TY - JOUR A1 - Dean, Tim T1 - It ain't over till it's over response to editors’ follow-up questions JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 08 (1998), pp. 033-043. N2 - Whether it sees itself as an instrument of healing, of training, or of exploration in depth, psychoanalysis has only a single medium: the patient's speech. That this is self-evident is no excuse for our neglecting it. And all speech calls for a. Reply [Lacan, 1953]. Y1 - 1998 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dyess, Cynthia A1 - Dean, Tim T1 - Reply to commentary JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 10 (2000), pp. 787-794. N2 - This. Reply to the commentaries by Corbett, Hansell, and Stern explores whether Lacan's concept of the real can – or should – be translated into more readily recognizable terms. It extends our previous discussion of impossibility by arguing that not all ideas and experiences can be brought within the realm of the known and familiar. We suggest that impossibilities of meaning should not be understood primarily in phenomenological terms, and we demur from the assessment that our concept of impossibility offers nothing for clinical work. Claiming that what resists meaning also impedes relationality, we encourage relational theorists to address the nonrelational processes that subtend relationality, including the relation between analyst and patient. We acknowledge that the theory of impossibility – or what we now call >negative mediation< – raises a fundamental challenge to relational theory, but we insist that disruptions of relationality need not be considered pathological. Taking into account the nonrelational may enhance rather than impoverish relational psychoanalysis. Y1 - 2000 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dyess, Cynthia A1 - Dean, Tim T1 - Reply to commentary JF - Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 10 (2000), pp. 735-756. N2 - This paper offers an antiessentialist, psychoanalytic account of gender by arguing against Butler's deconstructive critique of gender essentialism. We develop an alternative to Butler's conception of gender as performative by focusing on those aspects of gender that resist meaning and representation. Using Lacan's concept of the real, we argue that any viable theory of gender must account for the limit conditions of cultural discourses that constitute subjectivity and sociality. Once gender is understood in terms not of proliferating possibilities for meaning, but of a certain impossibility of meaning, then gender's bearing on human relationality requires reconceptualizing. Claiming that various cultural narratives about gender (including traditional psychoanalytic narratives) should be recognized as symptomatic attempts to come to terms with a fundamental impossibility at the heart of sexual difference, we conclude by suggesting ways in which psychoanalysis may productively illuminate the failures of meaning that structure human relationality. Y1 - 2000 ER -