Jill Gentile, Ph.D.

Teaching Faculty and Co-chair | Independent Track

Education

A.B. 1982, Brown University
M.A. 1986, Ph.D. 1989, University of Rochester

Areas of Research/Interest

  • The evolution of personal, sexual, political, and collective agency
  • Spaces between (material/subjective; you/me; psyche/soma; reality/fantasy; physical/mystical)
  • Psychoanalysis, free speech, and democracy
  • Feminine law (beyond patriarchy)

External Affiliations

  • Faculty and Clinical Supervisor, Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity in New York City
  • Faculty, Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy of NJ 
  • Faculty, Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis
  • Instructor, National Institutes for the Psychotherapies
  • Instructor, Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California
  • Clinical Consultant, Tufts University Counseling Center’s postgraduate psychotherapy training program

Awards & Honors

  • APA Dissertation Research Award (1988)
  • Psychoanalytic Society Scholars Grant for book project on Freud and Free Speech (2014)

Publications

Book:

Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire, with M. Macrone (London: Karnac, 2016).

 

Journal articles:

(2016f). Between the familiar and the stranger: Attachment security, mutual desire, and reclaimed love. International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, 11: 193-215.

(2016e). The erotically reconceived familiar stranger—Reply to Ringstrom and Slavin. International Journal of

Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, 11: 239-247.

(2016d).  Naming the vagina, naming the woman. Division/ Review, 14 (Spring).

(2016c). Democracy: Relevant to psychoanalysis. American Psychoanalyst, 50.

(2016b). On spatial metaphors and free association: Phallic fantasy and vaginal primacy. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 52: 21-50.

(2016a). What is special about speech? Psychoanalytic Psychology, 33: 73-88.

(2015d).  Where infantile sexuality was, there democracy shall be: A psychoanalytic manifesto. Division/ Review, 13: 26.

(2015c). The elusive feminine signifier: Reply to Pellegrini and Harris, Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 12: 266-274.

(2015b). On having no thoughts: Freedom and feminine space. Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 12: 227-251.

 (2015a). Parrhesia, Phaedra, and the polis: Anticipating psychoanalytic free association as democratic practice. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 84: 589-624.

 (2014). On mattering, materiality, and “transitional memory”: A discussion of Jonathan Slavin’s essay.  Psychoanalytic Perspectives,11: 35-43.

 (2013).  From Truth or Dare to Show and Tell: Reflections on childhood ritual, play, and the evolution of symbolic life.  Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 23: 150-169.

 (2011). Between private and public: Towards conceptualizing the transitional subject. In Relational Psychoanalysis, Vol 4: Expansion of theory. Eds. L. Aron & A. Harris. London: Routledge.

 (2010).  ‘Weeds on the Ruins’: Agency, compromise formation, and the quest for intersubjective truth.  Psychoanalytic Dialogues: 20: 88-109

 (2008).  Between private and public:  Towards conceptualizing the transitional subject.  International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 89: 959-976

 (2008).  Agency and its clinical phenomenology.  In R. Frie, ed. Psychological agency: Theory, Practice, and Culture.  MIT Press.

 (2007).  Wrestling with matter: Origins of intersubjectivity.  Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 76, 547-582.

 (2001).  Close but No Cigar: The perversion of agency and the absence of thirdness.   Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 37, 623-654.

(1998).  Listening for deep structure:  Between the a priori and the intersubjective.  Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 34, 67-89.

with  Cicchetti, D., O'Brien, R.A., & Rogosch, F.A. (1992).   Functional deficits in the self and depression in widows.  Development and Psychopathology, 4, 323- 339

Recent Paper Presentations & Professional Workshops

Psychoanalytic Thoughts on Nameless Dread: What Do the Presidential Election and Inauguration Signify?” 
Panel with Jessica Benjamin, Eyal Rozmarin, and Charles Strozier. William Alanson White Institute, February 4, 2017.

The Developing Child, The Developing City and Developing Peace. Educators and Analysts Discussion Group. American Psychoanalytic Association 2017 National Meeting, January 19, 2017.

Freud, Free Speech, Desire and the Presidential Election, Faculty Psychotherapy Conference, Mount Sinai Medical Center, December 13, 2016.

Creative Process and Feminine Law. Conversation with the Artist Group of the Psychotherapy Service for People in the Arts. The William Alanson White Institute,  December 1, 2016.

Free Speech/Hate Speech: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Homeland (In)Security. 23rd Annual Irving and Janice Schulman Lecture, Widener University.  November 5, 2016.

Pre-conference workshop on Attachment, Desire, and Oedipal Phenomena. IAPSP Conference, Boston, MA, October 19, 2106.

The “Baggage Claim Dream” as Transformative Marker of Political Agency and Social Justice. Association for Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society Conference, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, October 14, 2016.

Psychoanalysis meets democracy: A Conversation on Free Speech and How Talking Cures. NYU Institute for Public Knowledge. September 29, 2016.

