dialogues on sexuality gender and psychoanalysis

DIALOGUES ONSEXUALITY, GENDER,

AND PSYCHOANALYSIS


AND PSYCHOANALYSIS

edited by

Iréne Matthis

KARNACLONDON NEW YORKKARNAC

First published in 2004 by

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vii

CONTENTS

EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ix

PREFACE xiii

CHAPTER ONE

Dialogues on sexuality and genderIréne Matthis 1

CHAPTER TWO

Freud and female sexualitiesJoyce McDougall 23

CHAPTER THREE

Some observations on female sexualityJulia Kristeva 41

CHAPTER FOUR

Phallacies of binary reasoning: drive beyond genderPaul Verhaeghe 53

viii CONTENTS

CHAPTER FIVE

The difference between gender and sexual differenceJuliet Mitchell 67

CHAPTER SIX

Gender and sexual differenceColette Chiland 79

CHAPTER SEVEN

From femininity to finitude:Freud, Lacan, and feminism, again

Toril Moi 93

CHAPTER EIGHT

Femininity theory, theories of women,or feminist theory?

Ebba Witt-Brattström 137

CHAPTER NINE

Revisiting the riddle of sex:an intersubjective view of masculinity and femininity

Jessica Benjamin 145

CHAPTER TEN

The economy of freedomGisela Kaplan 173

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Beyond sexual difference:clinical individuality and same-sex cross-generationrelations in the creation of feminine and masculine

Nancy J. Chodorow 181

INDEX 205

ix

EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS

JESSICA BENJAMIN, a psychoanalyst practicing in New York City, isa supervisor and faculty member at the New York UniversityPostdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. She isa founding board member of the International Association forRelational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, member of the edi-torial board of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and an associate editor ofthe journal Studies in Gender and Sexuality. She is the author of threebooks: The Bonds of Love (1988), Like Subjects, Love Objects (1995), andShadow of the Other (1998).

COLETTE CHILAND is a psychiatrist, a psychoanalyst at the Paris Psy-choanalytic Society, and professor emeritus at René Descartes Uni-versity of Paris. She is the author of six books and co-author andeditor of fourteen books and five special issues of journals. She hasalso authored some 200 papers. Some of these books and papershave been published in English. Her most recent paper, “Thepsychoanalyst and the transsexual patient”, appeared in February2000 in The International Journal of Psychoanalysis.

x EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS

NANCY J. CHODOROW is a psychoanalyst in private practice inOakland, California, a faculty member of the San Francisco Psycho-analytic Institute, and clinical faculty, Department of Psychology,University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The Repro-duction of Mothering (1978, 2nd. edition, 1999), Feminism and Psycho-analytic Theory (1989), Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities (1994),and The Power of Feelings (1999). She is North American BookReview Editor of the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis and anEditorial Associate of Studies in Gender and Sexuality.

GISELA KAPLAN, originally from Berlin, is now research professor atthe University of New England, Australia, in two disciplinaryfields: social science (sociology, education, and psychology) andbiological science (ethology) in the Faculties of Science and Educa-tion. She has published over 150 papers as well as seven books inthe social sciences, including Hannah Arendt: Thinking, Judging,Freedom (1989), Contemporary Western European Feminism (1992), TheMeagre Harvest: The Australian Women’s Movement 1950s–1990s(1996), and nine books on animal behaviour (orang-utans, birds,animal communication, etc.). Her latest book (with Lesley Rogers),is Gene Worship (2003).

JULIA KRISTEVA is a professor at Paris 7 (linguistics and literature), apsychoanalyst, and a prolific writer. She is the recipient of manyinternational awards. Some of her latest books published in Englishare The Female Genius, Vol. 1: Hannah Arendt (2001) and The FemaleGenius, Vol. 2: Melanie Klein (2002).

IRÉNE MATTHIS is professor of psychoanalysis and assistant professorof clinical neuroscience at Umeå University in Sweden. She is atraining analyst and teacher at the Swedish Psychoanalytic Insti-tute (IPA) and is the Scandinavia Co-ordinator for IPA–COWAP.She is a Board Member of the International Neuro-PsychoanalysisSociety and editor of the Bulletin Section of the international jour-nal Neuro-Psychoanalysis. She is the author of several books andpapers, including, in Swedish: Det omedvetnas arkeologi [The Ar-chaeology of the Unconscious] (1992); and Den tänkande kroppen[The Thinking Body] (1997); and, in English, “Sketch for aMetapsychology of Affects”, International Journal of Psychoanalysis

xiEDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS

(2000); “Finger-twisting and Cracked Voices: The Hysterical Symp-tom Revisited”, in D. E. Scharff (Ed.), The Psychoanalytic Century:Freud’s Legacy for the Future (2001); and “Strangebody”, in M.Alizade (Ed.), The Embodied Female (2002); she also co-edited, with I.Szecsödy, On Freud’s Couch (1998).

JOYCE MCDOUGALL, born in New Zealand, received her psychoana-lytic training in London and Paris, where she has been a traininganalyst since 1961. She has published several books, including Pleafor a Measure of Abnormality (1978), Theaters of the Mind: Illusion andTruth on the Psychoanalytic Stage (1982), Theaters of the Body: A Psy-choanalytic View of Psychosomatic Phenomena (1989), and The ManyFaces of Eros: A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Human Sexuality (1995).Co-author with S. Lebovici, she has also written Dialogue withSammy (1961, new revised edition 1984). She has made numerouscontributions to American, Brazilian, English, French, German,Scandinavian, and Spanish psychoanalytic journals.

JULIET MITCHELL is professor of psychoanalysis and gender studies inthe University of Cambridge, where she is also a Fellow of JesusCollege. She is a Full Member of the British Psychoanalytical Soci-ety and the International Psychoanalytical Association. Her mostrecent books are Mad Men and Medusas: Reclaiming Hysteria and theEffects of Sibling Relations on the Human Condition (2000) and Sib-lings, Sex and Violence (2003).

