Revisiting “An Unknown Woman”: A Look at Freud’s Paper Through the Lens of Hans Loewald

Abstract

In his paper “The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman” (1920), Freud tried to outline a general psychoanalytic approach to homosexuality by recounting the case of an 18-year-old girl sent to him by her father. The case, as told by Freud, makes for awkward reading today. Loewald’s theory of developmental narrative, differentiation, linking, and his notion of parricide as the individual giving voice to one’s self, offers a different lens through which to view it. Although Loewald did not write directly about the issue of homosexuality, in boys or girls, in “The Waning of the Oedipus Complex” he gives voice to the inner processes of separation and linking from parents, leading to mourning, through which the adolescent has to go. In this paper, I offer a reading of the Freud case using Loewald’s theory, which enables us to highlight homosexuality as a variation in the expression of human sexuality, rather than a pathological deviation as Freud implies, and presents the “unknown woman” as struggling with difficulties in mourning.

Keywords:

• ego-reality relationship
• female homosexuality
• Loewald
• mother-baby field
• Oedipus complex

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Gila Ofer

Gila Ofer, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, training psychoanalyst, and group analyst. Dr. Ofer is co-founder and past president of The Tel Aviv Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis (TAICP) and a founding member of The Israeli Institute of Group Analysis (IIGA) and she serves on the faculty of both institutes and at the Post-Graduate School for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, Tel Aviv University. Her edited book, A Bridge over Troubled Water: Conflicts and Reconciliation in Group and Society, was published in 2017.