriage as a result of psychological factors, with a critical factor involving the 'pregnant woman's unconscious rejection of an identification with her own mother.'

In 1916, Helene sought admittance to Freud's infamous Wednesday night meetings of Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. As a condition of her acceptance, Helene had to comment on Lou Andreas-Salomé's paper, 'Vaginal and anal.' Deutsch joined the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1918 and became its director in 1924.

In 1919, under Freud's supervision, Helene began analyzing her first patient, Viktor Tausk, while at the same time Freud was analyzing Helene. After three months, upon Freud's request, Helene terminated Tausk's sessions. During her sessions with Freud, Helene reported 'falling in love with Freud.' She often felt herself to be Freud's daughter, claiming that Freud had inspired and released her talents. Helene claimed, however, that Freud tended to focus "too much on her identification with her father" and her affair with Lieberman. In one analysis with Freud, Helene dreamt that she had both female and male organs. Through analysis with Freud, she discovered that her personality was largely determined by her "childhood wish to be simultaneously [her] father's prettiest daughter and cleverest son."  After one year, Freud terminated Helene's analytic sessions, to instead work with the Wolf Man. Helene nevertheless was a brilliant clinician, who stood up to Freud and got away with it when she 'disagreed with him about her patients.'

In 1935, Helene emigrated her family from Vienna to Boston, Massachusetts, where she continued to work as a psychoanalyst until her death.

The "as-if" personality

'Her best known clinical concept was that of the "as if" personality, a notion that allowed her to spotlight the origin of women's particular ability to identify with others'.

In a 1942 article, she wrote:

“My only reason for using so unoriginal a label for the type of person I wish to present is that every attempt to understand the way of feeling and manner of life of this type forces on the observer the inescapable impression that the individual’s whole relationship to life has something about it which is lacking in genuineness and yet outwardly runs along ‘as if’ it were complete. Even the layman sooner or later inquires, after meeting such an ‘as if’ patient: what is wrong with him, or her?”

In Freud's Women, Lisa Appignanesi has written:

"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 Woman

Helene Deutsche, who was to make her name with her writings on female sexuality became paradoxically something of an Aunt Sally 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'

After 1950, Helene Deutsch began to say that she regretted being known primarily for her work with women’s psychology. At this time, Deutsch began to turn her attention back to men’s psychology and narcissism in both sexes. Over time, she became increasingly devoted to the study of egoism and narcissism, thereby abandoning her lifelong study of feminism.

Helene Deutsch died at the age of 97 on 29 March 1982 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her contributions had an impact not only on the development of American psychiatry, but also on the future of women in medicine, psychology and other careers.

In her biography, Paul Roazen writes:

"Helene Deutsch was an independent-minded woman, who wanted to assert a viewpoint different from that of either traditional psychiatry or conventional analytic wisdom.... Her whole life meant a challenge to the prevailing standards of her society”

Books by Helene Deutsch

• The Psychology Of Women - A Psychoanalytic Interpretation - Vol I ~ Free Online

• The Psychoanalysis of Sexual Functions of Women

• The Therapeutic Process, the Self and the Female Psychology: Collected Psychoanalytical Papers

Books on Helene Deutsch

• Helene Deutsch: A Psychoanalyst's Life

• Mothers of Psychoanalysis: Helene Deutsch, Karen Horney, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein

See also:

Lou Andreas-Salomé, One of the First Female Psychoanalysts
 

Adoptive Mothers by Helene Deutsch

When a woman’s longing to be a mother is not gratified by children of her own, and when she seeks a substitute by the most natural method, namely, adoption, the question arises as to why she has no children of her own. In the course of our discussion we have met various types of women who long for children but are unable to gratify this longing directly, owing to unresolved psychic conflicts. We have seen the midwife who out of fear of the biological functions was obliged to content herself with presiding over the delivery of other women’s children, and Unamuno’s Aunt Tula, who despised sexuality to such an extent that she could gratify her ardent motherliness only by exploiting the sexual service of other women. We have seen the androgynous woman who withdraws from female reproductive tasks and yet wants to create and shape a human being after her own image, and the woman whose eroticism has remained fixed in homosexuality and whose yearning for a child derives from the profound source of her own mother relationship. Many such women renounce men, but gratify the wish for a child by adoption. . . .

