Are Women the Dark Continent?

Historically, the woman’s voice has been relatively muted. Even in this country, women have been second class citizens, needing legislation to obtain property rights and only afforded the right to vote in 1920. In spite of the illusion of equality, woman are still paid less than men for the same jobs and are often characterized as fundamentally incapable of managing challenging positions because of their physiology. History has been largely written by men, and the woman’s place has often been that of the more silent shadow that stands to the side and does not speak directly. This leaves her in the somewhat “sinister” position of coming from the side, relieving when she can be kept in her place but unnerving when she insists on taking a more direct stand. Women are caught between being self-effacing versus self-authorizing, resulting in ambivalent and conflicting feelings regarding what it means to serve self versus others. This tension makes it difficult for women to realize many of their individual potentials.

Like Diana and the golden apples, there can be an agreement that the woman should not outpace the man. In this tale, Diana’s hand is finally taken in marriage by the man who can outrace her because he throws golden apples in her path. The allure of the gold takes Diana’s attention off the race to be run, though in some versions of the tale, she recognizes what she is giving up and is thereby complicit in giving up her autonomy. That reading of the tale holds the complexity of the multiple layers of allure of the autonomy that can bring isolation, the intimacy that can impede self-actualization, and the price that can be paid for material comfort.

Along with their own ambivalent feelings regarding the prices entailed in the various choices afforded at crucial junctures in life, women have been both idealized and depreciated in how they have been positioned by men, and have both enjoyed and deplored being held in this way. Freud (1925) wrote of women as the “dark continent,” something mysterious to be conjectured about. Lacan (1982), too, positioned the woman as the mystery, the unfathomable other in whose gaze the male lack might be revealed. Given the patriarchy in our culture and in the liturgy that has be-

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come the psychoanalytic text, women have, paradoxically, been revealed and concealed through the lens of the male gaze that may idealize or demonize but, in coming from the external position, can only objectify. If we think of the male gaze as that frame of reference that runs through and conditions our readings of “reality,” then we can see how the male gaze runs through contemporary culture, insidious because of its relative invisibility. Because men have dominated legal, corporate and political culture, values associated with the feminine have tended to be obscured and denigrated, making it difficult for women to take an alternative position. In this way, basic human values such as empathy, vulnerability, and compassion that are associated with femininity are deprecated, to the detriment of both men and women.

We find ourselves in the paradoxical position in which the illusion of gender equality is predicated on the subordination of these female values. This illusion makes it difficult to speak to differences as they emerge. Psychoanalysis has evolved via a male lineage, such that it has been difficult to question some of the presumptions that keep the dark continent obscure. Shoshana Felman (1993) argues for the importance of dialogue between subjects as a way of illuminating both difference and similarity. I put it this way because I believe that the position Felman is taking is a crucial one, in inviting each individual to speak as a subject who can, of necessity, only illuminate certain aspects of the field under inquiry. In the absence of a conversation between different subjects, important data will inevitably be missing.

This conditionality may be the beauty of psychoanalysis as a field of inquiry, which is predicated on the supposition that there is always more than one can see. The unconscious is unconscious and, while we can hope to recognize its communications, its patterns, the ways in which it configures our experience or leaks into it, we are always looking for traces of something we cannot see directly. Many psychoanalysts have pointed to this dilemma, as in Bion’s (1990) highlighting of a remark by Freud regarding the importance of being able to deepen the darkness in order to better catch a glimpse of things that are merely further obscured by illumination. Similarly, Lacan (1978) refers to the oblique angle, the ways in which the gaze that cuts from the side may reveal more than might be observed through a direct view. What we have learned from oppressed minorities strikingly reveals how information can be visible to those who are cast to the side and margin-

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alized that may be largely invisible from within the frame of the dominant culture. The Greek chorus, the voice that speaks from the side, is always a privileged voice, ironically privileged by virtue of its very marginalization that frees it up to speak from outside the frame of whatever has become consensual within the culture. This is also the power of art, to speak from the side, to provide an idiosyncratic position that cuts across the field of vision, defamiliarizes it, and thereby invites us to take a new look.

From the side, we can perhaps see where our gaze is heading and therefore what it might miss. The recognition of the inevitability of perspective helps us to recognize the limits of what can and cannot be seen from any particular perspective and invites us to take seriously what might be revealed from another vantage point, to inquire into difference rather than opposing it. Such opposition may be seen, in part, as a function of shame, the shame that ensues when we are called into question precisely as lacking something, as though whatever we lack is the very thing on which our value would depend. Yet, if we take Lacan’s suggestions seriously, we see that our challenge is precisely to come to terms with the inevitability of lack, itself, so that we can work with what we have. The history of psychoanalysis has been written as though the most important lack was that of a penis, leaving women the envious “castrated” others who, from one perspective, cannot even be considered capable of the type of moral development to be achieved by men. Although the “castration complex” has been rewritten to highlight the relationship to the phallus of power and male privilege rather than the penis itself, there is a paternalistic overlay that remains. The history of the human psyche, as written by men, privileges the penis over the womb, affirming that one lack is superior to another, a stance with which women often consciously disagree and yet unconsciously are diminished by.

