Author interviews: 
Braving the Erotic Field in the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Children and Adolescents
edited by Mary Brady

Sunday 1 October 2023 
9:30-11:30 PST

SPEAKERS:
Virginia Ungar
Andrea Celenza
Anne Alvarez
Mary Brady
Dianne Elise
Elena Molinari
Christine Anzieu-Premmereur
Robert Tyminski
Bruce Reis
Emil Jackson
Drew Tillotson

Overview

Author interviews of Braving the Erotic Field in the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Children and Adolescents

On October 1st , 9:30-11:30 PST, (12:30- 2:30 EST), (2:30-4:30 GMT-3), (5:30-7:30 GMT +1), (6:30-8:30 GMT +2) Virginia Ungar, Andrea Celenza, Anne Alvarez, Mary Brady, Dianne Elise, Elena Molinari, Christine Anzieu-Premmereur, Robert Tyminski, Bruce Reis, Emil Jackson and Drew Tillotson, contributors to Mary Brady’s edited book, Braving the Erotic Field in the Treatment of Children and Adolescents will be interviewed by psychoanalyst Dodi Goldman.  

The event is free.  Each contributor will highlight their most crucial ideas to give the viewer a sense of the breadth and depth of this topic, not possible by hearing any single chapter presented.  For instance, from the treatment of a small child presenting with the symptom of compulsive masturbation to the intensities of erotic feeling emerging well into the analysis of an adolescent.  From the overstimulation of the sexually abused child to the delicate first naming of sexual feelings during the confusions of puberty.

The Committee on Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis (COCAP) is initiating a series entitled Reading Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis, highlighting important new books in child psychoanalysis.  These interviews are the inaugural event for the series. Further author interviews will be forthcoming from the various regions of the IPA.  In COCAP’s view, understanding the nascent development of any issue (here, the erotic) deepens the understanding not just of child psychoanalysts, but all analysts.  The work presented here ranges from very small children to late adolescents/young adults.  

Braving the Erotic Field is a groundbreaking collection of chapters from an international group of authors.  The book addresses the general lack of psychoanalytic writing on working with erotic feelings in the consulting room when treating children and adolescents.  This lack is doubly odd given Freud’s emphasis on childhood sexuality, as well as the intensities of the adolescent body/mind.  This book has emerged from the IPA, as Mary Brady, Anne Alvarez and Chris Lovett & Kim Boyd presented on this topic at the IPA in London in 2019 and were struck by the level of interest and anxiety expressed by members of the audience in relation to this topic.  In this last IPA Congress in Cartagena, two chapters from the book were presented during the Pre-congress by Christine Anzieur-Premmereur and Elena Molinari allowing a fascinating and in-depth look at two analysts working from different theoretical orientations with two little girls with compulsive masturbation.

Editor and chapter author Mary Brady takes the view that the subtle interchange of feelings, dreams, narratives and images that arise when erotic feelings are in the fore is better conceptualized as an erotic field, than with the binary of transference/countertransference.  In contemporary psychoanalysis the idea that the transference love offers the possibility of knowing the other in the deepest possible way is supplanting an attitude of suspicion.  This book is an important development in that the understandable concern regarding boundary violations can lead to a timid avoidance of the erotic in the treatment of children and adolescents that Brady terms ‘erotic insufficiency.’

We hope you will join us for these interviews with what Foreword author Andrea Celenza calls, “a collection of scholarly, intuitive, passionate and playful, reflecting a brave and daring foray into the erotic field of child and adolescent analysis.”  She says, “Read this book, learn from the best among us and find the child analyst within you,” we could add, join us on October 1st and for upcoming interviews with child analyst/authors from around the world.