On the Desymbolization of Psychoanalytic Metaphors of Gender: Commentary on Velleda C. Ceccoli's “Beyond Milk and the Good Breast: Reconfiguring the Maternal Function in Psychoanalytic Dyads”*

Ceccoli (1999a) argues that, because of their capacity for maternity, women analysts are capable of certain interventions that men are not. Taking issue with such assertions, this commentary argues that although the gendered metaphors of psychoanalytic intervention have changed usefully since Freud's paternalistic imagery, in favor of the maternal language of Klein and Winnicott, these metaphors are regressive if their value as symbolism is undermined. Ceccoli's case study is revisited and reevaluated to posit an alternative view: that theory is sometimes employed to fill gaps that might be more productively tolerated in the service of the analysis. It is argued that Ceccoli's use of Kristevan theory to support an essentialist position that translocates the paternal phallus into the female analysts' “gendered, bodily specificity … on the basis of our capacity for maternity” (p. 695) is an example of such a use of theory.

The analyst situates himself on a ridge where, on the one hand, the ‘maternal’ position—gratifying needs, ‘holding’ (Winnicott)

—and on the other the ‘paternal’ position—the differentiation, distance and prohibition that produces both meaning and absurdity—are intermingled and severed, infinitely and without end [Kristeva, 1983, p. 246].