The categories of virginity and sainthood, often used as norms of femininity, are historically and contextually constructed. Genealogies of these categories reveal definitions of female subjectivity in accordance with male desires. Traditional conceptions of virginity have implications for theories of female development and sexuality, conceptions of the psychoanalytic process, and theories of social symbolism. Notions of virginity as an unblemished state, the first penetration by a penis as an irrevocable transformation to womanhood, and defloration as a developmental mile-stone in female sexuality derive from male fantasies of female purity that translate into justifications for social structures of control and ownership. While fantasies of sainthood played significant roles in the work of both Sigmund and Anna Freud, their images of saints, which they did not analyze, were unconsciously shaped by a Victorian sensibility. Because the psychoanalytic legacy is androcentrically informed, analysts may be hampered in their efforts to treat the pathologies of perfection that continue to plague women. Contesting and unsettling conventional epistemological assumptions open up the categories of virginity and sainthood to images and representations of female autonomy and integrity. The critical analyses offered here contribute to theories of the plasticity of gender and the social construction of femininity.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Bartky, S. (1991). Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. New York: Routledge .
2.
Benjamin, J. (1988). The Bonds of Love. New York : Pantheon.
3.
Bergmann, M.S. (1996). Review of W.W. Meissner, The Psychology of a Saint: Ignatius of Loyola. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association44:611—616.
4.
Bollas, C. (1999). Creativity and psychoanalysis. American Journal ofPsychoanalysis59:99—100.
5.
Brontë, C.(1853). Villette. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
6.
Burrus, V. . (1994). Word and flesh: The bodies and sexuality of ascetic women in Christian antiquity. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion10:27—51.
7.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of IdentityNew York: Routledge.
8.
——— & Scott, J. (1992). Feminists Theorize the Political. New York: Routledge.
9.
Chodorow, N. (1994). Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities: Freud and Beyond. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.
10.
Coltart, N. (1993). Ignatius of Loyola: The psychology of a saint . International Journal of Psychoanalysis74:1281—1283.
11.
Cott, N. (1987). The Grounding of Modern Feminism. New Haven: Yale University Press.
12.
De La Cruz, Sr J.I. (1691). A Woman of Genius: The Intellectual Autobiography of Sor Juana de la Cruz, transl. M. Sayers Peden. Salisbury, CT: Lime Rock Press, 1982.
13.
Duplessis, R.B. (1981). For the Etruscans. In The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, and Theory, ed. E. Showalter.New York: Pantheon, 1985, pp. 271—291.
14.
Eliot, G.(1871). Middlemarch. New York: Norton, 1977.
15.
——— (1842—1877). Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings, ed. A.S. Byatt & N. Warren. London : Penguin Classics, 1990.
16.
Elliott, A. (1998). Freud 2000. New York: Routledge.
17.
Fanon, F. (1961). The Wretched of the Earth, transl. C. Farrington. New York: Grove Press, 1963.
18.
Fenichel, O. (1953—1954). The Collected Papers of Otto Fenichel, ed. H. Fenichel & D. Rapaport.New York : Norton.
19.
Foucault, M. (1977). Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. D. Bouchard.Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
20.
Frank, K.A. (1990). Action techniques in psychoanalysis: Background and introduction. Contemporary Psychoanalysis26:732—756.
21.
Freedman, W. (1991). Gulliver's voyage to the country of the Houyhnhnms: Adolescent asceticism, idealization, and ideology. International Journal of Psychoanalysis18:527—539.
22.
Freud, A. (1936). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. Madison, CT: International Universities Press, 1966.
23.
Freud, S. (1905). Fragment of an analysis of a case of hysteria . Standard Edition7:7—122.
24.
——— (1918). The taboo of virginity. Standard Edition11:191—208.
25.
——— (1925). Some psychical consequences of the anatomical distinction between the sexes. Standard Edition19:248—258.
26.
——— (1926). The question of lay analysis. Standard Edition20:183— 250.
27.
——— (1963). The taboo of virginity, transl. J. Riviere. In Sexuality and the Psychology of Love, ed. P. Rieff.New York: Macmillan, pp. 70—86.
28.
Frye, M. (1992). Willful Virgin: Essays in Feminism 1976—1992 . Freedom, CA: Crossing Press.
29.
Gaskell, E.(1857). The Life of Charlotte Brontë. London: Penguin, 1975.
30.
Gilberg, A.L. (1974). Asceticism and the analysis of a nun. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association22:381—393.
31.
Hall, S. (1996). On postmodernism and articulation: An interview with Stuart Hall. In Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ed. D. Morley & K.-H. Chen.London: Routledge, pp. 131—150.
32.
Holtzman, D., & Kulish, N. (1997). Nevermore: The Hymen and the Loss of Virginity . Northvale, NJ: Aronson.
33.
Irigaray, L. (1985). This Sex Which Is Not One, transl. C. Porter with C. Burke. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
34.
