People are often eager to find the best psychotherapist possible for themselves. This urgency comes from a feeling of need, a need to be understood on a subconscious level, and deal with the emotional turmoil; individuals often struggle with. Fernanda Magallanes, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and an academic at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, believes that the consumers of mental health do not well understand psychoanalytic therapy.

Born on September 14, 1985, in Mexico City, Fernanda devoted the majority of her life in investigating the intersection between gender studies, theories of corporeality and psychoanalysis. Her contributions in the field of psychoanalysis developed ideas used in the rethinking of how violence has something to do with the current state of things in the world.

Fernanda completed her graduation from the European Graduate School as Doctor in Philosophy, Art and Critical Thought Summa Cum Laude, and holds a Masters degree in psychoanalysis (honors) from the Asociación Psicoanalítica Mexicana with a project on hysteria and femininity. Given her education, she published the majority of her work on online platforms trying to educate people on the underlying sexual differences and variety of practices that define what is and is not possible for a body.

She did a residency with Dr. Otto Kernberg from the Weill Cornell Hospital at the Personality Studies Institute, allowing her to draw on both theoretical and clinical understandings inspired by Freudian and Lacanian works. Her fellowship in the Institute for Critical Social Inquiry at The New School for Social Research allowed her to reconsider the various itineraries of gender formation and sexual desires. 

She is the author of “¿Qué quiere una mujer?: Lo femenino en psicoanálisis”. The book deals with the subject of feminism from a psychoanalytical perspective. She uses a variety of sources to bring a darker shade of feminist theory into the spotlight. The book shows consistency towards undertaking the question of what women want and interrogating the fundamentals factors behind it.

According to Fernanda Magallanes, the human body goes through an epistemic crisis. From its genealogy of psychoanalysis that it sustains to the Oedipus complex in the background, she finds new ways of thinking of a body. In today’s cultural domain, there is more than one way of thinking about sex differences and different practices that define what is possible for the body. Human beings are capable of traveling through a universe of new technologies, practices of assisted reproduction and sex reassignment surgeries, the notion of body limits are yet to be thought.

She wrote, “Psychoanalysis, The Body and the Oedipal Plot.” Her work in The Body and the Oedipal Plot attempts to convey the most complex aspects in the most accessible language. The book addresses people who belong to a variety of disciplines. Her book confirms the reader’s subjectivity and the concept of alterity and difference.

The Body and the Oedipal Plot by Fernanda is an incisive essay that deserves to play a central role, questioning the gender and sexual normativity of Psychoanalytic practices and discourses. In this book, she treats the body as a cultural and political archive.

Fernanda, in her work, deals with the theoretical and practical applications of psychoanalytical practice. She offers a new perspective on the significance of the body in psychoanalytical theory. Her bracing and innovative work open up the links between psychoanalysis and literature bringing new understandings on the subjects of desire and sexuality. 

A notable aspect of her is that it shows glimpses and takes inspirations from Sigmund Freud's theory and a few women psychoanalysts such as Melanie Klein, Karen Horney, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. In her psychoanalytical text, she makes Freud lie down on the couch of post-structural queer, feminist and trans theories. She pays a considerable amount of attention to the use of the story of Oedipus and his bodily specificities by Freud. He uses the term Oedipal complex to explain the theory of “psychosexual stages of development.”

Freud's work on the Oedipal complex focuses on the erogenous zones in the child’s body and the unconscious feel of desire towards the opposite-sex parent and envy towards the same-sex parent. Magallanes uncovers the patriarchal narratives found in Freud’s work. Rather than attempting to get rid of Oedipus, she attempts to save Oedipus. Her work attempts to give Oedipus to accept his alterity and vulnerability. Fernanda's work shakes the theoretical and practical foundations of psychoanalytic theory.