How Queer Can Psychoanalysis Be? Reflections on the Encounter Between Analytic Practice and Queer Theorizing of Sexuality

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article offers responses to the book Clinical Encounters in Sexuality: Psychoanalytic Practice & Queer theory. The author proposes that the book’s dialogic structure itself encourages a particular kind of lively engagement with the ideas, and observes his own experience of reading it and how this has contributed valuably to his stance in clinical work. Each of the book’s three sections is referenced, briefly reflecting on the themes of Queer Theories, Psychoanalytic Responses, and Responses to Psychoanalytic Practices Encountering Queer Theories. This includes various writers’ thoughts on how unknowable sexuality remains and perhaps beyond interpretation; psychoanalysis and its history of homophobia post Freud; and the significant connections and tensions between the apparent “queerness” of psychoanalysis and the separate discipline of Queer Theory itself. In essence, central issues prompted by the book are related to what can be known with regard to sexuality internally and interpersonally, and the language we have (or not) to voice it.