——— (1993). An Ethics of Sexual Difference, transl. C. Burke & G.C. Gill. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
35.
Jasin, S.H.D. (1996). Sex and Suicide in Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, The Awakening and The House of Mirth. Unpublished dissertation, University of Texas at Dallas.
36.
Kieckhefer, R. (1988). Preface. In Sainthood: Its Manifestations in World Religions, ed. G.D. Bond & R. Kieckhefer.Berkeley : SAGE Publications, pp. vii—xii.
37.
King, R., & Apter, A. (1996). Psychoanalytic perspectives on adolescent suicide . Psychoanalytic Study of the Child51:491—511.
38.
Kovel, J. (1981). The Age of Desire: Case Histories of a Radical Psychoanalyst. New York: Pantheon .
39.
Kristeva, J. (1986). TheKristeva Reader , ed. T. Moi. New York: Columbia University Press.
40.
Krohn, A., & J. Krohn (1982). The nature of the oedipus complex in the Dora case. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association30:555—578.
41.
Laqueur, T. (1990). Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
42.
Lasch, C. (1979). The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: Norton.
43.
Layton, L. (1998). Who's That Girl? Who's That Boy? Clinical Practice Meets Postmodern Gender Theory. Northvale, NJ: Aronson.
44.
Lelwica, M.M. (1999). Starving for Salvation: The Spiritual Dimensions of Eating Problems among American Girls and Women. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
45.
Luepnitz, D.A. (2002). The Family Interpreted: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Family Therapy. New York: Basic Books.
46.
Mandelker, A. (1993). Framing Anna Karenina: Tolstoy, the Woman Question, and the Victorian Novel. Columbus: Ohio State University.
47.
Markus, G. (1993). The Radical Tradition: Revolutionary Saints in the Battle for Justice and Human Rights. New York: Doubleday.
48.
Mogul, S.L. (1980). Asceticism in adolescence and anorexia nervosa . Psychoanalytic Study of the Child35:155—175.
49.
Nietzsche, F. (1883—1891). Thus Spoke Zarathustra . In The Portable Nietzsche, ed. & transl. W. Kaufmann.New York: Viking Penguin, 1954, pp. 103—439.
50.
Ortner, S. (1996). Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture . Boston: Beacon Press.
51.
Rabine, L.W. (1990). The unhappy hymen between feminism and deconstruction . In The Other Perspective in Gender and Culture: Rewriting Women and the Symbolic, ed. J.F. MacCannell.New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 20—38.
52.
Róheim, G. (1946). Saint Agatha and the Tuesday woman. International Journal of Psychoanalysis27:119—126.
53.
Rossetti, W.M. (1906). Memoir. In The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti. London, Macmillan, pp. xlv—lxxi.
54.
Rothstein, A. (1984). The Narcissistic Pursuit of Perfection. 2nd ed. New York: International Universities Press, 1999.
55.
——— (1991). On some relationships of fantasies of perfection to the calamities of childhood. International Journal of Psychoanalysis72:313—323.
56.
Showalter, E. (1993). Hysteria, feminism, and gender. In Hysteria beyond Freud, ed. S.L. Sander , H. King, R. Porter, G.S. Rousseau, & E. Showalter.Berkeley: SAGE Publications, pp. 286—344.
57.
Shrage, L. (1989). Should feminists oppose prostitution?Ethics99:347—361.
58.
Silverman, D. (2001). Sexuality and attachment: A passionate relationship or a marriage of convenience?Psychoanalytic Quarterly70:325—358.
59.
Sissa, G. (1990). Greek Virginity, transl. A. Goldhammer. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
60.
Slater, D. (1997). Consumer Culture and Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
61.
Stern, D.B. (1997). Unformulated Experience: From Dissociation to Imagination in Psychoanalysis, ed. S.A. Mitchell & L. Aron.Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
62.
Stiritz, S. (2001). Victorian Hagiography and Feminine Self-Fashioning. Unpublished dissertation, Washington University, St. Louis.
63.
Tolstoy, L.(1875—1877). Anna Karenina. The Maude translation, revised by G. Gibian . New York: Norton, 1995.
64.
Van Der Leeuw, G. (1938). Religion in Essence and Manifestation: A Study in Phenomenology. London: Allen & Unwin.
65.
Wach, J. (1944). Sociology of Religion. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
66.
Wachtel, P.L. (1977). Psychoanalysis and Behavior Therapy: Toward an Integration. New York: Basic Books .
67.
——— (1978). Internal and external determinants of behavior in psycho-dynamic theories. In Perspectives in Interactional Psychology, ed. L.A. Pervin & M. Lewis.New York : Plenum.
68.
——— (1987). Action and Insight. New York : Guilford Press.
69.
Yates, S.L. (1930). An investigation of the psychological factors in virginity and ritual defloration. International Journal of Psychoanalysis11:167—184.
