Psychoanalysis and the Feminine: An Other Sex

Psychoanalysis and the Feminine presents Jacqueline Schaeffer’s understanding of the feminine as a psychoanalytic concept.

Schaeffer considers the difference between the sexes to be the paradigm of all differences, and the basis for the repudiation of the feminine and gender theories, those that destitute or invalidate psychic bisexuality. In addition, the author proposes a number of oppositions: a feminine, constructed in relation to the masculine, which differentiates itself from the person of the woman, and also from femininity. A feminine that distinguishes itself from the phallic, which denies its existence, hates it or wants to dominate it. A feminine that is antagonistic to but not cleaved from the maternal, with which it can be harmoniously reconciled. A feminine that carries the risk of suffering, but also the chance of a destiny of openness and growth.

Psychoanalysis and the Feminine: An Other Sex will be key reading for psychoanalysts in practice and in training, and for students of psychoanalytic studies, gender studies and feminist philosophy.

Jacqueline Schaeffer is an honorary training and supervising analyst of the Psychoanalytical Society of Paris, France. She is former editor of the Revue Française de Psychanalyse and the Débats de psychanalyse, and a former supervisor in child and adolescent psychotherapy at the Pierre Male Child Guidance Center, Sainte Anne Hospital in Paris.