The largest proportion of adoptive parents, however, is recruited from among sterile married couples. Here the psychology of the adoptive mother is largely determined by the psychologic motives for sterility (if any) and by the woman’s reaction to her renunciation. Has her fear of the reproductive function proved stronger than her wish to be a mother? Is she still so much a child that she cannot emotionally and consciously decide to assume the responsible role of mother? Is she so much absorbed emotionally in other life tasks that she fears motherhood? . . . Does a deeply unconscious curse of heredity burden all her motherly wish fantasies? And, above all, has the sterile woman overcome the narcissistic mortification of her inferiority as a woman to such an extent that she is willing to give the child, as object, full maternal love? . . . .

We must not forget that in such cases adoption constitutes an attempt to remedy a severe trauma, and that this trauma must be overcome before motherliness with its gratifications can fully develop. What kind of trauma it is, and the woman’s reaction to the necessary renunciation of the hope of giving birth to a child, depend very much, as we have seen, upon the cause of sterility. The emotional difficulties of adoption may originate in the very conditions that have led to sterility, and the ghosts that were supposed to be banished by the renunciation of the reproductive function can under different circumstances re-emerge in the adoptive mother in a new form. The fear “I cannot have a child” will, for instance, assume the form. . .“The child will be taken from me.” The adopted child can become the bearer of all the problems that have led to sterility, as well as of those that normally pertain to a child of one’s own. The only difference is that here the conflicts have a more real background. . . .

There are women—I might call them female Pied Pipers—who use the bait of a cozy home and motherly care to lure children out of social institutions without regard for their nature, driven by a strong psychic urge to help children, to foster fledglings in their nests, and to hear the name “Mother” uttered by as many mouths as possible. . . . A masked kidnaperism may often lead a kind and reasonable woman to undertake the grandiose social task of becoming a replacing mother of the abandoned or neglected children of many mothers. I have heard such an addict of adoption speak with the greatest energy against social assistance to children: a child—every child—needs one mother, the mother. And she offered herself as such a mother to society. . . .

It is certain that similar individual motives, which remain completely unconscious, operate in adoptions.


Source: Helene Deutsch, “Adoptive Mothers,” in The Psychology of Women (New York: Grune & Stratton, 1945): 395, 397,420-421, 422, 423.

The Psychology Of Women - A Psychoanalytic Interpretation - Vol I ~ Free Online

by Helene Deutsch

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'.

Download The Psychology Of Women - Vol I here.

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'.

The Psychoanalysis of Sexual Functions of Women by Helene Deutsch

Buy The Psychoanalysis of Sexual Functions here.

This is the second work of Helene Deutsch's study into female psychology and sexuality. The first volume of her influential work, The Psychology of Women, appeared in 1944, to be followed by the second volume a year later. When, towards the end of her life, Deutsch came to consider the relationship of The Psychology of Women to Psychoanalysis of the Sexual Functions of Women, first published almost twenty years before, she observed: "It is evident that the first publication already contains all the building stones for the latter. What was first conceived by intuition and observation of a small number of analyzed women was later supported and confirmed by thirty years of experience".

Helene Deutsch was born in Przemysl, Poland, in 1884. After studying medicine at the University of Vienna School of Medicine she worked during World war I as a full-time assistant at the Wagner-Jauregg psychiatric clinic. During this period her interest in psychoanalytic ideas grew to such an extent that she eventually entered into analysis with Freud, resigned from her position at the clinic, and became a member of the Vienna Psycho-Analytic Society. Her contributions to the Society were quickly recognized when, in January 1925, the Vienna Training Institute was established, she was nominated its Director. In 1935 she left Vienna for America, eventually settling with her husband, Felix Deutsch, in Cambridge, Massachusetts where she took up work as a lecturer at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. Paul Roazen is Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto, Canada. His books include 'Brother Animal: The Story of Freud and Tausk, Freud and his Followers, Helene Deutsch: A Psychoanalyst's Life', and 'Encountering Freud: The Politics and Histories of Psychoanalysis'.

