Paper Announcement by Robin Young (USA)

Reclaiming the Female Body: My Journey from a One-Person to a Two-Person Psychoanalysis

(2020). The Psychoanalytic Review, 107(3):243-265.

Drawing from historical scholarship, original research, and clinical practice, this essay describes the emergence of Relational theory as a profound paradigmatic shift within psychoanalysis, as illustrated by my own intellectual, clinical and personal journey from conflict/drive model to the Relational perspective. I argue that the classical intra-psychic conflict/drive model, while offering many valid insights, contains significant clinical inadequacies, particularly in its disallowance of gendered (“feminized”) feeling states and needs. This disallowance creates an asymmetrical clinical dynamic that therapeutically limits and may be iatrogenic for some patients. I offer historical context by documenting and discussing the repeated “forgetting” of the female body in classical psychoanalysis despite Freud’s own invitation for further exploration.

I conclude that Relational theory addresses these problems by integrating the intra-psychic and inter-subjective, universalizing previously gendered feeling states, and welcoming the analyst’s subjectivity into the consulting room. Patient and personal clinical vignettes are used to illustrate these issues.

https://www.guilford.com/journals/The-Psychoanalytic-Review/Tony-Pipolo/00332836

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