ABSTRACT

Sexualities: Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspectives presents a broad selection of contemporary psychoanalytic thinking on sexuality from a wide range of psychoanalytic traditions.  Sexuality remains at the heart of much psychoanalytic theory and practice but it is a complex and controversial subject. Edited by Alessandra Lemma and Paul E. Lynch, this volume includes a range of international contributions that examine contemporary issues and trace common themes needed to understand any sexuality, including the basics of sexuality, and the myriad ways in which sexuality is lived.  

The clinical examples provided here demonstrate contemporary psychoanalytic techniques that uncover meanings that are both fresh and enlightening, and address heterosexuality, homosexuality, gender, and perversion from a psychoanalytic perspective. Divided into four parts, the book includes the following:

Historical context

Foundational concepts: Contemporary elaborations

Homosexuality

Perversion revisited

Throughout Sexualities: Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspectives the reader will find psychoanalytic wisdom that is transferrable to work with patients of all sexualities, and will see that the essentials of sexuality may be more similar than they are different for homo- and hetero-sexuality.  Psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as academics interested in the subjects of psychoanalysis, gender, sexuality, or homosexuality will find this book an invaluable resource.

Alessandra Lemma, PhD is Director of the Psychological Therapies Development Unit at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. She is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society and Visiting Professor in the Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London. She is a Consultant Adult Psychotherapist at the Portman Clinic where she specializes in working with transsexuals. She has published extensively on psychoanalysis, the body and trauma.

Paul E. Lynch, MD is on the faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, and the China American Psychoanalytic Alliance.  He teaches about psychoanalysis, gender, and sexuality, and has been a popular speaker on issues of homosexuality and psychoanalysis.   He is also a Clinical Instructor of Psychiatry at the Tufts University School of Medicine.

chapter |16 pages

Introduction

Let's talk about sex or . . . maybe not . . .

part I|24 pages

Historical context

chapter 1|22 pages

What happened to psychoanalysis in the wake of the sexual revolution?

A story about the durability of homophobia and the dream of love, 1950s–2010s

part II|82 pages

Foundational concepts

chapter 4|20 pages

Disrupting Oedipus

The legacy of the Sphinx

chapter 5|22 pages

No maps for uncharted lands

What does gender expression have to do with sexual orientation?

part III|52 pages

Homosexuality

chapter 8|19 pages

Objecting to the object

Encountering the internal parental couple relationship for lesbian and gay couples

part IV|60 pages

Perversion revisited

chapter 9|12 pages

Sexual aberrations

Do we still need the concept? If so, when and why? If not, why not?

chapter 10|16 pages

The prostitute as mirror

Distinguishing perverse and non-perverse use of prostitutes

chapter 12|16 pages

Working with problems of perversion