On Queering Psychoanalysis
This short class will cut a queer path — querying and playing with ideas and experiences related to difference, embodiment, creativity, and aliveness both in and beyond the consulting room. We will weave queer theory and memoir into psychoanalysis and explore the significance of what queer and queering are (all) about. The notion of “queer,” in contemporary parlance has become mobile and shape-shifting, taking the form of nouns, adjectives & verbs, and imaginatively expanding beyond bodies and identities related to gender and sexuality. “Queering” is a magnet for multiplicity — it works to push against norms, crack open constraining binaries, and challenge concepts that turn stale. Queering courts the unexpected and troubles the straight and narrow — it de-centers and defies clear categorization, and much like the work of psychoanalysis, it bears disruptive and exciting potential.
NCSPP is aware that historically psychoanalysis has either excluded or pathologized groups outside the dominant population in terms of age, race, ethnicity, nationality, language, gender, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, disability, and size. As an organization, we are committed to bringing awareness to matters of anti-oppression, inequity, inequality, diversity, and inclusion as they pertain to our educational offerings, our theoretical orientation, our community, and the broader world we all inhabit.
Presenter's Response:
This class attends to queer theory, to activities of queering and to how being queer (especially in the intensifying currents of an anti-queer/anti-trans political climate) often involves being othered and quite possibly endangered. This class will include the words of those whose marginalization has additionally occurred along the lines of race and class.
At the end of this course participants will be able to:
- Describe what “queering” means and discuss the ideas, stories and sentiments of Sarah Ahmed, James Baldwin, Maggie Nelson and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
- Discuss how psychoanalysis is paradoxically already queer and also needs to be queered in an ongoing way to stay alive and creative.
- Articulate Saketopoulou and Pelligrini’s critique of the concept of core gender identity.
- Define Griffin Hansbury’s notions of the “transgender edge” and the “masculine vaginal.”
- Ahmed, Sara (2019). Queer Use in What’s the Use: On the Uses of Use. Duke University Press, pp. 197-229.
- González, Francisco (2017). The Edge is a Horizon: Commentary on Hansbury. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 65:1061-1073
- Hansbury, Griffin (2017). The Masculine Vaginal: Working with Queer Men's Embodiment at the Transgender Edge. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 65:1009-1031
- Saketopoulou, A., Pellegrini, A.(2023). Chapter 1: A Feminine boy: trauma as resource for self-theorization, in Gender without identity. The Unconscious in Translation Press.
- Seidel, Emily (2026). Keeping the Channel Open: Psychic Mobility and Queer, Creative Possibility. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Issue 3, forthcoming.
LCSW/MFTs: Course meets the requirements for 6 hours of continuing education credit for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs and/or LEPS, as required by the CA Board of Behavioral Sciences. NCSPP is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (Provider Number 57020), to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCS, and/or LEPs. NCSPP maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content.
Psychologists: Division 39 is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Division 39 maintains responsibility for these programs and their content.
Certificates of Attendance for CE credits will be sent to those participants who attend the entire workshop and return a completed course evaluation.