ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis has been severely criticized by feminists for the nature and implications of its account of the development of female sexuality, in which women’s subordinate position is located in the structures (Oedipus complex, penis envy, etc.) through which sexual identity is acquired. These psychoanalytic structures are posited by psychoanalytic theory as fundamental to civilized culture and as a result, women’s subordination becomes an inevitable consequence of the development of human sociality. Nonetheless Freud has been recognized by many feminists as the first theorist to bring the question of sexuality to the fore and to show that sexual identity is socially constituted rather than biologically innate. In this article we intend to look briefly at developments in psychoanalysis since Freud in relation to the acquisition of sexuality, language and subjectivity, and to examine its usefulness in the development of a materialist theory of sex/gender relations – a theory which might explain ideologies of sexual identity in such a way as to point to useful political strategies against women’s subordination and sexism generally.
