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Studies in Gender and Sexuality

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The Fourth Wave of Feminism:

Psychoanalytic Perspectives Introductory
Remarks
a
Harriet Kimble Wrye Ph.D., ABPP, FIPA
a
Los Angeles Institute & Society for Psychoanalytic Studies
(LAISPS) ,
Published online: 02 Oct 2009.

To cite this article: Harriet Kimble Wrye Ph.D., ABPP, FIPA (2009) The Fourth Wave of Feminism:
Psychoanalytic Perspectives Introductory Remarks, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 10:4, 185-189,
DOI: 10.1080/15240650903227999

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 Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 10: 185–189, 2009
Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1524-0657 print=1940-9206 online
DOI: 10.1080/15240650903227999

The Fourth Wave of Feminism: Psychoanalytic

Perspectives Introductory Remarks

Harriet Kimble Wrye, Ph.D., ABPP, FIPA

Downloaded by [University of Saskatchewan Library] at 06:17 09 January 2015

Los Angeles Institute & Society for Psychoanalytic Studies (LAISPS)

This introductory paper traces a century of 4 waves of feminism from a psychoanalytic perspective.
The first phase focused on political change as the suffragette movement was undertaken at the turn
of the 20th century by feminist activists who lobbied successfully for women’s right to vote; the sec-
ond phase, a broad sociopolitical-cultural movement located in the 1960s and 1970s, focused on
consciousness-raising around gender issues, women’s liberation (Betty Friedan, Kate Millet, Simone
de Beauvoir, Bela Abzug, Gloria Steinem), and job and economic parity. With sexual freedom and
job opportunities more established for women, the third phase evolved in the 1980s and 1990s,
emphasizing women exploring gender pluralities; ‘‘having it all’’; and juggling career, sex, and
motherhood. The fourth wave moved into the 21st century as women turned toward spiritual con-
cerns about the planet and all its beings, putting themselves in the service of the world, ecology,
and the downtrodden.

American feminism is usually periodized by three waves. The First Wave focused on political
change, ignited the suffragettes’ successful lobby for women’s right to vote, championed the
abolition of slavery, and broadly supported women’s education. The Second Wave critiqued
rigid sex roles; claimed economic parity; validated women’s desire for sexual pleasure; and
widened feminism’s scope to take in critical differences among women, from sexuality to class
to race and ethnicity. The Third Wave, finally, has emphasized the body as personal expression
(e.g., Riot grrrl, material girls, tattoos and piercings), sex positivity, and subject positionality,
incorporating theories of postcoloniality, queer sexuality, transgenderism and transsexuality,
and disability activism.
There has now arrived, I propose, a Fourth Wave, as exemplified by this symposium.1
Although inclusive of the preceding waves, the Fourth Wave distinguishes itself by stressing
spirituality and community in particular (Harris, 2001). This emphasis is manifest in the work
of four women Nobel Prize winners: Rigoberta Menchu Tum (who campaigned for human
rights, especially for indigenous Guatemalans), Jody Williams (who has fought to ban and
clear antipersonnel mines), Shirin Ebadi (who has defied theocratic authorities by working

1
The papers in this symposium formed a colloquium convened as the Invited Panel sponsored by Section III
(Women, Gender, and Psychoanalysis), Division 39 (Psychoanalysis), American Psychological Association, April
2006, Philadelphia, PA.
Correspondence should be sent to Harriet Kimble Wrye, Ph.D., ABPP, FIPA, 781 Baler Road, Aptos, CA 95003.
E-mail: harrietwrye@mac.com
 186 WRYE

