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Gender and Sexuality
November 22, 2019 @ 1:45 pm - 3:15 pm
Adult Psychoanalytic Training (APT)
2019-20, 1st Trimester — Fridays, 1:45-3:15pm
John Cardinali, PsyD
Karen Weisbard, PsyD
View Whole Syllabus
November 22, 2019 — Homosexuality
[53 pages]
Psychoanalysis has had a difficult history with regard to the conceptualization and treatment of persons with same gender sexual object choice. Contemporary views of homosexuality emphasize the meanings and experience of desire rather than the psychopathological origins of homosexual desire. Consequently, we will consider some unique aspects of the pathway to and experience of same gender object choice. Elise operates from two primary assumptions: innate bisexuality and that the mother is the first love object for both girls and boys.  Elise’s ideas have implications for women who identify as lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual. In a clinically oriented paper, Phillips provides an example of a nuanced theory regarding some unique dynamics of gay male development.
Elise, D. (2002). The Primary Maternal Oedipal Situation and Female Homoerotic Desire. Psychoanal. Inq., 22(2):209-228.
Phillips, S.H. (2001). The Overstimulation of Everyday Life: I. New Aspects of Male Homosexuality. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 49(4):1235-1267.
Optional Reading
Rich, A. (1980) “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”, in Feminism and Sexuality (Jackson; Scott; Eds), 1996, pp130-141
Roughton, R. (2000). Sometimes a Desire is Just a Desire: Gay Men and Their Analysts. Gender and Psychoanalysis, 5(3):259-273.