Estela Welldon

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Estela Welldon 2014

Estela V. Welldon (born in Mendoza (Argentina) in 1939 ) is a British-Argentinean psychoanalyst , sexologist and analytical psychotherapist . She also works as an organizational consultant. Forensic psychiatry also specializes in the treatment of criminals and people with sexual disorders . In this field she is both practical and therapeutic as well as theoretical and active in research, about which she has presented numerous publications. In particular, she researched, taught and published about female perversion, which does not differ in psychodynamics , but clearly in its appearance from the perversion of men , and has thus contributed to a growing understanding of female psychopathology .

Personal

In an interview published in the Guardian in November 2011 , Welldon also gave insights into her private life. At the age of eleven she lost her brother three years older than her. She would have wanted a big family, but her husband died at the age of 38 when their first child, a son, was just nine months old. She would have suffered more than one trauma in her life , but for some reason she didn't break down from it. She also went through several cancers. Kira Cochrane, who spoke to her, described Welldon, who was in her seventies at the time of the interview, as "youthful, glamorous and adamantly direct."

When asked how she can stand dealing with such difficult cases on a daily basis, Welldon said she was carrying an enormous amount of violence within herself. Knowing about this is helpful and gives her access to her patients who would feel it. With one exception, she would never have been afraid. Only once, when a woman who had claimed to have shot several people undetected, brought a gun. She told her that she would be afraid to give her necessary interpretations if she had a weapon with her.

Welldon reported of her occasional desperation in treatments that sometimes lasted many years, during which nothing seemed to move, and yet she would never have given up hope. Perversions could definitely be cured, but by no means for everyone.

Professional background

Growing up in Argentina, Welldon started teaching children with Down syndrome at the beginning of her career . She then studied medicine at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo , went to America and began working as a doctor in the clinic in Kansas that Karl Menninger and his family had founded . Interested in forensic psychiatry from an early age, she went to Great Britain in the 1960s, where she was able to work psychoanalytically with these patients at the Tavistock Clinic - often referred to as the Portman Clinic . In 1997 she received from the Oxford Brookes University , the honorary doctorate . In 2018 she received a visiting professorship at the Pontifical Catholic University in Peru .

Memberships

Welldon is a member of the British Association for Psychotherapy , the Confederation of the British Psychoanalytic Council , the Institute of Group Analysis , the American Group Psychotherapy Association, and the International Association for Group Psychotherapy and Group Processes . In 2013 she was made honorary membership of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APA) .

Act

Francisco Muñoz-Martin in conversation with Estela Welldon in October 2014 at the Psychoanalytic Association Madrid (Spanish)

After specializing in the treatment of offenders and people with sexual disorders, Welldon founded the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy (IAFP) in 1991 , of which she is now Honorary President .

In addition to her own publications, Welldon has worked as (co-) editor of several scientific journals : for the British Journal of Psychiatry as an expert of the Royal College of Psychiatrists on female crime and sexual deviations (since 1990), for the Journal of the British Institute of Psychohistory , for the Argentine Journal of Group Psychotherapy , for the British Journal of Psychiatry and Group Analysis , the Journal of the Irish Forum for Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy, and for the journal Psychotherapy: A Monthly Journal .

Welldon is a psychotherapist himself, offers individual and group therapies and trains forensic psychotherapists. She shaped forensic psychotherapy and founded a corresponding course in 1990. At the Tavistock Clinic, she is responsible for supervising the treatments.

In 2008, the Belgian psychoanalyst Paul Verhaeghe paid tribute to Estela Welldon's scientific achievements, particularly in the field of the entanglement of motherhood and perversion:

“Putting forward the combination between motherhood and perversion made Estela famous - to my knowledge, she is the first clinician who has demonstrated time and again that perversion can only be understood if we look at the mother, meaning that we have to reconsider female perversion as well. The importance of this clinical insight cannot be overrated, and it testifies to three things. First of all, to her intellectual courage. Secondly, to her sense of humanity. And last but not least, to her clinical finesse. "

“Promoting the combination of motherhood and perversion made Estela famous - as far as I know she is the first doctor who has shown time and again that perversion can only be understood when we look at mother, which means that we also have to rethink female perversion . The importance of this clinical insight cannot be overstated and it testifies to three things. First of all, from their intellectual courage. Second, from their sense of humanity. And last but not least, their clinical finesse. "

- Paul Verhaeghe (2008)

With her book Mutter, Madonna, Hure , published in German in 1992 , she contradicted central contemporary convictions - both traditional patriarchal and feminist views - and that was very courageous “in a feminist time and in a feminist place”. According to Verhaeghe, it was "a miracle that the book was actually published and read". Verhaeghe did not mention that Welldon is a feminist himself, which Sigal Spigel, head of the interdisciplinary seminar on gender research and member of the scientific advisory board at the Center for Gender Research at Cambridge University, did not conceal in her conversation with Welldon a year later.

