Maternal Embodiment: A Conversation Between Rosemary Balsam and Adrienne Harris.

On May 6, 2011, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis presented a special colloquium on the maternal body. This colloquium featured a public dialogue, a semistructured conversation between Rosemary Balsam and Adrienne Harris, exploring psychoanalytic understandings of images and experiences of the maternal body. The conversation wove chaos, gender, feminist and psychoanalytic theories with the speakers’ respective intellectual autobiographies. Asking each other questions about culture, generation, medicine, politics, and ideology, the dialogue took shape around how these categories were lived by the 2 analysts and how they helped form how Balsam and Harris conceptualized femininity, gender, and embodiment. This format highlighted differences and spaces of integration. We are delighted to provide the transcript of this stimulating public dialogue here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]