Wild Desires and Mistaken Identities: Lesbianism and Psychoanalysis

by Noreen O'Connor, Joanna Ryan

Overview

This groundbreaking book provides a challenging exploration of psychoanalytic ideas about lesbians and lesbianism. Based on the authors' clinical experience as psychoanalytic psychotherapists, it offers a new and thoughtful framework that does not inevitably pathologise or universalise all lesbianism. A wide range of psychoanalytic ideas are sur

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367329792
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/29/2019
Pages:	316
Product dimensions:	5.81(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Noreen O'Connor is a qualified analyst practising in North London for over twenty-five years. She has a Ph.D in Contemporary European Philosophy (NUI, Cork). As a member of training committees for psychoanalytic trainings for eleven years she taught and supervised trainees alongside her supervision of qualified analysts. She has lectured on philosophy courses in universities and publicly. She is co-author (with Joanna Ryan) of 'Wild Desires and Mistaken Identities: Lesbianism and Psychoanalysis' (2003).

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION 1. FREUD: Disappointment and Repudiation2 . THE MASCULINE WOMAN: Identification and Rivalry with the Father 3. THE CHILD AND THS MOTHER: Deutsch and the Maternal/Erotic 4. KLEIN: The Phantasy that Anatomy is Destiny 5. SPOILING THE PERVERSE GRATIFICATION: Narcissism and Metapsychology 6. TRUTH and REALITY: McDougall and Gender Identity 7. PROMISES AND CONTRADICTIONS: Lacan and Language, Irigaray and Kristeva 8. JUNG: The Waters and the Wild 9. EROTICISM AND COUNTERTRANSFERENCE 10. DIFFERENT VOICES? Sources of Dissent and Dialogue 11 . IDENTITIES: Mistaken , Assumed, Revealed or Concealed? POSTSCRIPT Notes Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

Based on the authors' clinical experience as psychoanalytic psychotherapists, this reconsideration of lesbian lives and experiences offers a new framework that does not inevitably pathologize all lesbianism, but instead argues for the development of a psychotherapeutic theory and practice open to the complexities of individual life histories, relationships, and identities. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Offers the first critical, systematic, and comprehensive survey of psychoanalytic writings on female homosexuality available in English.... Remarkable not only for being the first such survey to appear in print, and for its sustained attention to both psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice, but especially for its effort to work through Freudian psychoanalysis from a lesbian perspective, questioning and yet retaining both categories––psychoanalysis and lesbianism––in tension with each other.... Immensely valuable.

Journal of the History of Sexuality - Teresa de Laurentis

[This] exhaustive critical review of psychoanalytic theories about female homosexuality is a necessary reference tool for analytic therapists who want to understand the history and development of psychoanalytic thinking on the subject.

Clinical Social Work Journal

Ranks among the best of recent psychoanalytic work on same-sex object choice.... Should prove of great interest to those who are interested primarily in lesbianism and to those who are concerned with the more general issues of the contours and limitations of psychoanalytic theory and discourse.

Psychoanalytic Books

"Offers the first critical, systematic, and comprehensive survey of psychoanalytic writings on female homosexuality available in English... Remarkable not only for being the first such survey to appear in print, and for its sustained attention to both psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice, but especially for its effort to work through both Freudian psychoanalysis from a lesbian perspective, questioning and yet retaining both categories - psychoanalysis and lesbianism - in tension with each other.... Immensely valuable."

"Ranks among the best of recent psychoanalytic work on same-sex object choice... Should prove of great interest to those who are interested primarily in lesbianism and to those who are more concerned with the more general issues of the contours and limitations of psychoanalytic theory and discourse."

From the Publisher