Lynne Layton
Biographic Data
| ID | 1285590 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lynne Layton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lynne |
| FAMILY NAME | Layton |
| SIGNATURE | LAYTON L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0786-6563 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 101 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Commentary on Chanda Griffin, Dissociated Anti-Blackness and Racial Multiplicity
In this commentary, I highlight the value, indeed, the gift, of Chanda Griffin’s having centered Blackness in her essay and having grounded it in her lived experience. Like Griffin, I look here at both the fixed and fluid nature of identificatory processes. While mindful of the superordinate effects of the binary structure of white supremacist ideology on development and on identificatory processes, I also try to unpack possible points of resista…
Implicated subjects
Drawing a connection between the “repetition compulsion” and reparations movements' demand for a “guarantee of non‐repeat,” this essay examines some of the psychological workings of implication in systemic racism by highlighting individual, familial, and collective histories, and by looking at some of what is currently taking place in psychoanalytic institutions
Splitting
In most of my psychoanalytic work on gender, race, sexuality, class, and their intersections within particular regimes of power, I have argued that taking up a position in relation to a culture or
What’s Repaired in Reparations
Couched is a podcast series that features conversations among psychoanalysts, artists, writers, activists, and intellectual change-makers about our current social and political conditions and the challenge of finding grounding and connection in an increasingly uncertain world. Couched aims to generate conversations that will move listeners to engage with one another and the world, ideally creating generative communities. This article is an edited…
An Interview with Lynne Layton, Harvard Medical School
Commentary on Beverly Burch, “Engaging the Whitewashed Countertransference
In this commentary, I build on Beverly Burch’s (this issue) important analysis of race dynamics in a White-White dyad by exploring the way that the intersection of the overlapping oppressions of racism, classism, and sexism–within a neoliberal context–are enacted. I also argue that the clinical material suggests the limits of models that figure the sociocultural as an add-on to subjectivity and familial dynamics rather than as constitutive of the…
Toward a Social Psychoanalysis
Frantz Fanon, Erich Fromm, Pierre Bourdieu, and Marie Langer are among those activists, clinicians, and academics who have called for a social psychoanalysis. For over thirty years, Lynne Layton has heeded this call and produced a body of work that examines unconscious process as it operates both in the social world and in the clinic. In this volume of Layton’s most important papers, she expands on earlier theorists’ ideas of social character by …
Remembering Simon Clarke
Editors’ introduction to ‘Reflections on the Revolutions of our Time
Gratitude and leave-taking
Commentary on Kernberg and Michels
On Moralism and Ethics
Henry Abelove (1986) writes that Freud was troubled by what he saw as moralistic leanings pervading the theory and practice of early American psychoanalysis. Drawing on Erikson’s (1976) distinction between moralism and ethics, my associations to Abelove’s still very timely paper explore the psychological “deals” we all tend to make between moralism and ethics. I begin with Freud’s less than progressive views of female homosexuality. I then focus …
Editor’s introduction to the special section
What to teach? Social psychoanalysis in the clinic and the classroom
Conflicts in the Habitus
This article argues that Bourdieu's concept of habitus, and, in particular, the way habitus is transmitted intergenerationally, can be enhanced by considering conflictual conscious and unconscious processes that emerge in relationships. We suggest that Christopher Bollas's discussions of the 'unthought known' and of 'transformational objects' add relational depth to the concept of habitus and thus contribute to developing a more psycho-social und…
Introduction to special section on Juliet Mitchell’s Psychoanalysis and Feminism
In Memoriam
Some psychic effects of neoliberalism
Editors’ introduction to special issue on psychology and the other
Editor’s introduction to special section on the psychosocial effects of neoliberalism
Editor’s introduction to special section on the psychosocial effects of neoliberalism, part II
Psychoanalysis and politics
In this paper, I compare three different views of the relation between subjectivity and modernity: one proposed by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, a second by theorists of institutionalised individualisation, and a third by writers in the Foucaultian tradition of studies of the history of governmentalities. The theorists were chosen because they represent very different understandings of the relation between contemporary history and subjectivity. My purp…
You can't be neutral on a moving train
Social Trauma and Models of Ideological Analysis
Although the author appreciates and agrees with Katie Gentile's (this issue) thesis, the author's commentary proposes some different models besides the model of ideological domination to think about both the social trauma she eloquently describes and the media discourses that seem only to exacerbate the trauma, obfuscate its origins, and oppress women. The models the author discusses question ideologies of progress, understood as central in creat…
On the Irreconcilable in Psychic Life
Culturesexgenderconflictfeminismsocial changeidentificationparentingnormative unconscious processes
Racial Identities, Racial Enactments, and Normative Unconscious Processes
The author surveys various views of racial and ethnic identity, and proposes a model of thinking about identity aimed at capturing both its oppressive and its facilitating character. To further elaborate the dual nature of identity, she discusses the way that inequities in the social world, and the ideologies that sustain them, produce narcissistic wounds that are then enacted consciously and unconsciously by both patient and therapist. A variety…
Some psychic effects of neoliberalism
A Fork in the Royal Road
Conflicts in the Habitus
This article argues that Bourdieu's concept of habitus, and, in particular, the way habitus is transmitted intergenerationally, can be enhanced by considering conflictual conscious and unconscious processes that emerge in relationships. We suggest that Christopher Bollas's discussions of the 'unthought known' and of 'transformational objects' add relational depth to the concept of habitus and thus contribute to developing a more psycho-social und…
Editor’s introduction to special section on the psychosocial effects of neoliberalism
