Gender as Soft AssemblyGender as Soft Assembly weaves together insights from different disciplinary domains to open up new vistas of clinical understanding of what it means to inhabit, to perform, and to be, gendered. Opposing the traditional notion of development as the linear unfolding of predictable stages, Adrienne Harris argues that children become gendered in multiply configured contexts. And she proffers new developmental models to capture the fluid, constructed, and creative experiences of becoming and being gendered. According to Harris, these models, and the images to which they give rise, articulate not only with contemporary relational psychoanalysis but also with recent research into the origins of mentalization and symbolization. In urging us to think of gender as co-constructed in a variety of relational contexts, Harris enlarges her psychoanalytic sensibility with the insights of attachment theory, linguistics, queer theory, and feminist criticism. Nor is she inattentive to the impact of history and culture on gender meanings. Special consideration is given to chaos theory, which Harris positions at the cutting edge of developmental psychology and uses to generate new perspectives and new images for comprehending and working clinically with gender. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 89
... space . As analysts , we are drawn into ways of being in dyadic space and time , a task we execute well or badly . Mis- attunement can spoil or provoke change in a treatment . In ways we are often not fully conscious of , we draw on the ...
... space for herself to move and act , at least in her imagination , less rigidly , not be anchored to binary catego- ries , living in the space between masculinity and femininity . That opening this space is difficult to do is compelling ...
... space for connection and shared knowing . After the family had been out listening to some music , Sarah was jumping around , playing air guitar and making up a country and western type song about her daddy . Picking up on the song Sarah ...