Summer Institute: Psychoanalysis & Gender

The Summer Institute of Psychoanalysis, a joint venture of Northwestern University and the Sorbonne Nouvelle that was inaugurated in 2017, develops topics at the intersection of psychoanalysis and the human sciences.  We are pleased to announce that the 2023 session takes place from June 26 through June 30 in Paris and focuses on the topic of “Psychoanalysis and Gender.”  Taught in English, the Institute proposes an intensive week of study for doctoral and postdoctoral students in the humanities from Europe, Israel, Latin America, and USA.  If you are interested in attending, please send your CV and a 400-word statement of interest by February 10, 2023 to Alessia Ricciardi ([email protected]) or Isabelle Alfandary ([email protected]).

This year’s session revisits the question of gender and sexuality, which has been problematic for the field of psychoanalysis since the 1920s.  Notwithstanding several recognized limitations and the notorious resistance of Freud, Lacan, and others, psychoanalysis may be said to have contributed substantially to our awareness of the linguistically and socially constructed nature of gender identities, highlighting the fictional and unstable nature of male and female sexual identity and thus making possible more open-ended considerations of transsexuality and diverse identities.  We will focus on the role of psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice in gender studies, the place of gender in analytic theory, as well as the cultural and political quarrels that gender has triggered in the psychoanalytic domain such as that between Preciado and the professional establishment.  Taught by Isabelle Alfandary, Alessia Ricciardi, and Axel Nesme, this year’s senior seminars, “Trans-Desire and Trans-Identity from Stoller to Preciado” and “Gender Through the Prism of Lacanian Theory,” revisit a wide range of texts in psychoanalysis and philosophy in light of some of the most controversial issues of our times.  Our internationally renowned keynote speakers—Anne-Emanuelle Berger, Penelope Deutscher, Patricia Gherovici, and Daniel Koren—will lead several additional talks and sessions.