Fridays @CCP
Chris Nadler, PhD, LP
(New York, NY)
Friday, December 1, 2023
Dyking Oedipal Logics of Sexual Difference: Cultivating Psychoanalytic Imagination through Queer Kinship, Creative Bodies, and Fertile Minds
7-9pm: (CST): ZOOM Presentation & Discussion
About the presentation: Borrowing the concept of psychoanalytic innocence, this talk will explore the ways psychoanalysts maintain an innocence to both the ongoing production of Oedipal logics of sexual difference, and the acknowledgment that Oedipus is a political project with far-reaching consequences. Oedipal logics—a way of organizing mind and body based on binary sexual difference synergistically maintained alongside heterosexual kinship practices—have produced, in no small part, a century of anti-queer and anti-trans clinical, material, and legal harms and violence. Oedipus has been challenged by feminists and queer theorists over the last fifty years as a homophobic, transphobic, and patriarchal political project. Within psychoanalysis, however, efforts continue to be made to “rescue” Oedipus, often by feminist and queer theorists.
In turning to a specific instantiation of this political project—queer parents and queer kinship practices—psychoanalysis’s rendering of queer patients as “infertile” is revealed as evidence of a resolute psychoanalytic pathologizing of queer minds and body. This project is most often, and ironically, accomplished through attempts to include queer people within Oedipal psychoanalytic literature and theory. “Fertility” is preserved as only a quality of heterosexual coupling, betraying conceptual links to classical psychoanalytic beliefs that queers and our homosexual ancestors are not capable psychic and bodily creativity. Lacking the psychoanalytic imagination necessary to imagine queer fertility—necessarily thought outside of Oedipal logics—psychoanalysts fail to see the imaginative capacity of their own queer patients who playfully and powerfully engage in queer baby-making through queer sex and kinship. Queer psychoanalysis is suggested as an open-ended concept that psychoanalysis might use to cultivate the capacity to imagine a psychoanalysis outside of Oedipus.
Chris Nadler, PhD, LP (they/she) is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. Chris is faculty and analytic supervisor at the Manhattan Institute of Psychoanalysis and is a Visiting Lecturer in the Anni Bergman Parent-Infant Program. They completed psychoanalytic training at the Contemporary Freudian Society and also completed the three-year Anni Bergman Parent-Infant Program, where she was trained in conducting psychoanalytic work with infants and their caregivers. They hold a PhD in sociology from The Graduate Center, CUNY. Chris is the 2023 winner of the Ralph Roughton Paper Award. She was a 2022 Sexualities and Gender Identities Committee Scholar of the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology (Division 39 of APA).
Learning Objectives
1. Participants will be able to describe what is meant by Oedipal logics of sexual difference and understand the importance of thinking about Oedipus as a logic.
2. Identify the links between psychoanalytic thinking about queer fertility and the larger homophobic Oedipal psychoanalytic theories.
This is an Intermediate to Advanced Level Presentation
Fees
CCP members: free with annual $195 membership, payable at registration.
Students:free with annual $175 membership, payable at registration.
Fellows: free with annual $175 membership, payable at registration.
Non-CCP members, single admission: $50
Continuing Education
This program is sponsored for Continuing Education Credits by the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. There is no commercial support for this program, nor are there any relationships between the continuing education sponsor, presenting organization, presenter, program content, research, grants or other funding that could be construed as conflicts of interest. Participants are asked to be aware of the need for privacy and confidentiality throughout the program. If the program content becomes stressful, participants are encouraged to process these feelings during discussion periods. The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis maintains responsibility for this program and its content. CCP is licensed by the state of Illinois to sponsor continuing education credits for Licensed Clinical Social Workers, Licensed Social Workers, Licensed Clinical Professional Counselors, Licensed Professional Counselors, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapy Counselors and Licensed Clinical Psychologists (license no. 159.000941 and 268.000020 and 168.000238 Illinois Dept. of Financial and Professional Regulation).
Professionals holding the aforementioned credentials will receive 2.0 continuing education credits for attending the entire program. To receive these credits a completed evaluation form must be turned in at the end of the presentation and licensed psychologists must first complete a brief exam on the subject matter. No continuing education credit will be given for attending part of the presentation. Refunds for CE credit after the program begins will not be honored. If a participant has special needs or concerns about the program, s/he/they should contact Toula Kourliouros Kalven by November 30, 2023 at: tkalven@ccpsa.org
References/Suggested Readings
Izzard, S. (1999). Oedipus - baby or bathwater? A review of psychoanalytic theories of homosexual development. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 13.
McGleughlin, J. (2021). Rethinking Oedipus or not. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 31:329–339.
Rubin, G. (1975). The Traffic in Women: Notes on the “Political Economy” of Sex. In R. R. Reiter (Ed.), Toward an Anthropology of Women (pp. 157–210). Monthly Review Press.
Sheehi, L., & Sheehi, S. (2021). Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine. Routledge.
Wittig, M. (1980). The Straight Mind. In M. Wittig, The straight mind and other essays. Beacon Press.
Presented by
The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis/CCP Program Committee: Toula Kourliouros Kalven, Alan Levy, PhD, Zak Mucha, LCSW
The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis is an IRS 501(C)(3) charitable organization, and expenses may be tax deductible to the extent allowed by law and your personal tax situation.