Queering psychoanalysis: power, self and identity in psychoanalytic therapy with sexual minority clients

Abstract

In this article I consider whether psychoanalytic psychotherapy can be gay affirmative and ask to what extent is psychoanalytic practice able to incorporate a queer account of heteronormativity in work with sexual minority patients/clients. I discuss the often pathologising vocabulary of psychoanalysis and go on to consider its theoretical use in providing a complex and practical understanding of the oppression of sexual minority persons, along with a model of therapeutic work and Oedipal relations which may contribute to helping sexual minority patients/clients work through the impact of growing up and making a life in a heteronormative culture. Thus, in this article I seek to address the question of how a queering of the foundations of psychoanalytic therapy may offer a means of effectively challenging heteronormativity both throughout our wider culture and within psychoanalytic theory and practice itself. IntroductionPsychoanalysis 1 has traditionally constituted a site in which one was almost guaranteed to find profoundly pathologising accounts of sexual minority development and experience and thus, for many sexual minority persons, psychoanalysis figures not only as a model to be treated with suspicion but also as fundamentally embodying those elements of psychology/psychiatry that must be fought, resisted, challenged. Here I wish to consider the issue of the enduring (though changing and multifaceted) pathologisation of sexual minority identity within many models of psychoanalysis and ask the question to what extent can psychoanalytic psychotherapy be 'gay-affirmative'? 2 In exploring this question, I discuss the moral and exclusionary force of psychoanalytic discourse and the extent to which psychoanalytic practice is able to incorporate a queer account of power and heteronormativity in work with sexual minority patients/clients. 3 At the same time, I aim to highlight a queer reading of psychoanalysis as one possible site of resistance to homophobia and heteronormativity through its theoretical utility in providing a complex and practical understanding of the oppression of sexual minority persons, along with a (revised) model of therapeutic work which may contribute to helping sexual minority patients/clients work

Contemporary psychoanalytic account of gender and sexual diversity in the theory of Jean Laplanche

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Prejuicio, discriminación y homofobia hacia las personas LGBTTTI desde el ámbito de la salud mental

“…Lo que se relaciona con Barragán et al (2016) al considerar que los estereotipos de los roles sexuales se ligan a la hegemonía heterosexual en la que las parejas heterosexuales que están casadas y practican la monogamia son las valoradas por la sociedad. Ubicándose el modelo de sexualidad heterosexual, casado y monógamo como una norma (Hodges, 2011).…”

Theorising medical psychotherapy: Therapeutic practice between professionalisation and deprofessionalisation

“…Another challenge that comes along with the professional self-understanding is a changing society, and with this, the predicaments of working with outdated diagnostics. From within the profession, to name one example, the discussion around gender norms and the norms for setting up romantic relationships has developed and shown that the idea of heteronormativity is strongly underlying a lot of therapeutic approaches and understandings of a ‘healed’ patient (Hodges, 2011; Ruti & Cocking, 2015). It remains open whether and how changing notions of normalcy will affect the future of training institutes and diagnostic manuals.…”