Freud_And_Ragtime

Freud And Ragtime Throughout the novel Ragtime, Doctorow suggests that in Sigmund Freud’s visit to the United States he did not enjoy himself because of the differences between the United States and Vienna. With references of feminist women such as Emma Goldman in Ragtime, it can be determined that the real reason for Freud not enjoying the United States, was his views on women as being less than human, unable to think like men, born merely to breed and serve men(1933; New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1933). American women were living different lives than the women of Vienna. Victorian culture, which was the culture of Freud’s life back in Vienna, gave women many reasons to envy men: the same conditions, in fact, that the American feminists in Ragtime, fought against. If a woman who was denied the freedom, the status, and the pleasures that men enjoyed wished that she could have these things, she might wish herself a man and see herself with that one thing which made men unequally different , the penis(1905; Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory, 1910.) Freudian psychology, had its emphasis on sexual freedom for a man who was living in a repressive society, such as the Victorian culture in which he was living. Women on the other hand, were freud, women, sexual, men, theory, ragtime, man, culture, american, stages, october, male, living, development, woman, vienna, victorian, studies, problem, one, new, introduction, inferior, having, freedom, feminine, contributions, 1910, zenia, years, wish, visit, thought, society