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Psychodynamics Of The Family Essay

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“The Psychodynamics of the Family”, taken from The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender, published in 1978, remains one of Nancy Chodorow most influential works.
Chodorow establishes in “The Psychodynamics of the Family” her interpretation and analysis of the heterosexual dynamic within the social and familial context, and the effects of mothering, manhood and womanhood on the perpetuation of the family.
The article is structured in three parts: “Oedipal Asymmetries and Heterosexual Knots”; “The Cycle Completed: Mothers and Children”; and “Gender Personality and Reproduction of Mothering”.
Chodorow’s main arguments are based on Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical “Oedipus Complex” theory, which she uses to …show more content…

A child recreates the mother-child exclusivity and allows women to return to their primary object-love unit – however, it interrupts it for men, who find themselves sidelined in the relationship.
Finally, the author examines how gender personality shapes a woman’s mothering capacities, and thus reproduces the cycle of mothering. The different structures of the oedipal triangle (binary for men, triangular for women) contribute to the formation of gender identity in children. The psychoanalytic object choice also ensures that the heterosexual relationship will result in women mothering and taking on the role of primary caretaker, leading to an asymmetrical organization of parenthood where men are mainly absent or removed. However, male-dominant households ensure that women will remain unfulfilled in the relationship, leading to a desire for a child, and rearing this child in a socially gendered family. In this manner, due to women’s nurturing role and their narcissistic attachment to their daughters, they contribute to the perpetuation of “their own social roles and position in the hierarchy of gender”.

“The Psychodynamics of the Family” has greatly resonated in feminist literary theory and psychoanalytical theory. Chodorow’s first edition of The Reproduction of Mothering has been the object of criticism due to shortcomings and its limited view of the family and

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