How can psychoanalysis support the flourishing of queer and trans life in light of the discipline’s contested history and present? Why is it preferable to understand gender as a process of becoming instead of something that is a preprogrammed part of the self? In this interview from July 2024, Clayton speaks with Dr. Ann Pellegrini and Dr. Avgi Saketopoulou about their book Gender Without Identity and how their ideas and their psychoanalytic practice seeks to answer these questions.

Avgi Saketopoulou is a psychoanalyst in private practice in NYC, and a member of the faculty at New York University's Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She is also the author of Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia from the Sexual Cultures Series, NYU Press.

Ann Pellegrini is Professor of Performance Studies & Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, and a practicing psychoanalyst. Their books include Performance Anxieties: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race and Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance (coauthored with Janet R. Jakobsen).

Clayton Jarrard⁠ is a graduate student at New York University's XE: Experimental Humanities & Social Engagement program and works at the University of Kansas Center for Research, contributing to initiatives at the nexus of research, policy implementation, and community efforts. 

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