TORIL MOI is James B. Duke Professor of Literature and RomanceStudies at Duke University, North Carolina. She is the author ofSexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (1985; second edi-tion, 2002), Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman(1993), and What Is a Woman? (2000) and the editor of The KristevaReader (1986) and French Feminist Thought (1987). She is currentlyworking on a book on Ibsen and planning more work on feministtheory.

PAUL VERHAEGHE is full professor at the University of Gent, Belgium,and head of the department for psychoanalysis and consultingpsychology. He has published over 100 papers as well as fourbooks: Does The Woman Exist? From Freud’s Hysteric to Lacan’s

xii EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS

Feminine (1997), Love in a Time of Loneliness: Three Essays on Drive andDesire (1999), Beyond Gender: From Subject to Drive (2001), and OnBeing Normal and Other Disorders (2004).

EBBA WITT-BRATTSTRÖM is professor of comparative literature andgender studies at Södertörn University College, Stockholm. She isSwedish editor of Volumes 2 and 3 of Nordisk kvinnolitteraturhistoria[Nordic Women´s Literary History] (1993, 1996), and volume editorof The New Woman and the Aesthetic Opening: Unlocking Gender inTwentieth Century Texts (2004). She is the author of Moa Martinson:Skrift och drift i trettiotalet [Moa Martinson: Writing and Instinct inthe Thirties] (1988), Ediths jag. Edith Södergran och modernismensfödelse (Edith´s Self: Edith Södergran and the Birth of Modernism,1997), and a book on feminism, psychoanalysis, and literature, Urkönets mörker. Litteraturanalyser [Out of the Darkness of Sex: Liter-ary Analyses] (1993, 2003). She has edited books on, among others,Julia Kristeva (1990) and Lou Andreas-Salomé (1995). Her publica-tions in English include “Maternal Abject, Fascist Apocalypse, andDaughter Separation in Contemporary Swedish Novels”, in Writ-ing New Identities: Gender, Nation, and Immigration in ContemporaryEurope, edited by Gisela Brinker-Gabler and Sidonie Smith (1997),and “Towards a Feminist Genealogy of Modernism: The Narcissis-tic Turn in Lou Andreas-Salomé and Edith Södergran”, in Gender–Power–Text: Nordic Culture in the Twentieth Century, edited byHelena Forsås-Scott (forthcoming 2004).

xiii

PREFACE

It seems that human beings are never fully satisfied withtheir lives. One way of dealing with this fundamental sense ofdissatisfaction is to look for its sources, its roots: in short, an

explanation. In this light, is it fair to say that femininity theoriesare created to “make sense” of women’s dissatisfactions and frus-tration? Freud, reflecting on his experience with women a centuryago, made sense of women’s predicament through his theory ofthe “missing penis”, an explanation that was meaningful at thetime to a great many people, women as well as men. Today, weusually regard this theory as a reflection of time-bound prejudicesthat prevailed in the specific environment of turn-of-the-centuryVienna.

But, rather than merely dismissing yesterday’s theories asprejudices, we need to explore and investigate the new theoriesthat are taking the place of the traditional models, and, conse-quently, to question our own prejudiced opinions and notions. Onepleasant, and exciting, way of doing so is to gather people withdifferent perspectives and allow them the space and the time totalk with each other rather than merely to each other. This was oneof the ideas behind the Stockholm Conference on Sexuality and

xiv PREFACE

Gender (30–31 August 2002), and in this book you will be able topartake in the dialogues that were born out of this gathering.

The conference was organized by COWAP (Committee onWomen and Psychoanalysis), a commission created in 1998 by theInternational Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). From the begin-ning, the main purpose of COWAP was to study and discuss“women issues”, but slowly it shifted towards including “men’sissues” as well. The idea of having the first European COWAPConference in Sweden was planted by Joan Raphael-Leff, the firstchair of COWAP, in the autumn of 2000. When Mariam Alizadetook over the chair in 2001, she continued to strongly support therealization of the project.

With speakers such as Jessica Benjamin, Colette Chiland, NancyChodorow, Gisela Kaplan, Julia Kristeva, Joyce McDougall, JulietMitchell, Toril Moi, Paul Verhaeghe, and Ebba Witt-Brattström,there was never any doubt that the difficult questions of sexualityand gender, of femininity and masculinity, would be analysed anddiscussed in new and stimulating ways. Old concepts were dis-mantled and new ideas brought forward. A conference so rich inideas calls for documentation, and it became necessary to collectand publish the (reworked) contributions in the form of this vol-ume. The COWAP conference on “Sexuality and Gender” wascreated with the conscious intent of bringing different ideas to bearon each other, in order to promote further research into this areathat is so important to all of us. We were not necessarily looking forconsensus, but for thoughtful elaboration. It is dialogue that makesus move forward.

The conference depended on the volunteer work of many peo-ple. I want to thank all of those who generously made their contri-bution as chairs of panels and discussion groups, and as hosts ofthe groups: Mariam Alizade, Giovanna Ambrosio, Cecilia Annell,Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen, Svein Haugsgjerd, Eva Hurtig, SonjaHärdelin, Suzanne Kaplan, Magnus Kihlbom, Pirjo Lantz, JohanNorman, Lars-Göran Nygren, Joan Raphael-Leff, Beth Seelig,Mikael Sundén, and Maria Yassa.

The conference was organized with the help of a local commit-tee appointed by the Swedish Psychoanalytical Society and theSwedish Psychoanalytical Association. Their devoted labour dur-ing the year that preceded the conference was decisive in making

xvPREFACE

the conference a success, and I warmly thank Christina Flordh,Daniela Montelatici Prawitz, Lena Necander-Redell, AgnetaSolberger, and Mikael Sundén. Also, I am deeply grateful to PaulaBarkay, at the Anna Freud Centre in London, whose knowledgeand experience was invaluable.

