Stand by Your Man Commentary on Paper by Velleda C. Ceccoli

My Father Was A Boxer, As Was His Father Before Him. I Was barred from the ring because I was a girl, and I became an analyst. This and other early experiences have influenced my professional interests, particularly regarding the subjects of aggression and desire in women. Velleda Ceccoli's essay and, most significantly, the analytic story within it, are an attempt to create an innovative way to think and speak about desire and aggression and about their coding in gender. In particular, Ceccoli presents a unique blend of European and American psychoanalytic and feminist thinking to discuss these matters. Such a discussion focuses on the interplay, inhabitation, and embodiment of gender in addition to maternal and paternal orders by men and women, analysts and analysands. This is a topic that interests me on multiple levels, for it addresses an issue that has both intrigued and pained me since I saw the look on my mother's face when I asked my father, on my fifth birthday, for a rifle. I was told girls play with dolls, not guns, to which I responded, “Not this girl. I want to be a cowboy too!” These early experiences contributed to my current interests in the subjects of preoedipal and oedipal maternal and phallic identifications, as well as gender fluidity and rigidity.

Ceccoli's essay (re)visits mothers and fathers, who they are, and what they potentially can provide for us and in us. She speaks to the importance of the paternal and the need for a father who can provide an important presence to his children. This elaborates Benjamin's (1988) important work that establishes and documents the need for