In recent years there has been a surge in awareness of the many arenas in which violence against women occurs. There is a growing attention to human and sex trafficking and femicide throughout the world. Female genital mutilation along with childhood marriage and rape occur regularly in many societies. Sexual victimization of women in custody is now exposed. College campus violence against women has been a serious problem and only recently acknowledged. In this edited book psychoanalysts show how violence can be seen, known and represented on the world stage and in psychoanalytic treatment. The editors bring psychoanalytic ideas and understanding in an effort to comprehend violence against women. Observing the active witnessing of the contributors to this book elucidates the way trauma is transformed into resilience and healing. Scholars and psychoanalysts from Argentina, Mexico, Peru, the United Kingdom and the United States together address this serious problem along with the consideration of depictions of violence against women in film, art, drama and poetry. With courage, multiple modalities of intervention become possible. Additionally, psychoanalysts develop psychoanalytic commentary of the presentations, bringing the psychoanalytic mind to the larger arena of the many courageous efforts at fighting violence against women. Reviews: "The title of this new book speaks for itself. Courage is a component of the analyst–patient bond, and is even more necessary when we tell and are told the horror wrought by gender violence against women. This book attests to the courage needed to make this cry heard and pave the way for change." - Virginia Ungar, president-elect, International Psychoanalytical Association "In this book Paula L. Ellman and Nancy R. Goodman have convincingly demonstrated that whenever and wherever there is conflict and unrest, at any time in history and anywhere across the globe, the beast of violence against women raises its ugly head. This frequently passes unnoticed. In listening to trauma there must be a witness; this book helps open witnessing through the courageous writing by psychoanalysts, activists, artists, poets and scholars." - Dori Laub, co-editor of Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History, and co-founder of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University "This volume about the unfortunately very timely subject of violence against women includes wideranging discussions of the psychoanalytic and psychosocial dimensions of the problem. It explores national, international, political and personal aspects with depth and sensitivity. The book is a response to those that maintain that psychoanalysis lacks social consciousness and is concerned only with psychic reality and not the real world. The contributors address inter-psychic and interpersonal imperatives and consider historical, cultural, social and psychological determinants in their observations and writings. I am sure the volume will be widely read and widely cited." - Arnold Richards, psychoanalyst and former editor of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association "In this important book, we hear the voices of women suffering from violence in its many forms brought to us in the voices and words of courageous psychoanalysts, scholars, artists and activists who work to relieve the devastating suffering of so many women in many different contexts. Sex trafficked, fleeing genocides and wars, subject to violence in intimate and in social and cultural spaces, the women who are the focus of this book require our careful, open attention. It will take courage to read this book and to remain attentive to the pains and the triumphs it details. It is imperative that we all absorb the depth of the problem of violence against women and follow the path of the writers in this book to support and undertake work and care of women who are in danger everywhere." - Adrienne Harris, New York University "The Courage to Fight Violence Against Women" boldly addresses the subject from a broad psychosocial perspective that examines such violence as a derivative expression of unconscious fantasies and fears related to women’s bodies and socio-political systems of suppression and control demanding an activist view. The volume also discusses creative expressions that deal with the issue as well as covering a number of important topics, including rape, sex trafficking, genital mutilation, and more. The authors originate from a variety of countries and disciplines, offering a rich and diverse understanding of an urgent issue. The editors have crafted an insightful, disturbingly relevant book that all clinicians should