From: Critical Sexology [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Corinne Squire [[log in to unmask]] Sent: Monday, October 01, 2012 5:19 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [CRITSEX] NOVELLA-CNR postgraduate research seminar, October 9: Women's narratives of love All welcome! Graduate Seminars in Narrative The Centre for Narrative Research, University of East London and the NOVELLA ESRC Research Node, Institute of Education and UEL Women's narratives of love Elis Chasan, University of East London Tuesday October 9th, 5.00-6.30 The Library, Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London, 27-8 Woburn Square, London WC1H OAA Over the last fifteen years, an increasing number of women have been looking for help to control their sex and love lives when diagnosing themselves sex and or love addicts. One of the places these women turn to for help is the organisation Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, an off-shoot of Alcoholics Anonymous (SLAA). Since I started researching sex and love addiction anonymous in 2010, I can count a 57 per cent increase in the number of Sex and Love Addiction recovery groups in London in 2010. What is leading this increase? Are we experiencing a new psychosocial phenomenon? What forces are driving women to associate with a label that implies such a lack of agency as addiction suggests? Is the increase of sex and love addiction one of the consequences of the transformation of intimacy (Giddens, 2008), that is, is the moving from the patriarchal era of fixed identities to a more fluid era of sexual equality being somehow resisted by an acting out of old stereotypes (women and love, men and sex) ? Is the increase of the groups of SLAA related to the fact that we live in a therapeutic culture (Richards, 2007) in which there is a emotionalisation of culture and a search for self-fulfilment? What ideals of love are present in our historical moment? What sense are women making of their failure of their love? Is there anybody being blamed? These are some of the question that I intend to explore using a psychosocial approach informed by psychoanalysis. The investigation will consist of theoretical analysis followed by the analysis of narrative interviews with women who diagnose themselves as 'sex and love addicts'. The interviews have no fixed format. Instead each interviewee is invited to narrate their difficulties in intimate relations, an attempt is made to understand which forces may be behind their discourse and what is the meaning each interviewee ascribes to their difficulty. Elis Chasan is a Brazilian psychologist and holds a master's degree on Psychoanalytical Studies from the Tavistock Institute. She is currently training in psychoanalysis at CFAR (Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research) and studying for a PhD at University of East London on the subject of 'Sex and Love Addiction and Femininity'. All welcome, especially graduate students. For further details contact Corinne Squire ([log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> ) or Rowena Lamb ([log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> ). Details are also on the CNR website: http://www.uel.ac.uk/cnr/home.htm <http://www.uel.ac.uk/cnr/home.htm>