The Haunting of Men: Commentary on Thomas Burkhalter’s “Foregrounding Masculinities in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy”

Abstract

Thomas Burkhalter’s paper opens an important conversation about the fate of White masculinity in post-Apartheid South Africa. The commentary celebrates the nuance and complexity of the analysis but also suggests that social and historical context would deepen its reach. This concerns taking account of the ways in which the therapeutic moment described owes its formation to a historically and socially specific form of White liberal masculinity. The implications of this for women gendered as female are explored.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sally Swartz

Sally Swartz, Ph.D., is a Member of the University of Cape Town’s Psychology Department training faculty in the clinical psychology program. She also teaches Relational theory in the Cape Town Self Psychoanalytic Psychology group. She has published widely in the fields of colonial psychiatric history and psychoanalytic psychotherapy in South Africa.