Rosemary H Balsam
Biographic Data
| ID | 1718896 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rosemary H Balsam |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rosemary H |
| FAMILY NAME | Balsam |
| SIGNATURE | BALSAM R H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Yale University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 87 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The Echo of Narcissus: An “as-if” experience
The clinical dilemmas in this 6 year analysis, with this single woman in her 30s, (whom I saw mostly in candidacy), unfolded into a dramatic, yet simultaneously stalled analysis that remained intrapsychically frozen. My conceptualization of the interaction was of the patient and me as Echo and Narcissus. The best I felt I could do for her, and for the analysis, was to explore those dimensions - yet always the enactment seemed more of a self-explo…
Obituary: Nancy Julia Chodorow, PhD (1944–2025)
Nancy Julia Chodorow, PhD, the eminent feminist sociologist and psychoanalyst, died in Boston, Massachusetts, on 14 October 2025, at 81. She died at home, surrounded and comforted by her family, du
Thoughts On Ending Analyses
Starting with the English translations of Freud’s Citation1937 nuanced concept of ending analysis, the author touches on the history of subsequent ego psychologists’ more exact notions of termination. Merton Gill’s radical shift in perspective away from that attempt, shows how more modern, post-1990 theoretical developments have evolved toward more subjective, intersubjective, and ranging judgments about what may be practical (Freud’s own final 1…
The Legacy and Promise of Hans Loewald
Thoughts on the Beginnings of Psychoanalyses
Musing on the topic of initiating analyses, I began asking myself, what do we experience and what do we mean when we commonly say “an analysis unfolds”? Hans Loewald understood the rhythms of psychic development as coming into being, and that an analysis (when it works) also seems to follow that pattern. This paper will focus on appreciating the new within the old in the analytic process as a way to illustrate narrative and behavioral themes in t…
Abortion
A deprivation of women’s reproductive rights has occurred by the right-wing turn in recent United States’ politics. Looking at the details of Roe v. Wade, (1973), and Dobbs (2022), the author notes the limited legal, but predominantly emotional, thinking in the Supreme Court’s opinions that led to the overturn. The contemporary legal coup is seen here as yet another age-old attempt to control the female body’s reproductive powers and capacities. …
Darkening Barbie
The Birth of Relationship Therapy: Carl Rogers Meets Otto Rank
Writing the Inward Eye
Eros is Alive and Well, Still
Roy Schafer (1922–2018)
This article memorializes Roy Schafer (1922-2018). Schafer was a major theoretician of psychoanalysis. He began his long professional life in the famous Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, conducting psychological diagnostic research. Early on he became known for foundational work on the Rorschach test. Schafer pursued traditional ego psychology in the then-new Western New England Institute of Psychoanalysis in New Haven, Connecticut, where he be…
On the Natal Body and Its Confusing Place in Mental Life
These reflections concern ongoing confusions in holding together the gestalt of the natal body, sex, gender, and procreation. Highlighting theoretical confusions is the shifting history of relations among the material body, the “psychoanalytic body,”:sex, and gender. Studying these confusions and collecting more data may help the field advance where a rush to theoretical foreclosure will not. Observe, for example, how commonly foreclosing are the…
Roy Schafer, 1922–2018
Response to John Steiner's “Overcoming Obstacles in Analysis: Is it Possible to Relinquish Omnipotence and Accept Receptive Femininity?”
