Dragging Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis was, and unfortunately somewhat remains, a field for the wealthy, which means that interactions with so-called lowbrow forms of art and entertainment are somehow outside the scope of what analysts have shown interest in. In a city as segregated by financial class as New York, the wealthy's interactions with the financially disenfranchised have become even fewer and far between, other than in the roles of server and served. It often seems like we're living in two different worlds with no bridge between them. To what extent is psychoanalysis' classism and presumed high-mindedness something that remains under-examined? Does the psychoanalytic field have disdain for supposedly lowbrow interests, things like video games, sports, and various underground youth subcultures?

I don't think it's melodramatic to say that the field of psychoanalysis remains guilty for its historically hideous treatment of LGBTQ+ and gender-nonconforming individuals—a history which this event is trying to reconcile with. It's no secret that until frighteningly recently, homosexuality and transgender identity were thought of as mental disorders, and the psychoanalytic “debate” about the pathological nature of non-heterosexual identity remains frighteningly echoed alive today. Outdated and patently bigoted ideas about trans people and queer people remain discussed and proliferated at psychoanalytic institutes, and I could tell you some blood-curdling stories about the things people in this field remain unafraid to speak: insisting that “transgenderism” is a form of hysteria or psychosis, linking borderline pathology to non-normative gender presentation, suggestions that the goal of treatments of gay men should be to make them more masculine, or even the idea that transgender people simply don't exist. These beliefs still have sway in our circles.

I think a lot of these misguided ideas about queer people, queer identity, and queer art are mostly born of ignoran