Past Event

"Creativity and the Erotic Dimensions of the Analytic Field"

Dianne Elise, Ph.D.

Dr. Elise will present an overview and discussion of her book, Creativity and the Erotic Dimensions of the Analytic Field, where she puts forth the premise that psychoanalysis is an erotic project. She proposes that a creative aesthetic can provide a clinical container for the engagement and exploration of erotic life within the anlytic field of each treatment - linking the erotic dimensions of the psyche with the psychoanalytic process. An atmosphere of libidinal energy is seen as a crucial aspect in enlivening the intersubjective field. When fully articulated as an energy potential in both participants, analytic eroticism can offer libidinal engagement within an ethical frame as a stimulus to emotionally embodied thinking - linking - that can lead to transformation in many dimensions including the erotic. Maternal eroticism, as a libidinal vitality and investment that a mother brings to her fully embodied engagement with her child, is developed as a metaphor for clinical process: The analyst holds, contains, and stimulates; each of these capacities is mobilized in the service of the patient's growth. An intertwining of the erotic and the creative in the embodied, affective interaction of the analytic dyad allows for deepening contact with an authentic sense of being. A Winnicottian field theory is conceptualized.


Berkeley City Club
2315 Durant Avenue

Saturday, January 25, 2020

10:00 AM - 12:00 PM


DianneDianne Elise, Ph.D.

Dianne Elise, Ph.D. is a Personal and Supervising Analyst and Faculty member of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, a Training Analyst member of the International Psychoanalytic Association, and she has served on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of the Americal Psychoanalytic Association and Studies in Gender and Sexuality. Her over 30 publications include wide-ranging papers on the subjects of gender, sexuality and erotic transference, appearing in the Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Studies in Gender & Sexuality, and Psychoanalytic Inquiry. She has recently developed the concept of analytic eroticism to portray the role of libidinal vitality in treatment. Dr. Elise's book Creativity and the Erotic Dimensions of the Analytic Field (Routledge, 2019) expands her work in innovative ways and presents her contemporary thinking on erotic life in psychoanalysis. She is in private practice in Oakland, California.


Future Events

Coming soon


Past Events

Saturday, February 3, 2024

"Questioning the Superego"
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Saturday, December 2, 2023

"Rossellini Beyond Repair"
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Saturday, October 14, 2023

"Anorexia: Between Desire for Recognition and the Death Drive"
Domenico Cosenza, Ph.D.


Saturday, April 15, 2023

"Psychoanalysis and Opera: Rejoining the Verbal and Non-Verbal"
Steve Goldberg, Dr.,
Lee Rather, Ph.D.,


Saturday, January 21, 2023

""What Should I Call You? Pronouns and the Scene of Address""
Judith Butler, Ph.D.


Saturday, December 3, 2022

"Link Theory and Practice: The Irreducible Effects of Presence"
Israel Katz, M.D.


Saturday, October 1, 2022

"The Structure and Function of Part Objects"
Richard Rusbridger


Saturday, April 30, 2022

"Psychoanalysis: the Contemporary Scene from an Editor's View"
Murray Schwartz


Saturday, February 5, 2022

"Working Backwards: "Backwards Causation"and the Temporality of the Unconscious in Pre-Freudian Dream Theory"
Jake Fraser, Ph.D.


Saturday, December 4, 2021

"The Significance of the Anus in Psychoanalytic Theory"
Benjamin Y. Fong, Ph.D.


Saturday, October 9, 2021

"Love, Hate and Knowledge: the Analyst’s Aesthetic Conflict"
Meg Harris Williams


Saturday, April 24, 2021

"The Analyst's Desire: The Ethical Foundation of Clinical Practice"
Mitchell Wilson, M.D.


Saturday, February 27, 2021

"Freud’s Nietzsche: Eternal Return, Symptomatic Acts and the Gay Apophrades"
Dany Nobus


Saturday, December 12, 2020

"What's uncanny in the Unheimliche?"
Sergio Benvenuto, Ph.D.


