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Sex Changes

Transformations in Society and Psychoanalysis

• By Mark Blechner

Price: $90.00add to cart

• Price: $90.00
• Binding: Hardback (also available in Paperback)
• Pages: 192
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 23rd January 2009 (Available for Pre-order)
• ISBN: 978-0-415-99434-7

About the Book

The last half-century has seen enormous changes in society’s attitude toward sexuality. In the 1950s, homosexuals in the United States were routinely arrested; today, homosexual activity between consenting adults is legal in every state, with same-sex marriage legal in Massachusetts. In the 1950s, ambitious women were often seen as psychopathological and were told by psychoanalysts that they had penis envy that needed treatment; today, a woman has run for President of the United States.

Mark Blechner has lived and worked through these startling changes in society, and Sex Changes collects papers he has written over the last 45 years on sex, gender, and sexuality. Interspersed with these papers are reflections on the changes that have occurred during that time period, both within the scope of society at large as well as in his personal experiences inside and outside of the therapeutic setting. He shows how changes in society, changes in his life, and changes in his writing on sexuality - as well as changes within psychoanalysis itself - have affected one another.

One hundred years ago, psychoanalysis was at the cutting edge of new ideas about sex and gender, but in the latter half of the 20^th Century, psychoanalysts were often seen as reactionary upholders of society’s prejudices. Sex Changes seeks to restore the place of psychoanalysis as the "once and future queer science," and aims for a radical shift in psychoanalytic thinking about sexuality, gender, normalcy, prejudice, and the relationship of therapeutic aims and values.

Table of Contents

Part I. Psychoanalysis, Sexuality, and Prejudice 1. Homosexuality and the Rorschach Test 2. Psychoanalysis In and Out of the Closet 3. The Experience of Hating and Being Hated 4. Homophobia in Psychoanalytic Writing and Practice: A Comment on Trop and Stolorow (1992) and Hanna (1992) 5. The Interaction of Societal Prejudice with Psychodiagnosis and Treatment Aims 6. The Closeting of History 7. Selective Inattention and Bigotry: A Discussion of the Film Trembling before G-d Part II. Sex, Gender, and the Good Life 8. Maleness and Masculinity 9. Disgust, Desire, and Fascination: Psychoanalytic, Cultural, Historical, and Neurobiological Perspectives 10. The Gay Harry Stack Sullivan: Interactions between His Life, Clinical Work, and Theory 11. AIDS 12. Intimacy, Pleasure, Risk, and Safety 13. Love, Sex, Romance, and Psychoanalytic Goals 14. Polymorphous without Perversity: A Queer View of Desire 15. Erotic and Anti-Erotic Transference 16. The Political is Psychoanalytic: On Same-Sex Marriage