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I Would Like To Thank Michelle Price For Her Enthusiastic Discussion of my paper, which captures the spirit in which I wrote it. My essay is an attempt to talk about the embodied gender of the analyst and the effect it has on our work—not just on our patients' perceptions and transferences but on the way we listen, speak, and translate experience. It is in fact based on the notion that, as a woman, I hear and process material differently than if I were a man. Elaborating this idea immediately places me in the dilemma of how to write about sexual difference (in the consulting room) as a woman—how to speak from a subjective position while being aware of its construction and shifting meanings—and still address the issue of difference as a meaningful variable in analytic work. Price works within this dilemma and to my mind raises three separate issues as potential points of discussion. I will attempt to address them sequentially.
First, as a postmodern scholar, Price questions the role of biology and anatomy in the conceptualization of difference, focusing on my use of women's capacity for maternity and its meaning as an essential distinction between the sexes. Although at first glance it may appear that I elevate the position of maternity for women, this is not so. I use it as a basic distinction between men and women not only because of the physical reality of it but also because of its many psychic significations. I am trying to elaborate the possible meanings of this position for women analysts in a treatment situation. I do not believe that our capacity for maternity endows us with the ability to mother, to be maternal, or encapsulates the essence of woman. It does, however, influence our experience and that of others on the basis of its meaning. It is an anatomical distinction with a host of meanings and therefore a powerful psychological signifier for both analyst and patient. In the context of the clinical case I presented, it provided a psychic and