Saturday, October 31, 2020

"Roads to the Unconscious: Some Parallels and Divergences between Psychoanalysis and the Writing of Poetry"
John Hart,
Helen Schoenhals Hart,


Saturday, October 10, 2020

"Trans Realism: Psychoanalysis and the Trans Experience"
Patricia Gherovici, Ph.D.,
Grace Lavery, Ph.D.,


Saturday, April 4, 2020

"*POSTPONED* What's uncanny in the Unheimliche?"
Sergio Benvenuto, Ph.D.


Saturday, March 21, 2020

"*POSTPONED* Trans Realism, Psychoanalytic Practice, and the Rhetoric of Technique"
Grace Lavery, Ph.D.


Saturday, January 25, 2020

"Creativity and the Erotic Dimensions of the Analytic Field"
Dianne Elise, Ph.D.


Saturday, November 23, 2019

"Mama, Mnemo - Reading Kristeva with Montale"
Benjamin Davidson, Ph.D.


Saturday, October 12, 2019

"The Maternal: Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film"
Claire Kahane, Ph.D.,
Marilyn Fabe, Ph.D.,


Saturday, April 13, 2019

"Light Rooms: Medium, Mourning and Mania"
Elizabeth Abel, Ph.D.


Saturday, January 26, 2019

"From Freud's Mourning to Mourning Freud"
Madelon Sprengnether, Ph.D.


Saturday, December 1, 2018

"Group Discussion: The Place of the Nonrepresentational and the Nonverbal in Psychoanalysis"
Margot Beattie, Ph.D.,
Israel Katz, MD,


Saturday, October 20, 2018

"Freud's Seduction: Psychoanalysis and California"
Fernando Castrillon, Psy.D.


Saturday, March 3, 2018

"Trans Psychoanalysis and Livable Embodiments"
Patricia Gherovici, Ph.D.


Saturday, January 27, 2018

"The Political Unconscious in Perilous Times"
Judith Butler, Ph.D.,
Lance Dodes, M.D.,
Jill Gentile, Ph.D.


Saturday, October 28, 2017

"Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg: The Dream World of Wagner"
Steven H. Golderg, MD,
Jeanne C. Harasemovitch, LCSW,


Saturday, October 7, 2017

"Incandescent Alphabets: Language and Art in Psychosis"
Annie G. Rogers, Ph.D.


Saturday, May 20, 2017

"Homeland (In)Security: How Feminine Law Might Rescue Democracy, Truth and Free Speech"
Jill Gentile, Ph.D.


Sunday, March 26, 2017

"Enigmatic Mechanisms: Some Reflections on Love, Affect, and Identification in Freud"
Marcus Coelen, Ph.D


Saturday, March 18, 2017

"Refashioning Jouissance/Enjoyment for the Age of the Imaginary"
Juliet Flower MacCannell, Ph.D.


Saturday, January 28, 2017

"Freud and the Frankfurt School"
Martin E. Jay, Ph.D.


Saturday, October 29, 2016

"Thinking About The Future"
Christopher Bollas, Ph.D.


Saturday, September 24, 2016

"Death Drive Dialogue #2"
Henry Markman, MD,
Israel Katz, MD,


Saturday, May 21, 2016

"Psychoanalytic Knowledge"
Peter Hobson, Ph.D.


Saturday, April 23, 2016

"The Alterability of the Memory Trace"
Rosaura Martinez, Ph.D.


Saturday, April 2, 2016

"Conversion Disorder: Freud, religious transformation, Foucault and Agamben"
Jamieson Webster, Ph.D.


Saturday, March 26, 2016

"Surviving Terror: An Interview with Ernst Federn"
Helen Schoenhals Hart, Dr.med.


Saturday, October 17, 2015

"Rosa Luxemburg and Marilyn Monroe: Women in Depressed Times"
Jacqueline Rose


Saturday, May 9, 2015

"Keeping the Other Alive: Counter-trends to the Death Drive"
Judith Butler, Ph.D.


Monday, March 30, 2015

"Cultivating the Foreigner Within: Julia Kristeva and Hannah Arendt on Uncanny Art and Human Relations in the Contemporary World"
Elaine Miller, Ph.D.


Saturday, January 31, 2015

"Enduring Inequality: Racism in America"
Jeffrey Prager, Ph.D.



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