Revisiting Seize the Day: Feminist Critiques, Embodied Care, and the Gendered Foundations of Relationality

Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day offers a poignant exploration of relational disintegration and embodied despair. Yet, through the lens of feminist critiques of psychoanalysis, the novella reveals deeper structural biases that echo Freudian and Lacanian constructions of gender, relationality, and sexuality.

Wilhelm Adler’s struggles embody a crisis of care and relational grounding, one shaped by patriarchal and phallocentric frameworks that theorize women as lack and reduce care to a feminized, secondary role. This critique can also extend to Buddhism, whose focus on detachment and transcendence I have critiqued for its lack of an ontology of Mitsein (being-with) and care—gaps that may reflect its own foundational dualities and sexist assumptions about gender and relational roles.

Feminist critiques of psychoanalysis and the insights of Winnicott, Klein, and Heidegger provide a framework for reinterpreting Bellow’s novella. They challenge both the sexist underpinnings of Freudian theory and the cultural narratives that devalue care and relationality. In this context, Seize the Day becomes not only a critique of modernity but also a reflection of the broader cultural and philosophical failures to sustain embodied, relational care.

Freudian and Lacanian Constructions of Gender in Seize the Day

Freud’s psychoanalytic framework, centered on the Oedipus Complex, has long been critiqued for its phallocentric and patrocentric biases. The Oedipus Complex positions the father as the figure of authority and self-development while reducing the mother to an object of desire, whose significance wanes as the child submits to paternal law. Lacan extends this framework, theorizing "Woman" as lack, the Other to the male subject, defined by what she is not rather than what she is.

Bellow’s Seize the Day echoes these constructs. Wilhelm’s mother is conspicuously absent, and his father, Dr. Adler, looms large as a figure of judgment and cold rationality. Wilhelm’s disintegration is framed as a failure to achieve masculine independence and a regression to a feminized state of masochistic dependency. This dynamic reflects Freud’s and Lacan’s constructions of womanly lack and the notion of the (m)Other as a site of primordial longing and incompleteness.

The novella’s absence of healthy women further underscores its gendered framework. Wilhelm’s estranged wife is portrayed as manipulative and domineering, while no maternal figure provides grounding or care. Instead, Wilhelm’s relationships with men, particularly Dr. Adler and Dr. Tamkin, perpetuate cycles of judgment, exploitation, and abandonment. This lack of nurturing relationships aligns with the Freudian and Lacanian tendency to theorize relationality through conflict and negation, rather than mutual care and recognition.

Relationality and Embodied Care: Feminist Alternatives

Feminist psychoanalysis challenges these phallocentric constructs by reclaiming relationality and care as universal foundations of human experience, not confined to gendered stereotypes. Winnicott’s emphasis on embodiment and relationality, particularly through his concepts of the holding environment and transitional space, offers a model of care that transcends patriarchal binaries. For Winnicott, the early caregiver’s embodied presence fosters the child’s capacity for trust, play, and creativity, grounding the self in relational security. Wilhelm’s failure to find such grounding reflects the absence of this foundational care in his life, leaving him adrift in a world of fragmented relationships.

Melanie Klein’s theory of developmental positions deepens this critique. Klein posits that incomplete development traps individuals in the paranoid-schizoid position, where others are experienced as fragmented part-objects—wholly good or wholly bad—rather than as integrated, complex beings. Wilhelm’s relationships with his father, his wife, and Dr. Tamkin mirror this dynamic, as he idealizes or demonizes these figures without the capacity to engage with their complexity. The absence of relational care exacerbates Wilhelm’s inability to move to the depressive position, where ambiguity and mutual vulnerability become possible.

Heidegger’s Mitsein situates relationality as a fundamental aspect of human existence, emphasizing that being-with-others is not secondary to individuality but constitutive of it. Wilhelm’s existential despair can thus be read as a failure of Mitsein, where the absence of embodied, mutual care leaves him isolated and disintegrated. Feminist critiques of Freud and Lacan complement this existential framework by situating care and relationality at the heart of human flourishing.

Buddhism’s Relational Gaps: Gender and the Ontology of Care

Buddhism’s emphasis on detachment and transcendence offers a valuable counterpoint to Western psychoanalytic theories, yet it too has been critiqued for its lack of an ontology of Mitsein and care. While Buddhism’s principle of interdependence (pratītyasamutpāda) recognizes the interconnectedness of all phenomena, its framing often abstracts relationality into metaphysical or ethical terms, neglecting the embodied and relational dynamics emphasized by Winnicott, Klein, and Heidegger.

Moreover, Buddhism’s dualistic approach to gender and its often rigid sexual roles can reinforce the same patriarchal binaries found in Freudian theory. The emphasis on detachment as a path to liberation risks dismissing the foundational importance of embodied care and relational grounding. By focusing on transcendence, Buddhism may replicate the very dynamics that feminist critiques of psychoanalysis challenge, sidelining the body and relationality in favor of an abstract ideal.

In Seize the Day, these relational gaps are evident in Wilhelm’s disintegration. His longing for connection reflects a universal human need for care, yet the absence of nurturing relationships—whether maternal, paternal, or communal—leaves him fragmented and isolated. The novella’s gendered framework, which pathologizes dependency as feminized and idealizes independence as masculine, mirrors both the patriarchal biases of Freudian theory and the potential relational gaps in Buddhist thought.

Toward a Universal Framework of Care

Feminist critiques of psychoanalysis and relational theories like those of Winnicott, Klein, and Heidegger challenge the gendered binaries that constrain our understanding of care and relationality. They reclaim the maternal foundations of care as universal, transcending patriarchal constructs that reduce care to a feminized and secondary role. Wilhelm’s plight in Seize the Day reflects a failure not of masculinity but of relational grounding—a cultural and philosophical gap that devalues care and embodiment in favor of abstraction and autonomy.

Bellow’s novella, shaped by the relational and existential crises of its time, exposes the consequences of these gaps. Yet it also invites a broader critique of frameworks—whether Freudian, Lacanian, or Buddhist—that overlook the embodied and relational dimensions of care. By situating care within a universal ontology of Mitsein and relationality, we can move beyond the limits of patriarchal binaries and abstract detachment, recognizing care and connection as the foundation of human flourishing. In this light, Seize the Day becomes not only a critique of modernity but also a call to reimagine relationality and care beyond the confines of gendered and metaphysical dualities.