Cruising as Moral Practice
Los Angeles Review of Books
Jordan Osserman reads two recent queer theory books exploring the form and chemistry of sex
7 Sep 2025
A Psychoanalytic Reconsideration of Chemsex and Anti-Retroviral Time
Or, It's G O'Clock
Body & Society
This article intervenes in contemporary critical scholarship on the ethics ofchemsex and other so-called ‘risky’ gay male sexual practices through a carefulappraisal of psychoanalytic theory on subjectivity and sexuality. I argue that theemerging field of critical chemsex studies prioritises contemporary approachesto ‘bodies and pleasures’ at the expense of subjectivity, leading to an inabilityto adequately theorise […]
29 Nov 2024
Book Review: Toward a Feminist Lacanian Left
Psychoanalysis and History
Review of Alicia Valdés, Toward a Feminist Lacanian Left: Psychoanalytic Theory and Intersectional Politics (London & New York: Routledge, 2022; 181 pp).
Dec 2023
Psychoanalysis and Trans
A study of two psychosocial scenes
Handbook of Psychosocial Studies
The wave of activism and popular discourse around trans identity and subjectivity has had a profound impact on numerous fields, including psychoanalysis. In this chapter I will bring a psychosocial lens to thinking about how the signifiers “trans” and “psychoanalysis” encounter one another today. There are two different psychosocial “scenes” through which, I propose, we […]
Oct 2023
Gender Care and Untimeliness
Reflections on the Gender Identity Development Service
The Polyphony: Conversations Across the Medical Humanities
In the fifth post of the Waiting Times takeover, Jordan Osserman draws our attention to the ‘untimely’ nature of youth gender care.
9 Aug 2023
Introduction to Transgender Children
From Controversy to Dialogue
The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child
This paper introduces the topic and unique format of the section that follows, on psychoanalytic work with transgender children. We first review the apparent impasse that characterizes our field regarding clinical work with gender diverse kids, as well as the reasons we pursued a live dialog to push thinking forward. Then, we outline the structure […]
22 Oct 2021
Waiting for other people
A psychoanalytic interpretation of the time for action
Typical responses to a confrontation with failures in authority, or what Lacanians term ‘the lack in the Other’, involve attempts to shore it up. A patient undergoing psychoanalysis eventually faces the impossibility of doing this successfully; the Other will always be lacking. This creates a space through which she can reimagine how she might intervene […]
10 Jun 2020
Report of SITE Transgender, Gender, and Psychoanalysis Conference
TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly
This article reviews the 2017 conference, “Transgender, Gender, and Psychoanalysis,” organized by the SITE for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and held at the Freud Museum in London. The event brought together clinicians, scholars, activists, and artists interested in putting psychoanalytic ideas into conversation with transgender issues and experiences. This review highlights interesting presentations, controversies that occurred, and […]
1 Nov 2017
Is the Phallus Uncut?
On the Role of Anatomy in Lacanian Subjectivization
TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly
This article examines the role of anatomy in Lacan’s theory of the phallus, focusing on a fundamental question insufficiently addressed in Lacanian thought: Does the penis really matter, and if so, why and how? The question is addressed by analyzing Lacan’s work on the imaginary and symbolic dimensions of the phallus alongside a series of […]
1 Nov 2017
“Real Circumcision is a Matter of the Heart”
On Badiou's Paul and Boyarin's Jewish Question
Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 16.2 (2017)
In 1997, two books were published on Saint Paul: A Radical Jew: St. Paul and the Politics of Identity, by the eminent Jewish studies scholar Daniel Boyarin, and Alain Badiou’s Saint Paul: La fondation de l’universalisme. 1 Though the two authors would not encounter each other’s work until many years later,2 their arguments appear as […]
2017