While the author agrees that issues of sex and gender are frequently involved in impasses and often remain clinically unexplored, she highlights how Dr. Steiner's thinking and (contemporary) Kleinian theory approach, in spite of seeming to recommend gender balance, suffer from the underlying severe sexed-gender polarities that were accentuated in the old Freudian and early twentieth-century schemata. Instead of setting up either/or propositions b…
Freud, The Birthing Body, and Modern Life
Freud early on had an astute sense of the psychic impact of the bodily power of females’ biological sex and childbearing potential. His early appreciation of the biological femaleness of a body, however, became gradually obscured after 1908, distorted by an exaggerated male view that was challenged in the 1920s and 1930s but then became fixed in stone by his followers. This strange but hegemonic view was once again challenged, especially in the U…
Oedipus Rex: Where Are We Going, Especially with Females
The Oedipus myth usefully informs triangulated object relations, though males, females, and "humankind" can become overly interchangeable. Freud's intentions to enlighten sexed gender are nowadays obscured. In 1931, he rejected Oedipus for females. Counterreactive gender blindness forecloses exploration about female development. Loewald's (1979) view of Oedipus Rex emancipates male heterosexuals from a recurring (universal), regressive pull back …
Thirteen ways of looking at a man: Psychoanalysis and masculinity
Donald Moss MD, the seasoned New York based psychoanalyst, has brought his full attention and his exciting writing voices to the complexity of men and ‘masculinity’. The author of Hating in the fir
The Embodied Mother: Commentary on Kristeva
J ulia Kristeva is one of the very few psychoanalytic writers who regard the female essence as a central given in any viable theory of mind, not an add-on or “special” topic that can then be set aside to get on with the real work of analyzing the mind of the subject. Females (and thus, using this term as meaning specifically the biologically sexed body, and thus implicitly the sexed bodies also of males, or in-betweens) are central to life, and t…
Appreciating Difference: Roy Schafer on Psychoanalysis and Women
The author describes and appreciates Roy Schafer's critique of Freud's view of female psychology and his other contributions to the psychoanalytic literature on women, noting his then-novel emphasis that took into account social and cultural factors in analytic treatment. She relates the influence on Schafer's work of his ambiance in that era: the Yale University Student Health Services during the social turmoil of the 1970s (where she was his su…
(RE)membering The Female Body In Psychoanalysis: Childbirth
Commentary on Patrizio Campanile’s “I Had Twenty-Five Piercings and Pink Hair When …”
Maternal Embodiment: A Conversation Between Rosemary Balsam and Adrienne Harris
On May 6, 2011, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis presented a special colloquium on the maternal body. This colloquium featured a public dialogue, a semistructured conversation between Rosemary Balsam and Adrienne Harris, exploring psychoanalytic understandings of images and experiences of the maternal body. The conversation wove chaos, gender, feminist and psychoanalytic theories with the speakers’ resp…
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, 1946–2011
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's untimely death at age 65 was a devastating shock. On December 1, 2011, walking home from a concert with her wife, Christine Dunbar, Elisabeth was stricken with a pulmonary
Commentary on Melitta Schmideberg’s “‘After the Analysis …’”
Women Showing Off: Notes on Female Exhibitionism
The limitations of the phallocentric cast of earlier psychoanalytic formulations of “female exhibitionism” linger into the present. In part this connects to certain historical expectations for women's social behavior, and to the vicissitudes of Freud's insufficient knowledge of women in his libidinal psychosexual phasing used as a basis for analytic understanding. The contemporary fade of libido theory contributes to the neglect of such topics as…
The Vanished Pregnant Body in Psychoanalytic Female Developmental Theory
The author contends that the pregnant body—the premier icon of the mature female body—has vanished from our psychoanalytic theory of female development. Until we are able to restore this missing entity on a par with the phallus, the developmental theory for both sexes remains fixated in phallocentricism. The author traces some of the evidence for this claim in a brief overview of the literature, a study of the relevant aspects of the case of Litt…
Integrating Male and Female Elements in a Woman's gEnder Identity
Despite advances in female developmental theory since the 1970s, there remains a lingering tendency to stereotype and polarize gender identity. The key to this puzzle may be found in the legacy of early libido theory, which offers an unintegratable solution for women. This is because in order for a woman to claim femininity according to this early theory, her masculine trends in development must be repudiated and `overcome.` A contemporary theory…
(RE)membering The Female Body In Psychoanalysis: Childbirth
The Embodied Mother: Commentary on Kristeva
J ulia Kristeva is one of the very few psychoanalytic writers who regard the female essence as a central given in any viable theory of mind, not an add-on or “special” topic that can then be set aside to get on with the real work of analyzing the mind of the subject. Females (and thus, using this term as meaning specifically the biologically sexed body, and thus implicitly the sexed bodies also of males, or in-betweens) are central to life, and t…
The Mother Within the Mother
This paper describes the subjective experience of internalization, focusing on the daughter's inner world as the encounters becoming and being a mother. Three case vignettes at three phases of a woman's mothering cycle are used to demonstrate modes of registration and expression of her own internalized mother as these in turn involve her offspring. Some issues in analyzing the new mother are raised by the material, as well as implied questions ab…
Oedipus Rex: Where Are We Going, Especially with Females
The Oedipus myth usefully informs triangulated object relations, though males, females, and "humankind" can become overly interchangeable. Freud's intentions to enlighten sexed gender are nowadays obscured. In 1931, he rejected Oedipus for females. Counterreactive gender blindness forecloses exploration about female development. Loewald's (1979) view of Oedipus Rex emancipates male heterosexuals from a recurring (universal), regressive pull back …
Women Showing Off: Notes on Female Exhibitionism
The limitations of the phallocentric cast of earlier psychoanalytic formulations of “female exhibitionism” linger into the present. In part this connects to certain historical expectations for women's social behavior, and to the vicissitudes of Freud's insufficient knowledge of women in his libidinal psychosexual phasing used as a basis for analytic understanding. The contemporary fade of libido theory contributes to the neglect of such topics as…
On the Natal Body and Its Confusing Place in Mental Life
These reflections concern ongoing confusions in holding together the gestalt of the natal body, sex, gender, and procreation. Highlighting theoretical confusions is the shifting history of relations among the material body, the “psychoanalytic body,”:sex, and gender. Studying these confusions and collecting more data may help the field advance where a rush to theoretical foreclosure will not. Observe, for example, how commonly foreclosing are the…
Freud, The Birthing Body, and Modern Life
Freud early on had an astute sense of the psychic impact of the bodily power of females’ biological sex and childbearing potential. His early appreciation of the biological femaleness of a body, however, became gradually obscured after 1908, distorted by an exaggerated male view that was challenged in the 1920s and 1930s but then became fixed in stone by his followers. This strange but hegemonic view was once again challenged, especially in the U…
The Essence of Hans Loewald
Response to John Steiner's “Overcoming Obstacles in Analysis: Is it Possible to Relinquish Omnipotence and Accept Receptive Femininity?”
