Sexual Identities in Transit: A Contemporary Question

Everyone knows that the fields of sex and gender have become sites of intense debate and experimentation today. What it means to be a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ (or neither) is no longer determined by a pre-given social, cultural, or religious consensus, but seems to be in uncertain transit. Increasingly then, individuals must invent their own diverse answers to this fundamental question. On the other hand, a gender-based identity politics has also emerged which, in its pursuit of individual rights, sometimes defends a new “universal” answer that paradoxically prevents individuals posing this as a question unique to them.  

Sexual Identities in Transit: A Contemporary Question is a one-day international conference exploring the relationship between these urgent issues and the clinical practice of psychoanalysis. As Gender Studies in academia illustrates, psychoanalytic theory has long been at the forefront of questioning received ideas about gender and sexual identity. Yet at the level of its practice, its ethical orientation towards the specificity of the individual means that psychoanalysis is not a matter of merely applying a theory, nor of promoting solutions circulating in the common discourse. Instead, psychoanalysis attempts to be a space of listening, questioning, and interpretation, in which things can indeed be in transit but without knowing in advance where they will end up.   

This event brings together a diversity of perspectives – academics, journalists, and clinicians with experience of working in gender clinics and/or private practice, from countries such as France, Belgium, Switzerland, and the UK – to explore what psychoanalysis offers to contemporary debates about sexual identity. It will be of interest to clinicians of all modalities (whether psychoanalytic or not), but also to anyone with an interest in, or personal experience of, these issues.  

The full programme will be released soon.

Note: Ticket sales stop Friday 3rd February 2023 at 7:00 PM.

Host or Publisher The London Society of the NLS