Description
This book updates the Oedipus complex for a contemporary audience in the light of social and cultural changes and explores its implications for psychoanalytic treatment and our understanding of queer families.
Growing evidence during the past few decades indicates that children who grow up in same-sex families adapt well. These findings, which do not conform to the predictions of Oedipal theory, expose the theory’s biases, and call for reexamination of its premises. This book based on ground-breaking research and pursues a methodical investigation of the characteristics of the same-sex families that defy the expectations of Oedipal theory. Furnished with vivid illustrations, it invites the reader to engage actively in the interpretive effort and presents a diverse and complex story about kinship, opening a window onto a rich world of infantile phantasies and parents’ psychological conflicts, at the fascinating intersection of the personal and the social.
Oedipal Experiences in Same-Sex Families will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, educators and policymakers, same-sex parents, and parents who were assisted by gamete donation.
Table of Contents
Introduction: A bridge between two islands: psychoanalytic thinking and the research field Part I: What does Oedipal development have to do with the parents' sex, anyway? 1.“I want to marry you, Mommy”: On Oedipal configurations in same-sex families 2.Oedipal Configurations: Mutual illumination of theory and research findings Part II: What does genetics have to do with kinship, anyway? 3. On biological affiliation and kinship 4. A new hierarchy: Asymmetry between the birth mother and social mother in lesbian couples 5. Back to the closet: The issue of the child’s genetic origin among gay fathers 6. The dual role of the extended family. 7. The power of interpellation: kinship conceptualization among same-sex parents and their children Part III: What does procreation have to do with parental coitus, anyway? 8. Between longing and dread: representations of gamete donors and surogates in the children's inner-worlds. 9. Gamete donation in light of the primal scene: The parental challenge of integrating the donor’s imago Part IV: Afterword 10. Oedipus for Everyone? Biases in the Oedipal model: their roots and how to overcome them 11. How to work with same-sex families? Coda. The Kids Are All Right: a psychoanalytic reading in Lisa Cholodenko's film. Appendix A Appendix B.
