Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Women and Their Experience of Desire, Ambition and Leadership (Routledge, 2019) is a new book, edited by BPSI Members, Stephanie Brody and Frances Arnold. In addition to several of Brody’s and Arnold’s papers, the book includes essays and clinical cases written by Rosemary Balsam, Brenda Bauer, Andrea Celenza, Diane Elise, Adrienne Harris, Dorothy Holmes, Nancy Kulish, Vivian Pendar, Dionne Powell, and Arlene Richards.
Psychoanalysis has long struggled with its ideas about women, about who they are, how to work with them, and how to respect and encourage what women want. This book argues that psychoanalytic theory and practice must evolve to maintain its relevance in a volatile landscape. Each section of the book begins with a chapter that reviews contemporary ideas regarding women, as well as psychoanalytic history, gender bias, and societal norms and deficits. Three composite clinical stories allow our distinguished contributors to discuss the contexts within which individual experience can be affected, and the role that clinical work may have to mobilize and advance passion and vitality. In their discussions, the interplay of clinical psychoanalysis, sociopolitical context, and understanding of gender, combine to offer a unique perspective, built on decades of scholarship, personal experience, and clinical expertise.
Stephanie Brody’s chapter entitled Leadership and Women: Opportunity Mobilized references a series of D.W. Winnicott’s letters from the BPSI Archives. Members can borrow the book from the BPSI library. Follow this link to see the Table of Contents and abstracts of chapters online. Contact library@bpsi.org to request access to an audio recording of Stephanie Brody’s and Frances Arnold’s Meet the Author and book discussion event on May 6, 2019.
Stephanie Brody, PsyD is a Supervising and Training Analyst at Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and Lecturer in Psychology, Department of Psychiatry (part-time), Harvard Medical School and a Clinical Associate in Psychology and Attending Psychologist, McLean Hospital. She is the author of Entering Night Country: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Loss and Resilience (Routledge, 2016). Click here to watch her interview about Entering Night Country recorded in the BPSI library in 2016.
Frances Arnold, PhD is on the Faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and is a Lecturer in Psychology, Department of Psychiatry (part time), Harvard Medical School and a Clinical Associate in Psychology and Attending Psychologist, McLean Hospital.
