Working Psychoanalytically with Gender Diversity and Sexualities: Resistances to Differences

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Frances Thomson-Salo Marco Posadas

Working Psychoanalytically with Gender Diversity and Sexualities

Resistances to Differences

Frances Thomson-Salo, Marco Posadas, Silvia R. Acosta

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Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Routledge
30 September 2025

Humanities; Cultural studies; Gender studies, gender groups; Psychoanalytical theory (Freudian psychology); Psychotherapy

Series: IPA Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies

Working Psychoanalytically with Gender Diversity and Sexualities considers and challenges expectations about psychoanalytic work with LGBTQIA+ patients.

The book is organised into three parts, starting with a theoretical review, which includes a discussion of the relevance of the Oedipus complex, resistance to infantile sexuality, the conquest of otherness and challenges in maintaining neutrality. Secondly, the contributors approach an ethical dimension, with chapters describing different moments in the way in which psychoanalysts engage with ethical responsibility in the face of gender and sexual diversity. The third part of the book considers an ontological dimension, that incorporates fluidity as a condition of the subject as an object of study and includes factors such as race and generational status, emergence of stigmas and a particular focus on the concept of helplessness. The contributors offer insight into countertransferential reactions and responses in clinical work, ensuring that analysts can work with these patients without preconceptions standing in the way.

Extending an opportunity to air conflicting psychoanalytic views and rethink established psychoanalytic concepts, this book will be key reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in practice and in training. It will also be of interest to academics and students of psychoanalytic studies and gender studies.

Edited by: Frances Thomson-Salo, Marco Posadas, Silvia R. Acosta
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
Weight: 453g
ISBN: 9781032871875
ISBN 10: 1032871873
Series: IPA Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies
Pages: 170
Publication Date: 30 September 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

List of Contributors Series editor preface Introduction Marco Posadas, Silvia Acosta and Frances Thomson-Salo Part 1. Gender diversity and sexuality: theoretical revisions that include diversity Introduction Angela Vila-Real 1. The Oedipus complex: an expanded approach on sexual and gender polyphonies Leticia Glocer Fiorini 2. Psychosexuality and the problem of (mis)representation: A mentalizing perspective Liz Allison 3. Encountering otherness: On the ability (and inability) for psychic movement within sexual states of mind Anat Schumann 4. Shapes of gender identity: Three stories with an impact Domenico di Ceglie Part 2. Psychoanalytic ethics and depathologising gender diversities and sexualities: Intolerance as an unconscious response to violence in analytic field Introduction Marco Posadas 5. The many colours of the rainbow: Depathologising sexual diversity Sergio Lewkowicz 6. Towards a psychoanalytic ethics-based practice with transgender individuals Alessandra Lemma 7. A history of reception: Falling apart as the ground for learning Oren Gozlan Part 3. In search of complexity Introduction Nicolas Evzonas 8. Gender fluid and fixed: gender and suffering, gender and transformation Adrienne Harris 9. Gender crossing as caesura versus gender crossing as cut Dana Amir a) Eva Reichelt Discussion b) Elda Abrevaya Discussion 10. On Trying to Pass off Transphobia as Psychoanalysis and Cruelty as “Clinical Logic”: Gender Dysphoria Avgi Saketopoulou

Frances Thomson-Salo, Ph.D., is an adult and child psychoanalyst, European co-chair of the IPA Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies committee, and member of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis Board. She was an Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, specialising in infant mental health. Marco Posadas, RSW, MSW, PhD is a psychoanalyst based in Toronto, and inaugural chair of the IPA Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies Committee. He received the 2018 Sue Fairbanks Excellence in Psychoanalytic Knowledge Distinguished Lecturer award, the 2022 Distinguished Social Worker for Toronto award, and is the 2024-2025 Antoinette Calabria visiting scholar for the Psychoanalytic Center of the Carolinas. Silvia R. Acosta, PsyD, PhD is an Argentinian psychoanalyst, member of the SPP and the APC, a member of the IPA Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies Committee, and a co-founder of the FEPAL Working Party on drive constellations and subjectivation processes. She has published psychoanalytic articles and teaches on sexual and gender diversity in Europe and Latin America.

Reviews for Working Psychoanalytically with Gender Diversity and Sexualities: Resistances to Differences

“At a time when free thinking and a democratically legitimate, diverse culture are increasingly under threat worldwide, this book provides a scientifically sound wake-up call to preserve open thinking not only in our culture and society, but also within our psychoanalytic community. With their consistent plea for an opening and fluidity of psychoanalytic theory and practice in the realm of sexuality and gender, the authors repeatedly touch on the original field of psychoanalysis. At the same time, their multi-layered message is: we need resistance to arbitrariness in our psychoanalytic concepts, but also resistance to normative restriction in the diversity of innovative theories on socially new, often still incomprehended forms of sexuality and gender. This is an excellent book that cannot be pigeonholed into any psychoanalytic cliché, but opens up creative spaces for thought and life.” - Dr. med. Heribert Blass, IPA President elect “The paradox at the heart of psychoanalysis--without resistance, there can be no cure; yet when resistance calcifies, the analytic process stalls--shapes every treatment, implicating both analyst and analysand. With candor and precision, the ten essays in this volume—authored by a distinguished group of international clinicians—trace the evolving contours of resistance as it intersects with gender, embodiment, and the enduring question of sexual difference. It is, unmistakably, essential reading for the contemporary psychoanalyst.” - Patricia Gherovici, Ph.D. psychoanalyst, Sigourney Award winner, and author of Transgender Psychoanalysis.