Spring Conference 2003 - Description
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Spring Conference 2003

 

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: APS CONFERENCE, APRIL 26, 2003

    

            Men, Masculinity and Fathering Across The Life Cycle: A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspective

 

Instructor: Michael J. Diamond, Ph.D., A.B.P.P.

 

Brief Biographical Sketch on Michael J. Diamond, Ph.D.

Michael J. Diamond, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in the full-time practice of psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic therapy, and couples therapy in Los Angeles, CA.  He received his doctorate from Stanford University and completed his analytic training from the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies.  He is currently a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Los Angeles Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies.  He is also on the Teaching and Supervising Faculty of the Wright Institute Los Angeles and is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA.  He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association as well as of the Division of Psychoanalysis (Division 39), a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association, and a Diplomate in Clinical Psychology of the American Board of Professional Psychology.

Dr. Diamond has published extensively in the areas of fathering, gender, and masculinity, as well as on psychoanalytic technique, the treatment of early trauma and dissociation, hypnosis, and group process.  He is a member of the Editorial Board of Studies in Gender and Sexuality.  In addition, he has been the recipient of numerous awards for his professional writing and teaching (including the Jean L. Sanville Award for Original Writing in Psychoanalysis).  He co-edited the 1995 text, Becoming A Father: Contemporary Social, Developmental, and Clinical Perspectives and wrote the 1998 monograph entitled, “Fathers With Sons: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on ‘Good Enough’ Fathering Throughout the Life Cycle” (which appeared in Gender and Psychoanalysis).  His two most current papers are on the early shaping of a boy’s sense of masculinity and the transformation of masculinity at midlife.

Workshop content

This conference considers the links between the early development of male gender identity and the challenges confronting the adult male.  Attention will also focus on how the therapist's understanding of the complex dynamics of masculine development enhances psychotherapy with many male patients.  The format will include didactic presentation, group discussion, and clinical material to illustrate the operation of these processes.

The instructor will present his own emerging model of masculine gender identity development from childhood through adulthood.  It will be demonstrated how a male’s changing sense of his masculinity assumes an ongoing, plastic process of destabilization and reconstruction at various pivotal developmental stages, particularly during early childhood, adolescence, and middle adulthood.  Particular emphasis will be placed on the important role of the father and the maturational opportunities afforded by involved fathering.    

The initial shaping of a boy’s sense of masculinity is founded on his unique struggles in separating from his mother. However, in drawing on recent empirical findings as well as the work of relational, inter-subjectively oriented, and more traditional ego analysts, the instructor confirms that healthy masculine gender identity does not result from what has been traditionally viewed as the boys’ dis-identification from his mother.  In contrast, boys who need to violently repudiate their identifications with their mother are more susceptible to psychopathology.  Thus, by expanding on the centrality of the male’s striving for narcissistic completion, we will examine how a boy’s sense of his masculinity rests on the nature of his relationship with his mother and father (and their respective capacities to recognize his subjectivity and affirm his maleness).  

Finally, we will consider how both phallic and genital “masculine” ego ideals shift across varying developmental junctions and ultimately, how a more mature sense of masculinity evolves when the phallic wish to be unlimited is renounced and mourned and instead, certain real limits concerning sex, gender, and generational differences are accepted.  This reshaping of the “masculine” ego ideal consequently involves the transformation of a man’s previously adaptive “phallicism” (resting on omnipotence, desires for narcissistic completion, and gendered splitting) into more realistic, “genital” ego ideals.  In other words, we will see that this achievement involves an interplay between masculine and feminine identities and the integration of antithetical elements in a psyche no longer so unconsciously gendered. 

Outline

  1. Introduction: "Masculinity" Through A Developmental (And Cultural) Lens
     

  2. Traditional Psychoanalytic Perspectives On Male Gender Identity Formation and Development

  1. Freud and the oedipal father

  2. Pre-oedipal maternal-infant identifications and attachments

  3. Greenson and Stoller’s symbolic father of dis-identification

  4. Pre-oedipal paternal-infant dyadic identifications and attachments (e.g., Abelin, Blos)

  5. The boy’s striving for narcissistic completion and the gendered masculine ego ideal (e.g., Chasseguet-Smirgel)

  1. Controversies Over Gender Differentiation-Enter the Empiricists, Feminists, Queer Theorists, and Postmodernists (Fast, Benjamin, Elise, Ogden, Frommer, Corbett)
     

  2. My Contemporary Model of Male Gender Identity Development 

  1. Revisioning boys’ turning away from mothers

  2. Relational and metapsychological issues in the boy’s early traumatic separation process

  3. The role of the father and the mother’s relationship to her son’s maleness

  4. Intersubjectivity, recognition, and relational issues

  5. Understanding the role of phallic and genital ego ideals

  6. Maturing masculine gender identity—from rigid phallicism to fluid genitality
     

  1. Destabilization and Reconstruction of Male Gender Identity Across the Life Cycle

  1. From adaptive gender polarization to ossification

  2. Maturation and the fluid expansiveness of male gender identity
     

  1. The Impact of Aging and Mid-life on Masculine Gender Identity: Beyond Gender Essentialism

  1. The tasks of mid-life and the breakdown in masculinized identity

  2. Shifting internal realms and the attenuation of “masculine” identity
     

  1. Masculine Development and Psychoanalytically-Oriented Psychotherapy: Clinical Applications

Course Objectives--What each participant can expect to learn:

  1. An expanded appreciation as to the search for masculine identity in today's cultural context and how the sense of masculinity is "attained" in other cultural milieus.

  2. How a developmental perspective impacts our understanding of masculinity.

  3. A broad overview of how psychoanalytic theory has understood the development of a male's sense of gender identity, including:
    ... a more specific understanding of the prevailing pre-oedipal basis of male gender identity
    ... similarly, a more specific understanding of the prevailing oedipal basis of male gender identity (as originally espoused by Freud)

  4. An appreciation of post-Freudian contributions to an understanding of masculinity, including:
    ...Greenson's and Stoller’s theory of the boy's need for dis-identification from the mother based on the importance of core gender identity and protofemininity
    ...Abelin's hypothesis pertaining to the father and early triangulation vis a vis the mother and child
    ...Blos' conceptualization of the role of the early dyadic father
    ...Fast's differentiation model of male gender identity
    ...Benjamin's (and Pollack's) focus on the early import of intersubjective desire, attachment, and identification

  5. An informed perspective on the role played by bifurcation and adaptive gender polarization, as well as ossification and fluidity in masculine gender identity.

  6. A better understanding of the current controversies over gender differentiation.

  7. An understanding of Michael Diamond’s emerging model of masculine identity development throughout the life cycle, emphasizing the important role of the father and the maturational opportunities afforded by involved fathering.

  8. A recognition of how the reshaping of the “masculine” ego ideal involves the transformation of previously adaptive “phallicism” (resting on omnipotence, desires for narcissistic completion, and gendered splitting) into more realistic, “genital” ego ideals.

  9. A description of the specific impact of fathering and aging on the male’s maturing sense of his masculinity.

  10. An understanding of the phase specific destabilizing and reconstructive nature of male gender identity.

  11. A recognition of the expansiveness of male gender identity through maturation and a better understanding of the obstacles to such development.

  12. An exposure to the central tasks of a male’s mid-life, the importance of a man’s mid-life “depressive crisis”, and its impact on the structuralization of his masculinized identity.

  13. An understanding of the shifting internal realms of the “masculine” and the mature male adult’s attenuation of his gendered identity.

  14. A deeper appreciation as to how the therapist's understanding of the complex dynamics of masculine identity development enhances psychotherapy with many male patients.