Final Paper
Class: Feminist Theory
Teacher: Dianne Rothleder
Student: Wiebke Boetefuer

Freud′s Displacement In Dora`s Case And Judith Butler′s ``Gender Trouble``

In this essay it will be showed how Freud interpreters displacement in one of his cases. Further, he sees homosexuality as pathological. With that, he stands in contrast with Butler as this essay will show. What is displacement? Displacement is if one thing displaces another, it forces the other thing out of its place, position or role, and than occupies that place, position or role itself. Freud mainly sees desires and emotions displaced.
For Freud displacement is elementary in human life and result out of the experiences of loss and unfulfilled desire. The infant learns in the first moment of life that his/er desires will not always be fulfilled. S/he learns that desire has to be controlled and suppressed. Emotions and desires can not be felt in an original way. They are depressed by cultural customs and get transferred or displaced. This displacement can occur in ways, which are not related to the cause on the first and obvious spot. For example, the experience of being let alone as toddler, without the possibility to reach the mother gets displaced in biting fingernails. The anger about the loss, about the other gets transformed in auto-aggression.
Furthermore, the infant has to cope with the lost of the nipple or with the lost of her/is first love object, the mother. That makes all women to homosexuals in first place. This homosexuality has to be suppressed in Freud′s Heterosexual Matrix. Also, it seems that Freud does not make a distinction between sexual love and mother-(brother etc) love. That means the lost of the nipple, is the lost of the first sexual stimulating object. Therefore, the baby tries to replace his/her sucking in a mother direction in other words, the mother gets displaces.

In the theory of Freud the female sex is incomplete. She is the castrate of the real sex, the man. ``...the little girl is first a little boy, actively desiring her mother in the preoedipal period. When she recognize her lack- the penis she must have to gain her mother′s love- she turns with hostility from her mother, represses her inappropriately phallic desire, takes her father as love object and is thrust into the feminine position (Bernheimer<sup>1</sup>, p.28.)``. How can be a girl be a boy? (I will come back to this question later) But how could girls in Freud′s society figure out that they are incomplete? Where could they see naked kids or adults? Would they not more likely see the father as uncompleted, which has no obvious sex organs, missing the breathed? Or was his society not as bluestocking as history use to tell us and Focault, with his believe about the un-prude bourgeoisie society is right? Freud impute all women a desire for a penis. Out of this penis envy the girl rejects her mother and turns to the father. This includes the rescue of the girl from her homosexuality. The original desire is displaced. Also, the desire after the nipple has to be transferred. Again, this displacement, in the theory of Freud, occurs in different ways not directly related to the cause. As result, the mother gets not only associate with a passive loss, out of stopping breathed feeding; also the mother gets active rejected, out of her incompleteness. That means, in early childhood, the mother gets twice related with negative associations and experiences.

