King Kong & Goldilocks: Imagining Transmasculinities Through the Trans–Trans Dyad

Tuesday, March 23, 2021, 6:30 – 8:30pm CST

Location: Zoom: https://icsw.zoom.us/j/6410482572

Presenter: Griffin Hansbury, LCSW-R

After the presentation we will have time for a discussion, during which you can send in questions or comments for the speakers to answer.

Transgender subjectivities are becoming an increasingly popular area of inquiry for relational psychoanalysis. Postmodern feminist analysts, perhaps especially, grapple with the seemingly contradictory position that the trans subject embraces both binary and multiple, both essentialist and constructivist, modes of being sexed and gendered. Using a composite clinical example, this paper explores some of the dynamics between a transmale psychoanalytic psychotherapist and his transmale patients. Through a close-up lens on the trans–trans analytic dyad, and with an emphasis on metaphors and experiences of the body in both flesh and fantasy, this paper illustrates a model of transmasculine subjectivity in which the language of material substance carries interpretive power. It is suggested that a post-postmodern theory of gender and sex is needed to fully articulate transgender subjectivities.

Griffin Hansbury is a psychoanalyst in New York City. A recipient of the Ralph Roughton Award from the American Psychoanalytic Association, his writing on transgender phenomena has appeared in several journals, including the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and Studies in Gender and Sexuality. Under the pen name Jeremiah Moss, he is the author of Vanishing New York and is currently at work on Feral City, a chronicle of the plague year. His writing on the city has appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and the New York Review of Books.

Educational Objectives:

After attending this session, participants should be able to:

1. Describe some of the transference-countertransference dynamics between a trans male psychoanalyst and his trans male patients.

2. Discuss some of the differences between transgender and cisgender.

3. Explain ways of working psychoanalytically with gendered multiplicity.