Iréne Matthis


AND PSYCHOANALYSIS

1

CHAPTER ONE

Dialogues on sexuality and gender

Iréne Matthis

Theory and practice are not always in harmony with oneanother, although the former is created and applied in orderto achieve precisely that. There is a conflict between reality

as we experience it and the theories that we apply to it. In thespecial case of “sexuality and gender”, we find that if we—whetherwomen or men—fail to conform to the (general) theory about whatwe are supposed to be (female or male), it is usually we who are infor trouble, and not the theory. This may seem unfair to us, but ashumans we can neither understand nor make sense of our lives,nor exchange ideas about it, without having access to a theory ofsome kind.

It follows that there are problems inherent in concept forma-tion. Concepts are created at an abstract level to give us not thedetails, but an overview that our individual and limited experiencecannot provide. But as soon as the concepts are applied to indi-vidual material—for example, at an ordinary, clinical level in psy-choanalysis—they seem to become misleading. Why is that?

As abstract concepts—that is, as part of a metapsychology—they make universalizing claims. That is exactly why we value andneed them. They seem to offer us a bird’s-eye view and, thus,

2 IRÉNE MATTHIS

insights that we could not otherwise have. At the same time, theystructure the whole field in such a way that we feel there is a law,or at least a rule guiding the world.

Applied to a real situation, however, this claim to universalitymay become problematic, when that which is unique and singularis judged and categorized according to a universal rule that mightnot be pertinent in the particular case. A patient–analyst relation-ship, for example, or a novel written in specific historical circum-stances, may very well be mistreated and misjudged if we treat it inaccordance with a given rule that we apply without considerationand thought.

So we find ourselves having to make an impossible choice. Wecan choose to maintain the appeal of universal lawfulness by offer-ing up the uniqueness of the specific case to the demands ofuniformity—or we have to let go of the claim to generalizabilityand make do with the truthfulness of each single case. If we choosethe latter, we lose the much-cherished claim to scientific relevanceand the possibility of creating theories by which we can orientourselves in the world. In this volume you will find examples ofboth tendencies.

For the reader, this may initially create confusion. Nevertheless,if you are prepared to suspend your desire to hear voices singing inconcert, you may find that you start to enjoy the kind of harmonycreated by diverging voices. I have written this introduction inorder to facilitate the reading. It offers a summary of the chapters inthis volume in order of appearance, creating a kind of score for thereading of the book. This is, of course, a subjective attempt, but it is,nevertheless, an attempt to be true to the subject under discussionand to the eternal pursuit of knowledge. We start with JoyceMcDougall.

Freud and female sexualities (Joyce McDougall). There are con-scious beliefs and manifest behaviours related to gendered sexual-ity. But equally important are the hidden agendas and sexualconduct rooted in unconscious fantasies and marked by archaicand pregenital erotism. This is a theme that has been exploredthoroughly by Joyce McDougall, one of the most important post-Freudian writers on women and sexuality. Freud’s views on female

3DIALOGUES ON SEXUALITY AND GENDER

sexuality might have been misconstrued, she writes, but he wasone of the first to listen to women, bringing into the open theirunconscious desires and fantasies. It was, indeed, by listening tothem that he reached the initial insights that led him to the conceptof the unconscious.

Joyce McDougall’s contribution, not only to female psychologybut to psychoanalytic thought in a broad sense, is important. Shehas, for example, dealt with the three fundamental traumas thateveryone has to suffer: the fact that there are others; the fact thatyou can belong only to one sex; and, finally, the fact that you aredoomed to die. The way in which we deal with these traumas willcolour all later events in our lives. This idea, which JoyceMcDougall presented in her book The Many Faces of Eros (1995), isalso important in relation to male and female psychology, and thetheme is elaborated by Toril Moi in her contribution to this volume.Moi relates it to the question of castration, the central point in bothFreud’s and Lacan’s theories of sexual difference and femininity,although these theories differ in many other respects.

In “Freud and Female Sexualities” (note the plural), JoyceMcDougall presents the Freudian background and outlines therevolution in social representations of sexuality and sexual rela-tionships that we have witnessed during the last forty years. Al-though we talk of a sexual liberation, sexuality is in many respectsas conflictual as it was before. Men’s fear of women, which JoyceMcDougall discerns both in Freud’s writings on women and inmale analysands today, may perhaps be a projection onto thewoman of the man’s fears of his own inner space and longings,fears related to unconscious pregenital fantasies. Men’s projectionof their own frightening ideas and longings is a line of thought thatrecurs in Jessica Benjamin’s chapter in this volume, but dealt withfrom quite a different angle.

The ideas produced by these projections will, of course, bedistorted. What Freud saw in the girl was very much determinedby what the little boy wanted to see, or what he feared to appre-hend. Thus Freud’s metaphors became phallocentric, only givingsignificance to the clitoris. And the girl’s clitoris, defined as adiminutive male organ, had to be eliminated as an erogenous zonein the process of becoming a woman. Blinded by the little boy’s

4 IRÉNE MATTHIS

perspective, Freud missed an aspect that was especially importantto the little girl: the mother–daughter relation. Joyce McDougallclaims that this relationship will define and specify the femininebody and its erogenous zones as somatopsychic images, relatingmouth and vagina to each other, especially in the early stages. (Thistheme is developed further in Kristeva’s contribution.)

Looking back to Freud’s theory of femininity, Joyce McDougallwrites that “[it] is hard to avoid the suspicion that Freud hadelevated Victorian prejudices to the rank of a theory . . .”, and shegives us an overview of the reasons, cultural and psychological, forsuch a phenomenon.

Finally, Joyce McDougall brings into focus the issue of sexualdeviation in women, and especially the question of “perversemotherhood”. As sexual perversion has usually been identifiedwith male sexuality, interest and research has been deflected fromthe problems of female deviation. Joyce McDougall writes that “notall mothers are good”—as Freud would have it—and if there isabuse, “the pattern of abuse goes back three generations or more”.She gives ample evidence of this and points to the research thatneeds to be done in the future on an arena of female sexuality thatwe have hardly even started to investigate.

