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    • New Horizons in Forensic Psychotherapy: Exploring the Work of Estela V. Welldon (2018)
    • Sex Now, Talk Later (November 2016)
    • Sadomasochism in Art and Politics (November 2016)
    • A Practical Guide to Forensic Psychotherapy (eds.)
    • Mother, Madonna, Whore
    • Playing with Dynamite
    • Sadomasochism – ‘Ideas in Psychoanalysis’ series
  • Other publications
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  • Past Events Diary
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Books

Estela has written books translated into many languages

Interviews

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Lectures

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Honorary Member of American Psychoanalytic Association

Estela joins an illustrious group of Honorary APsaA Members

Estela and Otto Kernberg

Read Estela's Letter to Free Associations journal

25th Anniversary Conference in Ghent, Belgium

The Association Estela founded celebrates 25th years!

Read her speech

Estela quoted in The Independent

Why are we shocked when women commit violent crimes? Read the article

Estela publishes two new books

Sex Now Talk Later (Karnac) & Sadomasochism in Art and Politics (2nd Edition)

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Estela launches new translation in Moscow

Mother Madonna Whore translated into Russian

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PPNow 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award

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ESTELA WELLDON

Author

Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist
Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists

Founder and president for life of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy

Group analyst
Member of the American Group Analysis & the International Association of Group Psychotherapy

Lecturer
Estela lectures around the world. For more see Future Events and Past Events Diary.

Psychodynamic psychotherapist
Senior Member of the British Psychoanalytic Council

Supervisor
PAUL VERHAEGHE ON ESTELA

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.

To publish a book about motherhood as the seat of perversion in a feminist time and place is just another way of trying to commit suicide by proxy. With hindsight, it is almost a miracle that the book was actually published and read. It goes against two visceral certainties: that mothers are always saints and that women are never perverse. Estela confronts us with another reality, not caring about being politically correct, as long as it is clinically correct. And correct she was and is - beyond the romantic mainly boyish ideals of a saint motherhood and the feverish phallic masculine ideals of a sexy femininity, there are real women with real problems that are totally different from both the romantic and the erotic universe of the male, but it takes courage to put that forward against both traditional patriarchal and then contemporary feminist views.

Paul Verhaeghe, 2008

About

Estela Welldon is founder and president for life of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy, author of Mother Madonna Whore, and Playing with Dynamite, and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist ...

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Books

Estela Welldon has published a number of acclaimed books

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Future events

Estela Welldon has been lecturing, giving seminars and workshops for decades

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All the pages, alphabetically ordered

  • About
    • Estela joins an illustrious group of Honorary APsaA Members
    • Interviews
  • Books
    • A Practical Guide to Forensic Psychotherapy (eds.)
    • Mother, Madonna, Whore
    • New Horizons in Forensic Psychotherapy: Exploring the Work of Estela V. Welldon (2018)
    • Playing with Dynamite
    • Sadomasochism – ‘Ideas in Psychoanalysis’ series
    • Sex Now, Talk Later (November 2016)
  • Future events
  • Listen and Watch
  • News
  • Other publications
    • Letter from Estela to Free Associations journal, 14 May 2015
    • The Guardian article from November 2011 is published in Italian magazine Internazionale 927, December 2011
  • Past Events Diary
    • Speech at IAFP 25th Anniversary Conference
  • Sadomasochism in Art and Politics (November 2016)

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