In Dora`s case<sup>2</sup>, Freud does not only diagnosis a hysteria out of the cause of displacement, he also diagnosis bisexuality. The 19 years old Dora lives with her patents in one house. The mother seems to play a minor role in Doras life. She is characterize with a very strong drive to clean the bourgeois house. Dora`s family lives a strong friendship to the K since years. While her father has a strong relationship to Frau K., which Dora interpreted as love-relationship, Herr K. is turned to Dora. Freud interpreted her case as Dora being in love with Frau and Herr K. and with her father. It accurse that Dora takes the love to her mother and transfers it to Frau K. Herr K. kisses Dora once when she is 14. She feels disgust and turns from Herr K. Freud diagnose Dora with hysteria. In his opinion Dora`s disgust of being kissed by Herr K. is for Freud an ill reaction. ``Instead of the genital sensation which would certainly have been felt by a healthy girl in such circumstances, Dora was overcome by the unpleasurable feeling which is proper to the tract of mucous membrane at the entrance to the alimentary canal- that is disgust`` (Freud, p.22).
Further, she displaced not only her disgust, but also misled the feeling of Herr K`s erection at her lower body to her upper thorax into a hysteria cove. Knowing about oral-sex, but living in the prude society of Vienna in the end of the 19^th century, Dora transfers the kiss to her fantasy about oral-sex. ``It then needs very little creative power to substitute the sexual object of the moment (the penis) for the original object (the nipple)...`` (Freud, p.45)³. Freud interpreted, that Dora displaces her fantasy of sucking a penis in to the kiss. After sucking her fingers for pleasure in early childhood, Dora transferred her desire to suck to ``the true sexual object, that is, the male organ...`` (Freud, p.45). Freud call the fantasy of sucking a penis perverted (p.45). Dora react on this unconscious sex fantasies with remorse. Pangs of conscience. She admits in one talk with Freud that she know about this practice but can not recall where from and denies in another talk to speak about it. This is understandable, if we recall how the perfect Victorian women had to be: ``the Victorian women was looked up to as representative of the purity, order and serenity of earlier, less anxious times. Gentle, submissive, naive and good, she was also expected to be strong in her righteousness, perfectly controlled in her decorous conduct, and skilled in her domestic managerial capacities`` (Bernheimer, p.5). Out of this conflict a lot of women displaced there anger about the society and the dominance patriarchal in pathological behavior, like hysteria. This behavior then, been tried to cured by male doctors and psychoanalysts. Bernheimer offers an important point: Illness was accepted for women, considered as fragile and therefore a part of there feminine character. The un/conscious protest then failed and been twisted into the strategy of the patriarchal. Dora living in this society, between passive women, prude and knowing as well, her reaction of disgust, at being kissed by an adult man, can also be interpreted as compensation of anxiousness and therefore as physiological.
To draw a clear distinction between compensation and displacement I will give an example based on out postmodern society. Susan Bordo in her book ``Unbearable Weight<sup>4</sup>``, argues that Western people live in a society where ``In place of God the watchmaker, we now have ourselves, the master sculptors of that plastic`` (p.246). Plastic surgery makes us able (if you have the money) to sculpture the own body to after our own fantasies. The offspring of this fantasies are beauty standards normed by culture. While a couple of years ago a lot of Hollywood stars made there breasts larger, right now the trend to a natural look is in fashion. That means, a lot of stars get rid of there silicon breasts. It might be, that the reason to achieve a natural look veil the concern about breast-cancer, back problems and other physical problems. However, the question rises why women do that to themselves? Bordo argues, that women claim to do this for themselves and that they feel better and more beautiful. Then, why do women have the feeling not to be beautiful in her natural way? Society seems to put a large pressure on them, that they feel insecure and unloved. Not only Advertisements creating a whole fantasy-world, socialization teaches little girls what is pretty and desirable. So, women learn in early childhood that they most likely not fulfill the beauty standards and become insecure. Which women is absolutely satisfied with her body? To announce the fact, undergoing a plastic surgery for themselves, is in my eyes not only a compensation of the cultural pressure, but furthermore a foreground thought, without reflecting the social circumstances. To escape the cultural pressure, the desire of beauty tangled in insecurity, gets transferred instantly into cosmetic surgery. Therefore, it is a direct result on the cause, and not a displacement of desires.
In contrast Anorexia nervosa can be defined as displacement. The whole issue of anorexia is much more complex, out of there different causes. The illness anorexia can result out of sexual abuse, rebellion against the patriarchal society or struggling with the identity of the female sex, just to mention some sources. It has always a cause that gets transferred indirectly into auto-aggression. The auto-aggression displaces the real reason for uncomfortably. The original motivation can not be seen on the first place and therapist has to dig for it.

