In Feminism and Its Discontents: A Century of Struggle with Psychoanalysis, Mari Jo Buhle writes, “Psychoanalysis and feminism both concern the meaning of individuality in a secular society and, as philosophical systems, gained coherence only as this century began. Psychoanalysis took shape as a clinical or therapeutic method, feminism as a political strategy. The two systems occupied a common domain as theories of human liberation, even at subsequent moments of conflict of competition” (pg. 3). She argues that the two systems developed in conversation with each other and that, where psychoanalysis inspired feminists to refine their analytical categories, feminism forced psychoanalysts to address Freud’s blindspots. Buhle continues, “Psychoanalysis in the United States quickly became, as Freud predicted, the property of freewheeling intellectuals and popularists as well as of physicians” (pg. 6). Further, “Some of the responsibility for this process lay with psychoanalysts themselves and other scholars trained in the discipline. Karl Menninger wrote a column for the Ladies’ Home Journal in the early 1930s; Margaret Mead picked up the thread decades later in her regular contributions to Redbook. After World War II the most prominent psychoanalysts enjoyed long runs on the nonfiction bestseller list and met with even greater success when their books were reprinted as mass-market paperbacks” (pg. 7). Finally, Buhle provides “a historical context for the shift from feminist ‘thought’ to ‘theory,’ precisely at the nexus between feminism and psychoanalysis” (pg. 21).

Discussing the late 1940s and the portrayal of psychoanalysis in popular culture, Buhle writes, “Psychoanalysts themselves contributed to the processes of popularization. Several prominent analysts, such as New York’s A.A. Brill and Gregory Zilboorg, literally served the entertainment industry by building their clientele from its stars” (pg. 168). Further, “Psychoanalysis walked hand in hand with mass culture through its Golden Age. Its celebrity among intellectuals not only accompanied but nourished the rapid expansion of commercialized mass media” (pg. 169). Examining the status of psychoanalysis in the immediate postwar years, Buhle writes, “Much of the glory of psychoanalysis arose from its enhanced professional standing” (pg. 170). She links this with postwar antifeminism, writing, “At a time when white middle-class wives and mothers constituted the fastest-growing sector of the labor market, thereby speeding the long trend toward the ‘two-income family,’ psychoanalysts were advising women to return home and to occupy their important but subordinate position in the patriarchal family. Rather than struggle for equality in the marketplace, women should seek their emotional salvation by following out their reproductive destinies” (pg. 173). Psychoanalysts further argued that women in the workplace would affect the healthy sexual development of children (pg. 191). ( )