Individualizing Gender and Sexuality ─ Theory and Practice

Nancy Chodorow, in her groundbreaking book The Reproduction of Mothering, quite simply changed the conversation in at least three areas of study: psychoanalysis, women's studies, and sociology. In her latest book, Individualizing Gender and Sexuality, she examines the complexity and uniqueness of each person's personal creation of sexuality and gender and the ways that these interrelate with other aspects of psychic and cultural life. She brings her well-known theoretical agility, wide-ranging interdisciplinarity, and clinical experience to every chapter, advocating for the clinician's openness, curiosity, and theoretical pluralism. The book begins with reflections on Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, followed by considerations of Melanie Klein and Stephen Mitchell, as well as on her own work and on the postmodern turn in psychoanalytic gender theory. Subsequent chapters address contemporary clinical-cultural issues such as women and work, women and motherhood, and men and violence. Concluding chapters elaborate on the multiple ingredients and the personal affective, conflictual, and defensive constellations and processes that create sexuality and gender in each individual. Ending with a chapter on homosexualities as compromise formations, Chodorow deepens her account of clinical individuality and sex-gender transference-countertransference while bringing her readers back to Freud and to the many strands that followed, as she consolidates a consistent line of interest in sexuality and gender, theory and practice, sustained over a lifetime.

Nancy J. Chodorow, Ph.D., is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, on the faculty of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, a Lecturer on Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, and Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of four previous books and winner of numerous awards and fellowships. She is in private practice in Cambridge, MA.

Psychoanalysis and Women from Margin to Center: A Retrospect. Part I: Theorists and Theory, 1905-2005. Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality: A Reading. From Subjectivity in General to Subjective Gender in Particular: Rethinking Melanie Klein, "Mourning and its Relation to Manic-Depressive States." The Reproduction of Mothering: Reconsiderations. Prejudice Exposed: On Stephen Mitchell's Pioneering Investigations of the Psychoanalytic Treatment and Mistreatment of Homosexuality. Gender on the Modern/Postmodern and Classical/Relational Divide: Untangling History and Epistemology. Part II: Gender and Sexuality in Consulting Room and Culture. Glass Ceilings, Sticky Floors, and Concrete Walls: Internal and External Barriers to Women's Work and Achievement. "Too Late": The Reproduction and Non-reproduction of Mothering. Hate, Humiliation, and Masculinity. Beyond Sexual Difference: Same-sex/Cross-generation and Clinical Individuality in the Creation of Feminine and Masculine. Homosexualities as Compromise Formations.