Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1995

Dr. Chasseguet-Smirgel was a leading French psychoanalyst, a training analyst. She was Freud Professor at the University College of London and Professor of Psychopathology at the University of Lille. She was best known for her reworking of the Freudian theory of the ego ideal and its connection to primary narcissism, as well as her extension of this theory to a critique of utopian ideology and her theories on the relationship between art, creativity and perversion.

A leading French psychoanalyst, both as a theoretician and clinician, Dr. Chasseguet-Smirgel lectured around the world. Her very early book on the application of psychoanalytic theory to art was rapidly followed by the classic book edited by her on feminine sexuality. She was well known for her work on female development and gender identity, as well as her work on perversions as reflected in her books “The Ego Ideal” and “Creativity and Perversion.” One of her classic articles on femininity deals with the myth of male monism, as well as articles on the centrality of the anal period of development and the role of perversion by the crossing of gender, as well as generational, boundaries.