Revisiting Psychic Bisexuality: The Feminine Within

Editor : Ana Teresa Vale, Editor : Nadja Troger

Part of Psychoanalysis and Women series - more in this series

Revisiting Psychic Bisexuality: The Feminine Within

Book Details

Publisher : Routledge
Published : December 2025
Cover : Paperback
Pages : 184
Category :
Forthcoming
Category 2 :
Psychoanalysis
Catalogue No : 98334
ISBN 13 : 9781032953557
ISBN 10 : 1032953551

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Revisiting Psychic Bisexuality: The Feminine Within explores the complexities of psychosexual development from a psychoanalytic perspective, challenging traditional ideals and theories.

Viewing the feminine and the masculine as an interdependent dyad in the human psyche, this book examines the construction of identity, as well as the sexual identification process. Considering inter- and intrapsychic dynamics, the chapters explore the relationship between analyst and analysand, looking at how various perspectives on the identification process of the masculine and feminine can challenge the analytic process. Focusing on classic and contemporary psychoanalytic theories, the chapters approach the phenomenon of psychic bisexuality as a mediating and mental function and work to find a model that fits with contemporary Psychoanalysis and life in the 21st century. Based on the universal idea that each element of the analytic pair carries inside his/her idiosyncratic experience of the feminine/masculine relationship, and that the analytic pair is engaged in an ongoing unconscious communication, the global cohort of contributors invite psychoanalysts working today to expand their viewpoint and move beyond the traditional psychoanalytic frame to better help their clients.

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Table of Contents
About the Editor(s)
Customer Reviews

Reviews and Endorsements

This book is a rare combination of articles from well-known psychoanalysts from all over the world. They share their complex views on psychic bisexuality, dealing in depth with psychoanalytic theory, and very interesting developments on early psychic life, on Freud’s cases, and contemporary clinic. This book captures the essence of the complex issue of psychic bisexuality in our societies, and of the stimulating work of psychoanalytic technique with contemporary patients. This is a brilliant book, exciting and very accessible: a good combination of education and psychoanalytic thinking.
Christine Anzieu-Premmereur, MD, PhD, Assistant Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at Columbia University, Overall Chair IPA COCAP

In publishing this book, the editors have succeeded in bringing together a collection of esteemed authors from different regions of the world who invite the reader to explore the complex question of the feminine and the masculine, both of which are intricately linked to the concept of psychic bisexuality. The richness of this book also lies in the deep respect and sensitivity with which each author listens to their patients and follows them in the conundrums of the unconscious processes that underlie the vicissitudes one encounters when confronted with questions that touch the most intimate part of one’s identity and sense of femininity and of masculinity, leading to a better understanding of their suffering. Particularly today, in a contemporary world where diversity and respect for the other are under threat, this book enriches the reader by offering the opportunity to discover, or rediscover, the concept of psychic bisexuality from different cultural psychoanalytic traditions providing new ideas to help us better understand our patients who question gender, sexual identity, femininity and masculinity.
Katy Bogliatto, MD, Training Psychoanalyst from the Belgian Psychoanalytical Society, IPA Vice-President elect (2023-2025)

Starting from the notion that the field of sexuality today is undergoing profound changes that could be compared to a “landslide”, this book by many eminent authors, admirably edited by Ana Teresa Vale and Nadja Tröger, investigates the background for a cultural phenomenon that can be seen as constituting the nucleus of the dramatic changes within the present time: psychic bisexuality. To sum it up, the attention on psychic bisexuality could be considered a movement against dominance: the “primacy of genitality”, viewed still by Freud as the most advanced, and in this way most mature form of psychosexuality, to reign over the partial drives, has today lost its place and meaning in sexual practices as well as in psychoanalytic theory. Instead, the rediscovery of the concept of psychic bisexuality as it is extensively elaborated in this book, is seen as a liberation by the younger generation. It opens up a path for a new psychoanalytic understanding of the spread of sexual practices that were before considered improper or even pathological. The authors of this book explore the possibilities clinically and expand into new theories. I can highly recommend reading this book to all who are involved with the training of candidates, but more even with young people of both sexes in their search for orientation in sexual life, intimacy and love.
Rotraut De Clerck, Training Psychoanalyst from the German Psychoanalytic Association, Chair of the EPF Group Psychoanalysis in Literature – Literature in Psychoanalysis, Consultant IPA Culture

1. Introduction
Ana Teresa Vale and Nadja Tröger

Part I - Power, difference and complementarity
2. Mind the Gap: Reflections on the feminine and psychic bisexuality
Conceição Tavares de Almeida

3. Psychic bisexuality in the construction of subjectivity
Cláudia Aparecida Carneiro and Eliana Rigotto Lazzarini

4. The feminine side of the force – The elaboration of the feminine identity
Ana Teresa Vale

5. Bisexuality: Freud and Woolf meet
Barbara Stimmel

6. Passion and melancholia, red and black: The vicissitudes of the sexual in an analytic process
Rosine Perelberg

Part II - Challenges in the construction of a gender and sexual identity
7. Crossing borders. Persona, mask, who am I?
Mona Chahoury Charabaty

8. Integration of the feminine and the masculine in the analysis of a woman
Ester Palerm Mari

9. Masculinity as appearance
Silvia R. Acosta

10. Psychic bisexuality and its pulsional vicissitudes
Luz Abatángelo Stürzenbaum

11. When I look into your eyes: An approach to psychic bisexuality in the case of role reversal
Nadja Tröger

12. Of gender and bisexuality
Ângela Vila-Real

13. A chronicle of mother-daughter envy: Elena Ferrante’s Lost Daughter
Dana Amir

About the Editor(s)

Ana Teresa Vale is a Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst living and working in Lisbon. European member of COWAP, she is also part of the Editorial Board of the Portuguese Psychoanalytic Journal

More titles by Ana Teresa Vale

Nadja Tröger is a Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst living and working in Lisbon, Portugal. She is the COWAP Link for the Portuguese Psychoanalytical Society and a member of the Editorial Board of the Portuguese Psychoanalytic Journal.