The Relational Use of Self and Space in Creation: Commentary on Paper by Frank Summers

In this discussion I address some of the ways in which psychoanalytic theory and technique have advanced, taking as my starting point Dr. Summers' chosen schools of thought. I then go on to elaborate what I see as a difference in our understanding of Philip Bromberg's and Donnel Stern's ideas about therapeutic action, suggesting that they actually contribute in bolstering Summers' argument.     

Book Reviews: The Mystery of Things,by Christopher Bollas,Routledge, 1999, 196 ps.

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Book Review: The Power of Feelings,by Nancy J. Chodorow,Yale University Press, 1999, 274 ps.

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Book Review: Hysteria,by Christopher Bollas,Routledge Press, 2000, 180 ps

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Does She Do or Does She Don't?: Reply to Commentary

This reply clarifies the ideas originally presented in “Beyond Milk and the Good Breast: Reconfiguring Psychoanalytic Dyads” (PD 9/5, 1999) in response to Steven Reisner's commentary. It faults Dr. Reisner's reading of Lacan and Kristeva, as well as his use of male-gendered metaphors to transform my clinical material into a different analytic treatment. I conclude that, by arriving at such differing conclusions regarding theory and clinical treatment, he inadvertently proves, and enacts, the basis of my argument: that the gender of the analyst is an important variable that affects psychoanalytic formulations, treatment, and outcome.     

Liminal Space,Sexuality, and the Language of #MeToo

#MeToo has advanced the way that we think and speak of sexual abuses of power by creating a powerful social platform in which victims can function as a group, symbolizing what as psychoanalysts we consider unthinkable, while also striking at the inherent paradox that sexuality poses – how to account for the vagaries of human sexuality and its transgressive nature while holding individual and collective abuses of power accountable? My essay addresses such questions by focusing on the way that language fails to hold and symbolize sexuality due to its affective excess and its driven and enigmatic qualities, and advances the idea that the sexual is metabolized in action with an other and not through words and language. Further, that the boundary between what is permissible and what is not is negotiated on both conscious and unconscious levels of knowing, which I refer to as the liminal area of sexuality. I develop these ideas within a post-Lacanian framework and suggest that psychoanalysis must interface with other disciplines in order to bring depth to our consideration of sexuality at its most transgressive as well as to help stretch the symbolic function of language.