page_title: Feminist theory
section_title: Psychoanalysis
hierarchical_section_title: Feminist theory / Disciplines / Psychology / Psychoanalysis
caption_attribution_description: English: A girl wearing a dress with a flower print and holding a doll with both hands.
context_page_description: Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's social roles, experiences, interests, chores, and feminist politics in a variety of fields, such as anthropology and sociology, communication, media studies, psychoanalysis, home economics, literature, education, and philosophy.
  Feminist theory focuses on analyzing gender inequality. Themes explored in feminism include discrimination, objectification, oppression, patriarchy, stereotyping, art history and contemporary art, and aesthetics.
context_section_description: Psychoanalytic feminism and feminist psychoanalysis are based on Freud and his psychoanalytic theories, but they also supply an important critique of it. It maintains that gender is not biological but is based on the psycho-sexual development of the individual, but also that sexual difference and gender are different notions. Psychoanalytical feminists believe that gender inequality comes from early childhood experiences, which lead men to believe themselves to be masculine, and women to believe themselves feminine. It is further maintained that gender leads to a social system that is dominated by males, which in turn influences the individual psycho-sexual development. As a solution it was suggested by some to avoid the gender-specific structuring of the society coeducation. From the last 30 years of the 20th century, the contemporary French psychoanalytical theories concerning the feminine, that refer to sexual difference rather than to gender, with psychoanalysts like Julia Kristeva, Maud Mannoni, Luce Irigaray, and Bracha Ettinger, have largely influenced not only feminist theory but also the understanding of the subject in philosophy and the general field of psychoanalysis itself. These French psychoanalysts are mainly post-Lacanian. Other feminist psychoanalysts and feminist theorists whose contributions have enriched the field through an engagement with psychoanalysis are Jessica Benjamin, Jacqueline Rose,  Ranjana Khanna, and Shoshana Felman.
caption: Girl with doll
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