Primary and secondary oedipal phases (Julia Kristeva). The Oedi-pus complex is, as everyone knows, central to the question offemale psychosexual development. In her contribution, Kristevapresents a revised interpretation that emphasizes the primary oedi-pal phase. Like Joyce McDougall, Kristeva claims that there is acrucial early relationship between the little girl and her mother.This period is mentioned late in Freud’s writings (Freud, 1931b),and he describes it as difficult to analyse. For Lacan, it is nothingbut impossible: “it is irreducible by analysis because it eludes theascendancy of phallic primacy”.

Kristeva elaborates on the significance of this early relation-ship between the infant and the mother, viewing it from a perspec-tive influenced by Laplanche’s idea of “enigmatic signifiers”(Laplanche, 1987). In these “early, dark ages” of psychosomaticdevelopment, marked especially by orifices (mouth, anus, andvagina), we discern the basis for the “female position”, which will


become important in the sexual development of men as well aswomen, albeit in different ways.

The little girl’s earliest sexuality, based on both a “vaginal–cloacal mobilization” and a clitoral excitation, becomes structuredas a psychic bisexuality. It is simultaneously passive and active, butit reveals something even more important than the passive–activedynamics: an interactive subjectivity is installed, according toKristeva. She argues that this pattern is confirmed in the treatmentof adult women, and in her contribution to this volume JessicaBenjamin develops this theme and furnishes clinical examples.

During this period the girl introjectively installs the seductivemother in the excited cavity of her body—as an internal represen-tation. But this psychization of the maternal object needs to bestabilized by a real link to the mother, who in a symmetrical waycouples with her infant girl. The avatars of this process, Kristevaargues, can explain “women’s tendency to privilege psychic orloving representation–idealization over erotic drive excitation”.Women will tend to find lovers who understand them the way amother would, rather than lovers who are partners in desire.

Kristeva claims that due to the anatomical difference betweenthe sexes, as well as for historical and cultural reasons, the girl’slater development will become both more fragile and more com-plex than the boy’s. She goes on to explore this theme, whileemphasizing that she is not out to diminish the structuring role ofphallic authority, but to remind us that it appears in the infant’spsyche through mediation by the parental seduction stemmingfrom the first, early phase and thus only adds to something that isalready there.

Kristeva’s hypothesis stresses precisely this: the female posi-tion, formed during the primary oedipal phase with its emphasison internal space and (symbiotic) relationships, is the bedrock ofsexual psychization—much more so than castration anxiety. Thephallic phase will, however, repress these significations, or, rather,will mask them by a reactional femininity—perhaps the one we seedisplayed in today’s beauty magazines.

A psychoanalytic theory of sexuality is always based on “the co-presence of sexuality with thought, a web of both energy andmeaning”, and the phallic stage becomes the organizer of this

6 IRÉNE MATTHIS

dynamic—in both sexes. There is a phallic pleasure in the access tolanguage and the functioning of speech and thought, and thephallus thus becomes the privileged signifier of symbolic law. Inthis process, Kristeva believes that the girl is disadvantaged. De-prived of the penis and devalued by this fact in all patriarchalsocieties, she is excluded within the order and finds herself subjectto a “radical strangeness”. Like the man, she is a phallic subject ofspeech, but she is also placed in the position of becoming the objectof the father, by falling back not, Kristeva writes, on a passiveposition but, rather, on a receptive position related to the originalexcitation during the primary oedipal phase.

This is a difficult route, but if the female subject can metabolizethe cavernous receptivity of the primary oedipal phase and man-age the narcissistic challenge of the secondary oedipal phase,Kristeva thinks she will have the chance to acquire a maturity thatthe man often lacks.

On binary oppositions (Paul Verhaeghe). Kristeva’s writings con-stitute the springboard for Paul Verhaeghe to bring the all-inclu-sive issue of dualism and binary reasoning into the discussion. InWestern dualistic thought, where two elements are always op-posed to one another—nature versus culture, masculinity versusfemininity, primary oedipal versus secondary oedipal, and so on—a third term or position is required to ground the binary. God hasoften had to fulfil this role, and Freud did something of the sortwhen he constructed his myth of the primal father.

Verhaeghe claims that this has an ontological effect at the levelof the subject. The subject identifies with the father and believesthis identity to be authentic and substantial (but, of course, it is not:it is a way of coping with life). However, binary thinking alsoimplies a mirroring of the one in the other, as when we say that thepsyche mirrors the body. In relation to the third term (e.g. God) theidentification (man is constructed in the image of God) implies areduction: man is a lesser “God”; the child is the image of thefather, albeit a lesser form; and so on. This is nothing but a versionof the mirror stage, by which the child acquires an imaginaryidentity. Related to gender, Paul Verhaeghe claims, this gives riseto a particular reading of (the) phallus (see below).


The binary reasoning often induces problematic analogies. Theterm “gender”, which implies a constructivistic approach, wasintroduced to help solve the problem of biological sex versuspsychosexual identity. It was, however, soon invaded by the samebinary opposition—the division into feminine and masculine iden-tity—and the same discussion resumed. Paul Verhaeghe maintainsthat these analogies—and the list is seemingly endless—are basedon a patriarchal binary way of thinking, where the woman isusually aligned with nature, the real, drive, body, and so on, whilethe man is aligned with culture, the symbolic, psyche, and so on. Inclinical practice, however, these attributions do not stand the test.For example, women seem more symbolically inclined than men,who in turn expose more of a drive-ridden sexuality. Nor doesmotherhood, which appears to place a strong link between womanand Nature, stand the test: Verhaeghe has met many mothers whoreject their children or have no interest in them. “The maternalinstinct is a myth, and maternal love is an effect of an obligatoryalienation.” At this point, Paul Verhaeghe’s discussion intersectswith the ideas brought forward by Joyce McDougall in her contri-bution.

The presumed connection between masculinity and the sym-bolic is the result of a particular reading of phallus within binarythinking. It is viewed as the grounding third term in gender dual-ism, based on the presence or absence of a penis. This was clearlyso for both Freud and the early Lacan. This concentration on thephallic is not very helpful either for men or for women. It belongsin the field of psychopathology. What we find in it is the repetitioncompulsion, and Verhaeghe moves on to develop his ideas on thissubject.

