1st Edition

Wild Desires and Mistaken Identities Lesbianism and Psychoanalysis

By Noreen O'Connor, Joanna Ryan Copyright 1993
    316 Pages
    by Routledge

    316 Pages
    by Routledge

    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 surveyed, from Freud, Deutsch and Jung to Lacan and contemporary object-relations theorists. Questions on sexual identity, sexual desire and gender identity, of transference and countertransference, and also of institutional practices in relation to training, are all critically - and stimunlatingly - addressed.

    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

    Biography

    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).