The Psychopolitics of Bisexuality
This article begins with the observation that multiple current uses of the term “bisexuality” render the practice of sexual desire for both men and women invisible. It then centers on the use of the term in contemporary psychoanalytic gender theory and argues that here, too, its use to mean the mix of male and female genitals or of masculinity and femininity renders bisexual desire invisible. Although theorists suggest that psychic bisexuality ca…
Working Nine to Nine
Contemporary psychoanalytic gender theory has posited two psychic structures typical of the heterosexual family's gender arrangements: male defensive autonomy and female relational submissiveness. This essay looks at recent television shows that normalize defensive autonomy in women. These shows, and the young women they reach, are products of a “stalled” feminist revolution and an impoverished cultural imaginary that offers its subjects, male an…
Editor’s introduction to the special section
On the Irreconcilable in Psychic Life
Culturesexgenderconflictfeminismsocial changeidentificationparentingnormative unconscious processes
A Gift of the Spirit
Gratitude and leave-taking
What to teach? Social psychoanalysis in the clinic and the classroom
Editor’s introduction to special section on the psychosocial effects of neoliberalism, part II
Trauma, Gender Identity and Sexuality
American Imago - Volume 52, Number 1, Spring 1995
Planning for a Non-Sexistsociety
On March 20-22, the McGill Committee for Teaching and Research on Women sponsored a conference on planning for a non-sexist society. At registration, participants received a round white button with nothing written on it; participants were to create their own vision of a non-sexist society — or perhaps to “white out" the present sexist one. In fact, the papers presented and films shown reflected all points of view and were presented by academics f…
The Hearts of Men. American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment
Barbara Ehrenreicht. The Hearts of Men. American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment. Anchor: Garden City, N.Y., 1984
The Changing Self
In this paper we describe a technique for coding expressions of preoccupation with aspects of the adult self in personal documents and retrospective autobiographical writings In particular we explore the value of this approach by analyzing themes of identity, intimacy, and generativity expressed in Vera Brittain's diary and correspondence, written during her adolescence in World War I, and in her retrospective autobiographical account of that per…
Blue Velvet
Trauma, Gender Identity and Sexuality
American Imago - Volume 52, Number 1, Spring 1995
Who's that girl? Who's that boy?
Gender Studies
Reply to Bassin, Stimmel, and Elise
The Psychopolitics of Bisexuality
This article begins with the observation that multiple current uses of the term “bisexuality” render the practice of sexual desire for both men and women invisible. It then centers on the use of the term in contemporary psychoanalytic gender theory and argues that here, too, its use to mean the mix of male and female genitals or of masculinity and femininity renders bisexual desire invisible. Although theorists suggest that psychic bisexuality ca…
Who's that girl? Who's that boy? Clinical practice meets postmodern gender theory.
Drescher, Foreword. Introduction. Beyond Narcissism: Toward a Negotiation Model of Gender Identity. Gender Benders/Gender Binders: A Psychoanalytic Look at Contemporary Popular Culture. Who's That Girl? Madonna. Trauma, Gender Identity, and Sexuality: Discourses of Fragmentation. Blue Velvet: A Parable of Male Development. What Is a Man? Postmodern Challenges to Clinical Practice. A Deconstruction of Kohut's Concept of Self. Performance Theory, A…
A Fork in the Royal Road
Working Nine to Nine
Contemporary psychoanalytic gender theory has posited two psychic structures typical of the heterosexual family's gender arrangements: male defensive autonomy and female relational submissiveness. This essay looks at recent television shows that normalize defensive autonomy in women. These shows, and the young women they reach, are products of a “stalled” feminist revolution and an impoverished cultural imaginary that offers its subjects, male an…
Psychoanalysis, Class and Politics
Describes how issues of class and politics, and the intense emotions they engender, emerge in the clinical setting and how psychotherapists can address them rather than deny their significance. This book demonstrates how clinicians need to take into account the complex convergences between psychic and social reality to help their patients.
Racial Identities, Racial Enactments, and Normative Unconscious Processes
The author surveys various views of racial and ethnic identity, and proposes a model of thinking about identity aimed at capturing both its oppressive and its facilitating character. To further elaborate the dual nature of identity, she discusses the way that inequities in the social world, and the ideologies that sustain them, produce narcissistic wounds that are then enacted consciously and unconsciously by both patient and therapist. A variety…
Discussion of Sue Grand's Maternal Surveillance
Editors' Introduction to Commentaries on State Regulation of Psychoanalysis
What Divides the Subject? Psychoanalytic Reflections on Subjectivity, Subjection and Resistance
A Gift of the Spirit
Irrational exuberance
Social Trauma and Models of Ideological Analysis
Although the author appreciates and agrees with Katie Gentile's (this issue) thesis, the author's commentary proposes some different models besides the model of ideological domination to think about both the social trauma she eloquently describes and the media discourses that seem only to exacerbate the trauma, obfuscate its origins, and oppress women. The models the author discusses question ideologies of progress, understood as central in creat…
On the Irreconcilable in Psychic Life
Culturesexgenderconflictfeminismsocial changeidentificationparentingnormative unconscious processes
You can't be neutral on a moving train
Psychoanalysis and politics
In this paper, I compare three different views of the relation between subjectivity and modernity: one proposed by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, a second by theorists of institutionalised individualisation, and a third by writers in the Foucaultian tradition of studies of the history of governmentalities. The theorists were chosen because they represent very different understandings of the relation between contemporary history and subjectivity. My purp…
In Memoriam
Some psychic effects of neoliberalism
Psychology (35 works) · Sociology (31 works) · Psychoanalysis (30 works) · Philosophy (20 works) · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications (17 works) · Epistemology (15 works) · Gender Studies (13 works) · Political science (13 works) · Psychoanalytic theory (12 works) · Law (11 works)