Juliet Mitchell

Children1Academic backgroundAlma materAcademic workInstitutionsPsychoanalysis 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

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

Women: The Longest Revolution

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

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

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

Monographs

• 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.

• Women, the Longest Revolution. New York City: Pantheon Books. 1984. ISBN 9780394725741.
• Mad Men and Medusas: Reclaiming Hysteria. New York City: Basic Books. 2000. ISBN 9780465046133.
• Siblings: Sex and Violence. Cambridge, UK Malden, Massachusetts: Polity Press. 2003. ISBN 9780745632216.
• Fratriarchy, The Sibling Trauma and the Law of the Mother. London: Routledge. 2023. ISBN 9781032364407.

Edited books

• Mitchell, Juliet; Oakley, Ann (1976). The Rights and Wrongs of Women. Harmondsworth New York: Penguin. ISBN 9780140216165.
• Mitchell, Juliet; Lacan, Jacques; Rose, Jacqueline (1985). Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the école freudienne. New York, London: Pantheon Books W. W. Norton. ISBN 9780393302110.
• Mitchell, Juliet; Oakley, Ann (1986). What is Feminism?. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 9780631148432.
• Mitchell, Juliet; Klein, Melanie (1987). The Selected Melanie Klein. New York: Free Press. ISBN 9780029214817.
• Mitchell, Juliet; Bourgeois, Louise (2016). Louise Bourgeois: Autobiographical Prints. London: Hayward Gallery Publishing. ISBN 978-1853323430.
• Mitchell, Juliet; Larratt-Smith, Philip (2021). Louise Bourgeois, Freud's Daughter. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300247244.

See also

• Nancy Chodorow
• Kate Millett

References

External links

• "Women: The Longest Revolution" by Juliet Mitchell (1966)
• Jesus College, University of Cambridge profile
• UCL profile
• Women's Rights: Radical Change – video of Mitchell appearing in a BBC debate first televised in 1974
• A Conversation with Juliet Mitchell
• Interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 6 May 2008 (video)