While the author agrees that issues of sex and gender are frequently involved in impasses and often remain clinically unexplored, she highlights how Dr. Steiner's thinking and (contemporary) Kleinian theory approach, in spite of seeming to recommend gender balance, suffer from the underlying severe sexed-gender polarities that were accentuated in the old Freudian and early twentieth-century schemata. Instead of setting up either/or propositions b…
Thoughts on the Beginnings of Psychoanalyses
Musing on the topic of initiating analyses, I began asking myself, what do we experience and what do we mean when we commonly say “an analysis unfolds”? Hans Loewald understood the rhythms of psychic development as coming into being, and that an analysis (when it works) also seems to follow that pattern. This paper will focus on appreciating the new within the old in the analytic process as a way to illustrate narrative and behavioral themes in t…
Darkening Barbie
Appreciating Difference: Roy Schafer on Psychoanalysis and Women
The author describes and appreciates Roy Schafer's critique of Freud's view of female psychology and his other contributions to the psychoanalytic literature on women, noting his then-novel emphasis that took into account social and cultural factors in analytic treatment. She relates the influence on Schafer's work of his ambiance in that era: the Yale University Student Health Services during the social turmoil of the 1970s (where she was his su…
The Mother Within the Mother
This paper describes the subjective experience of internalization, focusing on the daughter's inner world as the encounters becoming and being a mother. Three case vignettes at three phases of a woman's mothering cycle are used to demonstrate modes of registration and expression of her own internalized mother as these in turn involve her offspring. Some issues in analyzing the new mother are raised by the material, as well as implied questions ab…
Commentaries
Integrating Male and Female Elements in a Woman's gEnder Identity
Despite advances in female developmental theory since the 1970s, there remains a lingering tendency to stereotype and polarize gender identity. The key to this puzzle may be found in the legacy of early libido theory, which offers an unintegratable solution for women. This is because in order for a woman to claim femininity according to this early theory, her masculine trends in development must be repudiated and `overcome.` A contemporary theory…
The Vanished Pregnant Body in Psychoanalytic Female Developmental Theory
The author contends that the pregnant body—the premier icon of the mature female body—has vanished from our psychoanalytic theory of female development. Until we are able to restore this missing entity on a par with the phallus, the developmental theory for both sexes remains fixated in phallocentricism. The author traces some of the evidence for this claim in a brief overview of the literature, a study of the relevant aspects of the case of Litt…
Toward Less Fixed Internal Transformations of Gender Commentary on: Melancholy Femininity and Obsessive—Compulsive Masculinity: Sex Differences in Melancholy Gender by Meg Jay, Ph.D
While highly commending this cross-disciplinary exercise and agreeing with Jay and Butler that children may indeed mourn the loss of erotics with same-sex parents as they identify and develop in a gendered fashion, this author highlights, in both Butler and Jay's interesting further refinements of Butler's position in their use of Freud's 1917 paper on “Mourning and Melancholia,” a lack of attention to the significant aggression that Freud also i…
Women Showing Off: Notes on Female Exhibitionism
The limitations of the phallocentric cast of earlier psychoanalytic formulations of “female exhibitionism” linger into the present. In part this connects to certain historical expectations for women's social behavior, and to the vicissitudes of Freud's insufficient knowledge of women in his libidinal psychosexual phasing used as a basis for analytic understanding. The contemporary fade of libido theory contributes to the neglect of such topics as…
The Essence of Hans Loewald
Commentary on Melitta Schmideberg’s “‘After the Analysis …’”
Commentary on Patrizio Campanile’s “I Had Twenty-Five Piercings and Pink Hair When …”
Maternal Embodiment: A Conversation Between Rosemary Balsam and Adrienne Harris
On May 6, 2011, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis presented a special colloquium on the maternal body. This colloquium featured a public dialogue, a semistructured conversation between Rosemary Balsam and Adrienne Harris, exploring psychoanalytic understandings of images and experiences of the maternal body. The conversation wove chaos, gender, feminist and psychoanalytic theories with the speakers’ resp…
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, 1946–2011
