Mitchell, Juliet

   b. 1940

   Psychoanalyst

   Juliet Mitchell is a British psychoanalyst, who began publishing essays in the mid-1960s which fruitfully combined socialism and feminism. Her essay ‘The Longest Revolution’, published in New Left Review when she was only 26, used Marxist theory to explicate patriarchy and, together with her later ‘Women’s Liberation and the New Politics’, helped to shape later feminist analyses. Her seminal Psychoanalysis and Feminism (1974) turned away from Reich and Laing to Freudian approaches in order to reveal deep-seated and ideological assumptions that underpinned women’s oppression. Her work has been singularly important in discussions of the construction of femininity and in forging methodologies through which to subvert patriarchy. Her other books include Women’s Estate, Women: the longest Revolution and, with Jacqueline Rose, Feminine Sexuality.

   See also: feminist theory; Marxism

   PETER CHILDS