How can be a girl be a boy? Judith Butler⁵ argues, that in the moment the infants sees the light of the world her/is gender is fixed, by naming the sex. Society starts to covers the infant with its dualistic gender roles as soon the baby is there. That means trough language, thoughts and emotions. Therefore, a boy can not be a girl. Besides, a boy is born in a girls body and vive versus. Lets see how Freud constructs homosexuality. a During the process of loosing the mother as first sexual object the baby`s Ego incorporate structures and attributes. Therefore the m/other becomes part of the kid. If an active process of mourning and burring the person is not experienced, the person still lives in melancholy in the Ego. ``The process of internalizing lost love becomes pertinent to gender formationen when we realize that the incest taboo, among other functions, initiates a loss of a love object for the ego and that this ego recuperates from this loss through the internalization of the tabooed object of desire`` (Butler, p.58). In other words the rejection of the first object, so Freud has impact on gender roles, because the attitudes of the rejected gender gets internalisiert. The incest taboo has the result, that the individual has to deny h/er desire and has to focus on an other object. That means for the boy, as he rejects the mother to modify his desire onto another object of the opposite sex. For the girl it is not only the displacement of the object but also the desire and become strategies of melancholia. After Freud, the boy has not only reject the mother out of her incompletely, further he has to deny the father as sex object. He has to ``choose not only between the two objects, but the two sexual dispositions, masculine and feminine`` (Butler, p. 59). He agues, that the boy normally chooses the heterosexuality out of ``the fear of feminization``. That means, Freud assume that masculine kids not only have already a feeling for the negative meaning of feminism. Further, and this point has to be stressed, they are able to choose heterosexuality. Then homosexuality is chosen as well. Even if this choice happens unconcesly, results out of chose can be corrected. That, strengthens Freud′s theory, that homosexuality is unmormal and can be fixed through therapy. This thought stands in contrast to biological theories, which say hom/heterosexuality is based on the genes. The fear of feminization, so Freud, is in heterosexual cultures associated with male homosexuality (p.59). It is a pity, that Freud does not mention an example for a homosexual society. Arguing in the strategy of Freud, within his fixed gender roles, I will argue, that I know quite a few gays, with are more masculine as there heterosexual counterparts. To stress this point; arguing this way means that homophobia is natural and not a changeable social phenomena. Freud himself experienced this homophobia. ``There can be no substitute for the close contact with a friend which a particular -almost a feminine- side of me calls for. The rebellious overcompensation of the male (that) produces one of the strongest transference-resistance, that is, the resistance against adopting a passive attitude toward another man`` (Bernheimer,p.16) Freud does not only realize the dominance of men in society and still does not understand his patients, which are rebelling against patriarchal; also he rejects his female side, which he relates to homosexuality and wants to see punished and subordinated. For him homosexuality is not only negative and has to reject it for himself. His own homophobia gets focussed on his own identity. Further, in Freud′s fixed gender roles, the female side stands for passivity. If he sees no possibility for him, to adopted a passive attitude toward a men, he imputes that women can have one. As result, Freud sees a dominant relationship between man and women which is natural.
``Freud does postulate primary bisexuality as a complicating factor in the process of character and gender formation`` (Butler, p.59). Because masculine and feminine attributes gets accepted. One could argue that an ambivalence occurs; and both gender roles gets internalizes and accepted. An displacement of desires is not necessary, if they can be lived. Freud argues against this ambivalence and sees the primary bisexuality of feminine and masculine dispositions, which have the aim for heterosexuality. Again, Freud is stuck in his heterosexual matrix. Therefore, the goal is to overcome the bisexuality and internalize the hetero gender role and reject the Homo -gender role for once own life.
Butler asked ``how do we identity a `feminine` or a `masculine` disposition at the outset?`` (P.60) According to Freud gender roles are fixed in character dispositions. For example passive is connected with the female gender and active with the male gender. But it seems that Freud does not have a standardize disposition plan. Anyway, the problem is that Freud presumes that this dispositions are fixed by nature and not changeable. If they get internalized by the ``wrong`` sex it is pathological. Butler not only sees, and I confirm this point, that his dispositions are cultural made norms, which are changeable and interpretable; she also questions the Bagriff dispositions at all. Further, she argues, that the incest taboo, experiences during the Oedipal complex, the loss of the mother, as an influence on the gender identification. The major affect creates the homosexual taboo (p.63). ``The identifications consequent to melancholia are modes of preserving unresolved object relations, and in the case of same-sexed gender identification, the unresolved object relations are invariably homosexual`` (Butler, p.63). To resume, for Freud homosexual not only a displacement but more it is pathological, which based on prohibition and punishment.
Entering the notion of punishment and prohibition he speaks the language of the law. This means not only the juridical law but also the common law. Entering the area of law, the issues of power and ends has to be settled. Now, we have the basis of Focault on which Butler argues against Freud. According to Focault the law displaces the desire into a ``dissatisfying form of expression``. ``the juridical law, here as elsewhere, ought to be reconceived as a discursive practice which is productive or generative -discursive in that it produces the linguistic fiction of repressive desire in order to maintain its own position as a teleological instrument`` (Butler, p.65). Therefore, it is not a question of a natural based heterosexually versus pathological homosexuality, but a question of social practice and languages. The law has the power to set the discourse, or better to repress and forbid the discourse, within the expression of homosexual life and its acceptation. It becomes a question of what is spoken loud and discussed and what is mute. Again, the language becomes an instrument of power. Furthermore, the law has the power to restrict the individual. The juridical law gets transformed into remorse. Than, the restriction is in the being h/erselve. So it is the law which produces heterosexuality and not the nature. Contraire to a deterministic biological view, juridical law is a social contract and therefore has the possibility to change. The consequence is to open the discourse and to speak loud about homosexuality. With speaking I do not mean defaming and whispering behind hands, but a discussion and dialectic dialogue. Further, the question has to rises, who oppresses the discourse and who has the profit from the mutedety. Also, the remorse has to be overcome. The restriction of oneself has to become conciseness and conquered. The power of restriction has to transferred into active fearless action. Then the oppressed desire becomes obvious and does not need to be displaced any longer.
For Freud and Focault is the therapy against displacement talking. While Freud prefers his psychotherapy, Focault wants an discourse. In psychotherapy one part is ill and has to be cured, that means the therapist has power over his patient. He is able to lead the patient in the direction he wants in his interpretation and in the structures he is able to think. Focault rejects the power relationship in the dialogue and stresses the point of the unthinkable. The unthinkable and unspeakable has to be overcome to see power relationships. And to be able to see the law in our selves.

1 Bernheimer, Charles ; Kahane, Claire; In Dora`s Case; Columbia University Press.

2 Freud, Sigmund; In Dora`s Case; New York;1997.

3 And I thought psychoanalysis is a science and based on experiences and facts and not a creative power play, based on free interpretation, depending on the view of the therapist.

4 Bordo, Susan; Unbearable Weight; University of California Press; 1993.

5 Butler, Judith; Gender Trouble; Routledge; 1990.