SAPI/SAPA Seminar by Professor Rosine Josef Perelberg

ABOUT

Love and melancholia in the analysis of a woman by a woman

In the analysis of women by women a melancholic core may be encountered at the centre of the transference/ countertransference situation that is an expression of the loss of the primary maternal object that has never been mourned. The attachment to the primary, lost object may be preserved in a melancholic, invisible way, and the longing that it is connected to might only reach representation in the après coup of the analytic process. The links between this primary love, melancholia and the unrepresentable in the analysis of women will be explored. These analyses powerfully evoke the relationship to the somatic. The internalization of the body of the mother, which is a requirement in the development of a woman, can take on frightening, fragmented, part-object qualities. An example of a five times a week analysis is discussed.

Rosine Jozef Perelberg is a Fellow, Training Analyst and past President of the British Psychoanalytic Society, Visiting Professor in the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London and Corresponding Member of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society. Previously she undertook a PhD in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics.

She has written and edited 12 books. Psychic Bisexuality has won the 2019 American Board & Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize for Best Edited Book. Her short film Mourning and Melancholia in Times of Confinement has been seen by over 4k people. Her podcast for the IPA entitled The Murder of the dead father: the Shoah and contemporary antisemitism has also been listened to by over 4k people.