Genders & Sexualities

Fourth Year Adult Psychoanalytic Training (APT)
2022-23, 3rd Trimester — Fridays, 1:45-3:15pm
Danny Gellersen, LICSW FIPA

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Introduction

This class is designed with 2 goals in mind: 

1. We will primarily narrow the class in the work of Jean Laplanche, and several of the contemporary writers he has inspired.  My hope is that this will feel grounding, as there is an ocean of theoretical conceptualizations on this topic one can and will examine across a psychoanalytic career.  My preference is to focus on disrupting our personal affective/identificatory experience rather than a disruption of the intellectual—though I certainly hope for an “all of the above” to unfold. 
2. We will expand the notion of where we look to observe and analyze the gender/sexual in day-to-day living.  Art will be given some preference in this conversation, but I hope you’ll chime in with your own observations.  

I have tried to select readings that serve internal disruption and potential overwhelm. The papers we are reading may not always appear to reflect the patients you are feeling stuck with, or your own sexual/gender identities. Our work will be to find application in the human condition across difference, including your own personal reactions to the material.  Everyone is encouraged to bring material that most interests them in their work.  It need not apply directly to the topic of any given paper we are reading.  

There are two texts I am asking you to purchase, I do not take this request lightly—I completely understand how expensive training is.  I feel strongly that both texts are excellent additions to a Psychoanalytic library and will be books you can return to overtime to think through difficult case material.  The texts are: 

• Avgi Saketopoulou’s “Sexuality Beyond Consent”
• Jean Laplanche’s “Freud and the Sexual” 

We are fortunate to be concluding during PRIDE month, so on either May 25th or May 27th (Thursday or Saturday TBD by class) at our midpoint I’d like to take the class to attend a drag show.  Normally this show runs on Fridays, and I had hoped to be able to take you straight away from class, but scheduling issues with the venue changed the date of the show during May this year. I hope this will be both a much-needed celebration for your hard work over the year, and an opportunity to think about the material we are experiencing in an interesting way.  

Suggested assignment:  For those of you who have read Bollas, he has an interesting concept regarding the innate creativity of the unconscious he calls this “Psychic Genera.” To my understanding, this sits in tension with Trauma states, which can power-down psychic genera.    Inspired by Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way,” I invite everyone to write 3 pages of pure free association (aka “pages”), upon waking up each morning.  I will be joining the class in this exercise.  Write without discrimination, even if you repeat yourself or render yourself nonsensical.  Do not edit, review your writings, and please wait to read over what you’ve wrote until towards the end of the course.  The point of this exercise will be to put ourselves in touch with our own psychic genera and track its relationship to the work we are doing in the consulting room and in class.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this course, candidates will be able to:

1. Be able to compare and contrast Laplanche’s Sexual theory from Freud’s 3 essays leading to application of the theories in both practice application, and reading of contemporary writing on sexuality within Relational Psychoanalysis. Also will develop a familiarity with Judith Butler’s work with gender theory.
2. Develop a deeper integration of art, social and race theories in studying the conceptualizations of sexuality and the unconscious.
3. Mentalize and make application of “Overwhelm” as described by Avgi Saketopoulou’s work in service to deepening more difficult case work.

April 28, 2023 — Freud’s 3 Essays on Sexuality discussed

[28 pages]

Freud asserted that psychosexual development is fundamental to our shaping of thoughts, feelings and behaviors.  Perhaps most famously in this paper, he introduces infantile sexuality. We will be learning about Freud through a paper by Dominique Scarfone, a Laplanche scholar.  A 2nd paper by Galit Atlas introduces us to the Relational school’s perspectives on Sexuality and also makes reference to Laplanche.

Scarfone, D. (2014) The Three Essays and the Meaning of the Infantile Sexual in Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 83:327-344

Atlas, G. (2018) Has Sexuality Anything to Do with Relationality?, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 28:330-339.

Optional Reading

Freud, S. (1905) Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud 7:123-246