(Image credit: Ted Eytan [CC BY-SA 2.0])
In 2021, I taught a postgraduate seminar called “Trans-Gender Psychoanalysis” as part of the curriculum of the Adult Psychoanalytic Training Program and Fellowship in Hospital-Based Psychotherapy at the Austen Riggs Center. This was for sure the first time that such a seminar had been taught at Austen Riggs, and very likely one of the first times that a psychoanalytic training institute centered transgender identities in their curriculum in an affirming light (if anyone knows of any earlier instances, please reach out and let me know!).
Teaching this seminar meant a lot to me personally, and I am making the syllabus available publicly to provide a resource for other people looking to teach or learn about trans identities in psychoanalysis.
Seminar Description: Trans-Gender Psychoanalysis
Beyond psychoanalysis in the culture at large, transgender celebrities (e.g., Laverne Cox, Elliot Page), shows such as Pose and Drag Race, and requests to use non-binary pronouns or neo-pronouns (e.g., they/them, ze/zir/zim) demonstrate the accelerating visibility of gender variance, nonconformity, and transition. It may be tempting to ask: how can we think psychoanalytically about trans* issues, and what can psychoanalysis offer to trans* subjects?[1]
Two observations should give us pause, however. First, observe how gender and sexual difference saturate psychoanalytic theory: Freudian and post-Freudian theories and concepts depend upon and imply an epistemology of sex, gender, and sexual difference predicated on a male-female dichotomy. Consider, for example: masculinity/femininity as passivity/activity, castration anxiety, penis envy, psychic bisexuality, perversion and fetishism, object choice and identification (and their alleged normality or lack thereof), genital sexuality and the phallic stage, hysteria, good/bad breasts, maternal holding, primary maternal preoccupation, the Oedipus complex, primal scene, the question of feminine desire, the phallus/the paternal function/le nom de pére (the Name of the Father), maternal and paternal transferences—the list goes on. Second, observe how transsexuality and transgender identification have historically been relegated to abjection and pathology, being seen as, for example, developmental errors in identification (e.g., Stoller, 1975), borderline disorders (e.g., Green, 1986), narcissistic fantasy (e.g., Chiland, 2003), perversion (e.g., Gershman, 1970; Socarides, 1970) or psychosis (e.g., Millot, 1990).
Through considering trans* phenomena and trans* experiences, as well as some borrowed insights from gender theory and queer theory, we hope to turn the questions above on their head: what can trans* experiences offer to psychoanalysis, and how can trans* issues help us deepen and reflect upon psychoanalytic theory? How might our theories of development and of the clinical encounter—to the extent that they are predicated on binary sexuality, dichotomous gender roles/identities, functionalist biological essentialism, or an equation of sex with gender—need to shift to accommodate a culture in which trans* experiences and identities can no longer be ignored or dismissed as anomalous? What might it mean to consider a transgender psychoanalysis, in the sense of a psychoanalysis that is trans-gender—that is, beyond gender, or across or traversing many genders beyond the man/woman binary?
The seminar instructors also make no bones about the fact that this material is inherently political and personal. In the chosen readings, we have endeavored to center queer and trans* perspectives to mitigate the extent to which trans* individuals have historically been “treated as objects of study and not as speaking subjects” (Saketopoulou, 2020). We have also chosen to elide articles that contest the validity of trans* experience or that center concerns about the legitimacy or dangerousness of social or biomedical transition. Contemporary culture at large and mainstream psychoanalytic discourse are so replete with perspectives such as these that to purport to offer an allegedly balanced perspective on “controversial discussions” would be to re-inscribe the historical delegitimizing of trans*-affirming perspectives, not to mention trans* voices themselves.
The goal of this seminar is therefore not to “explain” trans* experience, whether per se or in terms of its etiology (whether said etiology is conceived of in terms of psychopathology or not); rather, it is to think together about how we, as clinicians, can better situate ourselves to really hear trans* subjects in an analytic mode—to really listen, rather than to assume we hold the key to their identity and experience. Here we can think in analogy to Corbett’s (1997) statement about sexual orientation: “[I am not interested in] the ill-conceived question of ‘why’ [someone is homosexual], I am interested in how someone is homosexual” (p. 499). Or, as the trans analyst Griffin Hansbury (2005) put it: “The etiology of trans is a question I have stopped asking, for myself and for my practice. We’re here—now what?” (p. 251).
