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Psychodynamic Foundations of Bioenergetic Analysis

Experiencing, Understanding and Healing the Body and the Mind
2-2-3 Female Identities / Weibliche Identitäten
Volume 2 Part 2: Bioenergetic Analysis in the Postmodern Age Chapter 2.3

Female Identities

Gendered Bodies and Sexual Bodies in the Making
Rossana Colonna

Female identities are sociocultural constructions. It is true that they have changed in the transition from patriarchal to postmodern society and can move more freely between the poles of feminine and masculine. Nevertheless, the feminine continues to be colonized by the masculine and is also mediated by the maternal body, which carries the history of a femininity that has been shaped by a patriarchal culture over many generations. With reference to psychodynamic theories and the bioenergetic grounding concept, the essay uses two case vignettes to examine how the transition from a bodily experience for another person to a bodily experience with the other person can be managed. The author criticizes the treatment of femininity in BA. She argues that male and female identities should be understood as an expression of bio-psychosocial being and that the dimensions and nuances of this being should also be given more recognition and interest in BA.

Link to the original publication at Routledge

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  • There is no body that is not gender-specific. However, gender is acquired as a political and cultural construction.
  • The feminine has been colonized by male culture to such an extent that it is impossible to make statements about femininity without taking the patriarchal perspective into account.
  • From the very beginning, the child has a bodily and sexual relationship with the mother’s body, which is expressed in gestures, postures, habits and rhythms. The mother’s body carries within it the history of a femininity that has been shaped over many generations by a patriarchal culture, and it passes this history on to the child.
  • This imprint also continues in post-patriarchal societies in the form of substructures that are permeated by a triumphant masculinity and are passed on via the collective unconscious.
  • In the past, the male mediation of the feminine meant that women did not see themselves through their own eyes, but through the eyes of men. The bodily experience with another person was replaced by a bodily experience for the other person, and the feminine was denied by women and men alike.
  • In the transition from patriarchal to postmodern society, female identities have changed. They are no longer trapped in binary conformity, but can readily move in the spaces between the poles of male and female. This makes it possible to experience sexuality without inhibitions and to move from the object to the subject of desire.
  • The sexual identities that have become fluid can also lead to mental suffering and decision-making paralysis.
  • The trend towards FTM transitions observed in the 21st century raises the question of whether the masculine is still (or again) the predominant value and, in the context of the socio-historical denial of the feminine, reflects a continuing overvaluation of the masculine.

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Rossana Colonna
Rossana Colonna

Rossana Colonna, psychologist and psychotherapist, member of the Società Italiana di Analisi Bioenergetica (SIAB) [Italian Society for Bioenergetic Analysis], certified...

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