Discussant: Deborah P. Britzman
Saturday, April 2, 2016: 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
What is misogyny? At first sight it is discrimination and depreciation of women manifested explicitly or implicitly, in different ways, from the most obvious to the most covert and subtle. A thin red line connects situations of extreme violence (for instance rape in times of peace or war) to other forms of gender violence such as sex slave trade, feminicide, and extreme forms of violence against women such as “burnt women”. This line runs through discourse exerting psychological abuse and leads inevitably to feelings of disparagement and as a consequent loss of self-esteem in women affected.
We could say that in today’s societies and cultures, important changes in relation to the place of women co-exist with manifestations of misogyny which deserve to be examined. Misogynous humor is is a classic example of how misogyny is embedded in our culture, and we need to evaluate it as a powerful manifestation of the unconscious. The way we describe in psychoanalytic theory the “woman as an object” is another example. In this context, are clinicians immune to misogyny? This question leads us to revisit positions regarding sexual and gender differences and to determine whether the psychotherapy field and psychotherapists as such are excluded from misogynous positions or not.
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