With all of that being said, our intention and ethical aim is to hold a thoughtful, courageous space for challenging ourselves and each other with civility, responsibility, and mutual respect. Beyond the straightforwardly didactic aims of a traditional educational offering, we also hope that this seminar will occasion a genuine encounter—or even confrontation—with your own gender and its impact on your clinical work and identity, and we hope everyone will contribute to creating a learning environment in which self-reflection and subjective transformation might become real possibilities.
Please come prepared to discuss the reading assigned for the week. Participants are encouraged to bring in clinical examples and dilemmas from their own work with patients, as well as personal reflections from their own experience as embodied, gendered subjects.
[1] The deployment of the asterisk (‘trans*’ rather than simply ‘trans’), as Tompkins (2014) explains, derives from search engine syntax and is intended to orthographically signal inclusivity of many identities under a broad understanding that overflow beyond binary understandings of transness: “[Use of the term trans* is] meant to include not only identities such as transgender, transsexual, trans man, and trans woman that are prefixed by trans- but also identities such as genderqueer, neutrios, intersex, agender, two-spirit, cross-dresser, and genderfluid” (p. 27)
A Note on the Readings
Each week we will consider two readings of moderate length (or, in the exceptional case of Week 2, one long text). Some weeks this will amount to a significant amount of assigned reading. This may seem excessive, but the excess is in some ways the point: there is so much to learn and more than we can possibly explore, but to explore is the primary point. In a territory as capacious as gender, breadth is a potential invitation to depth, and there is much to recommend acquiring a humble, rough and tumble map of what one does not know rather than clinging to the false varnish of narrow expertise in what one is supposed to know. Seminar participants should feel emboldened to peruse the readings as they see fit, whether by delving deeply into one, skimming both, reading them backwards or forwards or sideways—simply read, with an eye toward discovering whatever pearls puzzle, inspire, excite, or trouble you, and bring them with you as personal sites of potential conversation.
Supplemental readings each week are suggested as potential sources for ramifying, deepening, or providing context to the week’s issues. Dr. Olbert, in their role as seminar facilitator, will typically supply brief points of interest from the supplemental materials to enrich conversation and understanding of the assigned readings; and seminar participants are encouraged but not expected to join in likewise.
Seminar Schedule
Week 1 (Dec 7) – Trans-(Inter)ference: How do we encounter trans*ness?
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Assigned Readings:
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Stryker (1993): “My words to Victor Frankenstein above the village of Chamounix: Performing transgender rage”
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Hansbury (2017): “Unthinkable anxieties: Reading transphobic countertransferences in a century of psychoanalytic writing”
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Supplemental Reading:
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Pula (2015): “Understanding gender through the lens of transgender experience”
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Week 2 (Dec 14) – Trans-Mission: Can we really hear trans voices?
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Assigned Reading:
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Preciado (2021): Can the Monster Speak?
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Supplemental Reading:
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Evzonas (2020b): “Prologue: Queering and decolonizing psychoanalysis”
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Week 3 (Dec 21) – Trans-Positions: Considering gender in psychoanalytic theory
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Assigned Readings:
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Flax (2004): “The scandal of desire: Psychoanalysis and disruptions of gender: A meditation on Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality”
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Evzonas (2020a): “Gender and ‘race’ enigmatic signifiers: How the social colonizes the unconscious”
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Supplemental Reading:
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Corbett (2008): “Gender now”
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Week 4 (Dec 28) – Trans-Personal: Working with trans*-ness in adult patients
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Assigned Readings:
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Suchet (2011): “Crossing over”
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Millon (2019): “Metamorphosis, refuge, and the gaze: Non-binary shorelines”
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Supplemental Reading:
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Pellegrini & Saketopoulou (2019): “On taking sides: They/them pronouns, gender and the psychoanalyst”
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Week 5 (Jan 4) – Trans-Formation: Developmental considerations in trans* treatment
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Assigned Readings:
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Saketopoulou (2014a): “Mourning the body as bedrock: Developmental considerations in treating transsexual patients analytically”
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Silverman (2015): “The colonized mind: Gender, trauma, and mentalization”
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Supplemental Reading:
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Dimen (2014): “Both given and made: Commentary on Saketopoulou”
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Galatzer-Levy (2014): “Exploring a complex systems map of gender: Commentary on Saketopoulou”
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Saketopoulou (2014b): “When the body propositions gender: Reply to commentaries”
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Week 6 (Jan 11) – Trans-Cultural: Theorizing trans* experience at the intersection of gender and “race”
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Assigned Readings:
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Yanagino (2020): “Psychoanalysis, historical injury, and the language of castration: The murder of transgender women of color”
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Saketopoulou (2011): “Minding the gap: Intersections between gender, race, and class in working with gender variant children”
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Supplemental Reading:
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Rowland & Cornell (2021): “Gender identity, queer theory, and working with the sociopolitical in counseling and psychotherapy: Why there is no such thing as neutral”
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Week 7 (Jan 18) – Trans-Substantiation: On action, transition, and medical intervention
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Assigned Readings:
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Gozlan (2011): “Transsexual surgery: A novel reminder and a naval remainder”
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Hansbury (2005): “Mourning the loss of the idealized self: A transsexual passage”
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Supplemental Reading:
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Latham (2017): “Making and treating trans problems: The ontological politics of clinical practices”
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Seminar References
Corbett, K. (2008). Gender now. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 18(6), 838-856.
