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In the past dozen years, interest in the study of narrative and in the process by which meaning is “created” through shared discourse has gradually filtered from the humanities and social sciences into the psychoanalytic world. In a provocative and highly original article, “Gender as a Theme in Self-Narratives,” Palombo examines the complex topics of gender and the acquisition of gender identity from the perspective of semiotic theory, and proposes an entirely different way of understanding these phenomena. He observes that there are significant conceptual problems that inhere in our application of either “mechanistic” or “organismic root metaphors” to a discussion of gender and, as an alternative, suggests the “narrative/contextual root metaphor.” He further proposes that we use both diachronic (or historical) and synchronic (or contemporary) viewpoints to understand how the subject/patient attaches particular meanings to “gender-marked phenomena,” and how such meanings are thematically organized within the subject's self-narratives.
“The Professional Identity of the Social Work-Psychoanalyst: Professional Activities” is the second paper in a series examining various aspects of professional identity formation in the social work-psychoanalyst. In it, Perlman endeavors to answer two central