The Western Branch of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society invites colleagues, analysts, and psychoanalytic psychotherapists from near and far to join us for our annual conference for 2019:

GENDER AS A SOFT ASSEMBLY: GENDER MULTIDIMENSIONALITY
Adrienne Harris, Ph.D. Keynote speaker

In this presentation Dr. Adrienne Harris will outline contemporary models of development, stressing the intersubjective and relational perspectives.  In the development of the relational turn, both the social and cultural dimensions of experience and the unconscious are essential.  The work of Laplanche, the neo Bionian work of Civitarese and Lombardi will be discussed. This essay pays attention to the non-symbolic aspects of experience of gender and of sexuality and of the integration (smooth and rough) of these phenomena with matters of race and class and culture (intersectionality). Clinical examples will be provided.

Dr. Adrienne Harris, Ph.D. is a noted Ferenczi Scholar and a major contributor to the Relational School of Psychoanalysis, and editor of The Relational Perspectives Series of Books. She has many publications elaborating on themes such as the multidimensional contributions to identity formation, gender as a soft assembly, intersectionality in gender identity and sexuality, subjectivity in analysis, and field theory. She combines a background in psychoanalytic theory and practice with a profound understanding of social science theory in her discourse.

Conference Learning Objectives – At the end of the conference participants will be able:

1. To assess and make clinical and theoretical use of contemporary theories of gender (Butler, Kristeva, Saketopoulou and others) and sexuality (Laplanche)
2. To examine the implications of theories of intersectionality in regard to sexuality and gender development.
3. To understand the potentials for integration and the perspective in integrating differing field theories (relational, intersubjective, Bionian) in psychoanalytic theory and clinical work.

^{Photo Credits: Jean-Pierre Lafrance, untitled, 2005, oil on canvas}