Citation

Rudnick LP, Heru AM. Hist. Psychiatry 2017; 28(2): 195-208.

Affiliation

University of Colorado, Denver.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0957154X17691472

PMID

28468551

Abstract

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the unspoken fear of syphilis played a significant role in the development of beliefs about female sexuality. Many women were afraid of sexual relationships with men because they feared contracting syphilis, which was, at that time, untreatable. Women also feared passing this disease on to their children. Women's sexual aversion, or repression, became a focus for Freud and his colleagues, whose theory of psychosexual development was based on their treatment of women. This article examines the case of Dora, the memoirs of Mabel Dodge Luhan and other sources to argue that the fear of syphilis was a significant factor in upper- and middle-class women's avoidance of heterosexual relationships. The fear of syphilis, in turn, became a significant factor in the psychoanalytic construction of female sexuality. The social suppression of the fear of syphilis has had a profound impact on theories of women's development. The implication for psychiatry is that our models of psychological development occur within a sociocultural milieu and cannot escape suppressed aspects of our culture.

Language: en

Keywords

Female sexuality; Sigmund Freud; hysteria; psychoanalysis; syphilis