Rousseau, Revolution, Romanticism and Retrogression

Abstract

We have suggested earlier on in this book that a patriarchal society depends on sexual taboos, and that psychological taboos have to be enforced with the decline of direct physical control. We see a modern example of this principle at work in an area of learning which, perhaps more than any other, has profoundly influenced our attitudes to ourselves and each other today. I refer to the teachings of Sigmund Freud, which came to full flower just when the social and economic dependency of women was being vigorously challenged. As women demanded the right to learn and work, to share in the capitalist system which men had come to regard as a natural male prerogative, Freudian analysis appeared on the intellectual horizon to provide a subtle psychological taboo: the would-be emancipated woman froze in her tracks, stopped from going further by a magic formula more powerful than any fence, and the psychological taboo which forbade her from venturing to compete still operates now.