Psychoanalysis and Gender
Psychoanalysis and Gender
Dr. Rivka Warshawsky
Freud always emphasized that "we must keep psychoanalysis separate from biology …. anatomy and physiology". However, Freud also thought that one of the major cornerstones of psychic health was a human subject's capacity to accept the basic fact of sexual difference, her ability to broach the fundamental question of the Freudian and the Lacanian hysteric: "am I male or female?" and to choose and assume one or the other of the two sexes. This seemingly binary view of human sexuality that is attributed to Freud, has been radically challenged today by the more fluid, multidimensional notion of gender, a term whose use is constantly growing and expanding in present common discourse When we recall the original quite limited meaning of the word "gender" as a grammatical property of different nouns in certain languages (masculine, feminine or neuter), we realize, all at once, how rapidly and extensively this signifier has been developed by feminist and queer theorists and has now become attached to multiple personal, social and political attributes of any human individual, but is not applied to any other living creatures.
In light of the above, the question "what sex am I, and what does that mean for my life?" may appear more as a grave, existential, Sphinx-like riddle, while the chameleon nature of "gender" identity could seem to partake more of the unbearable lightness of being. Both life questions however, one too closed and one too open, may often lead to anguish and uncertainty for the human subject.
Must we then also choose between thinking in terms of sexuality or of gender, or can we hold on to both, without falling into either a repressive discourse or a too easy way out? In the course we will open up and discuss both concepts and their advantages and limitations, and their gravitas for how our lives will look, we will explore the idea of sexual choice in Freudian and Lacanian clinical practice, and also the post-modern ideas of gender identity and the radical personal trajectories of gender development. For our investigations we will try to identify certain focal points in the history of gender development, such as feminist discourse, the Gay Revolution, and queer theory and discuss how their personal and political struggles influenced psychoanalytic thinking and our entire world.
Grading: Participation, Short Class Presentations, Final Paper (6 pages)
Some of the course reading and viewing list:
1. Freud, S., 1925, Some psychic consequences of the anatomical differences between the sexes, SE, XIX: 241-258. (PEP Archive)
2. Freud, S., 1920, Psychogenesis of a case of homosexuality in a woman, SE, XVIII: 145-172. (PEP Archive)
3. Freud, S., 1909, Analysis of a phobia in a five-year-old boy, SE, X: skim read 1-100. (PEP Archive)
4. Harris, A., 1991, Gender as contradiction, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 1:197-224. (PEP Archive) (Also in Dimen, M, & Goldner, V., (eds.), Gender in Psychoanalytic Space, New York: Other Press: Pp. 91-105.)
5. Chodorow, N., 2005, Gender in the modern-postmodern and classical-relational divide: Untangling history and epistemology, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 53(4): Pp.1097-1118. (PEP Archive)
6. Goldner, V., 2011, Trans: Gender in Free Fall, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Vol.21/2: Transgender Subjectivities: Theories and Practices,Pp. 159 - 171
7. Flax, J. (1990). "Transitional Thinking: Psychoanalytic, Feminist, and Postmodernist Theories". In Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism & Postmodernism in the Contemporary West. CA: University of California Press. Pp. 14-43
8. Butler, J., 2004, Doing justice to someone, in Butler, J. Undoing Gender, New York: Routledge: 57-74.
9. Benjamin, J., 2004, Revisiting the riddle of sex: An intersubjective view of masculinity and femininity, in, (ed.) Matthis, I., Dialogues on Sexuality, Gender, and Psychoanalysis, London: Karnac: read section 160-169.
- Lynn S. Chancer and Beverly Xaviera Watkins, 2006, Gender, Race, and Class: An Overview. Blackwell, MA, Oxford and Victoria.
- Verhaeghe, P., 2005, "Phallacies of binary reasoning: drive beyond gender". In Dialogues On Sexuality, Gender, And Psychoanalysis. Edited: Irene Matthis, Karnac, London, Pp. 53
Online lectures. Lacan Dot Com videos
Slavoj Zizek, Lacan and sexual difference. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpZXRaZtL-g
Marie-Helene Brousse, Beyond Prince Charming and Pink Swords, http://www.lacan.com/thevideos/e2011.html
Art books.
Nurith Yarden, Family Meals. Treating an experience of incestuous sexual abuse through an ironic photographic documentation
Films (not final)
Fried Green Tomatoes.
