Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women and Their Experience of Desire, Ambition and Leadership

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2020 Gradiva Award Nominee, Best Edited Book Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women and Their Experience of Desire, Ambition and Leadership considers how these factors can be understood, nurtured, or thwarted and the subsequent impact on women’s identity, authority and satisfaction. Psychoanalysis has long struggled with its ideas about women, about who they are, how to work with them, and how to respect and encourage what women want. This book argues that psychoanalytic theory and practice must evolve to maintain its relevance in a volatile landscape. Each section of the book begins with a chapter that reviews contemporary ideas regarding women, as well as psychoanalytic history, gender bias, and societal norms and deficits. Three composite clinical stories allow our distinguished contributors to discuss the contexts within which individual experience can be affected, and the role that clinical work may have to mobilize and advance passion and vitality. In their discussions, the interplay of clinical psychoanalysis, sociopolitical context, and understanding of gender, combine to offer a unique perspective, built on decades of scholarship, personal experience, and clinical expertise. Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women and Their Experience of Desire, Ambition and Leadership will serve as a reference for all psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists as well as gender studies scholars interested in the progress of psychoanalytic theory regarding women in the 21st century. Contributors to this book include: Rosemary Balsam, Brenda Bauer, Andrea Celenza, Diane Elise, Adrienne Harris, Dorothy Holmes, Nancy Kulish, Vivian Pendar, Dionne Powell, and Arlene Richards. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Acknowledgements: Frances Arnold Acknowledgements: Stephanie Brody Contributors Introduction PART I: Desire 1. Desire: what women want The psychoanalytic story of women: desire as envy Private and public Desire through the eyes of women Contemporary Perspectives: prime numbers, mothers and identity Mothers and daughters Desire derailed Imagination and the arc of desire The incubator of fantasy and imagination Clinical meaning and process I think, therefore I desire Notes References 2. Marie: a story of desire Introduction 3. A clinical case of desire Orienting comments Marie’s presentation Marie’s development Marie’s mother and her mothering Marie’s elusive desire Notes Bibliography 4. The present absence of desire in a dead body The binary is not dead; it is not even binary Disclaimed receptivity, dis-identifications and dysregulation Postscript Notes References 5. Frazzled desire: out of time References PART II: Ambition 6. Female ambition: psychoanalytic perspectives Introduction Psychoanalytic ideas about women and ambition: early history and social activism Joan Riviere, Karen Horney and Sabina Spielrein: Early voices and the search for recognition, authorship and authority Modern and postmodern psychoanalytic ideas about women and ambition Engaging the body, identity and multiplicity: New modernists and postmodernists – Chodorow, Balsam and Harris The social third: Layton, Dimen and current debate – women and wanting it all A call for diversity and deconstruction of women as a monolithic identity The need for perspectives that account for mutual growth and agency Bibliography 7. Elizabeth: a story of ambition Introduction Elizabeth 8. Commentary on Elizabeth: a case of the othering of a woman’s ambition Historical and current trends in researching the psychology of women A conceptualization of ambition and family contributions to it becoming conflicted Ambition, othering and prejudice in academia: gender dynamics and minority status Conclusion References 9. The case of Elizabeth: a discussion of ambition References 10. Elizabeth: appropriated ambition … a narrative Elizabeth’s treatment: rediscovering self References PART III: Leadership 11. Leadership and women: opportunity mobilized A new wave Women’s leadership in psychoanalysis: absence Stories of women in power The gauntlet Leadership and power The leadership identity Notes References 12. The social construction of female power and leadership: a psychoanalytic perspective The making of our political leaders: intersectionality of individual imagination and social discourse HRC HRC and Wonder Woman – a female superhero without baggage Misogyny Dialectics of power and gender Female leadership: visionaries and activists Nadelson, Eisenberg and Lawrence: early leaders in psychiatry and psychoanalysis Bibliography 13. Claire: a story of leadership Leadership: respected, renounced, restrained Case study – Claire 14. Feminine agency and identity amid mother-daughter alienation Bibliography 15. Women and ambition: our ambivalent under-indulged pleasure References 16. Discussion of Claire: identity, conflict and subjective reality in women leaders Identity Conflict Subjective reality References 17. Difference, connection, identification Intellect and power Women in psychoanalysis The myth of the powerful woman Claire: Self-esteem and shame Desire, parental roles, and repetition Role model, twin, or competitor? Post-election after-thoughts References Index