In this book a group of contemporary psychoanalytic authors dedicated to studies on women and the feminine have been assembled with the objective of displaying points of concordance and discordance in relation to Freudian proposals. Discourse on women has changed greatly since Freud's time. It coincides with deep changes experienced by women and the feminine position, at least in most of the Western world. It is common knowledge that contraceptives, assisted fertilization, advances in women's rights, growingly evident sublimational capacities and demonstrations of professional success have definitely changed ideas regarding an eternal and immutable feminine nature. The authors are interested in illuminating ways in which these changes have or have not influenced psychoanalytic debate in relation to the feminine. This implies renewing the question of what is authentically feminine and whether there is any essential truth concerning the feminine. They select as a starting point: 'Femininity', the thirty-third lecture of the New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1933 [1932]), a paper in which Freud reflects, and at the same time expands ideas developed in previous texts which state his concepts on femininity.
About the author: Leticia Glocer Fiorini is a training psychoanalyst of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association. She is the author of The Feminine and the Complex Thought (Lugar Editorial, 2001), editor of The Other in the Intersubjective Field (APA-Lugar Editorial, 2004) and Time, History and Structure. A Psychoanalytical Approach (APA-Lugar Editorial, 2006). Among other contributions in psychoanalytic journals concerning feminine sexuality she published: 'The enigma of the sexual difference' in Feminine ScenariosA"(Lumen, 2000), 'Assisted fertilization, new problems' in Prevention in Mental Health (Lugar Editorial, 2002), 'The sexed body and the real, its meaning in transsexualism' in Masculine Scenarios (Karnac, 2003), 'Psychoanalysis and Gender, Convergences and Divergences' in Psychoanalysis and Gender Relations (Lumen, 2004) and 'The bodies of present-day maternity' in Motherhood in the Twenty-first Century (Karnac, 2006). Graciela Abelin-Sas Rose is a member of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and of the Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine. For the last twenty-six years, she has been a member of CAPS (Center for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis). She was the founder and Chairperson of this Institute's Colloquium with Visiting Authors, where analysts from all over the world, with different perspectives in psychoanalysis, would join us to discuss their points of view.