He begins by discussing the concept of drive in Freud’s theory,and especially the partial drives, directly linked to sexuality andfocusing on various bodily orifices. The driving force is alwaysheading towards a previous state, but the crux is that there seem tobe two opposite states. Thus, Freud introduced his concept of thelife and the death drives, Eros and Thanatos. Eros aims for synthe-sis and the symbolic, associating what is separate and aiming at(phallic) fusion and wholeness. This goal is, however, neverreached, because of the presence of a drive in the opposite direc-

8 IRÉNE MATTHIS

tion: the death drive. This drive works in silence, beyond thesymbolic, and without any connection to the signifier. It scattersthe wholeness and explodes into an infinite universe.

Paul Verhaeghe relates this opposition to the question of ori-gins: more specifically, to the origins of sexually differentiated lifeforms. Asexual reproduction proceeds by cell division, meiosis, andit can be seen as representing the aim of Eros: eternal life. But withthe introduction of sexual reproduction, death becomes a structuralnecessity. The individual must die for the species to survive. Inasexual reproduction death is an accident.

According to Paul Verhaeghe, the drive antinomy is fundamen-tal, and the gender oppositions are but a consequence of this.Similarly, in the case of psychosexual development, the child isborn with an innate tendency to attach to the other as closely aspossible, incorporating as many parts as possible of the other(Eros) and thus trying to bridge the gap caused by birth. After awhile the other diffusional tendency comes to the fore, and nowindividuation and striving for a life of one’s own dominate thepicture (Thanatos). It is not by chance that this happens at the sametime as language is acquired and the child starts using “I”.

In this scheme, Verhaeghe suggests that gender and sexualityare attempts to regain the original Eros fusion. They are thus onlyexpressing a more fundamental element of drive, where failure isstructurally built in. Aristophanes’ well-known fable of the originalandrogynous being that was bisected by Zeus can be understoodas a description of this situation. Loss of eternal life is the loss of anoriginal wholeness. At the same time this implies a gender differ-entiation, and when phrased in phallic terms the original loss issecondarily interpreted as a castration: a perpetual repetition ofillusionary (Eros) longings!

In this scenario, the female who seems to have lost her male partneeds it in order to become whole again. According to Verhaeghe,this explains the female proclivity for fusion and Eros (and thesymbolic). The male part, on the other hand, has differentiateditself and, by avoiding fusion, he will represent separation andThanatos. This gender differentiation should, however, not be in-terpreted in a binary fashion. Like Eros and Thanatos, they arealways combined—Triebmischung, as Freud called it.


Finally, Verhaeghe stresses that the relationship between theelements—the dynamics—is more important than the elements onwhich it is based. One element always operates as a force ofattraction for the other, leading to a circular but non-reciprocalinteraction. In this never-ending process, where for life-as-such tocontinue individual life must meet death, the subject acquiresgender identity as a sequel to the Oedipus complex, which, in away of speaking, has interpreted the original loss in terms ofcastration.

This phallic interpretation is retroactively applied to all preced-ing occurrences, which also implies the construction of the body:not the body we are, but the body we have. This body, writes PaulVerhaeghe, is clothed in a gender identity, a final working over ofthe original gap between life and death. This conflict penetrates notonly society and every loving couple of whatever sex, but everyindividual. Rather than interpreting this opposition as mascu-line versus feminine, he suggests that it should be read as activeversus passive. He concludes with words of wisdom: “as long aswe can fight with our partner, we need not address our innerdivision. . . .”

The difference between sexuality and procreation (Juliet Mitchell;discussant: Colette Chiland). Juliet Mitchell’s contribution takesthe form of a question: “What is the difference between gender andsexual difference?” and her starting point is the fact that somepeople do not feel at home in the body with which they were born.Such a person, who is labelled transsexual, might even decide tochange her or his body through radical operations, removingbreasts, ovaries, and uterus or penis and testicles. On the remains,a new body is surgically constructed that analogues/mirrors thebody of the opposite sex. Juliet Mitchell seems to argue, if I havenot misunderstood her, that what the transsexual actually does isto create a sibling of the opposite sex, which represents the closestof kin, much closer than either father or mother. This is “only ashade away from a narcissistic economy”, she writes. In Mitchell’sbook Mad Men and Medusas (Mitchell, 2000), two themes werecentral: the importance of sibling relationships and the refusal ofthe hysteric, whether female or male, to acknowledge sexual differ-

10 IRÉNE MATTHIS

ence. Here she relates both issues to the question of sexual differ-ence and gender.

In the group discussions that followed the presentation,1 theidea of lateral sexuality, with sibling relations as a point of de-parture, was seen as important, as it is a neglected area in psycho-analytic theory. The sibling relation becomes powerful not leastbecause the arrival of a new sibling entails a serious injury andcan be experienced almost as annihilation. But it was also arguedthat Juliet Mitchell’s idea introduces an ethical problem. A lateralgender society may be seen as a pre-oedipal society: a group ofbrothers that knows no generational boundaries. Generational dif-ference was thought to be a necessary condition for an ethicalculture.2

Sketching the history of the terms “sex” and “gender”, JulietMitchell argues that we need to distinguish between sexual differ-ence and gender in our analysis—not because the terms can be orever are kept distinctly apart in real life, but for the sake of analysis.When the terms are mixed up, as is often the case in Anglo-Saxonwritings, this might lead to a repudiation of sexuality itself.

“Sexual difference” is—up to now, at least—a prerequisite forhuman reproduction. If reproduction is tied primarily to themother, as is usually the case, motherhood becomes central. Theattempts to “make the mother not the object of the baby’s needs . . .but instead a subject in her own right” does not, however, changethe currency of traditional Freudian thought: it merely shows theother side of the coin. For Juliet Mitchell, “sexual reproductiondemands sexual difference, which entails both a subject—objectand heterosexuality. . . . Our egos are . . . always sexed egos, andthey are sexed around reproduction.” Implicitly, this reasoningseems to follow the line of thought presented by Verhaeghe.Mitchell argues that sexual and reproductive difference, althoughit may rest in biology, is no more “natural” than the ego of themirror stage. It is constructed as a representation related to asubject–object relationship. This aspect is missing in the (mostly)American perspective, and Juliet Mitchell’s viewpoint stands insharp contrast to the one presented by Jessica Benjamin and NancyChodorow in this book.

