On March 14-15, The American hosted a San Francisco conference and workshop, How Men and Women Love, as a part of its Seminars for Clinicians series With over 650 attending, the conference was unusually successful in bringing the rich and varied perspectives of psychoanalysis to members of the mental health community at large.
A committee of the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, chaired by Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, prepared for the conference in a spirit of enthusiasm and cooperation. Scott Dowling, who served as chair for the Seminar, provided support and encouragement throughout the planning process. Included on the committee were members of the institute from all levels of experience and a variety of professional backgrounds. Candidates on the committee were given a voice equal to that of Institute members and training analysts in deciding the topic of the conference and what speakers to invite. The decision to have such respected analysts as Edward Weinshel, Jacob Arlow, and Adrienne Applegarth on the program proved a sound one.
The papers presented reflected a nice blend of theoretical and personal positions. Some speakers chose to present more theoretical discussions of the topic, while others made extensive use of clinical vignettes. Perspectives based on ego psychology, object relations, and sociology were offered. And of course, particularly appropriate for a conference addressing the topic of how men and women love, there was a near equal representation of men and women on the panels.
In planning a conference, as in falling in love, timing can be all-important. Mindful of this, the committee began meeting a full eighteen months before the conference was to be held. In an initial discussion, Dr. Mayer suggested the general theme of love, which struck an appealing chord in the rest of the committee. The topic was then more narrowly defined as the consideration of how men and women love, with an eye to similarities and differences. Clearly the topic captivated the attention not only of the planners but the many who registered to attend. Audience members remarked more than once that the title of the conference was particularly appealing—it was on “love,” in contrast to something like “The Role of Gender Difference in the Vicissitudes of Libidinal Cathexes.”
While analysts all recognize the frequency with which patients report difficulties in their pursuit of love, there would seem to be some hesitation by analysts in focusing a weekend symposium on the topic. It could be argued that discussing how men and women love is too vague, too pedestrian, or somehow insufficiently scientific. Nancy Chodorow indicated in her address why it is difficult to generalize about how men and women love. She emphasized the pitfalls and limitations of generalizing, while reminding us of the necessity to investigate the individual when studying love. It was Ethel Person, though, who identified the major obstacle to tackling the topic. Consistent with Dr. Chodorow's warning about oversimplification in the service of making generalizations, Person noted in her presentation that there has been no systematic psychoanalytic study of the inability to love, very likely because the inability may be just as complex as love itself. She proceeded, nonetheless, despite the substantial challenge, to provide the audience a very fine study of love and some difficulties typically met with in its pursuit. She succinctly reviewed Otto Kernberg's work on the psychological prerequisites for falling in love and his classification of the different levels of inhibitions militating against it. Dr. Kernberg was able to flesh out his ideas during the discussion period, though there was not enough time to even begin to cover all the territory he has mapped in recent years. By contrast, Dr. Person relied on a phenomenological approach rather than one based on object relations or libidinal development.
In their presentations both Owen Renik and Jessica Benjamin stressed the similarities with which men and women love. Dr. Renik, whose paper was entitled “Men and Women Love in the Same Way, Only Differently,” noted during the panel discussion that, even anatomically, men and women share many more similarities than differences. Dr. Benjamin eloquently delineated the developmental role of identification with the opposite sex parent in allowing one to know and love the “other.” Robert Wallerstein observed, as moderator of the final panel discussion, that all of the presentations leaned in the direction of identifying more similarities than differences in the way men and women love.