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Juliet Mitchell

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Juliet Mitchell
Born (1940-10-04) 4 October 1940 (age 84)
Christchurch, New Zealand
NationalityBritish
Spouses
  • (m. 1962; div. 1972)
  • Martin Rossdale
    (m. 1975; div. 1988)
  • (m. 2000)
Children1
Academic background
Alma mater
Academic work
InstitutionsPsychoanalysis Unit of University College London (UCL)
Main interests

Juliet Mitchell, Lady Goody FBA (born 4 October 1940) is a British psychoanalyst, socialist feminist, research professor and author.

Early life and education

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Mitchell was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1940, and then moved to England in 1944, where she stayed with her grandparents in the Midlands. She attended St Anne's College, Oxford, where she received a degree in English in 1962, as well as doing postgraduate work.[1] She taught English literature from 1962 to 1970 at Leeds University and Reading University. Throughout the 1960s, Mitchell was active in leftist politics, and was on the editorial committee of the journal New Left Review.[2]

Career

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Women: The Longest Revolution

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Mitchell's article "Women: The Longest Revolution", in the New Left Review (1966), was an original synthesis of Simone de Beauvoir, Frederich Engels, Viola Klein, Betty Friedan and other analysts of women's oppression.[3][4]

The Cambridge University Centre for Gender Studies

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She is a fellow professor of Psychoanalysis at Jesus College, Cambridge, and founded the Centre for Gender Studies at Cambridge University.[5] In 2010, she was appointed director of the Expanded Doctoral School in Psychoanalytic Studies at the Psychoanalysis Unit of University College London (UCL).[6]

Psychoanalysis and Feminism

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Mitchell is best known for her book Psychoanalysis and Feminism: Freud, Reich, Laing and Women (1974),[7] in which she tried to reconcile psychoanalysis and feminism at a time when many considered them incompatible.[8] Peter Gay considered it "the most rewarding and responsible contribution"[9] to the feminist debate on Freud, both acknowledging and rising beyond Freud's male chauvinism in its analysis. Mitchell saw Freud's asymmetrical view of masculinity and femininity as reflecting the realities of patriarchal culture, and sought to use his critique of femininity to critique patriarchy itself.[10]

By insisting on the utility of Freud (particularly in a Lacanian reading) for feminism, she opened the way for further critical work on psychoanalysis and gender.[11] She was an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University from 1993 to 1999.[12]

Bibliography

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Monographs

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  • Woman's Estate. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1971. ISBN 9780140214253.
  • Psychoanalysis and Feminism: Freud, Reich, Laing, and Women. New York: Pantheon Books. 1974. ISBN 9780394474724.
Reissued as: Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A radical reassessment of Freudian psychoanalysis. New York City: Basic Books. 2000. ISBN 9780465046089.

Edited books

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Juliet Mitchell interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 6th May 2008". Alanmacfarlane.com. 6 May 2008. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  2. ^ Benewick, Robert; Green, Philip (1998). "Juliet Mitchell 1940–". The Routledge dictionary of twentieth-century political thinkers. Psychology Press. p. 228. ISBN 9780415096232.
  3. ^ Mitchell, Juliet (November–December 1966). "Women: The Longest Revolution". New Left Review. I (40). Newleftreview.org. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  4. ^ Singh, Sunit (August 2011). "Emancipation in the heart of darkness: An interview with Juliet Mitchell" (PDF). The Platypus Review.
  5. ^ "Professor Juliet Mitchell | Jesus College in the University of Cambridge". Jesus.cam.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 28 September 2020. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  6. ^ UCL: Juliet Mitchell Archived 2 November 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  7. ^ Mitchell, Juliet (1974). Psychoanalysis and feminism: Freud, Reich, Laing, and women. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 9780394474724.
  8. ^ Juliet Mitchell Archive at marxists.org
  9. ^ Gay, Peter (1988). Freud: a life for our time. London: Dent. p. 774. ISBN 9780460047616.
  10. ^ Herik, Judith (1985). Freud on femininity and faith. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 15. ISBN 9780520053335.
  11. ^ Tandon, Neeru (2008). Feminism: a paradigm shift. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers & Distributors. p. 83. ISBN 9788126908882.
  12. ^ Dietrich, Penny (2018). "All Professors at Large, 1965–2023". Program for Andrew D. White Professors at Large. Retrieved 8 November 2018.
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