Sexual difference: masculinity and psychoanalysis

Sexual Difference is a critical exploration of psychoanalytic theories of sexual difference. In particular it explores the way in which masculinity is expressed in theory and practice. Developing from the unsettling impact of these issues on the author's own professional practice, Stephen Frosh examines how the very language and structure of psychoanalysis are loaded with assumptions about gender. Employing both Kleinian and Lacanian theoretical perspectives this book critically examines these approacheds to sexial difference. In addition, it discusses the application of these issues in the practice of treating sexual violence and in cases of child secual abuse. Sexual Difference will be of value to all trainees and professionals in psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, psychology and social work, as well as all those with an interest in m̀asculinity', f̀emininity' and their effects.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Finding sexual difference -- Towards psychoanalysis -- Psychoanalysing sexual difference -- 2 Psychoanalysis and sexual difference -- A gift of language -- The discourse of the other -- Getting back to the subject -- The Lacanian principle -- 3 Inside the dream -- The origins of psychoanalysis -- Masculine identifications: from Joseph to Moses -- The body of the dream -- The dream of Irma's Injection -- Disruption and the dream -- 4 Masculine mastery and fantasy, or the meaning of the phallus -- Phallocentric theory -- Phallic functions -- or, how men and women find out who they are -- The woman for the man -- 5 The seeds of masculine sexuality -- Deconstructing masculinity -- Sexuality and subjectivity -- On dominant abuse -- Masculinity dissolved -- His-story -- Desire and the mother -- Abuse again -- Sex and sexuality -- 6 Transgressing sexual difference -- Speaking without words -- Subject and object -- Time and space -- Speaking with the mother -- 'Their "Symbolic" exists' -- Transgressing sexual difference -- References -- Name index -- Subject index.