Deconstructing the Feminine: Psychoanalysis, Gender and Theories of Complexity - Softcover

'In Deconstructing the Feminine, Psychoanalysis, Gender and Theories of Complexity, Leticia Glocer Fiorini offers us a comprehensive picture of the feminine development in which we can follow with growing interest several ways of approaching this challenging issue. Among its many valuable insights, this book has the special value of using contributions from different psychoanalytic authors, as well as from other areas of knowledge, in such a way that the reader can follow not only historical contributions but also recent challenges as the new reproductive techniques. With this book, Leticia Glocer Fiorini offers a systematization of the current "state of the art" and brings also her own contributions, as well as possible new lines for future developments. I strongly recommend Deconstructing the Feminine to all readers interested in psychoanalytic studies, gender studies, human cycle development and to therapists who deal, in their practice, with both women and men and their interactions.' - Claudio Laks Eizirik, from the Foreword

The guiding thread of this theoretical review is the illumination of the impasses of binary thought and of the essentialist conceptions of women and the feminine. In this trajectory, the author's ongoing dialogue with Freud is connected with one aspect of his way of thinking: multicentred and complex. The text addresses questions relating to love, sexual desire, maternity, beauty and the passing of time and highlights current debates concerning women, the feminine, and sexual difference as well as some controversial topics that have been discussed throughout the history of the psychoanalytic movement. One of the most relevant subjects is the notion of 'feminine enigma' and the conceptions of the feminine as the negative of the masculine, which means going into the nature-nurture debate, as well as into considerations of the feminine seen as the other of the masculine. The author points out that the notion of 'feminine enigma' is a displacement of the enigmas inherent to the origins, to the finite time of life (the inevitability of death) and to sexual difference.