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Ethel Spector Person

Publications and source records attributed to Ethel Spector Person.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2005

As the wheel turns: a centennial reflection on Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.

Freud's theories of psychosexual development, while highly original, were anchored in the explosion of scientific studies of sex in the nineteenth century. Most of these studies were based on masturbation, homosexuality, and deviance, with little attention given to normal sexuality. Around the turn of the century, the narrow interest in pathological sexuality and sexual physiology gradually gave way to a broader interest in normal sexuality. It was in the context of these expanding studies of sexuality that Freud proposed the first psychological view of sexuality, a theory that defined sex as being at the interface between soma and psyche. Libido theory, which Freud developed, is a theory of drives and conflicts. For Freud, libido was the major force in personality development, and he posited sexual conflicts as the heart of neuroses, sexual fixations as the essence of perversions. This article traces the way Freud's libido theory has served as one of the mainsprings in the development of psychoanalytic theory. It also addresses the major revisions that have taken place in libido theory, with a focus primarily on object relations theory, and the impact of culture on the way sex and sexual mores are parsed.

Freudian Theory↗
PubMed2004

Personal power and the cultural unconscious: implications for psychoanalytic theories of sex and gender.

The changes in the way psychoanalysts theorize female psychology was in large part the result of changes that occurred in the context of the sex and gender movements of the last half of the 20th century. This article addresses the covert ways in which women sought to express power prior to women's liberation. It draws on psychoanalytic theory, emphasizing the study of power in conjunction with discourse theory in order to illustrate the complex ways change draws on both inner psychic impulses and changes in the cultural milieu.

Culture↗