Working Psychoanalytically with Gender Diversity and Sexualities: Resistances to Differences (Paperback or Softback)

Working Psychoanalytically with Gender Diversity and Sexualities considers and challenges expectations about psychoanalytic work with LGBTQIA+ patients.

The book is organised into three parts, starting with a theoretical review, which includes a discussion of the relevance of the Oedipus complex, resistance to infantile sexuality, the conquest of otherness and challenges in maintaining neutrality. Secondly, the contributors approach an ethical dimension, with chapters describing different moments in the way in which psychoanalysts engage with ethical responsibility in the face of gender and sexual diversity. The third part of the book considers an ontological dimension, that incorporates fluidity as a condition of the subject as an object of study and includes factors such as race and generational status, emergence of stigmas and a particular focus on the concept of helplessness. The contributors offer insight into countertransferential reactions and responses in clinical work, ensuring that analysts can work with these patients without preconceptions standing in the way.

Extending an opportunity to air conflicting psychoanalytic views and rethink established psychoanalytic concepts, this book will be key reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in practice and in training. It will also be of interest to academics and students of psychoanalytic studies and gender studies.

Frances Thomson-Salo, Ph.D., is an adult and child psychoanalyst, European co-chair of the IPA Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies committee, and member of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis Board. She was an Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, specialising in infant mental health.

Marco Posadas, RSW, MSW, PhD is a psychoanalyst based in Toronto, and inaugural chair of the IPA Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies Committee. He received the 2018 Sue Fairbanks Excellence in Psychoanalytic Knowledge Distinguished Lecturer award, the 2022 Distinguished Social Worker for Toronto award, and is the 2024-2025 Antoinette Calabria visiting scholar for the Psychoanalytic Center of the Carolinas.

Silvia R. Acosta, PsyD, PhD is an Argentinian psychoanalyst, member of the SPP and the APC, a member of the IPA Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies Committee, and a co-founder of the FEPAL Working Party on drive constellations and subjectivation processes. She has published psychoanalytic articles and teaches on sexual and gender diversity in Europe and Latin America.