Perhaps, in part, what is insidious is the externality of the gaze on women that runs through the history of psychoanalytic ideas. The external gaze always holds the possibility of shame, of revealing precisely that which we find most abhorrent in ourselves, including lack itself. Part of the challenge in psychoanalysis is to encounter the abhorrent and to face it. If we take seriously Bion’s (1965) conceptualization of the Oedipal dilemma as relating to the human tendency to turn a blind eye rather than facing unpleasant truths, we also find ourselves in the territory of Lacan’s warning regarding our tendency to defer to the authority of the grand Other,

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rather than taking a stand as a singular subject in relation to our own particular desires. Ironically, Lacan positioned himself as the “grand Master” while also inviting us to subvert his authority and find our own. Character is everywhere, and leaves its stamp on all of our productions. Learning to recognize that stamp has been the challenge posed by psychoanalysis, and also the challenge inherent in psychoanalysis, as we recognize the ways in which character and context have informed the various theories and perspectives as they have been put forth.

Although psychoanalysts have looked for universal laws through which to better understand the complexities of human experience, there is always an intermingling of the universal and the idiosyncratic. Being able to see common structures helps us to recognize the skeleton that underlies human experience, so that we can then also recognize the inevitable idiosyncrasy of human experience and rendering of meanings. It is from such a position, when the human life is viewed as structured by experience but inevitably idiosyncratic, that the individual subject might be found.

Freud centered much of his practice on language, the ways in which language slips and reveals something of what is hidden beneath the surface. That realm of analysis was never user-friendly to me, my data coming more from the nether regions Bion described in terms of the authentication of passion and the common senses, the ways in which nonverbal meanings are read and taken in without necessarily even being registered by the conscious mind. The body is often seen in terms of inferior functions, and yet, increasingly we discover that our bodies register data directly from the mind of the other through those nonverbal communication capacities most apparent in interactions with young children, on which we rely but lose sight of as we adapt to the strictures of verbal language.

In this culture, men seem to be able to better create a split between mind and body, whereas the woman is continually faced with embodiment, her life marked by life cycles large and small. In my own life, I have struggled to hold to my own values and the truths of my experience as lived, trying to also learn from the ideas and experiences of others without being overridden by them. Having grown into a paternal Authority that devalued my focus on more basic human truths, I held on to the Authority of those like Bion and Lacan who offered endorsements of the values I held. I found myself in the paradoxical position of being unable to directly

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value what I might know as a female subject in her own right, turning, rather, to the patriarchy as a means to get myself out from under the very bonds I was tightening.

Yet, paradox is everywhere, and in retrospect, I can see how I devalued myself in holding tight to the paternal authorities in the psychoanalytic liturgy, rather than reaching for the female voices, such as Joan Riviere and Marion Milner, whose sensibilities were so much more in line with my own. As early as 1929, Riviere is linking the mask of the woman to the fear of the man, whereas Milner is allowing theory to stand to the side as she attempts to engage as directly as possible in her work as one complex human being to another (Charles, 2012). The latter position is precisely where my own hours in the consulting room have brought me, to an appreciation of the metaphors and other conceptual structures afforded by psychoanalytic theories, in the face of the utter vulnerability of the encounter between subjects that underlies the psychoanalytic journey. Is it easier to locate myself in opposition rather than in identification?

History has a tendency to soften itself, as the details dim in relation to current concerns. Some years further down the road, I can see that what becomes invisible is often that which most threatens to undo us, the traps that lay waiting because we cannot see them. In the generations of women that have come after mine, the difficulty of being a woman in western culture does not have the urgency that it did in my generation, much less that of my mother. I found my own mother’s efforts toward autonomy quite strident but, in that very stridency, I recognized the extent of the difficulty, for her, in getting out from under the bonds that oppressed her so that she might find a way to value herself. A close friend, the same age as my daughter, seems at times to be similarly embarrassed by my stridency, but one can also see that she becomes entrapped at times by her failure to take seriously the pressure toward deferral of authority by the woman to the man in this culture. We each stand in our own generation.

