The Psychoanalytic Mode of Thought and its Application to the Non-Normative Analysis of Sexuality and Gender

Brian Kloppenberg, Discussants: Rosemary Balsam, M.D. and Robert Smith, M.D.

In “The Psychoanalytic Mode of Thought and its Application to the Non-Normative Analysis of Sexuality and Gender,” Brian Kloppenberg will articulate how the application of a particularly psychoanalytic mode of thinking to the categories of sexuality and gender must involve a necessary challenge to the normative ideas and ideals that inevitably imbue these interrelated, yet by no means straightforwardly linked, categories. A particular take on Freudian theory will be offered that draws upon two interpretive readings: (1) William Grossman’s distillation of Freud’s conceptualization of the psychoanalytic mode of thought; (2) Grossman and Donald Kaplan’s delineation of three Freudian commentaries on sexuality and gender. Together, these two readings allow for a return to Freudian thinking at its most interrogative and open-ended — both in terms of the process of building theory itself as well as the specific challenges involved in building psychoanalytic theory about sexuality and gender.