Presented by Avgi Saketopoulou, PsyD.

At this moment in time, conversations about gender are at the epicenter of heated debate and passionate conversation. At stake is gender’s status as a concept (does gender matter, and if so, how?) and matters relating to gender development. Is gender an innate part of the self or one that is distorted by exposure, say, to drag queens and the wrong internet sites?

Psychoanalysis has unique insights to contribute to these questions and to the anxieties that underwrite them. In this presentation, Dr. Saketopoulou helps us navigate them by focusing on the theory and clinical implications of two key psychoanalytic ideas: the fiction of a core gender identity that determines what one’s true and authentic gender is (be that cis, trans, or otherwise) and the idea of developmentally, predetermined gender endpoints.