Psychoanalytic feminism focuses on the inherent psychological need of men to oppress and subjugate women. Deep down within the human psyche lies men’s compulsion to oppress women, and women’s minimal resistance to subjugation. This pattern of oppression becomes integrated into society, which creates and sustains patriarchy. Application of psychoanalytic techniques to studying how gender is constructed crates a tool for changing socialization patterns at the early stages of a child's development.

 American psychologist Carol Gilligan studies gender order from a psychological perspective. In her book In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (1982) Gilligan criticized the theories of the stages of moral development of Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson, Jean Piaget, and Lawrence Kohlberg, as too much male-oriented. Gilligan, instead, believes that women's gender identity develops through personal relationships, while men's gender identity develops through separation and autonomy. This way of developing one's self and identity affects the differences in morals between women and men.

These differences are most pronounced in moments when there are moral dilemmas. Women develop ethics and morals focused on caring for others and maintaining personal relationships; while men develop ethics focused on justice and individual rights issues. Both ethical approaches are key to maintaining morality in society, as they form the basis for political and social change. Gilligan also believes that patriarchy, in addition to representing a hierarchical system, forces people to focus on heterosexual love relationships, and influences them to neglect other forms of human connection. She calls her approach to the relationship between gender identities and ethics "development of voice". She also studies topics of ethnicity and ethnic relations.

Belgian-French psychoanalyst and feminist theorist Luce Irigaray deals with the relationship between language and the female and male body, as well as masculinity and femininity in language. Irigaray believes that throughout the history of Western thought, females and femininity have been excluded from language, representation, and culture. Language is organized around the male subject and defined by its criteria. The exclusion of the female aspect from language is the basis for the creation of patriarchy and "phallocentric" social relations. Although she accepts the psychoanalytic perspective of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, Luce Irigaray criticizes their approach as phallocentric. Phallocentric thought defines male sexuality as primary, because the penis is visible, while female sexuality is defined as lack or deficit (of the penis). She wants to build psychoanalysis and philosophy that will make women and femininity visible. Irigaray bases femininity, in philosophy and psychoanalysis, on the female experience of sexuality and the female body, and especially focuses on the "two lips" experience, which is multiple. She sees writing and speaking from a woman's perspective and women's experience as a subversive activity, which has the potential to transform the dominant "male" culture.

 American sociologist and gender theorist Nancy Chodorow combines sociology, anthropology, and psychoanalysis in her approach to the study of gender and sexuality. In her book The Reproduction of Mothering (1978), she studies strategies created to maintain and strengthen existing social hierarchies. She states that gender roles and norms are not adopted by imitation or coercion, but are a consequence of the early relationship between a mother and a child (especially regarding attachment and separation). Both sexes identify with the mother after birth, but that relationship changes later. Likewise, mothers begin, over time, to treat children of different genders differently. Girls build their identity by maintaining a connection with their mothers, while boys build a sense of identity by separating from their mothers.

Boys build an identity by rejecting and suppressing the feminine side and by belittling femininity in women. Maintaining masculinity requires constant self-examination and struggle with oneself, which leads to its fragility. Femininity is more stable, but it involves the self-sabotage of women. Chodorow believes that there is a universal female self that transcends racial and class differences. Women's relationships within the family are relational institutions that include emotional and psychological interpersonal relationships, which serve to meet the needs of the domestic sphere. Women are defined, above all, through particular and affective relations in the family, while the definition of a man's gender role is based, first of all, on his role within the sphere of economic production.

In Psychoanalysis and Feminism (1974), Juliet Mitchell combines Althusser's view that ideology is relatively independent of economic relations with Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis. The view of the relative independence of ideology enables Mitchell to create a theory of the subordination of women, which is independent of the analysis of the role of women in capitalist production. She believes that the role of women in the economy was key for women's position while the whole society was based on kinship, however, in capitalism kinship ceased to be the basis of social and economic reproduction. The subordination of women in modern society is more maintained through ideology, and the ideology itself is reproduced on a subconscious level through the re-enactment of Oedipal drama between generations. That is why the struggle against patriarchy must take the form of a cultural revolution. Mitchell, unlike most feminists, was a supporter of psychoanalysis. She was a supporter of Freud's teaching and believed that he did not defend the symbolic order, but only described it.

Authors: Chodorow, Nancy; Gilligan, Carol; Irigaray, Luce; Mitchell, Juliet. Benjamin, Jessica; Kristeva, Julia.

Books:

Benjamin, J. The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination (1988);

Chodorow. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (1978);

     -     Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory (1989);

     -     Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities: Freud and Beyond (1994);

     -     The Power of Feelings: Personal Meaning in Psychoanalysis, Gender, and Culture (1999);

     -     Individualizing Gender and Sexuality (2012).

     -     The Psychoanalytic Ear and the Sociological Eye (2019);

Dinnerstein, D. The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise (1976);

Elliot, P. From Mastery to Analysis: Theories of Gender in Psychoanalytical Feminism (1991);

Flax, J. Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West (1989);

Flax, J. Disputed Subjects: Essays on Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Philosophy (1993);

Gilligan. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (1982);  

     -     Mapping the Moral Domain: A Contribution of Women’s Thinking to Psychological Theory and Education (1988);

     -     Making Connections: The Relational Worlds of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School (1990);

     -     Women, Girls, and Psychotherapy: Reframing Resistance (1991);

     -     The Birth of Pleasure (2002);

Irigaray. Speculum of the Other Woman (1985, in French 1974);

     -     This Sex Which Is Not One (1985, in French 1977);

     -     Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche (1991, in French 1980);

     -     Elemental Passions (1992, in French 1982);

     -     The Forgetting of Air: In Martin Heidegger (1999, in French 1983);

     -     An Ethics of Sexual Difference (1993, in French 1984);

     -     To Speak is Never Neutral (2002, in French 1985);

     -     Sexes and Genealogies (1993, in French 1987);

     -     Thinking the Difference: For a Peaceful Revolution (1993, in French 1989);

     -     Je, Tu, Nous: Towards a Culture of Difference (2007, in French 1990);

Kristeva, J. Tales of Love. (1987);

Mitchell. Psychoanalysis and Feminism (1974);

Weedon, C. Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory (1987).