Dianne Elise, "Creativity and the Erotic Dimensions of the Analytic Field" (Routledge, 2019)

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Aug 13, 2024

In this discussion, Dianne Elise, a pioneering author studying creativity and its ties to the analytic field, shares her insights on the erotic dimensions of therapy. She bravely tackles Freud’s query about female desire and critiques traditional psychoanalytic perspectives. Elise reflects on her feminist roots and the interplay between creativity and maternal eroticism, emphasizing the impact of societal norms on women's sexuality. Her exploration of these themes urges a deeper understanding of the feminine experience in psychological practice.

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ANECDOTE

Gender Gaps in Psychoanalysis

Dianne Elise's early psychoanalytic study revealed that literature on separation-individuation ignored gender differences.
She was shocked to see the pathologizing of girls' development, sparking her to theorize distinct female development phases.

INSIGHT

Embodied Vitality in Analysis

True analytic work requires clinicians to engage their full embodied, creative selves, not just intellect.
Libido and vitality fuel deeper connection and combat clinical burnout, highlighting the need for analytic eroticism.

ANECDOTE

Maternal Eroticism and Field Theory

A missed visit by Kristina exposes the power of maternal eroticism theory.
Elise's seminar in Italy sealed her belief in combining Winnicottian and field theory for analytic work.

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Today I talked to Dianne Elise about her book Creativity and the Erotic Dimensions of the Analytic Field (Routledge, 2019).

To be in the presence of a person—a woman in fact, and Dianne Elise in particular—who follows her instincts, someone who builds theory from the ground up, and whose theories keep evolving, enlivens the interlocutor. I almost hesitate to say more about this interview for fear it will not live up to the interview itself!

We could not record our eye contact, such as it can be (hobbled and skewed) on Zoom, but that we were in a lot of contact during our time together can probably be felt, acoustically and otherwise. I think she is among the most cutting edge thinkers in our field, precisely because she says new things, or things we all know to be true but hesitate (our inhibiting ourselves for fear of making some people uneasy) to articulate. She dares to answer Freud’s question regarding what a woman wants, and then she goes even further explaining, deconstructing really, why that question needs to remain never-endingly elusive.

For about 25 years Elise has been persistently working on opening up psychoanalytic thinking about female development, creativity and the erotics of motherhood and clinical work. Here she shares with us a bit of the story of her own development which includes her foundational encounter with feminism in the 1970s and with the writings of Freudian the thinking of Ogden thereafter. Her first publication reflects her foray into the work of Mahler, Bergman and Pine, which led her coming to question the presumption that girls and boys share the same experience of early life. This was followed by her utter re-working of the so called “negative oedipal”, moving it from the category of anomaly and placing it in the realm of the average and the expectable for girls. Not quite Winnicottian, Feminist, Relational or Field, she has blended these schools of thought to create something of her own—dare I say, and the play on words is simply irresistible, Elysian?

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