British socialist feminist and psychoanalyst, author of "Women: The Longest Revolution" and Psychoanalysis and Feminism
In "Women: The Longest Revolution" (New Left Review, 1966) she argued that the great socialist classics of the nineteenth century had stressed the importance of the woman question without solving it theoretically.
A British psychoanalyst and socialist feminist, born in Christchurch, New Zealand, who moved to England in 1944. She read English at St Anne's College, Oxford, taught English literature at the universities of Leeds and Reading in 1962–1970, and in the 1960s took part in New Left politics on the editorial committee of New Left Review. "Women: The Longest Revolution" (1966) was a new synthesis of Engels, Beauvoir and other analysts of women's oppression, and Psychoanalysis and Feminism (1974) sought to turn Freud to feminism's critique of patriarchy. She later became professor of psychoanalysis at Jesus College, Cambridge, and founded the university's Centre for Gender Studies.
Activities and affiliations
- 1962–
From "The Longest Revolution" to psychoanalysis
She was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 4 October 1940 and moved to England in 1944, staying with her grandparents in the Midlands. She took a degree in English at St Anne's College, Oxford, in 1962 and did postgraduate work there, then taught English literature at the universities of Leeds and Reading from 1962 to 1970. Throughout the 1960s she was active in left politics and sat on the editorial committee of New Left Review.
"Women: The Longest Revolution", published in New Left Review in November–December 1966, opens from the claim that the situation of women is different from that of any other social group. Mitchell held that all the great socialist thinkers of the nineteenth century had recognised the subordination of women and the need for their liberation, but that their classic studies stressed the problem's importance without solving it theoretically, and that the limits of their approach had never since been transcended. The essay is regarded as an original synthesis of Beauvoir, Engels, Viola Klein, Betty Friedan and other analysts of women's oppression.
In Psychoanalysis and Feminism: Freud, Reich, Laing and Women (1974) she tried to reconcile psychoanalysis and feminism at a time when many considered them incompatible. She read Freud's asymmetrical view of masculinity and femininity as reflecting the realities of patriarchal culture and sought to use his critique of femininity to criticise patriarchy itself; her insistence on the usefulness of Freud, particularly in a Lacanian reading, opened the way for later critical work on psychoanalysis and gender. She later became professor of psychoanalysis at Jesus College, Cambridge, and founded the Centre for Gender Studies at Cambridge University, and in 2010 became director of the Expanded Doctoral School in Psychoanalytic Studies at University College London.