On March 21, the second day of the academic conference A Return to Freud? continued with a new series of panels. The sixth panel, Symptomatic Reading Now, focused on feminist and queer responses to Freudian psychoanalysis. Moderated by Lily Scherlis, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago, the panel featured presentations by Patricia Gherovici of the University of Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Wilson of Emory University, Michelle Rada of Yale University, and Carolyn Laubender of the University of Essex. The panel addressed an audience of approximately a hundred people.
Gherovici’s presentation, Why War (on Gender)?, examined how classical psychoanalysis has historically relied on a rigid binary perception of gender, often pathologizing transgender identities. Drawing on transgender literature and psychoanalytic theory, she argued that transgender identities represent a meaningful reconstruction of the self, shaped through language and symbolic reconfiguration. By challenging classical psychoanalytic frameworks, Gherovici demonstrated how gender identity is a dynamic and evolving construct. She positioned this perspective within the context of contemporary political attacks on transgender rights, emphasizing the importance of psychoanalysis in resisting these discourses.
Wilson’s Notes on Feminism and Mentalization explored how feminist scholarship has traditionally distanced itself from biological explanations, viewing them as deterministic. However, Wilson contended that this opposition to the biological sciences may not always be beneficial to feminist discourse. She critiqued the mind-body dichotomy present in both Freudian and feminist theory, arguing that neuroscience demonstrates the plasticity and adaptability of biological processes. She suggested that acknowledging the body’s active role in shaping cognition and psychological experience could enrich feminist perspectives on the psyche.
Rada’s Ironizing the Symptom challenged Freud’s focus on individual suffering, which often neglects the broader social and political conditions contributing to distress. She argued that psychoanalytic concepts such as overdetermination—the idea that multiple causes contribute to a psychological symptom—could be repurposed to understand collective political solidarity. By examining the unconscious social bonds that shape solidarity, Rada proposed that psychoanalysis offers valuable insights into the psychological foundations of political movements and communal resistance.
Laubender’s Auto-Theory, Auto-Analysis: Freud, Gender, and the Plural Self revisited Freud’s model of the self as a divided entity, caught between conscious and unconscious forces. She introduced the concept of autotheory, which frames subjectivity as plural and fluid rather than a singular struggle between repression and desire. By incorporating this perspective, Laubender argued for a more open-ended and evolving understanding of selfhood that embraces multiplicity rather than rigid binaries.
The panel concluded with a Q&A session moderated by Scherlis, during which audience members engaged with the speakers on the intersections between psychoanalysis, gender, and contemporary political struggles.