There is, however, an area of subject/subject construction; butthis is the area of gender, Juliet Mitchell argues, not of sexual


difference. This area of “gender” is the area of sexual drive. Sexualdifference is related to reproductive fantasies, but there is no repro-ductive drive, Mitchell writes. In the Western world reproductionhas been related to woman and sexuality to man. The libido, asFreud claimed, is only one, and it is male. The greatest problemhere, Mitchell argues, is not that Freudian theory is phallocentric,but that Western ideas equate the male with sexuality and thefemale with asexual motherhood. Juliet Mitchell wants to give backto sexuality its central place, because the sexual drive lies behindall symptoms, and “a large part of this sexual drive is ‘perverse’”.

Freud’s Three Essays on Sexuality (1905d) deals with humandrives, and it is still path-breaking. Juliet Mitchell argues that theconcept of “gender” could be developed to become heir to theEssays, since it is not constructed on the difference between thesexes but applies in the same way to both women and men. “Gen-der” is the polymorphously perverse child grown up. JulietMitchell’s radical suggestion is that “gender”, thus understood,deals with violence and murder. In traditional difference, related tosexual difference, the other offers the subject what she/he has notgot: a penis, a baby, and so on. As we have already seen, this is anillusory exchange, doomed to miscarry, as we can never become“whole”. In the concept of “gender” there is no implication ofsomething being missing; instead, this “self-same other” is both thesame as self and other than self.

Juliet Mitchell’s arguments reverberate closely with recent de-velopments in genetics and reproductions of same-but-not-sameorganisms—as in cloning. The social and technological changesthat we are experiencing today do not have an immediate repercus-sion on our psychic life; instead, our psychic life may alreadycontain something that corresponds to these changes—“indeed,that may have been part of their precondition”.

The separation of sexuality from procreation/sexual differencelies at the basis of Juliet Mitchell’s arguments. In her discussion,Colette Chiland wants to relate this dissociation to perversity,which she considers specific to human beings. Sexual difference,she argues, is not only a prerequisite for procreation; it implies somuch more, relating to the genitals, to the position of each partnerin sexual interaction, to psychosexual cycles (for women the men-strual blood and its connotations in particular), and, above all, to

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the interpretations of these in various societies. Consequently, shedisagrees with Mitchell on some issues.

Outlining the history of the term “gender” and the conceptualconstructions related to it, Chiland ends up in a position that isquite opposite to Mitchell’s. Gender as such, she states, does notexpress any form of sexuality, reproductive or not. It is an expres-sion of “being”. This being is related to self-experience and narcis-sism. Thus she opposes Mitchell’s claim that gender is heir toFreud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905d). Rather, it isheir to cultural anthropology as exemplified by Margaret Mead.

At the moment there is a great deal of confusion in the use andsignification of various terms—including the concept of sexualityitself—but that might be part of the necessary renewal of the studyof sexuality and gender across time and space. Colette Chilandfinally turns to her long experience of working with transsexualsand argues that we can no longer avoid the question of what a“male” is and what a “female” is—terms the meaning of whichseemed so self-evident not so long ago. But even if the answers willbe difficult to find, Colette Chiland thinks we do need some kind of“sex compass”—that is, an “acknowledgement and acceptance ofthe sexual difference”.

What kind of gender theories does psychoanalysis need? (Toril Moi;discussant: Ebba Witt-Brattström). Toril Moi’s investigation ofpsychoanalysis and its relation to the “riddle of femininity” startsfrom a provocative question: does psychoanalysis need a feminin-ity theory? The chapter is a tour de force on which she has workedfor years. Her scrutinizing deconstruction of the writings of Freudand Lacan cannot be summarized in a page or two; I will, however,pick up some of the threads.

The reader will notice that in this volume the traditional issue ofessentialism versus constructivism, central to many discussions onfemininity during the 1990s, is conspicuously absent. Toril Moigives us, indirectly, an understanding of this transition. The con-crete, living body (essential) is always embedded in a historicalsituation and thus open to change (constructed). Viewed from thisperspective, the old opposition between essence and constructiondoes not apply. It is an approach inspired not only by Freud and


Lacan, but by Simone de Beauvoir in particular, and, finally, byMaurice Merleau-Ponty and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Since there is no quest for solving the “riddle of masculinity”but only the “riddle of femininity”, sexual difference and feminin-ity have become lumped together. Men have become the self-apparent norm that need not be explained. Women are differentand consequently a problem that has to be explained. Femininitytheory is a kind of universally applicable theory that tries to do so.Such a theory of sexual difference does not serve psychoanalysis.Instead, psychoanalysis needs an understanding of the differentways of becoming a woman. Femininity theory goes awry since itpredicts what is bound to happen, such as when a little girl discov-ers that she does not have a penis. Basing her argument on Freud,Moi emphasizes that psychoanalytic theory is not a predictory,synthesizing instrument but an analytic one.

Toril Moi starts by posing simple, direct, seemingly naive ques-tions, such as, “Why does the phallus have to be called phallus if ithas nothing to do with the penis?” and “Why does femininity haveto be called femininity if it has nothing to do with women?” Thesequestions, however, deserve a close reading and some thoroughthinking. To start with, they bring the relationship between sym-bols and bodies to our attention and, secondly, the relationshipbetween symbolic function and social norms and ideology. Lacan,for example, claims that the relation to the phallus is set up regard-less of anatomical difference. The phallus, defined as a symbolwithin a sophisticated theory, should never be confused or reducedto the penis. At the same time the phallus is the signifier thatseparates humankind into two sexes. These sexes are supposed tobe entirely symbolic, entirely psychosexual, and not to be mixed upwith men and women as such. In such a Lacanian reading, how-ever, women should not take up a position as feminine more oftenthan men. But even Lacan acknowledges that women will normallytake up the feminine and men the masculine position. Why is this,if it has nothing to do with the concrete anatomical body?

