Cover image for Individualizing gender and sexuality : theory and practice
Title:
Individualizing gender and sexuality : theory and practice
Personal Author:
Series:
The relational perspectives book series ; 53
Edition:
1st ed.
Publication Information:
New York, NY : Routledge, c2011
Physical Description:
xvi, 210 p. ; 23 cm.
ISBN:
9780415893572

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32050000000784 BF692.2 C46 2011 Open Access Book Book
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Summary

Summary

Nancy Chodorow, in her groundbreaking book The Reproduction of Mothering, quite simply changed the conversation in at least three areas of study: psychoanalysis, women's studies, and sociology. In her latest book, Individualizing Gender and Sexuality, she examines the complexity and uniqueness of each person's personal creation of sexuality and gender and the ways that these interrelate with other aspects of psychic and cultural life. She brings her well-known theoretical agility, wide-ranging interdisciplinarity, and clinical experience to every chapter, advocating for the clinician's openness, curiosity, and theoretical pluralism. The book begins with reflections on Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, followed by considerations of Melanie Klein and Stephen Mitchell, as well as on her own work and on the postmodern turn in psychoanalytic gender theory. Subsequent chapters address contemporary clinical-cultural issues such as women and work, women and motherhood, and men and violence. Concluding chapters elaborate on the multiple ingredients and the personal affective, conflictual, and defensive constellations and processes that create sexuality and gender in each individual. Ending with a chapter on homosexualities as compromise formations, Chodorow deepens her account of clinical individuality and sex-gender transference-countertransference while bringing her readers back to Freud and to the many strands that followed, as she consolidates a consistent line of interest in sexuality and gender, theory and practice, sustained over a lifetime.


Author Notes

Nancy J. Chodorow, Ph.D., is the author of The Reproduction of Mothering, Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory, Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities, and The Power of Feelings. She is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, a Lecturer on Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, and Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is in private practice in Cambridge, MA.


Table of Contents

Prefacep. X1
Acknowledgmentsp. xv
1 Psychoanalysis and women from margin to center: A retrospectp. 1
Part I Theorists and theory, 1905-2005p. 5
2 Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality: A readingp. 27
3 From subjectivity in general to subjective gender in particular: Rethinking Melanie Klein, "Mourning and its relation to manic-depressive states"p. 41
4 The Reproduction of Mothering: Reconsiderationsp. 51
5 Prejudice exposed: On Stephen Mitchell's pioneering investigations of the psychoanalytic treatment and mistreatment of homosexualityp. 63
6 Gender on the modern/postmodern and classical/relational divide: Untangling history and epistemologyp. 73
Part II Gender and sexuality in consulting room and culturep. 91
7 Glass ceilings, sticky floors, and concrete walls: Internal and external barriers to women's work and achievementp. 93
8 Too late: The reproduction and non-reproduction of motheringp. 103
9 Hate, humiliation, and masculinityp. 121
10 Beyond sexual difference: Same-sex/cross-generation and clinical individuality in the creation of feminine and masculinep. 137
11 Homosexualities as compromise formationsp. 155
Referencesp. 175
Indexp. 189