Juliet Mitchell

Juliet Mitchell (born 1940 in New Zealand) is a British socialist feminist, who is currently a fellow and serves as Professor of Psychoanalysis and Gender Studies at Jesus College, Cambridge University.

Mitchell is best known for her book Psychoanalysis and Feminism. Freud, Reich, Laing and Women (1974). In it, she tried to reconcile psychoanalysis and feminism at a time when many considered them incompatible. A substantial part of the thesis of the book is that Marxism may provide a model within which non-Patriarchal structures for rearing children could occur. The lack of the 'family romance' would remove the Oedipus Complex from a child's development, thus liberating women from the consequences of Penis Envy and the feeling of being castrated which Mitchell contends is the root cause of women's acceptance that they are inferior.

Writings

• Juliet Mitchell quotes
• Woman's Estate, Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1971
• Psychoanalysis and Feminism. Freud, Reich, Laing and Women, 1974, reissued as: Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A Radical Reassessment of Freudian Psychoanalysis, Basic Books 2000
• Women: The Longest Revolution, Virago Press 1984
• (editor), Feminine Sexuality. Jacques Lacan and the école freudienne, W. W. Norton & Company 1985
• (editor), Selected Melanie Klein, The Free Press 1987
• (editor, together with Ann Oakley ), Who's Afraid of Feminism?: Seeing Through the Backlash, New Press 1997
• Mad Men and Medusas: Reclaiming Hysteria, Basic Books 2001
• Siblings, Sex and Violence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003)

External links

• Jesus College: Juliet Mitchell
• Woman's Estate excerpt
• Juliet Mitchell interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 6th May 2008 (film)