Technically, Welldon takes the position that all perversions are symbolic attacks on the body of the pregnant woman. In her numerous publications, she developed this conviction, which had grown over the years, in detail and on the basis of clinical material, especially in Mother, Madonna, Whore , but also in her book Perversionen der Frau, which was published in 2014 in the second edition . As a significant difference between the perversion of the man and that of the woman, Welldon recognizes the direction of the aggression, which in the man turns outward and in the woman against herself, her own body or - as its proxy, as it were - one's own child.

In her article Dancing with death , published in 2009, Welldon draws a résumé about her training in Argentina, America and England and about her more than 30 years of work at the Tavistock Clinic in London.

Mother, Madonna, whore

Welldon’s professional positions are not politically correct , but clinically correct, as Verhaeghe noted in 2008. Around the same time, Cambridge University had started a series of talks aimed at stimulating intergenerational dialogue between so-called second wave feminists and their daughters. The second conversation in this series took place in 2009, this time between Estela Welldon and Sigal Spigel. The core of this conversation were the findings that Welldon had presented on perversion. Sigal described the book Mother, Madonna, Whore , first published by Welldon in 1988 , which was the basis of the conversation, as still painfully relevant after 21 years. Although it has found its way into forensic disciplines such as forensic psychology and psychiatry, it is also still a big taboo .

The source of perversion for men and women, Welldon said, can be found in the early relationship with the mother, which reveals some form of early abuse, neglect or deprivation by the mothers. Therefore, in the context of a perversion, the mother's body becomes the object of envious and murderous attacks, mostly symbolic, but sometimes also in fact, for example when the pregnant body of a woman is attacked. Even if these findings carry the risk of speaking out to so-called mother-blaming - that is, blaming the mothers - they should not be negated. But Welldon would have pointed out that the connections are more complicated. Motherhood brings with it considerable psychological demands, which can become so stressful that some mothers are no longer up to it due to their social situation. Then, when impotent feelings spread and satisfaction could no longer be drawn from other sources, a mother might resort to inappropriate behavior. The only power that remains to her is the emotional and physical authority over her baby to oppose the experienced powerlessness .

Even if it is a shock to hear about abusive mothers every time, Welldon says, a deeper knowledge must be acquired, because otherwise the affected mothers would remain silent and would not have a chance to talk about their feelings of despair and uselessness. And then nothing can change. Those who cannot speak are doing stupid things. One has got used to living in a guilty society instead of striving for understanding and that is only possible if the women concerned speak because they can have the hope of being heard. Without understanding, there remains only to be judged and condemned.

Welldons believed that at least two generations would have to be looked back to get an idea of ​​how problems with motherhood developed over the generations. When understanding grows in the mothers in a helping relationship, they often feel remorse and wish they could turn back the clock.

Socially, an unbroken idealization of motherhood prepares the ground for the development of female perversion. As before, female subjectivity is strictly distinguished from maternal subjectivity, the latter being characterized by the absence of sexuality. If a woman becomes pregnant, the fact that this is an unmistakable sign of previous sex is completely out of view. Welldon is not afraid to distribute the responsibility on more shoulders: "We are all involved in it, we are all a kind of collaborators in this problem".

If the social changes lead to women actually being able to participate equally in the world of work and in the power structures of society and if men were to enjoy and participate in raising their children, it would be conceivable that perversions could decrease and feminism would one day disappear Fashion would come. But we are not there yet.

literature

Fonts (selection)

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Kerstin Gutberlet describes Welldon as a "court psychiatrist". See: Kerstin Gutberlet: The State of the Nation. British cinema in the 1990s . In: Media Science . No. 1 , 2003, p. 167 , doi : 10.17192 / ep2003.1.2126 ( google.co.th [accessed March 25, 2019]).
  2. ↑ Freely translated from Paul Verhaeghe on Estela Welldon. 2008, accessed March 25, 2019 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Executive Board. International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy, accessed June 3, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b Publications. Retrieved March 25, 2019 .
  3. ^ Other publications. Retrieved March 25, 2019 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Kira Cochrane: Estela Welldon: 'I speak my mind. Patients take that very well'. In: The Guardian. November 17, 2011, accessed March 27, 2019 .
  5. ↑ About. Retrieved March 25, 2019 .
  6. ↑ International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy. Retrieved June 3, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Estela V. Welldon. In: Psychosozial-Verlag. 2014, accessed March 24, 2019 .
  8. ↑ a b Paul Verhaeghe on Estela Welldon. 2008, accessed March 25, 2019 .
  9. ^ University of Cambridge Center for Gender Studies. Academic Advisory Committee. Accessed March 28, 2019 .
  10. ↑ a b c d Estela Welldon, Sigal Spigel: Estela Welldon in conversation with Sigal Spigel . In: Studies in The Maternal . tape 1 , no. 2 , 2009, p. 1–23 , doi : 10.16995 / sim.107 (English, researchgate.net [accessed on March 27, 2019]).


personal data
SURNAME Welldon, Estela
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Welldon, Estela V.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-Argentinean psychoanalyst, sexologist and analytical psychotherapist
DATE OF BIRTH 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Mendoza (Argentina)