A study on Feminist Psychoanalytic approach by Laura Mulvey

Abstract

Psychoanalysis consists of a range of theories that deal most centrally with human subjectivity, sexuality and the unconscious. Many of its key concepts were developed, and often then revised, by Sigmund Freud. One element of its selectivity is that it will focus on those parts of psychoanalysis that address the visual. Freud suggested that scopophilia - pleasure in looking was one of the basic drives with which all (sighted) children are born. Lacan, building on various claims of Freud, argues that certain moments of seeing, and particular visualities, are central to how subjectivities and sexualities are formed. Lacanian guise, to understand how the visual is imbricated in the production of sexual difference. These writers work with various kinds of psychoanalysis to produce readings of paintings and photographs, but most often of films. They pay close attention to these visual images and are centrally concerned with their social effects: the ways they produce particular spectating positions that are differentially sexualized and empowered.