SE Academic Review 2023

67 ACADEMIC REVIEW 2023

“ every theory that explains everything explains nothing ”

could easily retaliate by saying he was just in ‘denial’. Karl Popper once said: ‘every theory that explains everything explains nothing’, and Beauvoir addressed this issue similarly by saying ‘if one criticises the doctrine to the letter, the psychoanalyst maintains that its spirit has been misunderstood’. These descriptions (Popper’s and Beauvoir’s) fit well with Freud’s science because by having an answer to everything, thus having an unfalsifiable theory, Freud’s philosophy reveals itself to lack depth by simply reusing the same arguments. The Freudian theory that was Beauvoir’s main focus was the ‘Electra complex’. With this idea, Freud suggests that that all women (and girls) want to copy their mother in order to get their father’s attention, due to the fact the daughter notices that her mother gets a different type of attention from her father and feels jealous of this. To me, this seems like a valid idea; it is a logical assumption that children can get jealous when they see attention being given to someone else. However, Beauvoir goes on to describe Freud’s philosophy in more detail. She states that Freud believed that a girl first has a maternal fixation, and later identifies with her father. However, around the age of five, she discovers the biological differences between men and women and, from the absence of a penis, has a castration complex which leads to frustration and pain because, ‘loving her father, the girl would like to resemble him’. This would be a reason for woman being ‘the Other’, as, from a young age, she is frustrated not to be like a man (or not to be a man). There are many problems with this theory but, I should mention first that it is possible that Beauvoir made Freud’s theory seem more sexual than he intended. Yet, judging from Freud’s philosophy as a whole, I would say that it is highly likely he intended it to be sexual. The problems Beauvoir identifies are that ‘Freud copied it (the Electra complex) from a masculine model’ and ‘he assumes that woman feels like a mutilated man’. However, this argument is ‘not generalised among girls’ and there is no proof of this complex occurring in young girls. As well as this, Beauvoir argues that girls usually do not see a penis until much later than the age of five, it would therefore not make sense for them to have a ‘castration complex’. I am in favour of Beauvoir’s argument as I believe there is a lack of proof and logic in Freud’s theory.

Beauvoir was more in agreement with Adler, another psychoanalyst. Beauvoir stated that ‘Adler departed from Freud because he understood the inadequacies of a system that bases the development of human life on sexuality alone’. Adler believed that the girl did not envy the phallus itself, she envied it only as a ‘symbol of the privileges granted to boys’. Adler said that woman’s response to this was either to try to masculinise herself or to use her feminine wiles to go into battle against men. However, Beauvoir expresses flaws present in all psychoanalytical philosophies, the ignorance of transcendence. Freud and Adler both ‘refuse the idea of choice and its corollary, the notion of value’, they do this in the name of determinism. For example, even if Freud’s science was true, the option of transcendence, that we could choose otherwise, is not included. Finally, ‘psychoanalysts fail to explain why woman is the other’, if libido in general is a defining aspect in our lives, why is male and female libido seen so differently? Why are women seen as passive and men ‘allowed’ to sleep around? Once again, biology and science are not enough to answer the question of why woman is ‘the Other’. To sum up all of the above, I agree with Beauvoir in her belief that woman being seen as ‘the Other’ cannot be blamed on biology alone. The reason for this view of woman is deeply embedded in society, possibly in a subconscious way, and social factors cannot be ignored as I believe they are much more influential than hormones and science when it comes to woman’s condition.