Content area
Full Text
Desire creates the power.
(Raymond Holliwell, n.d.)
...desire is like invisible ink: it
won't show up unless it gets wet. But
what w(h)ets it is culture: the
coloring, flavoring, meanings...without
which it could not be represented and,
unrepresented, could not exist.
(Dimen, 2003, p 107)
The following collection of papers was first presented as a panel at the 2006 Spring Meeting of Division 39 (Psychoanalysis) of the American Psychological Association in Philadelphia, PA. The panel represented the fifth meeting of Division 39's Sexual & Gender Identities Committee's (SGI) annual "Ongoing Discussion Group". At the April 2006 meeting, Bethany Riddle, Martin Stephen Frommer, Jeffrey Guss, Deborah Anna Luepnitz, and Scott Pytluk attempted to expose the hegemonic discourse on desire in psychoanalysis. Such a discourse defines "normative" desire and renders alternative expressions of desire pathological. The four papers that are published here offer unique theoretical, developmental, and/or clinical explications of "non-normative" desire from multiple psychoanalytic perspectives in the hopes of broadening psychoanalytic understandings of desire in general.
Before introducing these authors' fine contributions in greater detail, readers will benefit from learning about some history. The SGI committee was formed in 2001. In the years prior, many members of the Division had felt that some entity serving the needs and interests of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender members was necessary. Division 39 Past-Presidents Maureen Murphy and Jonathan Slavin collaborated in forming a "Sexualities Interest Group" which soon became a formal committee of the Division. The committee's mission is: (1) to assess the needs of the membership of Division 39 regarding LGBT concerns and issues, in the service of giving voice in the Division to all members with these interests; (2) to make recommendations to the Division 39 Board for actions that need to be taken regarding the place and needs of LGBT members of Division 39; (3) to make contact with APA's Division 44 (The Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Issues) and consider joint programming that might educate Division 39 members on LGBT-affirmative psychoanalysis and that could...