Book Launch: Michael G. Thompson, The Death of Desire. Moderator of panel including Darlene Ehrenberg, Tony Bass, Steve Kirschner, and Jeremy Safran.  The Ferenczi Center, New School. September 19, 2016.

Free Speech, Hate Speech: Can Talking Cure? Invited colloquium, Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies, NY. September 16, 2016.

Oh Baby, Oh God: Reflections on Loss, Lennon, and Winnicott’s “I AM.”Panel presentation, IARPP International Conference 2016,  Rome, Italy,  June 11, 2016

Standing at the Crossroads: The Science of hermeneutics and the Hermeneutics of Science. Panel Discussion. APA Division 39  Conference,  Atlanta, GA,  April 8, 2016.

Enshrined ambiguity in psychoanalysis and free speech. Panel discussion. APA Division 39  Conference,  Atlanta, GA,  April 7, 2016.

Lines between Speech and Action in Psychoanalysis and the Constitution. Panel presentation, Association for Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society Conference, New Brunswick, NJ, October 23, 2015.

Freedom for the thought that we hate. Panel presentation. Civilization and its Blisscontents: Violence and Psychoanalysis. New York City, NY, May 2, 2015.

Manifesto Fest: A psychoanalytic manifesto. (Moderator and speaker). APA Division 39 Conference—San Francisco, CA, April, 2015; Manifesto Fest 2: Psychology & the Other Conference, Boston, MA, October, 2015.

Free Association and Free Speech: How Psychoanalysis Speaks to Democracy. Symposium: Psychology and Civil Liberties—Major Controversies. Washington, DC. August 10, 2014.

Attachment Security and Mutuality of Desire. South Jerusalem Mental Health Center, Jerusalem, Israel – June 30, 2014

Memory Matters, Panel presentation, Spring meeting, APA Division 39 Conference – New York, NY, April 26, 2014.

Freud and Free Speech. NYU Independent Track Colloquium, October 26, 2013. NYU Law School, with Pasquale Pasquino, PhD, opening remarks; and John Ferejohn, PhD, discussant.

Truth and Consequences in Psychoanalytic Treatment: The Analyst’s Intimate Experience and the Patient’s Mind.

Invited Paper. February 2, 2013. Conference sponsored by the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity and the Sandor Ferenczi Center, The New School, New York.

Creative Flow: Psychoanalysis, art and the space between (Discussant), Division 39 Conference - Santa Fe, NM, April 18, 2012.


Oh Baby, Oh God: Loss, Lennon, and Winnicott’s “I AM”, Panel presentation, Division 39 Conference - Santa Fe, NM, April 20, 2012.


On mattering, matter, and “transitional” memory: A discussion of J. Slavin’s essay. Invited panel. Conference on Psychology 
and the Other, Cambridge, MA, October 2, 2011.


Between the familiar and the stranger: Attachment, agency, and desire, Invited colloquium, Manhattan Institute for 
Psychoanalysis, March 4, 2011.


Discussion of Bob Katz’ An Imperfect Death: Heidegger, Oedipus, and Basescu.  Intertrack Colloquium; NYU Postdoctoral Program, 
January 22, 2010


A discussion of “Weeds on the Ruins: Agency, compromise formation, and the quest for intersubjective truth”: IPSS explorations, 
November 17, 2010.


Thoughts on Phaedra, Hippolytus, and Euripedes’ psychoanalytic prescience.  Panel presentation, Conference “All the Gods 
Must be Heard”: The Dilemmas of Multiplicity in Tragedy and Psychoanalysis, Sicily, Italy, June, 2010.

Miscellaneous writing and media

First 100 Days: The P*ssy Missile has Launched.  PsychoanalyticActivist blog; reprinted Public Seminar,

March 8, 2017

Time for Resolution: This Year We Save Democracy. Public Seminar, January 11, 2017.

DW Winnicott and our Inescapable Need to Plunder.  June 11, 2010.  TalkingCures Consulting Blog.

Psychoanalysis, democracy, desire. Public Seminar, The New School for Social Research.  May 13, 2016.

 

Biographical Information

Jill Gentile is faculty at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis, where she co-chairs the Independent track. She teaches and writes on personal agency and the evolution of symbolic life, psychoanalytic phenomenology, developmental semiotics, and on the relationship of psychoanalytic free association to democratic free speech. She is a Corresponding Editor at Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and is on the editorial boards of Psychoanalysis, Self, and Context (formerly the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology) and The Candidate Journal (advisory). Jill completed psychoanalytic training at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity. Her clinical work has spanned child, adolescent, and adult populations, across day, residential, and inpatient settings. Jill is in independent practice in Greenwich Village, NY, and in Highland Park, NJ, and maintains ongoing clinical consultation with adults and couples and leads study groups (clinical process and writing) for colleagues.