Readings: Patricia Gherovici, “Depathologizing of Trans” and “The Singular Universality of Trans”

As the contemporary debate in trans-care frames transness as a mental health concern, at the Queer Analysis session Ednei Soares will debate his experience at the gender clinic within the scope of problematising the possibilities and limits of de-pathologizing trans within the psychoanalytic framework.

Ednei Soares is a Brazilian psychoanalyst trained at a Lacanian school with 18 years of experience in Europe and South America. He has a PhD from Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands) and the UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil). Recently his practice has focused on transgender care and on victims of sexual violence and abuse due to their sexual orientation, gender identity or expression.

In his research recent trajectory Ednei Soares discusses claims by trans and queer theory scholars on Freud’s theory of fetishism, focussing on how Freud’s thinking on fetishism allows for non-pathologizing perspectives in contemporary sexuality and gender identity, including trans sexuality. His research draws from different psychoanalytic traditions such as the object-relation approach (D. Winnicott and P. Greenacre) and Jacques Lacan’s.

email d.semerene@uva.nl for the texts.