Psychoanalytic Synthesis and Innovation in Times of Upheaval
presented by the Psychoanalytic Society of the William Alanson White Institute
OPENING EVENT
PATRICIA GHEROVICI, PhD
The And/Or of Gender – a Psychoanalytic Perspective
Moderated by TOM HENNES
FRIDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 20th, 7:30-9:30pm
Presented in person, on location at the Institute
20 West 74th Street (between Central Park West & Columbus Avenue)
ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION
In 1928, Virginia Woolf wrote Orlando, a novel in which the protagonist changes sex in the middle of the story. A century later, writer and activist Paul B. Preciado sends a filmed letter to Virginia Woolf in Orlando, My Political Biography (2023). Following the premise that the body is not a fixed entity but entails a process of embodiment, a becoming-body, this lecture takes as point of departure Preciado’s recent docu-fiction to explore how those analysands who exist beyond the so-called traditional gender norms as well as those who consider themselves non-binary or outside heterosexuality are helping us rethink gender. Thinking gender outside of the either/or of traditional binary opposition, one subverts the fixity of identitarian claims while reorienting psychoanalytic practice.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Patricia Gherovici, PhD, is a psychoanalyst, analytic supervisor, and recipient of the 2020 Sigourney Award for her clinical and scholarly work with Latinx and gender variant communities. She is a trustee at Pulsion: The International Institute of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychosomatics.
Her single-authored books include The Puerto Rican Syndrome (Gradiva Award and Boyer Prize), Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratizing of Transgenderism, and Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference. She co-authored with Chris Christian Psychoanalysis in the Barrios: Race, Class, and the Unconscious (Gradiva Award and the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize.) She edited with Manya Steinkoler Lacan On Madness: Madness Yes You Can’t, as well as Lacan, Psychoanalysis and Comedy, and most recently, Psychoanalysis, Gender and Sexualities: From Feminism to Trans* (Gradiva Award for Best Edited Collection).
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Tom Hennes is one of the most sought after exhibition designers in the world. He is founder of Thinc Design, an internationally recognized, award-winning exhibition design firm that has presented dynamic visitor experiences at museums and cultural attractions in numerous settings around the globe. Believing in the implicit power of the exhibition medium to engage society in important ways, he has pursued an ever-deepening involvement with exhibition projects embedded in social and environmental justice; Freedom Park in South Africa, a national memorial and museum in Pretoria. Hennes is in the midst of a 3-year consultation on human experience design in the planning of four new jails in the New York boroughs.
At Thinc, Tom Hennes has encouraged an evolving conception of relational design, envisioning the exhibition as a narrative environment, rich in implicit and explicit confluences, contradictions, and paradox. He has written extensively on the multi-faceted role of museums and has taught at leading academic and design institutions including the Rhode Island School of Design, the Pratt Institute in Boisbuchet, France, New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, the University of Pretoria, among many others.