aboveground for democracy and human rights in Iran), and Wangari Maathai (who has struggled
to reforest a greenbelt through community development and volunteerism in Kenya). Likewise
embodying the Fourth Wave’s spirit are the panelists—Jane Fonda, Hedda Bolgar, and Sue A.
Shapiro—whose papers follow. Each has unstintingly devoted her energy, resources, and time to
healing and education; their several approaches are shaped by their idiosyncratic personal
experiences. By speaking about some of our own evolution as Fourth Wave feminists, we in
this symposium hope to add to the patchwork quilt that is psychoanalytic feminism’s collective
project.
My own ‘‘herstory’’ was most profoundly shaped by the First and Second Waves and has
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come to fruition with the Fourth Wave. Educated at Vassar College for Women, founded in
1861 as part of the First Wave revolution in women’s education, I graduated a century later,
in 1962, at a time when women’s professional career options were still primarily limited to
teaching, nursing, and flight attending. I chose teaching high school English, one conventional
option for women. Participation in Second Wave consciousness-raising groups in the early
1970 s inspired me to pursue a doctorate in clinical psychology and psychoanalytic training, only
to find the field of psychoanalysis still tightly controlled by male medical analysts. As an
evolving feminist activist, I identified with the mission to open our field to women and non-
medical practitioners and enjoyed the opportunity to be one of the plaintiffs in the successful
1985 lawsuit against restraint of trade by the American Psychoanalytic Association.
During most of my early professional life, I felt like Ginger Rogers, who said she did
‘‘everything he [Fred Astaire] did except backwards and in high heels’’ (http://www.
reelclassics.com/Actresses/Ginger/ginger-article2.htm, retrieved September 24, 2008): as a
new mother, graduate student, and psychoanalytic candidate, I juggled the tasks of tending
my marriage, mothering my children, undergoing and training in psychoanalysis, developing
a practice, and raising my feminist consciousness. My generation of women struggled to ‘‘do
it all.’’ We fought to work our way out of the depressive states generated by sexism, psychosex-
ual repression, economic suppression, silencing, and pressures to conform. We made our marks
professionally, broke gender barriers, revised analytic theory from a feminist perspective, shook
up the roles in our relationships, and experienced our own liberation. At the same time, we and
our families also suffered deeply from the upheavals, daily compromises, and sacrifices
instigated by the magnitude of the feminist project.
Through it all, we watched peers and gifted Second Wave women in the performing arts like
Jane Fonda and Joan Baez taking risks and struggling with some of the same issues but in the
public spotlight, as revealed in their autobiographies (Baez, 1987; Fonda, 2005). We were
guided and inspired by our female mentors and teachers, in my case my amazing Dr. Hedda
Bolgar. Hedda, fleeing Nazi Europe, broke the glass ceiling many times in her education as a
psychologist at the University of Chicago and during her training at the Chicago Psychoanalytic
Institute. Her struggles prepared her for single-handedly founding the Wright Institute Los
Angeles, where I was blessed to be able to study and take my doctorate and receive her
supervision in my psychoanalytic training.
So many of us look back and, recognizing the pressures under which we struggled, wonder
how we did what we did and at what price. Many female psychoanalytic colleagues began to
recognize that ‘‘doing it all’’ in a man’s world was burning us out, costing too much,
compromising our nurturing side, diminishing our spirituality. Although our consciousness
has been raised yet again by our Third Wave younger sisters’ crucial extension of feminist ideals
 THE FOURTH WAVE OF FEMINISM 187

to incorporate the many gender pluralities and to emphasize the inclusion of women of color, we
also watched in dismay as high ideals of the Second Wave devolved for some into the Third
Wave’s material girls looking for Sex in the City. Many of us have shifted our priorities from
professional achievement and SuperMom- or Super Grandmom-ism and are turning our gaze
inward to nourish our thirsty spirits and outward to the concerns of our troubled planet. I found
my second home in socially engaged Buddhist practice with exiled Vietnamese Zen master
Thich Nhat Hanh, by whom I was ordained in 2007 as a lay member of the Order of Interbeing.
Ram Dass (Lee, 2003) speaks of how many seekers of fulfillment have turned to spirituality
and Eastern philosophy in contrast to the pursuit of narcissistic self-enhancement:
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Spiritual practices help us move from identifying with the ego to identifying with the soul. Old age
does that for you too. It spiritualizes people naturally. Then for those who don’t get it, death does it
for them. In old age, when people lose their memories, it can sometimes be a wonderful thing.
It makes them live in the present.

The Fourth Wave of feminism brings us into the 21st century as women who focus our atten-
tion on a question that earlier waves may have addressed but not to the extent now required:
the limits of materialism; the need to turn from concerns about ‘‘me’’ to concern for the planet
and all its beings; and the sense that, for us in the Fourth Wave, what is most important is to
put ourselves in the service of the world. This shift in focus was perhaps most striking at the
Women & Power conference sponsored by the Omega Institute and V-Day in New York City
(September 11–13, 2004). The 3,000 participants heard celebrity feminists like Jane Fonda,
Sally Field, and Gloria Steinem note the change. Playwright Eve Ensler, founder of the
V-Day Movement to stop global violence against women and girls, addressed the need to
change the face of power. Instead of seeing power in terms of ‘‘country over country, tribe
against tribe,’’ the new paradigm has to be about power ‘‘in the service of’’—collaboration,
not conquest; support, not competition (http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0608–
03.htm, retrieved September 24, 2008).
At a time when the United States is viewed with increasing distrust by other countries, who
can tell what effect feminism’s shift toward cultivating a spiritually informed activism might
have on an international level? No less important is the depth that comes from quiet reflection
closer to home. As Flinders (1990) notes, a serious spiritual life with a strong inward dimension
is crucial in itself, releasing the energy that can turn visionary feminist theory into action (http://
www.3rdwwwave.com/reviews/interview.html, retrieved September 24, 2008). From this
perspective it is my privilege to introduce our three panelists and discussant.
Jane Fonda is perhaps best known for her work in films and, secondarily, her antiwar activism
during the Vietnam War. Less well known is her current social activism. She now focuses her
resources and energy on feminist activism and social responsibility at the Jane Fonda Foundation
in Georgia. A member of the Women and Foreign Policy Advisory Committee of the Council on
Foreign Relations and other major organizations, she spearheaded the Laurel Springs Children’s
Camp. This camp ran for 15 years at her ranch in Santa Barbara, California, using performing
arts to build self-esteem and cooperation among children of all races and socioeconomic back-
grounds. Ms. Fonda traveled to Nigeria in 2000 and produced a film in collaboration with the
International Women’s Health Coalition entitled Generation 2000: Changing Girls’ Realities.
In ‘‘Gender and Destiny,’’ she challenges and reframes the very concept of the Four Waves
of Feminism, lets us in on the courageous self-scrutiny that also marks her recent memoir
 188 WRYE

