Series: Connections and Conversation
Connections and Conversation created and hosted by Shir Shanun, Psy.D. is a psychoanalytic open space for cultivating creativity and freedom of thought and feeling in a free Zoom meeting. We invite you to engage with our presenters and community as they share their interests and passions in conversation on current topics in psychoanalysis. Please see our calendar of events. The meeting often begins with a 45 minute presentation followed by 45 minutes of conversation. When an event is recorded you can access the recording at the vault.
This series is open to all.
In case of questions please contact: [email protected]
Notes from the Erotic Field: Potholes, Confessions, Discoveries
September 10 @ 9:00 am - 10:30 am PDT
I address the inhibitions that prevent analysts from exploring the charged and fertile ground of an explicitly erotic field. Psychoanalysis as a field has broadened its conceptualizations of both the repetitive and progressive dimensions of erotic transferences as they are refracted through increasingly complex and varied conceptualizations of development, gender, sexuality, and culture—all of which derive their idiosyncratic meanings in distinct intersubjective context. Yet these rich frameworks have also expanded the challenges for analysts in addressing erotic enactments in the immediacy of the clinical encounter, among them: our own anxieties about provocation and deficiency, power and vulnerability, exposure and rejection, excitement and disgust–all of which risk encounters with varied forms of arousal and shame, which, in turn, exacerbate anxiety and encourage avoidance. Such avoidance may be prudent at times, but it’s also costly. Much pain and shame collect around marginalized aspects of our patients’ sexual subjectivities, and they need us to confront our own concordant discomfiting states in order to engage the rich, if risky, potentials of an erotic field.
Presenter
Sarah Schoen, Ph.D.
Sarah Schoen, Ph.D. is Faculty, Supervising, and Training Analyst at the William Alanson White Institute, Adjunct Clinical Professor of Psychology at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and Invited Faculty at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. She is Executive Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, on the editorial board of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and she teaches and writes about contemporary perspectives on gender, narcissism, and the clinical implications of the relational turn. She is co-editor, with J. Petrucelli and N. Snider, of Patriarchy and its Discontents: Psychoanalytic Perspectives (2023). She is in private practice in Manhattan’s Flatiron District.
Series: Connections and Conversation
Connections and Conversation created and hosted by Shir Shanun, Psy.D. is a psychoanalytic open space for cultivating creativity and freedom of thought and feeling in a free Zoom meeting. We invite you to engage with our presenters and community as they share their interests and passions in conversation on current topics in psychoanalysis. Please see our calendar of events. The meeting often begins with a 45 minute presentation followed by 45 minutes of conversation. When an event is recorded you can access the recording at the vault.
This series is open to all.
In case of questions please contact: [email protected]
Notes from the Erotic Field: Potholes, Confessions, Discoveries
September 10 @ 9:00 am - 10:30 am PDT
I address the inhibitions that prevent analysts from exploring the charged and fertile ground of an explicitly erotic field. Psychoanalysis as a field has broadened its conceptualizations of both the repetitive and progressive dimensions of erotic transferences as they are refracted through increasingly complex and varied conceptualizations of development, gender, sexuality, and culture—all of which derive their idiosyncratic meanings in distinct intersubjective context. Yet these rich frameworks have also expanded the challenges for analysts in addressing erotic enactments in the immediacy of the clinical encounter, among them: our own anxieties about provocation and deficiency, power and vulnerability, exposure and rejection, excitement and disgust–all of which risk encounters with varied forms of arousal and shame, which, in turn, exacerbate anxiety and encourage avoidance. Such avoidance may be prudent at times, but it’s also costly. Much pain and shame collect around marginalized aspects of our patients’ sexual subjectivities, and they need us to confront our own concordant discomfiting states in order to engage the rich, if risky, potentials of an erotic field.
Presenter
Sarah Schoen, Ph.D.
Sarah Schoen, Ph.D. is Faculty, Supervising, and Training Analyst at the William Alanson White Institute, Adjunct Clinical Professor of Psychology at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and Invited Faculty at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. She is Executive Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, on the editorial board of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and she teaches and writes about contemporary perspectives on gender, narcissism, and the clinical implications of the relational turn. She is co-editor, with J. Petrucelli and N. Snider, of Patriarchy and its Discontents: Psychoanalytic Perspectives (2023). She is in private practice in Manhattan’s Flatiron District.
Presentation Archive
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