Chicago Psychoanalytic Society

Tuesday, September 24, 2019 – 6:30-8:30 PM 
Location: Robert Morris University, 401 St. State, 8th floor auditorium (Take elevator to 8th floor and look for Room 803)

Presented in collaboration with the Institute for Clinical Social Work (ICSW)

Couldn’t attend the event? Click on the photo to watch the presentation!

Was Evliya Çelebi Really Gay?

Presenter: R. Dennis Shelby, PhD

This lecture explores how we know, or think we know, the sexual orientation of others. We will look at the evidence from the lives of two men: Abraham Lincoln and Evliya Çelebi. One lived in 19th century America, the other in the Ottoman Empire of the 17th century. One was a President of the United States with a history of deep relations to other men. The other was an explorer and travel writer who left clues about his sexuality in his accounts of his travels. In examining their lives, we will come to appreciate how deeply our assumptions about sexuality are bound to the present, and several questions will be explored: how do we know — or think we know — the orientation of others? Does the commonplace heterosexual-bisexual-homosexual continuum really offer us insight into the mental lives of others? Perhaps, Shelby will suggest, it is time to return, instead, to the ancient concept of the Beloved.

R. Dennis Shelby, MSW, PhD, is on the Faculty of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute where he is a Training and Supervising Analyst and the Director of Distance Education. He also serves on the Faculty of the Si Chuan He Guang Clinical Psychology Institute, Chengdu, China and the HamAva Institute of Tehran, Iran and is Professor Emeritus of the Institute for Clinical Social Work. Dennis serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Psychoanalytic Social Work and Psychoanalytic Discourse. He has a long research and publication history in the areas of HIV infection, psychoanalysis with gay men and psychoanalytically informed qualitative research. Dennis is currently the principal researcher of study on the complexities and possibilities of intercultural psychoanalytic education.

Admission is free. CEs are available only to Society members. Interested in becoming a member? Click here.