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl's untimely death at age 65 was a devastating shock. On December 1, 2011, walking home from a concert with her wife, Christine Dunbar, Elisabeth was stricken with a pulmonary
Appreciating Difference: Roy Schafer on Psychoanalysis and Women
The author describes and appreciates Roy Schafer's critique of Freud's view of female psychology and his other contributions to the psychoanalytic literature on women, noting his then-novel emphasis that took into account social and cultural factors in analytic treatment. She relates the influence on Schafer's work of his ambiance in that era: the Yale University Student Health Services during the social turmoil of the 1970s (where she was his su…
(RE)membering The Female Body In Psychoanalysis: Childbirth
The Embodied Mother: Commentary on Kristeva
J ulia Kristeva is one of the very few psychoanalytic writers who regard the female essence as a central given in any viable theory of mind, not an add-on or “special” topic that can then be set aside to get on with the real work of analyzing the mind of the subject. Females (and thus, using this term as meaning specifically the biologically sexed body, and thus implicitly the sexed bodies also of males, or in-betweens) are central to life, and t…
Oedipus Rex: Where Are We Going, Especially with Females
The Oedipus myth usefully informs triangulated object relations, though males, females, and "humankind" can become overly interchangeable. Freud's intentions to enlighten sexed gender are nowadays obscured. In 1931, he rejected Oedipus for females. Counterreactive gender blindness forecloses exploration about female development. Loewald's (1979) view of Oedipus Rex emancipates male heterosexuals from a recurring (universal), regressive pull back …
Thirteen ways of looking at a man: Psychoanalysis and masculinity
Donald Moss MD, the seasoned New York based psychoanalyst, has brought his full attention and his exciting writing voices to the complexity of men and ‘masculinity’. The author of Hating in the fir
Freud, The Birthing Body, and Modern Life
Freud early on had an astute sense of the psychic impact of the bodily power of females’ biological sex and childbearing potential. His early appreciation of the biological femaleness of a body, however, became gradually obscured after 1908, distorted by an exaggerated male view that was challenged in the 1920s and 1930s but then became fixed in stone by his followers. This strange but hegemonic view was once again challenged, especially in the U…
Response to John Steiner's “Overcoming Obstacles in Analysis: Is it Possible to Relinquish Omnipotence and Accept Receptive Femininity?”
While the author agrees that issues of sex and gender are frequently involved in impasses and often remain clinically unexplored, she highlights how Dr. Steiner's thinking and (contemporary) Kleinian theory approach, in spite of seeming to recommend gender balance, suffer from the underlying severe sexed-gender polarities that were accentuated in the old Freudian and early twentieth-century schemata. Instead of setting up either/or propositions b…
Eros is Alive and Well, Still
Roy Schafer (1922–2018)
This article memorializes Roy Schafer (1922-2018). Schafer was a major theoretician of psychoanalysis. He began his long professional life in the famous Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, conducting psychological diagnostic research. Early on he became known for foundational work on the Rorschach test. Schafer pursued traditional ego psychology in the then-new Western New England Institute of Psychoanalysis in New Haven, Connecticut, where he be…
On the Natal Body and Its Confusing Place in Mental Life
These reflections concern ongoing confusions in holding together the gestalt of the natal body, sex, gender, and procreation. Highlighting theoretical confusions is the shifting history of relations among the material body, the “psychoanalytic body,”:sex, and gender. Studying these confusions and collecting more data may help the field advance where a rush to theoretical foreclosure will not. Observe, for example, how commonly foreclosing are the…
Roy Schafer, 1922–2018
Writing the Inward Eye
The Birth of Relationship Therapy: Carl Rogers Meets Otto Rank
Abortion
A deprivation of women’s reproductive rights has occurred by the right-wing turn in recent United States’ politics. Looking at the details of Roe v. Wade, (1973), and Dobbs (2022), the author notes the limited legal, but predominantly emotional, thinking in the Supreme Court’s opinions that led to the overturn. The contemporary legal coup is seen here as yet another age-old attempt to control the female body’s reproductive powers and capacities. …
Psychology (27 works) · Psychoanalysis (23 works) · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications (17 works) · Psychoanalytic theory (12 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · History (6 works)