Speaker: Margarita Cereijido, PhD

Discussants: Kirsten Dahl, PhD & Rosemary Balsam, MD
Psychoanalysis, from its beginnings, has a long history of pathologizing certain groups – women and homosexuals, to name a few. Personal beliefs and prejudices of the times – both past and present –seep into psychoanalytic theory, education and practice. Many new psychoanalytic ideas conceive of the feminine and notions of gender as conceptual constructs that shift and transform over time. Gender ideals change as culture changes. How analysts listen and give meaning to clinical material is significantly affected by the analyst’s own prejudices, her implicit and explicit theories as well as her subjective view of the world. If that be the case, are there ways in which psychoanalysts can ferret out their own prejudices with a view towards providing treatment unincumbered by bias? Dr. Margarita Cereijido, an internationally recognized thinker and writer on issues of gender, race, sexuality and politics in psychoanalysis will address how psychoanalysts can explore and support new notions of the feminine. Critical to this endeavor is an examination of one’s own gender prejudices, adopting an open curious attitude to the new scenarios patients bring to us and developing new psychoanalytic theories that do not pathologize alternative choices.

Both the current revisiting of Freud and exploring new psychoanalytic theories advocates an approach that de-pathologizes “different” lifestyles and family configurations such as, women who want to have children without a partner or with a female partner, homosexuals, non-binary persons, women who do not want to have children, etc.

Dr. Cereijido’s presentation will be followed by two discussions delivered by Drs. Rosemary Balsam and Kirsten Dahl. Dr. Balsam has published over one hundred academic publications and books on gender issues, mothers and daughters, “the vanished pregnant body” (to name a few) and is the winner of the coveted Sigourney Award for psychoanalytic achievement (2018). Dr. Dahl, a PhD Anthropologist and Emeritus Child, Adolescent and Adult Psychoanalyst has multiple publications on female gender and sexuality. The presenters, all Training and Supervising Psychoanalysts, will engage in a spirited discussion followed by an open forum exchange of ideas with the audience. Offering ideas relevant to psychoanalysis, gender studies, psychology, and sociology, this conference will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and to students and trainees in social work, gender studies, psychology, psychoanalysis, and psychiatry.