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This book takes us on a journey beyond familiar views and theories. It opens the way to a creative thinking space where fluidity and openness challenge some fundamental psychoanalytic concepts and point to their links with social mores and prejudice.
Yet the authors gathered here share an approach that is faithful to psychoanalysis' original spirit of exploration. Their questioning stance credits the revolutionary views expressed in Freud's writings on sexuality, whilst also offering a critique of their limitations. The scope is widened to include a range of theories including French psychoanalysis, contemporary Jungian thought, and queer theory. Compelling questions are asked, in particular in relation to differing interpretations of the Oedipus complex and the deeply engrained view of gender as binary. The result is a shake-up that is all the more effective for being theoretically sound, genuinely self-reflective, and ultimately poignant.
The book is made up of chapters by different authors, including the editors, Leezah Hertzmann and Juliet Newbigin, both psychoanalytic psychotherapists. The final chapter is a first-hand account by a transgender patient.
There are three sections. Opening the first of these, “Sex and the consulting room”, Newbigin points to the way object relations theories have shifted attention away from sexuality and focused more on carer/infant attachment