Psychic Bisexuality

Rosine Jozef Perelberg is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society, Visiting Professor in the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London and Corresponding Member of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society. Her books include Psychoanalytic Understanding of Violence and Suicide and Female Experience: Four Generations of British Women Psychoanalysts on Work with Women (with Joan Raphael-Leff). She is the author of Time, Space and Phantasy and Murdered Father, Dead Father: Revisiting the Oedipus Complex. In 2007, she was named one of the ten women of the year by the Brazilian National Council of Women.

"This book is precise and intense, engaging and illuminating. To say that we are all bisexual does not dismiss the psychoanalytic recognition of sexual difference and does not replace it with the phantasy—nowadays increasingly common—of a ‘neutral’ gender. The notion of psychic bisexuality as developed in this profound book recognizes the incompleteness of masculinity and femininity and the conflict inherent in desire. The speaking individual continuously adjusts their sexuality to the subtleties of their own desires and those of the other. Perelberg’s introduction is both brilliant and indispensable; the detailed and nuanced clinical examples open up a space for intimacy, within which psychic bisexuality can be expressed and reinvent itself."-Julia Kristeva, Training Analyst of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society and Professor Emeritus at the University Paris Diderot. Holberg Prize for outstanding contributions to research in the arts and humanities."This is a remarkable book; it celebrates and develops further Freud’s seminal insights on sexuality. The chapters, so aptly gathered and meticulously discussed by Rosine Perelberg, cohere around a search for a deeper understanding of psychic bisexuality, and examine with detailed clinical examples the centrality of this concept to the understanding of the feminine, the masculine, hysteria, psychosis, maternal and paternal transference, castration, and the the primal scene. I strongly recommend this wonderful book, both to analysts in training and to seasoned ones. It is a real gem, contemporary, intellectually stimulating, and a pleasure to read."-Claudio Eizirik, Training Analyst of the Brazilian Psychoanalytical Society of Porto Alegre and Past-President of the International Psychoanalytic Association.

• Introduction: a psychoanalytic understanding of bisexuality Rosine Jozef Perelberg 1. The beautiful differencesChristian David 2. Tell me whom you like best Catherine Chabert 3. The origin of psychoanalysis between bisexuality and transference Monique Cournut-Janin 4. Love and melancholia in the analysis of women by women Rosine Jozef Perelberg 5. From bisexuality to the feminine Jacqueline Godfrind 6. On bisexuality: being born with two eyes Marilia Aisenstein 7. Stumbling blocks of the feminine, stumbling blocks of psychic bisexualityNathalie Zilkha 8. Unconscious pacts and the bisexuality of the countertransference in the treatmentDenis Hirsch 9. "No sex, please, we’re British": some reflections on bisexuality in contemporary clinical theoryRosemary Davies 10. How to be both, by not being both: the articulation of psychic bisexuality within the analytic session Rachel Chaplin 11. Alienating identifications and sexuality Donald Campbell 12. The neuter genderAndré Green 13. Bye-bye, sexuality Gregorio Kohon Glossary