Moi believes that the confusion in the interpretation of Lacan’swritings on femininity might be related to the various meanings ofthe French word féminité. It is normally translated as femininity,connoting psychological and social categories, but in French the

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term has many more meanings. It also implies femaleness, whichhas biological connotations—the bodies and genitals of the femalehuman being. When femininity is a matter of castration, as it is forboth Lacan and Freud, women will tend to mask the (anatomical)castration with a masquerade of femininity (hysteria). In the endshe concludes that Lacan’s femininity theory is, structurally speak-ing, exactly the same as Freud’s.

Basically, this means that both writers hold that women arenot born—they become women. Simone de Beauvoir reasons alongthe same lines. However, problems arise when normative expecta-tions are coded into such theories, and this is where Beauvoirdiffers from Freud and Lacan. She does not try to define a norma-tive femininity, whereas Freud and Lacan do. The latter differ,however, in that Freud remains concerned with the concrete,phenomenological body, whereas for Lacan it is analysed as an“entirely abstract and idealist concept”. Lacan’s theory of sexualdifference is also, according to Toril Moi, worse than Freud’s. InEncore, Lacan (1975), writing on the question of woman and wom-an’s jouissance, even creates algebraic formulas for sexual differ-ence, thus universalizing his own gendered experience.

Then Toril Moi takes on the large and complex issue of speechand language. For Lacan, the phallus is the signifier not only ofsexual difference but of meaning—that is, the instituter of symbolicdiscourse as such. All symbolic activity is thus labelled phallic.Toril Moi claims that the Lacanian introduction of post-Saussureanlinguistics into psychoanalysis was a mistake. If the structuralrelationship of femininity to the phallus is made purely symbolic,patriarchy can never disappear. The content can change, but thestructure remains. This critique, relying heavily on a Wittgen-steinian tradition, is a frontal attack on the linguistic reading ofexperience so predominant within Lacanian discourse.

The concept of jouissance—proper to woman, according toLacan—is a riddle that leaves translators mute (it is said to beimpossible to translate). Toril Moi claims that what it actually doesis to relegate the female/feminine to a mysterious sphere beyondlanguage that can never really be known, understood, or ex-plained. In these kinds of theories femininity has become a “full-blown metaphysical concept”, she writes. To try to thinkfemininity within these theories is to “think the unthinkable”—a


phrase she herself uses in her introduction to The Kristeva Reader(Moi, 1986).

But, Moi continues, any attempt to “think the unthinkable” ismeaningless. If there is a border between what is thinkable andwhat is not, this border is already transgressed by “thinking theunthinkable”. There cannot be a limit to thought, only to language.Sometimes things are difficult to phrase in an easily understoodlanguage, but that does not mean that they lie “beyond language”in some kind of mystical, unknown landscape of their own. Such aview makes a complete mystery of women’s experiences, obscur-ing rather than clarifying. In this volume Kristeva herself offers anexample of how to write about this area that is supposed to be“unthinkable”, as do Joyce McDougall and Paul Verhaeghe, each inher or his own way.

Finally, Toril Moi tries to come to grips with the word and theconcept of “castration”. For Freud as well as Lacan it becamesynonymous with femininity and sexual difference. Toril Moi findsthis distressing, and she suggests that this conflation could beavoided. For Freud, in both sexes the “repudiation of femininity”has to do with the reluctance to accept the reality principle (the lackof penis in women). But the difficulty lies in giving up the dream ofbeing all-encompassing, of having eternal life, and of narcissisticomnipotence. But why, asks Moi, does this repudiation of realityhave to be called feminine?—Because it is tied up with the conceptof castration! Castration calls forth the notion of sexual difference,when, instead, we are dealing with a universal human predicamentthat engages both men and women. The use of castration as ageneral concept projects a deeply sexist notion of sexual differenceonto every human phenomenon. In the end, Moi suggests that wesimply replace it with a more neutral term. Basing her argumentson Joyce McDougall’s suggestion that there are three fundamentaltraumas in human life (the discovery of the other; the discovery ofone-sexedness; and the discovery of death), Toril Moi suggests theword finitude.

Ebba Witt-Brattström, discussing Toril Moi’s chapter, thinksthat replacing the term “castration” with the word “finitude” doesnot solve the problem, since the epistemological work needed todeal with these problems begins with the body. This was alsoheatedly discussed in the groups. In general, people agreed that

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“castration” was a problematic word, but some thought “finitude”was too general a concept to replace it, as it left out the bodilyconnotations of “castration” and the affects related to this, such asfear and envy. In order to solve the problem of the exclusivelymasculine connotation of the word “castration” while keeping theconnection to the body, other terms were suggested—such as“deheading” or decapitation—leaving us with “the guillotine com-plex”! In this context one is bound to wonder where and how thebodily metaphors used in psychoanalysis arise: do they originatewith the patient or with the analyst? The discussion group agreedthat if a patient feels castrated and uses the word, it is a proper useof the term. The word “castration” thus belongs only on the clinicallevel. Used as a theoretical concept, it fails. Here, it may help us toconsider the difference between “impossibility” and “incapabil-ity”: “impossibility” implies a symbolic castration, whereas “inca-pability” refers to an imaginary castration: a feeling of not beingcomplete. The term “finitude”, which belongs to a rational meta-language, works well with symbolic castration, but not with animaginary one; in the case of “castration”, it is the other wayaround.3

Ebba Witt-Brattström also had doubts about getting rid of femi-ninity theory. Using her own experience as a professor of literaturewith special emphasis on women’s literature, she asks herself howshe would teach her students about women authors from variousperiods without using historically defined femininity theories? Thetheories might be patriarchal and misconstrued, but they areneeded for the analysis, not as recommendations for living. Makingherself an advocate for “feminist theory” as a combination ofpolitics and subjectivity, she wants to dismantle patriarchal theo-ry’s claim to “scientific” objectivity.