read." - Danielle Knafo, author of The Age of Perversion: Desire and Technology in Psychoanalysis and Culture Table of Contents: List of Figures and Illustrations Acknowledgments About the Editors and Contributors Series Editor’s Foreword—Frances Thomson-Salo Preface—Gertraud Schlesinger-Kipp Opening Words by the Sponsors of the Conference “The Courage to Fight Violence Against Women”—Alexandra Billinghurst, Jack Rasmussen, Peter Starr, and Cecile Bassen Introduction: The courage to fight violence against women—Paula L. Ellman and Nancy R. Goodman 1) Unconscious fantasy and the courage to fight violence against women—Paula L. Ellman 2) Witnessing and resilience: commentary on being involved in “The courage to fight violence against women”—Nancy R. Goodman 3) Human sex trafficking: extreme violence against women and children—Vivian B. Pender 4) How art imitates life—Diana Romero 5) Sex trafficking: commentary on Chapters Three and Four—Margarita Cereijido 6) Girls at risk: paths to safety, interventions with female adolescents at sexual risk in Quintana Roo, Mexico—Raquel Berman 7) Sew to speak: story cloth healing with survivors of sexual violence—Rachel A. Cohen and Ana Maria Ramirez 8) Commentary on “Girls at risk” and “Sew to speak”—Carla Neely 9) Violation: a poem—Myra Sklarew with Introduction by Nancy R. Goodman 10) Anatomy of a man’s assault on a woman—Donald Campbell 11) Commentary on Donald Campbell’s “Anatomy of a man’s assault on a woman”—Justine Kalas Reeves 12) End Rape on Campus (EROC) and the making of The Hunting Ground—Annie Clark 13) Sexual abuse of women in United States prisons: a modern corollary of slavery—Brenda V. Smith, with Introduction by Paula L. Ellman 14) Commentary on “End Rape on Campus (EROC)” and “Sexual abuse of women in United States prisons”—Joy Kassett 15) Combatting femicide in Mexico: achievements and ongoing challenges—Maureen Meyer 16) Justice matters: scaling up the response to sexual violence in areas of conflict and unrest—Hope Ferdowsian 17) Women seeking asylum due to gender-based violence—Katalin Roth 18) Violence against women worldwide: a commentary on Chapters Fifteen to Seventeen—Louis W. Goodman 19) Poems on violence against women—E. Ethelbert Miller, Poet Laureate with Introduction by Louis W. Goodman 20) Violence against women in the work of women artists—Janice S. Lieberman 21) Woman: power and representation in pre-Columbian societies in the Andean region—Moisés Lemlij 22) Maternal imago and bodily symptoms—Rosine Jozef Perelberg 23) Discussion of Lemlij and Perelberg: women of power—Arlene Kramer Richards 24) Introduction to Traces in the Wind—Robin Dean 25) A staged reading for remembrance, reminder, and inspiration: Traces in the Wind—Gail Humphries Mardirosian Index About the Editors: Paula L. Ellman, PhD, ABPP, FIPA, is a training and supervising analyst in the Contemporary Freudian Society (CFS) and the IPA. She is the institute director of the Washington Program of the Contemporary Freudian Society, in addition to being on the permanent faculty. She is a diplomate in psychoanalysis certified by the American Board of Psychoanalysis in Psychology (ABPsaP) and assistant clinical professor of psychology at The George Washington University Center for Professional Psychology. She has held the following positions: Chair, Central Concepts Psychotherapy Training Program, Washington School of Psychiatry, Washington, DC; Member-at-large, Board of Directors of the Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies of the IPA (CIPS). She has written and presented in the areas of femininity and female psychology, listening, enactment, terror, and sadomasochism. She has a private practice in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in North Bethesda, Maryland and Washington, DC. Nancy R. Goodman, PhD, is a training and supervising analyst with the Contemporary Freudian Society, Washington DC Program and the IPA. She is interested in unconscious fantasy, witnessing of individual and mass trauma, enactments, and psychoanalysis and film. She is the leader of a CIPS study group on enactments. Her most recent publications include: The Power of Witnessing: Reflections, Reverberations, and Traces of the Holocaust—Trauma Psychoanalysis, and the Living Mind (co-editor/writer with Marilyn B. Meyers), 'Enactment: Opportunity for Symbolising Trauma' (Ellman & Goodman) in Absolute Truth and Unbearable Psychic Pain: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Concrete Experience (ed. A. Frosch), as well as being editor of Psychoanalysis: Listening to Understand--Collected Papers of Arlene Kramer Richards. She maintains a psychoanalytic practice in Bethesda, MD. |