Embracing Complexity: Challenging Norms in Psychoanalysis

This week on the show, Emily speaks with the authors of Gender Without Identity.

Ann Pellegrini and Avgi Saketopoulou are psychoanalysts who have focused their attention on gender and sexual identity. In their work, they have found the notion of a “core gender identity” or the “born this way” argument too simplistic and even problematic. All genders and sexualities, they argue, whether queer, straight, trans, nonbinary, or cis, are the result of complex psychic and social processes.

Their controversial take is that no one’s gender or sexuality is innate. 

Pellegrini and Saketopoulou assert that developmental events, even traumas, play an important role in all this. But to say that trauma may sometimes have a share in becoming trans or becoming queer does not mean trans or queer people are “broken.” Rather, they argue that trauma can function as an engine for transformation and growth.