BCA Summer Conference 2016

June 4, 2016 to June 4, 2016 9:30 am - 4.00pm

Date/Time
Date(s) - Saturday, June 4th, 2016
9:30 am - 4:00 pm


Over the rainbow and beyond…an exploration of sexuality and psychoanalytic thinking in the 21st Century
with Alessandra Lemmaand Leezah Hertzmann

Presenting two papers which revisit the theme of sexuality – mainly homosexuality – focussing on the dilemmas and conflicts between current psycho-social thinking and the more traditional psychoanalytic approach.

“Let’s talk about sex”: In this talk Alessandra will provide an overview of the place of sexuality in contemporary psychoanalytic thinking and practice.

Objecting to the object: Encountering the internal parental couple relationship for lesbian and gay patients – Psychoanalysis views our encounter with the internal parental couple relationship as a fundamental psychic event in the course of our development, but traditionally this has been a heteronormatively constructed concept. In this paper, Leezah Hertzmann considers some of the specific factors particular to
the psychic conflicts of some lesbian and gay patients including that of internalised homophobia, and its impact on conscious and unconscious aspects of sexuality.

Alessandra Lemma is Professor of Psychological Therapies at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust and the School of Health & Human Sciences at Essex University. She is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society and Visiting Professor, Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London. She is the Clinical Director of the Psychological Interventions Research Centre at UCL. She is Visiting Professor, Istituto
Winnicott, Sapienza University of Rome and “Centro Winnicott”, Rome. She is the Editor of the Routledge series of New Library of Psychoanalysis books and one of the regional Editors for the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. She has published extensively on psychoanalysis, body image disturbances, sexuality and trauma and works in private practice specialising in work with individuals with body image disturbances and with gender identity related difficulties.

Leezah Hertzmann is a senior couple and individual psychoanalytic psychotherapist, based at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships and in private practice. She has developed with colleagues at the Anna Freud Centre, mentalization-based treatments for parents and couples in conflict. Alongside this, Leezah has a particular interest in psychoanalytic theory and technique in work with lesbian and gay patients and has taught and published in this area. She is a member of the British Psychoanalytic Council advisory group on sexualities.

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