The Therapeutic Process, the Self and the Female Psychology: Collected Psychoanalytical Papers by Helene Deutsch

Buy The Therapeutic Process, the Self and the Female Psychology here.

Helene Deutsch was one of the most famous psychoanalysts to emerge from Freud's immediate circle in Vienna. Best known for her writings on female psychology, she was also one of the great teachers of psychoanalysis. As the founding president of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Training Institute, she confirmed her stature in the history of psychoanalysis by cultivating a whole younger generation of influential analysts. Deutsch was tolerant and open-minded, both as a theoretician and teacher, but, as Paul Roazen remarks in his introduction, independence and an absence of fanaticism can mean a temporary fading out of influence. For the first time, Deutsch's major professional contributions are brought together for permanent consideration. This volume documents her enduringly valuable exploration of the complexities of the psychology of women's experience. Deutsch remained essentially faithful to the Freudian canon. Nonetheless, and throughout these writings, she developed ideas on the subject of femininity that were often at odds with those of her mentor. Her use of Freud's theories aimed to encourage toleration of human diversity and to modify his model of sexuality according to the particular circumstances of women's lives. It was Deutsch who introduced motherhood as a central concern of psychoanalysis by stressing how the psychological dimension of reproduction was different for men and women and how this uniquely feminine capacity had its effects on the entire psychology of women. The same commitment to human diversity informs her much-misunderstood work on the clinical problems of female sexual dysfunction. While accepting the Freudian goal of sexual gratification, Deutsch argues that sublimation through work was a key value in its own right This is illustrated in "George Sand: A Woman's Destiny," a brilliant early example of psychobiography. This volume of Deutsch's classic papers, several appearing in English for the first time, will be of interest to psychologists, intellectual historians, and women's studies specialists.

Helene Deutsch: A Psychoanalyst's Life

Buy Helene Deutsch: A Psychoanalyst's Life here.

Student and protege of Sigmund Freud, Helene Deutsch was one of the most influential psychoanalysts of her time. An early woman analyst, Deutsch was an ardent feminist and a leading proponent of Freud's controversial theories about the psychology of women. Deutsch was also one of the first prominent career women to combine a professional life with motherhood-even though she never resolved her own conflicts over those contradictory demands. At the time of her death in 1982 at the age of 97, Helene Deutsch was the last survivior of Freud's original circle from Vienna. This volume is a definitive account of the life and works of this remarkable-and enigmatic-woman. The author knew Deutsch personally and was given exclusive access to her papers after her death. The private life of Helene Deutsch was as unconventional as her professional life. While Felix Deutsch, a physician who specialized in psychosomatic medicine, was to remain her husband for fifty years and father her son, Martin, their relationship was highly eccentric. Roazen produces evidence that indicates Felix Deutsch may have been homosexual; also that their son was raised primarily by Felix, as Helene was more interested in her career than was Felix in his, and the Deutsches often lived continents apart. With the rise of Nazism, Helene Deutsch departed in 1935 for America She was welcomed in Cambridge, Massachusetts by the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and was made director of the Society's new institute for the training of analysts. Her two-volume "The Psychology of Women, "published in 1945, remains one of the foundations of modern analysis. Roazen's biography is an authoritative portrait of a pioneer of psychoanalysis, and one of the unique women of her day. It will be of interest to psychoanalysts, cultural historians, and specialists in women's studies.

Mothers of Psychoanalysis: Helene Deutsch, Karen Horney, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein

This book tells the story of that revolution through biographical portraits of four pioneering figures in the early institutions of psychoanalysis: Helene Deutsch, Karen Horney, Anna Freud, and Melanie Klein.

“In lucid, uncluttered prose, Janet Sayers presents the reader with a fresh viewing of the lives and times of four extraordinary women pioneer analysts. Sayers recounts how they were able to shift the theoretic balance of the day to include the creative evolution of their thinking. This book is of value not only for the novice, but certainly for many others who can learn from these excellent, abridged biographies.” —Dr. Helene DeRosis

Buy Mothers of Psychoanalysis here.