Queering Psychoanalysis

In a footnote in his book Reverie and Interpretation, Thomas Ogden (1997) reports a personal communication from James Grotstein, who was analyzed by Bion: “Grotstein responded to one of Bion's interpretations by saying, ‘I understand.’ Bion paused and then calmly said, ‘Please try not to understand. If you must, superstand, circumstand, parastand, but please try not to understand” (p. 208). As analysts, we are constantly oscillating between positions of understanding our patients and being confused. To the extent that we become comfortable in our understanding, we risk also becoming closed to new ideas, new ways of seeing and understanding. Although I believe maintaining an open mind without sacrificing understanding is a challenge we all face in every aspect of the analytic encounter, and one that has received increased attention throughout all spheres of psychoanalytic discourse, the realm of sexuality has presented our profession with some of its greatest challenges. Queer theory, a multidisciplinary approach to cultural studies that first emerged within the academy in the early 1990s, has also articulated this paradox in regard to gender and sexual identity. For example, in the process of deconstructing labels such as “homosexual” and “heterosexual,” William Turner (2000), a literary critic who has traced the history of queer theory, draws attention to the fact that “cultural categories simultaneously constrain and enable subjectivity” (p. 110). It is in the overlapping arenas of gender, sexuality, identity, and the tendency to categorize that “queer theory” has much to offer psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis encompasses theories of human development, mental functioning, and psychotherapy. The development of a “sense of self” and individual “identity” is part of all psychoanalytic theories. Although there are some basic components common to all schools of psychoanalysis, each has its own unique perspective on development and treatment. Within a contemporary ego psyc