This presentation aims to approach the polyphonies of sexuality and gender focusing on the intersections of clinical, theoretical and meta psychological perspectives understanding that none of these approaches can be analyzed separately.

These perspectives open at least three paths: one is the way of thinking on these polyphonies: binary and non-binary logics are in play and leads to explore alternative territories based on the paradigm of complexity to approach this challenge. The other is the relation of the drive and unconscious desires with gender mandates. And the third one leads to illuminate the mechanisms by which culture and current discourses about sexual and gender migrations permeate subjectivity.

There are also at stake private theories, beliefs and prejudices of the analyst with regard to the masculine-feminine dualism and its impact on countertransference.

This context demands a review of the concept of sexual and gender difference which should be distinguished from ‘difference’ as a category.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this presentation participants will be able to:

1. Assess for themselves the primary purpose of this presentation which is to emphasize a UNICEF report (2006) statement – “The lives of women are inextricably linked to the well-being of children. If they are not educated, if they are not healthy, if they are not empowered, the children are the ones who suffer.”
2. Identify the psychological and social challenges faced by women mothering alone without sufficient resources.
3. Recognize that much can be learned about the capacity for motherhood and the basic characteristics of resilience, autonomy and caring from women without resources who are mothering alone and who are not patients.
4. Identify the contributors to psychological development of effective mothering and society’s responsibility to provide opportunity.

Letitia Glocier Fiorini, MD

Training and supervising analyst of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association (APA). Current Chair of the “Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies Committee” of the International Psychoanalytic Association. Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Buenos Aires. Past President of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association. Past Chair of the Publications Committee of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) and of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association (APA).

She has been awarded the Celes Cárcamo Prize for her paper: “The feminine position: a heterogeneous construction”. She published the following books: a) Deconstructing the Feminine: Psychoanalysis, Gender and Theories of Complexity (Published in Spanish in 2001 and in English by Routledge 2007 and 2nd edition in 2024), b) Sexual Difference in Debate: Bodies, desires and Fictions (Karnac/Routledge, 2017), and c) coeditor of On Freud’s “Femininity”, Mourning and Melancholia, The experience of time, among others, as well as numerous articles and chapters of books on femininity, motherhood and sexual and gender diversity.

She was invited to present a keynote paper at the IPA Congress on The Feminine, London, July 2019 among other presentations at International Congresses and Psychoanalytic Societies.