Clinical Encounters in Sexuality: Psychoanalytic Practice and Queer Theory

by Noreen Giffney (Editor), Eve Watson (Editor)

Clinical Encounters in Sexuality makes an intervention into the fields of clinical psychoanalysis and sexuality studies, in an effort to think about a range of issues relating to sexuality from a clinical psychoanalytic perspective. The editors have chosen queer theory as an interlocutor for the clinical contributors, because it is at the forefront of theoretical considerations of sexuality, as well as being both reliant upon and suspicious of psychoanalysis as a clinical practice and discourse. The book brings together a number of psychoanalytic schools of thought and clinical approaches, which are sometimes at odds with one another and thus tend not to engage in dialogue about divisive theoretical concepts and matters of clinical technique. The volume also stages, for the first time, a sustained clinical psychoanalytic engagement with queer theory. The central questions we present to readers to think about are: What are the discourses of sexuality underpinning psychoanalysis, and how do they impact on clinical practice?

In what ways does sexuality get played out for, and between, the psychoanalytic practitioner and the patient?

How do social, cultural and historical attitudes towards sexuality impact on the transference and countertransference, consciously and unconsciously?

Why is sexuality so prone to reification?

TABLE OF CONTENTS //

Introduction: Clinical Encounters in Sexuality: Psychoanalytic Practice and Queer Theory, by Noreen Giffney

SECTION 1: QUEER THEORIES /

Chapter 1 [Identity]: Precarious Sexualities: Queer Challenges to Psychoanalytic and Social Identity Categorisation, by Alice Kuzniar - Chapter 2 [Desire]: Are We Missing Something? Queer Desire, by Lara Farina - Chapter 3 [Pleasure]: Jouissance: The Gash of Bliss, by Kathryn Bond Stockton - Chapter 4 [Perversion]: Perversion and the Problem of Fluidity and Fixity, by Lisa Downing - Chapter 5 [Ethics]: Out of Line, On Hold: D.W. Winnicott's Queer Sensibilities, by Michael D. Snediker - Chapter 6 [Discourse]: Discourse and the History of Sexuality, by Will Stockton

SECTION 2: PSYCHOANALYTIC RESPONSES /

Chapter 7: On Not Thinking Straight: Comments on a Conceptual Marriage, by R.D. Hinshelwood - Chapter 8: Queer as a New Shelter from Castration, by Abe Geldhof and Paul Verhaeghe - Chapter 9: The Redress of Psychoanalysis, by Ann Murphy - Chapter 10: Queer Directions from Lacan, by Ian Parker - Chapter 11: Queer Theory Meets Jung, by Claudette Kulkarni - Chapter 12: Queer Troubles for Psychoanalysis, by Carol Owens - Chapter 13: Clinique, by Aranye Fradenburg - Chapter 14: From Tragic Fall to Programmatic Blueprint: 'Behold this is Oedipus ...' by Olga Cox Cameron - Chapter 15: Enigmatic Sexuality, by Katrine Zeuthen and Judy Gammelgaard - Chapter 16: The Transforming Nexus: Psychoanalysis, Social Theory and Queer Childhood, by Ken Corbett - Chapter 17: Clinical Encounters: The Queer New Times, by Rob Weatherill - Chapter 18: Undoing Psychoanalysis: Towards a Clinical and Conceptual Metistopia, by Dany Nobus - Chapter 19: 'You make me feel like a natural woman' Thoughts on a Case of Transsexual Identity Formation and Queer Theory, by Ami Kaplan - Chapter 20: Sexual Difference: From Symptom to Sinthome, by Patricia Gherovici

SECTION 3: RESPONSES TO PSYCHOANALYTIC PRACTICES ENCOUNTERING QUEER THEORIES /

Chapter 21: A Plague on Both Your Houses, by Stephen Frosh - Chapter 22: Something Amiss, by Jacqueline Rose - Chapter 23: Taking Shelter from Queer, by Tim Dean - Chapter 24: Courageous Drawings of Vigilant Ambiguities, by Noreen O'Connor - Chapter 25: Understanding Homophobia, by Mark J. Blechner - Chapter 26: Transgender and Psychoanalysis, by Susan Stryker - Chapter 27: The Psychoanalysis that Dare Not Speak Its Name, Ona Nierenberg

ABOUT THE COVER / On the Not-Meanings of Karla Black's There Can Be No Arguments, by Medb Ruane

AFTERWORD, by Eve Watson

Genres: Psychoanalysis, Nonfiction, LGBT

494 pages, Paperback

Published March 7, 2017

Reviews

[leren_lezen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely amazing that this book exists. Not all essays are of equal quality - and my personal interest is not so much with the clinical side of psychoanalysis - yet some of them are more theory-laden and absolutely sublime. Also very funny to note that the majority of more conservative 'responses' written in this bundle have been written by white men, who rarely refer to other essays in their response, but simply spew out their own preconceived notions. A bit scary to think that most of them are also practicing psychoanalysts.

The essays of Owens, Gherovici, Dean and Nobus were fierce, full of fire and absolutely beautiful. As beautifully stated by Nobus:

"Instead of reducing the interactions between the various components of human sexuality to a series of predictable, mechanical, normal (average, ordinary) and pathological (eccentric, extraordinary) relationships, which is what many psychoanalysts have tended to do over the past century, it befalls upon psychoanalytic practitioners, theorists and scholars to appreciate these interactions in their irreducible unpredictability" (p. 349).

Let it be the problem with technologically mediated expressions of sexuality (such as sex robots) that they are often incredibly normal and average, and simply not pathological enough.