(2005), and generously offers her approbation of the power of dynamic psychotherapy in her
own life and emotional healing.
Hedda Bolgar is a distinguished practicing analyst who celebrates her 100th birthday in 2009.
She has lived through most of this century of feminism, giving her the vantage point to offer
‘‘A Century of Essential Feminism.’’ She herself founded two prestigious graduate schools in
psychology: the California School for Professional Psychology and the Wright Institute Los
Angeles. She has also consulted in the development of the Fielding Institute, the Psychoanalytic
Institute of Northern California, and The Los Angeles Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies. In this
capacity, she has trained countless psychoanalysts and spoken widely on issues regarding women
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and social trauma, organizing in 2005 a five-institute-sponsored conference on the ‘‘Uprooted

Mind: Living with Terror and Uncertainty.’’ She is currently an active Training and Supervising
Psychoanalyst, Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies (LAISPS).
Sue A. Shapiro is Supervisor, Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis,
New York University; Faculty, Stephen A. Mitchell Center for Relational Studies; and Super-
visor, Ph.D. Program in Clinical Psychology, City University of New York (CUNY). She wrote
Contemporary Theories of Schizophrenia (1981) as well as many articles. Cofounder of The
Contemplative Studies Project, Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis,
New York University (NYU), she increasingly finds herself incorporating Buddhist meditation
in her psychoanalytic clinical practice. Beginning in 1985, her interest in social change led her to
address familial sexual and physical abuse; testify as an expert witness before state congressional
hearings; and found the Trauma Center, Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis. In her ‘‘Why
War? Why not Peace? Santideva’s Answer to Einstein’s Famous Question to Freud,’’ Shapiro
critiques the social blinders of early psychoanalytic thinking. In contrast, as she tells us, her
response to the events of 9=11 on her practice in New York City led eventually to her participa-
tion in disaster relief efforts with tsunami victims in 2005 in the South Pacific, for which she
developed a clinically informed training manual for Making Waves, a project to return trauma-
tized Thai people to their seaside homes.
Our discussant, Diana Diamond, blends a number of professional roles as psychoanalytic
clinician, theoretician, researcher, and political activist. She is Professor, Ph.D. Program in
Clinical Psychology, CUNY (which emphasizes in-depth, psychoanalytically oriented training
with a commitment to multicultural education and a dedication to training minority students).
She is also Adjunct Professor, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Medical College, Cornell
University, where she is part of the Personality Disorders Institute, which sponsors investiga-
tions in the theory, research, and treatment of severe personality disorders. She has written a
number of articles, book chapters, and monographs on the topics of women’s issues, film and
psychoanalysis, attachment theory and research, and personality disorders. In private practice,
she is a candidate at the Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, NYU.
She is also currently working on a film project based on anthropological and photographic
investigations of an Israeli kibbutz and an Arab village.

REFERENCES

Baez, J. (1987). And A Voice to Sing: A Memoir by Joan Baez. New York: Summit Books (Simon & Schuster).
Flinders, C. L. (1990). An interview with Carol Lee Flinders in The Third Wave: Feminism for the New Millennium.
Retrieved September 24, 2008, from http://www.3rdwwwave.com/reviews/interview.html
 THE FOURTH WAVE OF FEMINISM 189

Fonda, J. (2005). My Life So Far. New York: Random House.

Harris, A. (2001). www.monash.edu.au/pubs/monmag/issues7-2001/girlmay2007.html. Retrieved September 24, 2008.
Lee, V. (2003). Slower mind, deeper wisdom. Interview with Ram Dass in Conscious Choice. www.consciouschoice.
com/2003=cc1610=ramdass1610.html. Retrieved September 24, 2008.
Shapiro, S. A. (1981). Contemporary Theories of Schizophrenia. New York: McGraw-Hill.

AUTHOR BIO

Harriet Kimble Wrye, Ph.D., ABPP, FIPA, is Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at
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Los Angeles Institute & Society for Psychoanalytic Studies (LAISPS); cofounder of Division
39 Section III Gender and Psychoanalysis, West Coast; and coauthor of The Narration of
Desire (Analytic Press, 1994) and numerous articles on gender and transference.