When Freud gave his famous speech on femininity in 1933, he laid the foundations for attempting to answer an extremely complex question: how does a girl develop feminine aspects of her psyche? For Freud, the mind is not born fully masculine or feminine, and he recognised a particular complexity in the development of women. Other authors strongly disagreed with him, arguing that biology shapes sexual and gender identity, but since the Second World War, a series of new studies have given new impetus to the discussion. Simone de Beauvoir also seemed to try to answer Freud's question, agreeing that ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’. Her observations, which were more sociological than psychological, were nevertheless fundamental in talking about women through the words and experiences of women.
What we have understood in a century of gender studies is that if we ask ourselves what is the psychological and social path a girl goes through during her life, we learn a great deal of new information about the human mind (not only that of women's).
What complex relational intertwining takes place while searching for one's identity in the mirror of one's mother? How much influence do men have on the life of a future woman? How many generations of men and women contribute to our gender identity? How do identity, sexuality, psychic objects of love and the body intersect? Can we really forget about the society in which we live?
Finally, we realise how many rich observations (also useful in clinical work) open up simply by distinguishing between three concepts: “feminine”, “woman” and “female”.
