![]() ![]() The new mystique is much more difficult for the modern woman to question than the old prejudices, partly because the mystique is broadcast by the very agents of education and social science that are supposed to be the chief enemies of prejudice, partly because the very nature of Freudian thought makes it virtually invulnerable to question. The feminine mystique derived its power from Freudian thought for it was an idea born of Freud, which led women, and those who studied them, to misinterpret their mothers’ frustrations, and their fathers’ and brothers’ and husbands’ resentments and inadequacies, and their own emotions and possible choices in life. ![]() They merely reappeared in the forties, in Freudian disguise. The old prejudices – women are animals, less than human, unable to think like men, born merely to breed and serve men – were not so easily dispelled by the crusading feminists, by science and education, and by the democratic spirit after all. And then again, it was less a start than the prevention of an end. It did not really start, in America, until the 1940s. ![]() IT would be half-wrong to say it started with Sigmund Freud. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden in 1998, proofed and corrected in March 2005. Betty Friedan (1963) The Feminine MystiqueĬhapter 5 The Sexual Solipsism of Sigmund Freud ![]()
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