nts when he delineated from his ideas of women and tried to identify with them as analogues. Misunderstanding was replaced by assimilation, which led to progress. To Freud’s surprise, the characteristics that he had in common with his female patients were those of stubbornness, arrogance, and insight—qualities that are characteristically male.Freud’s desire to cure his patients reflects that his preconceived notions of women are bereft of an ability to predict their actions. By asking, “What does a woman want?” (Felman, 73), Freud indicates that merely adopting societal assumptions about women’s goals may be insufficient. Women are baffling to Freud because, unlike men, there is a large disparity between women’s desires and the roles forced upon them by society. Shoshana Felman supports this claim by investigating the dream of Irma’s injection, in which Irma is examined by men: “The riddle of the woman--Irma’s body, or Irma’s riddle--is thus submitted to an exclusively male examination… Here again the question of femininity becomes a question of male knowledge… The riddle, it would seem ‘does not apply’ to Irma because she is herself the riddle” (82). The all male examination denotes that men, not women, determine how women should behave and appear, implying that Freud is unconsciously comprehending the patriarchal nature of society. Freud further surmises that if women were content with their place in society, there would not be so many female hysterics. The fact that women, and not men, were forced into undesirable societal roles is the reason why the majority of Freud’s hysterical patients were female. Hysteria is a means of escaping one’s societal constraints. Therefore, when Freud asks, “what does a woman want?” he does not think that the answer is to be a wife and mother who is protected by her dominan...
