This paper reviews current feminist debates around gender and sexuality in relation
to their relevance for group-analytic theory and practice. The long and contested
engagement between feminists and (varieties of forms of) psychoanalysis highlights
major areas of convergence of theoretical and practical concern: in particular
around the attention to and construction of both gender and sexuality, and the
relations between these. Contemporary feminist debates have shifted emphasis to
discuss gender and sexuality as plural, fluid and situated, rather than as fixed
identities. This attention to the ‘performative’ character of
gender and sexuality has opened up new horizons for feminist analysis, which have
attracted considerable attention within psychoanalytic circles. Group analysis, as a
socially situated theory and practice, shares key political and intellectual
premises with these feminist analyses, and so has much both to gain and to offer
from this engagement.
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