Marguerite Sechehaye and Renee: a feminist reading of two accounts of a treatment

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Abstract
In this paper I explore what it means to write as a woman by uncovering Marguerite Sechehaye's unclaimed contributions to psychoanalysis through a feminist reinterpretation of her writing. Analyzing two discrepant accounts of a treatment relationship, a first‐hand account written by Renee, a young woman who was Sechehaye's patient, and Sechehaye's own writing about this case, I interpret the shifting voices in these accounts and discover a method of “locating the feminine not‐said” [Showalter, 1985] in women's writing. This feminist understanding of Sechehaye's work involves entering women's stories, often informed and inflected by male perspectives, in order to uncover subtexts of resistance to and revision of a dominant view. I argue that the dilemma Sechehaye faced reflects a contradiction in the education of women: to learn a dominant discourse is necessary to gaining entry and voice within any of the professions, yet taking on a dominant discourse often means leaving one's knowledge as a woman largely unclaimed, obscuring a critical and original perspective.

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