Nancy J. Chodorow :: Biography

Personal BackgroundChodorow is often appointed as a leading theorist in feminist thought, curiously in the field of psycho outline and feminist psychology. Her essays are included in many books concerning gender roles and construction as well as psychoanalysis. Her evaluations of the ways in which the psychological dynamics of the gender system is systematically generated and subject to historical change and development are ack like a shotledged as significant contributions to feminist theory. Chodorow is now at the University of California at Berkeley, and she continues her Education and TrainingShe graduated from Radcliffe College in 1966, she earned her PhD in sociology from Brandeis University and received her psychoanalytic training at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute. She thusly received her PhD from Brandeis University in 1975.Major ContributionsChodorow begins her experiences with challenging psychoanalyst none other than Sigmund Frued. His ambition for psychoanal ysis led him to his first methods and theories. These methods and theories are as followed Oedipus complex, dream analysis and his understanding of sexuality and psychopathology. Nancy was inspired by the psychology of women contributions of the 1920s and 1930s. Frueds Oedipus pivots an entire legacy of Nancys curiosity of mother-daughter psychology, and which led Frued (1931) to redefine the psychology of feminity. As Chodorow was influenced by the influencing psychoanalysis in the 1930s, she realized that psychological anthropology (her own subspecialty) had explored the psychology of gender culture. Chodorows first womens conference in 1969 is what propelled her and other women into awareness. creation and Doing was Chodorows first published book which contained a cross-cultural examination of the socialization of Males and Females (1972). Its main focus was that sexism is political, economic, familial institutions in terms of mens behavior toward women. Chodorow explains that Be ing and Doing located the mens origin of male dominance in mens dread of women and fear of their own external feminity. Surprisingly, Chodorow found that male and female bisexual identifications were asymmetrical the mans being more threatening. (Chodorow, 2004). The book concluded that womens identity was based on being and mens masculine identity was based on doing.Being and Doing was published over 30 years ago and inadvertently anticipate many of themes that are now found in psychoanalytic rethinking of feminity. At this point in time Chodorow insists to take an intuitive and natural mode ancestry with a single, self-evident, taken-for granted but previously unnoticed or unstudied feature of psychic or culture world and expand the consequences of the fact from indoors the clinical moment (Chodorow, 2004).