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Femininity, Desire and Sublimation in Psychoanalysis: From the Melancholic to the Erotic

Author(s) : Elda Abrevaya

Reviews and Endorsements

"Elda Abrevaya introduces us to a very interesting journey which starts with a deep analysis of the notion of femininity focusing on a crucial topic little explored: women’s sublimation, sometimes considered a masculine attribution. She develops the concept of early femininity, based on the original mother/child relation and its strong investment in the little girl. Notions such as primary homosexuality, 'dead mother', matricide, countertransference in women analysts go through the text enriched with clinical cases as well as with writings of Woolf, Duras, De Beauvoir, Kristeva and others.

Following this thread, the author tackles the challenge of providing a metapsychological understanding of sublimation in women as a source of jouissance connected to the resolution of the mother complex. Abrevaya constructs a network that allows mapping the text in different ways towards a better comprehension of sublimation in women. This conceptual path makes it highly recommended for psychoanalysts but also for those readers interested in this topic." - Leticia Glocer Fiorini, Training Analyst of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association; Chair of the "Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies" Committee, IPA.

"Psychoanalysis embraces a passion for the origins. It is also true when the theorist essays to grasp a question, here the figures of femininity. Elda Abrevaya’s work shows a remarkable psychoanalytic culture, as illustrated by the return to the Freudian source or by the recognition of the vivacity of further debates (M. Klein, Winnicott, Lacan, Laplanche and so on). The axis of the homosexuality mother-daughter, in the history of the subject as well as in the transference, occupies a privileged position. Between theory and the clinic and following the analytic treatments of Fatma, Aisha, Andy… a return to the sources that does not impede the author to question the contemporary challenges and the new conflicts which appear, as in motherhood or in the issue of gender.

The place accorded to sublimation, in opposition to the restrictive point of view of Freud, notably in reference to writing (Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras), concludes with clarity this itinerary full of subtlety of the multiple faces of femininity." - Jacques André, Psychoanalytic Association of France; author, Aux Origines Féminines de la Sexualité.