Renowned psychoanalytical psychotherapist and organizational consultant Dr Estela Welldon lectured to a packed 7th level auditorium at DEREE on “The Dark Side of Female Sexuality,” on February 27.
Invited by DEREE’s Graduate Program MS in Counseling Psychology & Psychotherapy, Dr Welldon presented case studies tracing her work on both female and male perversions over the decades.
DEREE Psychology Professor Fotini-Sonia Apergi, coordinator of the MS in Applied Psychology at DEREE, welcomed Dr Estela Welldon – author of the bestselling Mother, Madonna, Whore: The Idealization and Denigration of Motherhood (1988), and the Greek translator of her book, ACG alumna and psychologist Athina Tsoukali (DEREE ’79 – psychology major), thanking her for organizing the event.
Ms Tsoukali said she was elated to be back on campus after so many years, and thanked DEREE for hosting the event, while she also thanked “her friend Dr Welldon for her generosity in offering this lecture,” and gave a brief overview of Dr Welldon’s life and work – from her beginnings in Argentina through her training and work in the UK, becoming a “pioneer in psychotherapy. She has even developed a new therapeutic approach, where both victims and perpetrators are members of the same therapeutic group,” Dr Tsoukali noted in her introduction.
Taking the podium, Dr Welldon apologized for being the “bearer of bad news,” and for her loaded subject, before embarking on her informative lecture on how a subset of women are able to fall into abusive behavior patterns towards their children, refuting stereotypes held by society.
Dr Welldon focused on the reasons why women want to have children in the first place, and then through case studies presented the “internal circular motion of perversion,” and discussed the differences between male and female perversion. She posited that women who have never experienced love themselves act out on their children as they see them as an extension of themselves, and may have a history of harming themselves to begin with (self-mutilation and other forms of self harm).
A rapt audience, made up mostly of professional psychotherapists from around the country, students, faculty, staff, journalists and other guests, asked Dr Welldon a number of questions after the lecture, which she responded to using insightful examples from her long career.
Dr Welldon, MD DSc (Hon) F.R.C.Psych.BPC Hon.Memb. A.Psa.A, is founder and honorary-elected president for life of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy, Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist in Forensic Psychotherapy at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, and the author of several books – including Mother, Madonna, Whore: The Idealization and Denigration of Motherhood (1988) which has been translated into Greek by Athina Tsoukali (DEREE ‘79), entitled Μητέρα, Αγία, Πόρνη. Η Σκοτεινή Πλευρά της Μητρότητας, published by Ellinika Grammata, Athens 1997 and recently republished by Anatolikos.
To learn more about Estela Welldon, MD DSc (Hon) F.R.C.Psych.BPC Hon.Memb. A.Psa.A, visit here
To find out about DEREE’s Master of Science in Counseling Psychology & Psychotherapy and to register for the Spring Semester, which begins on March 2, click here