One place where I see this struggle toward differentiation without deprecation playing out in my patients is in the arena of gender identity, in the increasing nebulousness of gender that seems to be much more about identity than sexuality. I see women of all ages questioning their gender identity, these questions playing out, for example, in the choices they make in terms of who to love and whom to be loved by. For some women, the possible choice of a

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female partner seems to represent a move toward authorizing and authenticating something in themselves that is more accessible through the female gaze than through the male. This choice brings forward the question of values in human relationships. In a society that endorses such texts as Men are from Mars, and Women from Venus (1992), there is a presumption of meeting points that are less accessible across genders than between them. The choice, then, of the woman who gets me rather than the man who desires me becomes a meaningful one. The idea that this must be a forced choice seems in part to be a function of our romantic ideas about love, presuming that one person could or should fill all of our affiliative needs.

Particularly when families have been created and children reared, and the question emerges more directly regarding what we intend to do with our remaining time on the planet, it is possible to be selfish in a different way and therefore to take more seriously the questions regarding who am I and what do I value. In my consulting room, I see older women struggling to take up these issues, hoping not to unduly hurt the families they have created and deeply care for, and yet needing to be able to move beyond the position they had taken of self-abnegating martyrs in relation to the needs and feelings of family members.

I know all too well the internal injunction to take the last and smallest piece of pie, or to be satisfied with doing without when only a crumb remains. That austerity, mingling with martyrdom, may have its place but only alongside the other, equally compelling question regarding what does it mean to tell our daughters (and our sons) that their lives, needs, feelings, and desires matter less than those of the people around them. There are few choices in life that are really so simple, and the move toward austerity and martyrdom can have as high a price as selfishness and greed.

Those young people who are breaking into our assumptions regarding what it means to be a man; what it means to be a woman are, in my opinion, doing us all a great service, in breaking open the presumptions regarding gender that have overlain our ability to create possibilities within actual constraints rather than imaginary ones. Wrestling back a foothold from that dark territory beyond whatever is valued and validated by current conventions is precisely the work of psychoanalysis, which, at its best, helps us to move beyond the direction imposed by the perspective of the gaze, those inherent underlying values that focus our attention in particular but

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largely invisible ways. Being able to recognize the gaze, itself, and its impact, helps us to position ourselves in between the desire of the other and our own, to flesh out that territory in between, the arena of potential possibilities that have yet to be envisioned. In that “transitional space,” we can, perhaps, discover hidden aspects of ourselves with enough grace and kindness to become more fully ourselves and to make use of that potential in our daily lives.

Today, as I travel, I encounter others who are hungry for the kind of authorization I, too, had been seeking. I try to take the opportunity to encourage them to authorize themselves, to cherish and safeguard their own idiosyncratic perspective that is precisely what they uniquely have to offer. Recently, at a talk on “The Future of Psychoanalysis” at Hampshire College, a young person inquired “what does psychoanalysis have to say to me, someone who identifies as queer and trans?” I replied that I had had similar questions because I found that Freud did not speak directly to me, a woman, as the subject of the conversation but did offer me a method through which to make my own inquiry. This, I think, is precisely the future of psychoanalysis, to be able to make use of the extraordinary tools afforded in the application of a psychoanalytic lens and method of inquiry.

Because of the tension between the Establishment (as Bion put it in 1970) and whatever lies outside the gates, it matters to be able to take a stand, at times, to rehumanize that which has been dehumanized. If we are to sustain and develop our own creative capacities, we need to be able to recognize that creative potential in precisely that which seems odd or even “crazy.” Recalling Joyce MacDougall’s (1980) Plea for a Measure of Abnormality, and Bion’s (1970) recognition of the ways in which the marginalized voice is vital to the ongoing vitality of any group, it is crucial to be mindful of ways in which our “knowledge” can become concrete and foreclose possibilities. We tend to project or externalize—to “other”—aspects of self that frighten or overwhelm us, tending to locate concreteness in the psychotic, for example, in this way scotomizing our own tendency to reify human dilemmas into impenetrable structures that defy growth or development.

This othering tendency seems to be part of human nature, a tendency that can be seen as peculiar to an adolescent stage of development we don’t necessarily outgrow. We need to be able to deal with the complexity of daily life by organizing experience into categories but, if we can’t also entertain the inevitable grey, we lose

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much of the richness and possibility inherent in a human life. From my perspective, perhaps the greatest legacy of the women’s movement was afforded the men in western culture, for whom the cultural injunctions drove them toward losing touch with the essential human capacities for intimacy and relatedness. When we close ourselves off to aspects of being human, those aspects wither and the quality of life is diminished. The woman’s body reminds her that life is a miracle, with the potential for both great joy and great sorrow, and that life is lived in the little moments or it is not truly lived at all. That is a lesson to be taken seriously, and joyously, by us all.

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