Wild Desires and Mistaken Identities

Lesbianism and Psychoanalysis

Joanna Ryan author Noreen O'Connor author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd

Published:1st Dec '03

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

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Wild Desires and Mistaken Identities cover

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 lesbiansim. 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.

'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.'- Teresa de Laurentis, Journal of the History of Sexuality'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.'- Psychoanalytic Books'[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'A truly original venture...The clinical examples are invaluable in widening our understanding.'- Josephine Klein

ISBN: 9781855753303

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

316 pages