Gender Multidimensionality with Adrienne Harris
VICTORIA | September 2018 – June 2019
The Victoria Chapter of the Western Branch Course Committee is pleased to offer a nine session series of seminars in preparation for the Annual Scientific Meeting to be held on March 23, 2019. The annual conference will be entitled “Gender as a Soft Assembly: Gender Multidimensionality” with Presenter, Adrienne Harris, Ph.D.
Dr. Harris is on the faculty and is a supervisor at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She also serves on the faculty and is a supervisor at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. Dr. Harris co-edited the book Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and Studies In Gender and Sexuality, and in 2009, she, along with Lewis Aron, and Jeremy Safron established the Sandor Ferenczi Center at the New School University. Dr. Harris co-edited the Book Series Relational Perspectives in Psychoanalysis, a series with over 70 published volumes. She is a member of the NGO (non governmental organization) which the IPA developed to work with the United Nations and she has been involved with education and development on the problem of human trafficking. Dr. Harris is an editor of the IPA ejournal Psychoanalysistoday.com which is developing cross cultural communications on the topics of Violence and Migration.
Dr. Harris has been a key figure in the psychoanalytic discourse on gender, sexuality, and identity for the past 20 years. Steeped in Relational and Field Theory perspectives in contemporary psychoanalysis, she draws on works by sociologists and philosophers like Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Francois Lyotard, and psychoanalytic writers like Sandor Ferenczi, Jean Laplanche, Jessica Benjamin, among others, to develop a contemporary dynamic understanding of the multidimensional factors which contribute to the soft assembly of gender identity. Chaos theory, queer theory, and non-linear systems theory form the basis of her discourse on the multiplicity of genders and fluidity of identity, impacted by a multiplicity of environmental, developmental, and constitutional factors. Dr. Harris is a noted Ferenczi scholar who, among others is rehabilitating trauma theory, abandoned by Freud, in the psychoanalytic dialogue.
These seminars will focus on Harris’s work on gender and development and will use readings suggested by Dr. Harris as a useful preparation for the conference itself. During the first hour of each seminar the class will discuss the assigned readings. This will be followed in the second hour by class discussion and clinical application of the theories.
During the final two seminars of the series the class focus will shift to explore some of the recent work of Thomas Ogden.
Schedule:
The seminars will be held on the last Thursday
of the month from 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm.
**except** for May (4th week) & December (no seminar)
Dates:
2018: September 27, October 25, November 29
2019: January 31, February 28, March 28, April 25, May 23, and June 27
Organizing Committee:
Catherine Young, Ph.D., F.I.P.A, and Janet Oakes, M.A., BC-ATP, F.I.P.A.
Location:
Victoria Mental Health Centre, Eric Martin Pavilion, Room 135
Cost:
$360 general registration
$225 Student rate with valid student card
(CME credits are not available for this course)
Group Facilitators:
Catherine Young Ph.D., F.I.P.A, and, Janet Oakes M.A., BC-ATP, F.I.P.A.
All course readings will be provided upon payment of tuition fee.
Registrants for the course will receive a $25 discount toward their registration fee
for the WBCPS 2019 conference with keynote speaker Adrienne Harris, Ph.D.
Withdrawal Policy: The withdrawal policy of the Extension Program allows a refund minus a 10% administration cost, up to one week before the first class, and no refund after the first meeting.
Course Outline
Seminar 1: September 27, 2018
Janet Oakes, M.A., BC-ATP, F.I.P.A.
Readings:
1. Harris, A. (2003). Chapter 1: “Multiple Selves, Multiple Codes”. In Gender as a Soft Assembly: Routledge: New York. pp. 25-47.
2. Harris, A. (2003) Chapter 2: “Timelines and Temporalities” In Gender as A Soft Assembly: Routledge: New York. pp. 49-72.
Seminar 2: October 25, 2018
Reading:
1. Harris, A. (2003). Chapter 8: “Chaos Theory as a map to Contemporary Gender Theorists” In Gender as a Soft Assembly: Routledge: New York. pp.191-214.
Seminar 3: November 29, 2018
Catherine Young, Ph.D., F.I.P.A.
Readings:
1. Harris, A. (2000). Gender as a Soft Assembly: Tomboy Stories Stud. Gend. Sex., 1(3): 223-250. (This is also chapter 5 in Gender as a Soft Assembly.)
2. Harris, A. (2011). Gender as a Strange Attractor: Discussion of the Transgender Symposium. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 21(2):230-238. (This is Chapter 6 in Gender as a Soft Assembly.)
Seminar 4: January 31, 2019
Janet Oakes, M.A., BC-ATP, F.I.P.A.
Reading: Harris. A. “Beyond the Binary: Caesuras and Nonlinear Dynamic Stories”. (This is an excerpt from Dr. Harris’ new book to be released in the fall of 2018. She has graciously allowed us to use an advance version of her chapter.)
Seminar 5: February 28, 2019
Reading: Harris, A. “Hatred, Envy, Misogyny” (Advance chapter of unpublished book)
Seminar 6: March 28, 2019
Catherine Young, Ph.D., F.I.P.A.
Readings:
1. Harris, A. “Melancholic Fathers. Dangerous Fathers”. (Advance chapter of unpublished book)
2. Harris, A. (2008). “Fathers” and “Daughters”. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 28(1):39-59.
Seminar 7: April 25, 2019
Janet Oakes, M.A., BC-ATP, F.I.P.A.
Reading: Harris, A. (2016) Winnicott and Gender Madness. (Advance chapter of unpublished book)
Session 8: May 23, 2019
Reading: From Thomas Ogden’s book, Reclaiming Unlived Life
Experiences in Psychoanalysis, 2016
1. Chapter 1. Truth and Psychic Change (In Place of an Introduction)
2. Chapter 2. On Three Forms of Thinking
Session 9: June 27, 2019
Catherine Young, Ph.D., F.I.P.A
Reading: From Thomas Ogden’s book, Reclaiming Unlived Life
Experiences in Psychoanalysis, 2016
1. Chapter 3. Fear of Breakdown and the Unlived Life.
2. Evaluation of Course