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This paper discusses Janine de Peyer's paper on erotic countertransference, "Unspoken Rhapsody: Female Erotic Countertransference and the Dissociation of Desire," from the perspective of ontological and relational models of treatment. Its argument also draws on the work of Laplanche on sexuality, enigmatic seduction and the radical alterity of human sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion focuses on review of writing about phantom penis and phantom limb, considering how these data and research address the question of pleasure and sexuality in trans and gender-nonbinary persons. Implications of this work on phantom penis and prosthetic penis forms for thinking of brain structure, embodiment, and fantasy as sexuality are shaped and expressed in many different kinds of persons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay draws on Winnicott's deep insights developed in a series of texts over the last decade of his life and addressing questions of gender and sexuality, as these phenomena shape and are shaped by core experiences in the evolution of intersubjectivity. Interweaving Winnicott's work with that of Loewald, Laplanche and Matte Blanco, the essay speculates about possible developmental processes through which complex and shifting gender identifications intersect and interact with experiences of sexuality and desiring. The essay tracks Winnicott's evolving ideas about gender and madness and opens a way of thinking about one process by which gender may emerge, in a complex, 'softly assembled' encounter with desire and being desired. This approach also seeks to reframe and expand the current move in gender theory 'from etiology to teleology'. The term 'etiology' locates us in causation, diagnosis and the sites of pathology, and I think we should continue to be wary of the intrusion of these socially driven biases and ideas into reflections about sexuality and gender in development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is an edited transcript of a roundtable held in the Spring of 2012, at the invitation of the Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, where 4 of the most important psychoanalytic thinkers in the fields of gender and sexuality, Adrienne Harris, Virginia Goldner, Muriel Dimen, and Ken Corbett, came together to discuss the state of the field. Each of the participants prepared 1 question for each of the others. The discussion explored some of the historical areas these scholars researched as well as more current ones: the development of gender as a theoretical focus and its manifestations in social discourse now; sexual development, variance, and expression; the relations between gender and sexuality studies and the thrust of the women’s and queer liberation movements; the significance of different theoretical frameworks in understanding gender and sexuality, from traditional psychoanalytic notions to chaos theory; clinical considerations; and sexual boundary violations. This roundtable provides rare, sometimes personal, always rigorous, and illuminating snapshots of the work and the place of these minds now. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay was inspired by Robert Gober's moving and brilliant creation of a room of Forrest Bess's work and life, set within Elisabeth Sussman's paradigm smashing 2012 Biennial. I read Bess as an artist and a man in struggle, creatively and personally, with several binaries: inside/outside, metropolitan and hometown, gender binaries, and binaries in artistic practice. In all spheres, highly consciously and perhaps also unconsciously, Bess's encounter with, defeat by, and victory over these binaries produced an extraordinary body of work. In this very postmodern modernist, we see the complexity of materiality in body, sexuality, gender, and art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a commentary on the studies by Robert Weinstein and Ubaldo Leli which attempted to work outside the frame of conventional approaches to analysis of sexuality, character and homosexuality. Presentation of the patient's background and dynamics by Leli; Reaction to the paper of Weinstein regarding the shifting and dramatic history of the case presented; Need for further discussion on the therapeutic impact of love.

This article draws on a study of tomboys to reflect on developmental theory in psychoanalysis. To illuminate the power of chaos theory and nonlinear dynamic systems theory in understanding gender and sexuality, I trace three lines of theoretical work on gender, relevant to conceptualizing tomboy love and tomboy identity. First, I reexamine the work on gender development in which bodily life as the wellspring and organizer of gender is prominent. The second strand begins with the organization of gender development proposed by Stoller (1976) and taken up and developed by Fast (1984). Its most articulated form is in the work of Benjamin (1988, 1993). This line of argument conceptualizes gender development through the pattern of relationships and the resultant identifications. The third strand concerns the understanding of "masculinity" in women and the evolution of work on bisexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]