“I try to take students from where they are to somewhere else, and to me, that is also like therapy,” said Erica Galioto. 

Galioto, a Shippensburg University English professor, is a believer of allowing, and guiding, students to reach their fullest potential. To get them to that potential, she is adamant in teaching a variety of topics that range from connectivity and diversity to testimonial experience.  

As a professor at SU, Galioto has solidified her position within the English department as a primary educator of psychoanalysis and critical theory. Psychoanalysis is the study of the unconscious.

Galioto earned her bachelor’s degree in English in 2000, Master’s at the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB) in 2003 and her Ph.D. in English at UB in 2005. Galioto first recognized her interest in psychoanalysis when her professor, now mentor, assigned “Mourning and Melancholia” by Sigmund Freud. She said, “something unlocked within her because of the recognition of her experience of loss in a past relationship in the text, and it made sense.” 

According to the Institute of Psychoanalysis, Freud founded psychoanalysis in 1896. There have been several psychoanalysts since then who have created or practiced new and old theories. These works are directly used in relation to literature to describe a further experience of lack, desire and the unconscious mind. 

She was drawn to SU’s program because of her love for the east coast and the focus on teaching, rather than big research. Since then, she has become a significant part of campus for roughly 20 years. Her first job on campus was dedicated to training people who wanted to be English teachers, and then she became a professor with her own classes surrounding psychoanalysis and critical theory. 

Some of the courses that Galioto has taught over the years include Disaster & Hope in Literature since 1900; Modernism; Disability in Literature; Native American Literature; Women’s Literature; Reading and Writing about Trauma; Autotheory as Self-Writing; Art of the Film; Writing and Research about Literature; Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Literature; Literature and Society; and many others. She, additionally, teaches several seminars. 

“Psychoanalysis is really about one’s experience of desire, and that desire is not always sexual, although, sometimes, it is, but it’s just how you exist in relation to your own desire, which is really about your own experience of lack,” Galioto said. “So psychoanalysis is about trying to figure out, ‘How is your desire manifesting? What does this suggest about your experience of lack? What does this suggest about how you use language? What does this suggest about how you operate in relationships?’” 

Studying psychoanalysis is a strategy that affects both the analyst and the recipient; the recipient can be the analyst, and the analyst can be the recipient. It is an act of learning and practicing relativity between complex topics that form within a body of work — primarily literature. Then, it is interconnected with different minds to explain and understand mental unrest, culture and society. 

Galioto explains her relationships with students as an exchange of experiences. She said: “Your writing is not just this piece of paper that you’ve regurgitated out, but your writing is also connected to you, and what is important to you, and what you think about… I wouldn’t know that unless I was asking for that information.” 

Galioto said: “My work, really, in some ways, focuses on pain — as strange as it is to say that, my work focuses on pain. But it’s not necessarily about wallowing and sadness and the pain, right? It’s about how to beyond the pain, how to transform the pain, what the pain means, what the pain represents.” 

In addition to her teaching at SU, Galioto is a part of a group called the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society (APCS). She serves as a part of the board for that organization, and she contributes to its journal. Many members of the organization are active analysts whose patients use psychoanalytic strategies as a means of transforming their minds.  

Galioto, an academic in the field, “uses those same psychoanalytic theories in the classroom with novels and memoirs and auto theory, but, yet, can come together with that group and be viewed as, also, an expert in the theory who uses the theory from a literary, philosophical perspective.” 

“Teaching is a therapeutic act in psychoanalysis; the analyst also gets something out of the exchange. The transference is intersubjective, so I definitely, then, feed off of [I mean] so many different layers of the teaching that I do from the whole class environment,” said Galioto. 

Outside of SU, Galioto describes her favorite things as “food, clothes and books.” She and her family enjoy several different cuisines, and they value making an effort to broaden their horizons while traveling to further their interest in different foods. 

However, food, outside of enjoyment, can play a big role in the realm of psychoanalysis. She has taught a course called “Food, The Body, and Psychoanalysis,” and it focuses on the way that relationships to food, connectivity of the body to food and the meaning of food relates to the unconscious and conscious mind. 

In November 2024, Galioto hosted an event, based on one of her favorite books, called “Magical Realism, Trauma, and Intersubjectivity: From despair to healing in Aimee Bender’s ‘The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake,’” where she explained this interpretation of the relationship of food to psychoanalysis. 

In addition to her individual interests, she plays tennis and enjoys skiing with her family. Her children are involved in a variety of sports including soccer, dance and gymnastics, so she enjoys their hobbies alongside them.  

Reading and literature are, undeniably, a big part of Galioto’s life. She said, “I try to read at least 50 pages a day outside of my classroom expectations, so that means I read about, probably, between 60 and 65 books a year. Those are things that are really, really important to me.” 

Her favorite books are “significant to her because they speak to the pain and potential existence in ways that resonate with her psychoanalytic thinking.” Some of these, besides Bender’s novel, are: “The Solitude of Prime Numbers” by Paolo Giordano; “Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood” by Koren Zailckas; “Normal People” by Sally Rooney; “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safron; “Columbine” by Dave Cullen; “Family Pictures” by Sue Miller; “Tender Is The Night” by F. Scott Fitzgerald; and “Sorrow and Bliss” by Meg Mason.

In accordance with her reading, she has several publications that showcase her works within the field of psychoanalysis, literature and critical theory. Some of the most recent publications include: “‘Story it’: The Danger of Counter-transference and Need for Patient Voice in ‘In a Country of Mothers and Dora: A Headcase’” in ZAA (Special Issue on The Aesthetics and Politics of Psychotherapy) in 2024; “Prohibition and Power: ‘Normal People’ as Pandemic Pornography” in “Psychoanalysis and the Small Screen: The Year the Cinemas Closed” in 2023; and “‘I repeated the routine:’ The Lacanian Drive in Ling Ma’s ‘Severance’ and COVID-19” in “Movement, Velocity, and Rhythm from a Psychoanalytic Perspective: In/Variable Speeds” in 2022. 

She hopes to construct a writing connecting previously mentioned “Sorrow and Bliss” with “All My Puny Sorrows” by Miriam Toews and a 2024 film called “A Real Pain,” which was directed by Jesse Eisenberg and starred Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin. 

Galioto has made a name for herself and psychoanalysis on SU’s campus. Throughout her time as a professor and academic, she has created many meaningful relationships between staff, colleagues, students and clinicians. These relationships have shown the meaning behind psychoanalysis and the way that theory can teach us about ourselves, others and the world.

Her work, not only being successful, has proven that psychoanalysis “is alive and well.” 

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