The question of Freud and his women—and Freud’s women problem—has dogged psychoanalysis in the intervening century after its birth. Although psychoanalysis was invented by a patient, not a doctor, and by a woman, not a man, the question, so aptly phrased by Juliet Mitchell, of whether Freud offered women a description of patriarchy and how it quite literally made them sick, or was writing up a prescription that would assimilate them into patriarchy, has remained open and the site of much consternation. Looking at both Freudian and anti-Freudian attitudes and uses of psychoanalysis, women, and feminism, Hannah Zeavin in this lecture points us toward a feminist Freud for the 21st century. Zeavin appears as part of the Clayman Institute’s Artist’s Salon series, coordinated by Writer in Residence Moira Donegan.
Speaker Bio:
Hannah Zeavin is a scholar, writer, and editor whose work centers on the history of human sciences (psychoanalysis, psychology, and psychiatry), the history of technology and media, feminist science and technology studies, and media theory. Zeavin is an assistant professor of history (science / North America) in the Department of History and The Berkeley Center for New Media at UC Berkeley. Zeavin’s first book, The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy is now out from MIT Press. The upcoming Mother Media: Technology in the American Family (MIT Press) is expected in 2025.
In 2021, Zeavin co-founded The Psychosocial Foundation and is the founding editor of Parapraxis, a new magazine for psychoanalysis. She also serves as an associate editor for Psychoanalysis & History, an editorial associate for The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, on the editorial board of Television and New Media, and a series editor of Palgrave’s Studies in the Psychosocial. Essays and criticism have appeared in Bookforum, Dissent, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, n+1, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and elsewhere.
