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I Have Been Trying to Get Them to Respond to Me:
Sexuality and Agency in Psychoanalysis
Presenter: Jonathan Slavin, Ph.D.
Psychoanalytic theory has seen many changes in the past 100 years. But in the
process, sexuality, as the centerpiece of our understanding of human motivation
and conflict, seems to have gotten lost. As they did a century ago, clinicians
today still deal with sexualized transferences, defenses against them, and
sexual countertransferences. Yet, across most current perspectives and
paradigms, nothing compels us to focus on sexuality in the way that was
absolutely essential in the early development of psychoanalysis. At the same
time, psychoanalytic approaches have consistently been concerned with the
question of personal agency (i.e., a sense of personal initiative and feeling of
control over one's own mind, actions and motives), how it becomes disrupted
developmentally and must be restored in treatment. Indeed, traditionally, the
aim of treatment was understood as enabling patients to repossess their
experience of themselves as "agents" in relation to their own disowned
motives, affects and drives ("where id was, there shall ego be"). In
contemporary interpersonal, intersubjective and relational perspectives, the
issue of agency takes on an even more central interactional significance. Are
these two conceptual and developmental frameworks—sexuality as a function of
mind, and agency, as a derivative of relational experience—fundamentally
incompatible? This paper will explore the relationship of sexuality and the
experience of agency in parent-child and therapist-patient relationships and
examine whether sexuality may still have a central place in contemporary
psychoanalytic thinking and in understanding the essential nature of our psychic
functioning.
About the Presenter: Jonathan H. Slavin, Ph.D. has been the Director of the
Counseling Center at Tufts University since 1971. He is Past-President of the
Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association and
was the Founding President of the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. He
is also Consulting Psychologist, Ministry of Health, State of Israel; Consulting
Psychologist, Palestinian Counseling Service; Visiting Lecturer, Moscow
Psychoanalytic Society; Honorary Chair, Psychoanalytic Division, China Medical
Association. He is on the faculty of the Minnesota Institute for Contemporary
Psychoanalytic Studies and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California.
Dr. Slavin has published in the areas of trauma and sexual abuse, adolescent
development, psychoanalytic supervision, and psychoanalytic technique. Date:
September 19, 2003
Menu Options: There will be four entrée choices: tilapia, crab cake, chicken
kabob, and pasta portabella which guests will select that evening. There is a
cash bar during the cocktail hour.
Note: Kosher meals are available but you
must contact Noelle Burton by September 12th to place an order for one.
| Date: |
September 19, 2003 |
| Time: |
6:00 – 6:45 pm Cocktails and hors d’oeuvres
6:45 – 7:45 pm
Dinner
7:45 – 8:10 pm PSPP Business Meeting
8:10 – 9:40 pm Dr. Slavin’s
presentation |
| CE Credits: |
The dinner program is a non-CE program. |
| Location: |
Aldar Bistro, 281 Montgomery Avenue, Bala Cynwyd (610-667-1245)
[MAP]
A parking lot is located behind the restaurant and there is street
parking |
| Contact:
|
Noelle Burton, PsyD
(484) 557-7708
A brochure will be mailed to members soon with registration fees and information
on how to register
|
Philadelphia Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology