This groundbreaking book provides a challenging exploration of psychoanalytic ideas about lesbians and lesbianism. Based on the authors' clinical experience as psychoanalytic psychotherapists, it offers a new and thoughtful framework that does not inevitably pathologise or universalise all lesbianism. A wide range of psychoanalytic ideas are surveyed, from Freud, Deutsch and Jung to Lacan and contemporary object-relations theorists. Questions on sexual identity, sexual desire and gender identity, of transference and countertransference, and also of institutional practices in relation to training, are all critically - and stimunlatingly - addressed.

Based on the authors' clinical experience as psychoanalytic psychotherapists, this reconsideration of lesbian lives and lesbian experiences offers a new and thoughtful framework that does not inevitably pathologize or universalize all lesbianism. Instead, it argues for the development of a psychotherapeutic theory and practice open to the complexities and vicissitudes of individual life histories, relationships, and identities. Surveying a wide range of psychoanalytic ideas about lesbianism from Freud, Deutsch, and Jung to Lacan and contemporary object relations theorists including Klein and McDougall, O'Connor and Ryan critically address questions of sexual identity, sexual desire, and gender identity, of transference and countertransference, and also of institutional practices in relation to psychoanalytic training.

Disorienting Sexuality exposes the biases against gay men and lesbians in psychoanalytic theory and practice. In the introduction, Domenici and Lesser draw a brief history of anti-homosexual sentiment in psychoanalysis. The book then moves into essays written by lesbian and gay psychoanalysts seeking to have a voice in the reshaping of psychoanalytic theories of sexuality. The second section is devoted to presenting different theoretical perspectives for understanding both homosexuality and heterosexuality. Disorienting Sexuality concludes with the personal narratives of gay and lesbian psychoanalysts.

This book provides a contemporary exploration of psychoanalytic theory and its application to therapy with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer relationships, challenging heteronormative practice and introducing new perspectives on working with gender and sexual diversity. In this wide-ranging collection, international contributors draw on key aspects of couple psychoanalytic theory and practice, whilst also expanding hetero and mono-normative frames of reference to explore the nature of relating in open, closed and poly relationships. Developments in regard to gender and sexuality within the contexts of family and culture and an examination of same-sex parenting are also included, as are psychosexual considerations and the process of aging. A major focus of the book is the importance of the therapist’s own gender and sexuality in the clinical encounter and how to manage adjustments in approach to counter the dominance of heteronormative thinking in practice. The first book of its kind to incorporate an in-depth examination of same sex, queer, bi-sex, trans and queer relationships in regard to psychoanalytic thinking and practice, Same-Sex Couples and Other Identities is a vital resource for psychoanalytically informed psychotherapists, counsellors and practitioners working with a diverse range of clients.

Pilgrimage, Dorothy Richardson's thirteen-volume opus of autobiographical fiction, follows the entire arc of an independent woman's life in early twentieth-century Britain. It is one of the major works of the modernist period; indeed, it is considered by many a classic of modernist literature. In this book, Joanne Winning argues in this book, however, that Richardson's novels continue to be misunderstood in several important ways. Winning is the first critic to fully explore the issues of lesbian identity in the novels. Examining primary materials, manuscript drafts, and Richardson's previously unstudied correspondence, Winning demonstrates that Pilgrimage contains a carefully constructed, though concealed, subtext of lesbian desire and sexuality. The Pilgrimage of Dorothy Richardson explores the ways in which Richardson used such cultural forms as sexology, psychoanalysis, and other lesbian and modernist literature of her time to create an intertextual dialogue about lesbian identity. Winning suggests that a sustained reading of lesbian sexuality in Pilgrimage is crucial to a more complete understanding of Richardson's long and sometimes difficult work. Winning also places Pilgrimage in the context of other works by female modernist writers that record lesbian identity. This approach, Winning suggests, is the first step toward recognizing and defining a literary movement that can be termed "lesbian modernism," as well as toward a deeper understanding of how lesbian modernist writers helped shape modernist literature as a whole.