TY - JOUR A1 - Elise, Dianne T1 - The >death of Freud< and the rebirth of free psychoanalytic inquiry JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 12 (2002), pp. 667-673. N2 - Sherman underscores the tenacity of phobic avoidance of homoeroticism, especially between men. Homophobia and anxieties related to gender identity are prevalent. I agree with Sherman that the feeling of being psychically penetrated can represent a particular threat to men. Sherman's use of the image of opening Pandora's box reveals a fear of a vulnerable, >vaginal< opening in men. In defense, rigidly >professional< relationships may prevail. This clinical scenario often repeats an early developmental dynamic with the father erotic desire between males has a deep genetic history of dissociation and denial. Psychoanalytic theorists have had difficulty approaching this topic of passions for the same sex. Thinking further about elements that might entrench this dread and avoidance, I focus on the image of >being bad on the side,< with its potential meaning with regard to the primal scene. Homoeroticism might unconsciously register as a form of >cheating< on the heterosexual, reproductive couple – not sanctioned, tabooed, >cursed,< and thus particularly tantalizing and frightening. Analytic understanding of male development allows for the recognition of an especially strong sense of both attraction and danger for the male pairing – a >Laius curse.< Y1 - 2002 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Elise, Dianne T1 - Revenge and Forgiveness in Psychoanalysis: Commentary on Stephen Wangh's >Revenge and Forgiveness in Laramie, Wyoming< JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 11 (2001), pp. 561-570. N2 - This. Reply offers clarification of the author's thesis. What was originally a reciprocal, pleasurable experience for each sex of mutual interpenetration with the preoedipal mother devolves into a split, gendered polarity. The specific form this takes for a boy – repudiation of identification with the mother and with maternal qualities – is seen to be detrimental to male development. I theorize a culturally normative, gender-specific neurosis caused not by maternal care but by the difficulty in male development of continuing to incorporate the surplus pleasures of maternal penetration given a problematic model of masculinity. My aim in >Unlawful Entry< is not to reverse gendered power relations but to forward their elimination. Y1 - 2001 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Elise, Dianne T1 - Response to discussions JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 11 (2001), pp. 499-531. N2 - In this paper, it is argued that males as well as females have an early experience in relation to the nursing mother of being receptive to bodily and psychic penetration. Males tend to lose access to this experience and may come to fear penetration as a threat such that a masculine sense of self is felt to be dependent on an impermeable psychic boundary that is not to be penetrated. Instead, phallicism as a fortress of emotional self-sufficiency – which the author labels the citadel complex – becomes the matrix of a subjective sense of masculinity. The multiple and combined forces of bodily development, the establishment of gender identity, and the process of separation-individuation are examined for their role in this process. A critique of the Lacanian concept of paternal law suggests that the >law of the father< can be interpreted as a law regulating penetration. Paternal law can be viewed as a code for the establishment of an impenetrable masculinity whereby entry into an adult male psyche becomes unthinkable, >unlawful.< An impermeable bodily and psychic boundary – the ability to penetrate without the ability to be penetrated – collapses a necessary dialectical tension that may affect men's experience of sex and of love and that may shape and limit their desire. Y1 - 2001 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Elise, Dianne T1 - Making a Memorial Place: The Photography of Shimon Attie JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 08 (1998), pp. 383-384. Y1 - 1998 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Elise, Dianne T1 - Loyal opposition and the clarity of dissent. Commentary on Donald P. Spence's >the hermeneutic turn< JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 08 (1998), pp. 353-371. N2 - Selected aspects of case material in the treatment of a bisexual woman are used to illustrate the theme of penetrability versus impenetrability in the feminine and masculine psyches. I examine the dimensions not of activity and passivity, but of a fixed versus a permeable bodily and psychic boundary – the ability to penetrate as well as the ability to be penetrated. The patient showed shifting gender identifications, depending on the relational context – the geography of the lover's body and mind – that she described as >expanding her gender repertoire.< Bisexuality is discussed as a creative use of potential space that does not necessitate the collapse of core gender identity. An integration is offered of a clinical and theoretical focus on sexuality with an emphasis on earliest object relations. To the metaphors of the primal scene and the combined parent, I add the metaphor of the nursing couple as the site of bisexual identifications and as the earliest relation of the penetrating to the penetrated. I critique the gender split regarding the ability to penetrate – an ability not inherently male but that comes to be seen as such. Y1 - 1998 ER -