The Feminine Today






In Freud's work, the feminine takes various forms: "it is due to an unknown characteristic that [even] anatomy cannot grasp". Since then, women psychoanalysts have tried to clarify the feminine. And they will continue to do so during the IPA Congress in London this summer. 

In this webinar, three eminent psychoanalysts - one from each of the IPA's regions - will offer some of their present-day conceptualisation on the feminine. Rosine Perelberg will examine the way in which the feminine emerges in the course of the analytic encounter; Harriet Wolfe will explore the conflation of the feminine and female, and propose that a non-gendered approach to the feminine offers an important model for leadership; and Clara Nemas will examine the conception of feminine power and describe the difference between courage and valour; courage being the ultimate feminine quality, constant and sustained over time. 

If you are unable to attend the live session, but would like to receive a recording, please continue to register and a recording will automatically be emailed to you after the live session has ended. 

Please note, this webinar will be delivered in English

Rosine Perelberg - PhD in Social Anthropology, Training Analyst and President Elect of the British Psychoanalytic Society, Visiting Professor in the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London and Corresponding Member of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society. She works in London in private practice. She has published widely in international journals. She has written and edited 11 books, which include: Female Experience: Four Generations of British Women Psychoanalysts on Work with Women (1998, 2008) (with Joan Raphael-Leff), Freud: A Modern Reader (2006), and Psychic Bisexuality: A British-French Dialogue (2017). She is the author of Time, Space and Phantasy (2008), and Murdered Father, Dead Father: Revisiting the Oedipus Complex (2015). Sexuality, Excess and Representation will be published in 2019 by the New Library of Psychoanalysis. Paper available for download .

Harriet Wolfe M.D. - is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine (UCSF), a Training Analyst at the San Francisco Centre for Psychoanalysis (SFCP), and the Immediate Past President of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA). She is currently a member of the IPA Task Force on Representation, a member of the Advisory Board for the Proposed Interregional Psychoanalytic Outcome Study (MODE) and was a member of the Founding Board of the e-journal, Psychoanalysis Today. Since 1980, she has served in leadership positions within academic psychiatry at Yale University and UCSF, and since 1998, as an elected leader within psychoanalysis and an appointed committee chair for training, research and outreach at both SFCP and APsaA. In each organisational role, she has encountered challenges related to change. She has been open to diverse opinions, in a spirit of collaboration, and able to facilitate constructive dialogue that resulted in conflict resolution. She supervises psychiatric residents and junior faculty at UCSF, and teaches and supervises psychoanalytic candidates at SFCP. Her scholarly interests include organisational processes, female development, and therapeutic action. She has a private practice of psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and family and couples' therapy in San Francisco. Paper available for download .

Clara Nemas M.D. - is a Training and Supervising Analyst of the Buenos Aires Psychoanalytic Association (APdeBA), child and adolescent psychoanalyst, member of FEPAL and member of the IPA China Committee, of the Asia-Pacific Planning Committee (APPC) and member of the Asia-Pacific Conference Programme Committee for the Tokyo Conference 2018. She maintains a full-time private practice in Buenos Aires and was Vice President and Scientific Secretary of APdeBA. She has published numerous papers on ethics, psychoanalytic theory, and clinical technique in working with adolescent patients. She is currently involved in continuous education in seminars on Kleinian developments, the teaching of Meltzer's ideas and she runs a group of young colleagues on the project of becoming an analyst. She is also involved in the Latin American Working Party on Comparative Clinical Methods. Paper available for download .