A Conference Advisory Board event from William Alanson White Institute

Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider speaking alongside a diverse range of therapists, writers, and activists sharing their insights and experiences on how patriarchy hinders our ability to know what we know, to feel what we feel, and to form mutually responsive relationships.

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What is it about patriarchy that seems to make it so resilient and resistant to change? Undoubtedly it endures in part because some people benefit from the unequal advantages it confers. But is that enough to explain its stubborn persistence?

In their recently published and highly original book WHY DOES PATRIARCHY EXIST? Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider argue that patriarchy persists, in part, because it serves psychological functions. 

--Can moves from healthy protest to despair and detachment be tracked in the clinical situation and how can the anger of hope be distinguished from the anger of despair?
--Can psychotherapy in its liberatory impulse encourage a healthy resistance to patriarchy's persistence?
—Do the structures of patriarchy play out clinically in the therapist-patient relationship and with respect to termination?

Both morning and afternoon presentations will be followed by audience discussions that will address the implications of these ideas for psychoanalytic theory and practice.

• Can psychoanalysis in its liberatory impulse encourage a healthy resistance to patriarchy’s persistence?

• Do the structures of patriarchy play out clinically in the analyst-patient relationship and with respect to termination?  

• Can moves from healthy protest to despair and detachment be tracked in the clinical situation and how can the anger of hope be distinguished from the anger of despair?