“Gender in the Subjunctive Mood:
Temporality and the Question of Evidence"
Oren Gozlan, C. Psych, ABPP, FIPA
In this timely and thought-provoking presentation, Oren Gozlan takes up contemporary debates around gender-affirming care to interrogate a pressing question for psychoanalysis today: what is meant by “evidence,” and what work does it perform in the analytic field?
Drawing on his concept of the subjunctive mood, Gozlan explores how evidentiary discourse can subtly reorganize analytic listening—authorizing caution, rendering responsibility legible, and positioning clinical work for scrutiny beyond the consulting room. He distinguishes between the ontic demands of documentation—decision letters, refusals, and retrospective justification—and the ontological stakes of psychoanalysis, where questions of recognition, bodily suffering (for both analyst and analysand), and transference must be discovered within the unfolding analytic process itself.
Against the apparent neutrality of statements such as “the evidence shows,” Gozlan highlights how these sorts of formulations may prematurely close inquiry while shaping clinical action. Psychoanalytic evidence, he argues, belongs to a different temporality, one that emerges gradually through repetition, revision, transference, and afterwardsness.
The subjunctive mood names both an ethical and a clinical stance—one that sustains uncertainty in the analytic encounter without collapsing into withdrawal or foreclosing possibility. In this way, gender becomes not only a topic of debate, but a privileged site for rethinking time, knowing, and ethical responsibility in psychoanalysis.
Learning Objectives:
After attending this scientific meeting, participants will be able to:
- Distinguish ontic from ontological stakes in psychoanalytic work with gender.
- Identify how evidentiary discourse can reorganize analytic listening.
- Apply the subjunctive mood as an ethic of clinical uncertainty.
About the Presenter
Oren Gozlan, C. Psych, ABPP, FIPA, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in Toronto, Canada, and a member of the Sexual and Gender Diversity Studies Committee of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He is the author of Transsexuality and the Art of Transitioning: A Lacanian Approach (winner of the American Academy & Board of Psychoanalysis annual book prize, 2015), and recipient of the Symonds Prize (2016), Ralph Roughton Award (2022), and Miguel Prados Prize (2023). His edited volume Critical Debates in the Transsexual Studies Field: In Transition (Routledge) was a runner-up for the 2019 Gradiva Award. His recent books include Gender with Sexuality: Situations of Psychoanalytic Learning and Gender: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge).
About the Moderator
Caron Harrang, LICSW, FIPA, BCPsa is a board-certified psychoanalyst with a full-time private practice in Seattle, Washington. She is an IPA training and supervising psychoanalyst on the faculty of the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and teaches throughout North America. Her recent publications include co-editor and chapter author of the Gradiva Award–winning Body as Psychoanalytic Object: Clinical Applications from Winnicott to Bion and Beyond (2021); “Introduction. Truth and Lies: Psychoanalytic Perspectives” (2023); “On Grotstein’s ‘Truth’ in Bion’s Theory of ‘O’” (2023); Nancy C. Winters, Caron Harrang, and Stefanie Sedlacek, “Transformations in O Online: Group Process in the Virtual Realm” (2024); “Earthquakes in the Analytic Field: A Post-Bionian View of Negative Therapeutic Reaction” (2025); and “Binocular Vision as a Function of the Analytic Field” (2026). For additional information, see www.caronharrang.com.
Zoom Information
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