Fridays @ CCP Lecture Series
Jill Gentile, PhD
(New York, NY)
The Gender of Object Use
Friday September 18, 2026
7-9pm (CST)
1132 S. Wabash Ave., Suite 502, Chicago & ZOOM
About the presentation: This essay considers the largely unrecognized role of gender in the development of object use. It proposes a developmental continuum from the abject object to the phallic object, arguing that these mark successive organizations of gender within the symbolic. Read in this way, Winnicott's account of object use discloses a developmental logic that is coextensive with, yet extends beyond, his own formulation. What emerges is a conception of object use no longer organized by a phallic symbolic, but by a vaginal or feminine spatiality capable of holding paradox, difference, and transformation. The movement beyond gender polarity thus becomes both the precondition and the achievement of love and mutual recognition.
Jill Gentile is faculty at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, a training and supervising analyst at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity in New York, and is affiliated as teaching faculty at several other institutes. She is a corresponding editor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and on the editorial board of the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology. Her essays, describing a semiotic and phenomenological trajectory of agency, desire, intersubjectivity, and symbolic life, have been published in many psychoanalytic journals. A founding member of the DreamTank collective, dedicated to the application of psychoanalysis to democracy and to public, symbolic life, she is a practicing psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist in Highland Park, New Jersey and in Manhattan, New York.
Learning Objectives
Participants will be able to articulate a developmental movement from use of the abject to use of the phallic object as a newly theorized dimension of object use.
Participants will be able to explain how a gendered reinterpretation of Winnicott's theory of object use opens a developmental pathway beyond gender polarity toward mutual recognition, democratic relatedness, and love.
This is an Intermediate Level Presentation
Fees
CCP members: free with annual $195 membership, payable at registration.
Students:free with annual $175 membership, payable at registration.
New Fellows / Ongoing: free with annual $250/$300 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 September 17, 2026 at: tkalven@ccpsa.org
References/Suggested Readings
Gentile, J. (2022). The missing signifier and a malfunctioning paternal law: On the feminine third as vital portal for sexual difference and emancipatory democracy. In A. Govrin & T. Caspi (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis and Philosophy (pp. 494–506). Routledge.
Gentile, J. (2023). The democratic significance of anatomical difference. In J. Petrucelli, S. Schoen, & N. Snider (Eds.), Patriarchy and its discontents (pp. 110–131). Routledge.
Kristeva. J. (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. L. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980.
Seligman, S. (2006) The Analyst's Theoretical Persuasion and the Construction of a Conscientious Analysis: Commentary on Paper by Meira Likierman. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 16:397-405
Winnicott, D. W. (1969). The use of an object. International Journal of Psycho- Analysis, 50: 711–716
Presented by
The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis/CCP Program Committee