Dimen, M. (2014). Both given and made: Commentary on Saketopoulou. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 62(5), 807-813.
Evzonas, N. (2020a). Gender and “race” enigmatic signifiers: How the social colonizes the unconscious. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 40(8), 636-656.
Evzonas, N. (2020b). Prologue: Queering and decolonizing psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 40(8), 571-578.
Flax, J. (2004). The scandal of desire: Psychoanalysis and disruptions of gender: A meditation on Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 40(1), 47-68.
Galatzer-Levy, R. M. (2014). Exploring a complex systems map of gender: Commentary on Saketopoulou. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 62(5), 815-821.
Gozlan, O. (2011). Transsexual surgery: A novel reminder and a navel remainder. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 20(1), 45-52.
Hansbury, G. (2005). Mourning the loss of the idealized self: A transsexual passage. Psychoanalytic Social Work, 12(1), 19-35.
Hansbury, G. (2017). Unthinkable anxieties: Reading transphobic countertransferences in a century of psychoanalytic writing. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, 4(3-4), 384-404.
Latham, J. R. (2017). Making and treating trans problems: The ontological politics of clinical practices. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 18(1), 40-61.
Millon, G. (2019). Metamorphosis, refuge, and the gaze: Non‐binary shorelines. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 35(3), 362-372.
Pellegrini, A., & Saketopoulou, A. (2019). On taking sides: They/them pronouns, gender and the psychoanalyst. Retrieved November 28, 2021, from https://www.psychoanalysis.today/en-GB/PT-Articles/Pellegrini167541/On-taking-sides-they-them-pronouns,-gender-and-the.aspx
Preciado, P. B. (2021). Can the Monster Speak?: Report to an Academy of Psychoanalysts (Vol. 32). Semiotext(e).
Pula, J. (2015). Understanding gender through the lens of transgender experience. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 35(8), 809-822.
Rowland, H., & Cornell, W. F. (2021). Gender identity, queer theory, and working with the sociopolitical in counseling and psychotherapy: Why there is no such thing as neutral. Transactional Analysis Journal, 51(1), 19-34.
Saketopoulou, A. (2011). Minding the gap: Intersections between gender, race, and class in work with gender variant children. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 21(2), 192-209.
Saketopoulou, A. (2014a). Mourning the body as bedrock: Developmental considerations in treating transsexual patients analytically. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 62(5), 773-806.
Saketopoulou, A. (2014b). When the body propositions gender: Reply to commentaries. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 62(5), 823-833.
Silverman, S. (2015). The colonized mind: Gender, trauma, and mentalization. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 25(1), 51-66.
Suchet, M. (2011). Crossing over. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 21(2), 172-191.
Stryker, S. (2013). My words to Victor Frankenstein above the village of Chamounix: Performing transgender rage. In S. Stryker & S. Whittle (Eds.). The Transgender Studies Reader (pp. 244-256). Taylor and Francis.
Yanagino, Y. (2020). Psychoanalysis, historical injury, and the language of castration: The murder of transgender women of color. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 25(4), 558-575.
Trans-Friendly Psychotherapy in the Berkshires
If you consider yourself transgender, trans*, genderqueer, genderfluid, or queer and are looking for an allied psychotherapist in the Berkshires (in-person in Great Barrington, Massachusetts; also available for remote psychotherapy to people anywhere in Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island), please feel free to learn more about my psychotherapy practice or get in touch with me!