Queering psychoanalysis: power, self and identity in psychoanalytic therapy with sexual minority clients

Abstract

In this article I consider whether psychoanalytic psychotherapy can be gay affirmative and ask to what extent is psychoanalytic practice able to incorporate a queer account of heteronormativity in work with sexual minority patients/clients. I discuss the often pathologising vocabulary of psychoanalysis and go on to consider its theoretical use in providing a complex and practical understanding of the oppression of sexual minority persons, along with a model of therapeutic work and Oedipal relations which may contribute to helping sexual minority patients/clients work through the impact of growing up and making a life in a heteronormative culture. Thus, in this article I seek to address the question of how a queering of the foundations of psychoanalytic therapy may offer a means of effectively challenging heteronormativity both throughout our wider culture and within psychoanalytic theory and practice itself.