Witt-Brattström ends by invoking the founding mothers ofpsychoanalysis, whose opinions are often treated dismissively inthe discussion. This “her-story” or collective memory represents adifferent epistemological tradition. A great part of women’s litera-ture brings testimony from this universe, which has been sup-pressed for too long in society. Witt-Brattström tells us that in theirliterature, women authors often refuse to choose between particu-larity and universality (being either individual woman or human)


and that they look at men as marked just as much by particularityas women. In the discussion Toril Moi responded that it is notenough to particularize men—in order to even things up—becauseit only means that we end up by reifying not only femininity butalso masculinity.

An intersubjective approach (Jessica Benjamin; discussant: GiselaKaplan). Like many of the other contributors to this volume,Jessica Benjamin starts from the basic assumption that femininity isnot a pre-existing “essence”—whether hysteric or passive—but aconstruction by the (male) psyche. Actually, the concepts of mascu-linity and femininity are both constructs created at the same mo-ment, and for the same purpose. For Benjamin, it is a specificpurpose: solving the problem of sexual passivity.

Passivity, in the sense defined by Freud, is the key actor inBenjamin’s presentation. Passivity has often been seen as intoler-able, especially in men, but Benjamin wants to show that it repre-sents a “failure of self-regulation based on deficient responses bythe other”. In her view, this failure to relate intersubjectively gener-ates an “experience of excess”, which implies an overflow withwhich the psyche cannot cope. For Freud, this “excess” gave rise toa feeling of unpleasure or tension, defined from the perspectiveof a one-person economy: that is, it was, and is, an intrapsychicprocess. For Benjamin, however, pleasure and pain always arisewithin a two-person relationship. In this perspective failure oftension regulation, which she calls excess, is generally linked tofailures in recognition by the other.

Like Kristeva, Benjamin makes use of Laplanche’s idea of the“enigmatic message”, filled with sexuality and transmitted fromparents to children. When this transmission includes affective ten-sions that are not understood, represented, or “bound”, it may laterappear as if it was a self-created, one-person fantasy. Thus, forBenjamin the intrapsychic perspective (so basic in Freud’s writ-ings) comes to represent those processes that have to deal withundigested affects, more or less dissociated from other affectiveexperiences. These undigested affects often relate to sexuality, andthey contribute to a split in the self and between body and mind,where the sexual fantasy is then discharged physically.

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Discharge, which Benjamin links to a one-person economy inparticular, is a means of solving the problem of mental excess,created by a failure of intersubjective exchange. In this context sheplaces the handling and workings of passivity/activity. The littleboy, separated from his mother by the intrusion of the father,experiences himself passively overwhelmed and abandoned. Hefights this by identifying with the father/aggressor, and he projectsthe experience of passivity, associated with the baby he once was,onto the girl/other: the sister. In this way femininity is constructed:a projection from the oedipal boy’s psyche, creating a kind of“daughter position”. The daughter is given the role of passivecontainer and caretaker (the incest victim of Freud’s hysterical casestories).

At this point in Jessica Benjamin’s discussion the question ofpassivity is turned upside-down. Passivity usually connotes help-and hopelessness. But there is, Benjamin claims, a pleasurablereceptivity in “passivity”, which she goes on to describe. It isusually assumed that tension, which cannot be mentalized, has tobe discharged. But tension in an intersubjective relation that iscontained can, instead, give rise to mutual enjoyment. What isneeded is a (re)claim of ownership to desire and ownership to aholding and receptive position, which need not passivize theother. To Benjamin, ownership implies a notion of sustaining ten-sion rather than eliminating it. In this intersubjective exchangepassivity in relation to the other can be refigured as surrendering toa process of joint exploration and recognition. This process tran-scends gender roles, Benjamin writes, and creates a space ofthirdness.

Throughout the chapter Jessica Benjamin generously supple-ments her theoretical reasoning and illustrates her ideas with casevignettes and examples drawn from film and literature.

In her response, Gisela Kaplan points out that JessicaBenjamin’s arguments are anchored in a dynamics of spiral move-ments rather than one that is circular or linear. There is also apolymorphism rather than a dimorphism. In this context, Kaplanadds that we have to be aware of the fact that we are not onlyresponding to stimuli from the surrounding world, but actuallyaltering it in the process—according to how we assess ourselves.She goes on to exemplify her suggestion.


She believes that this has a bearing on Benjamin’s exposition ofthe concept of desire. Tension has to be held and contained in orderfor desire to be owned—this is Benjamin’s argument. Kaplan callson Michel Foucault when she reminds us that sexuality does notexist beyond power relations. How can the intersubjective momentof communication and sharing, so strongly argued by Benjamin,free itself from power struggles? Power resides everywhere, andeverywhere is male-defined, and thus, to Kaplan, Benjamin’s sug-gestions are contradictory.

Kaplan feels that the intersubjective sharing described byBenjamin reflects a cultural pessimism illustrated by her choice ofexamples. Eros becomes linked to surrender and death, to loss andmourning—a product of tensions between maleness and female-ness, between activity and passivity. It is in the gutter that wefinally understand each other. Kaplan’s interpretation of Eros isdifferent: she relates it to “a lightness of being” that exists for andin itself, without visible gain or purpose.

Referring to the Islamic scholar Imam Ghazali, Kaplan statesthat virtue arises from a discharge of tensions and culture from thesatisfaction of the sexual drive. In the Western world (in Freud andin Benjamin’s chapter) discharge is accorded only to the male, butin the Muslim tradition of Ghazali females, too, “discharge ten-sion”. The polarization of human sexuality into two kinds—femi-nine and masculine—is a Western idea.

Finally, Kaplan argues, although the intersubjective moment—the third space—is a significant extension of earlier ideas, it still isdependent on the two gendered players or their emotional states.This space, in Kaplan’s opinion, seems to turn into a kind of prison:one is contingent on the other, and there is no escape, no freedom.With Martin Buber, she pledges for some “nothingness”.

A viewpoint from the clinical scene (Nancy J. Chodorow). In thelinguistic model inherited from de Saussure and developed forpsychoanalytic purposes, by Lacan in particular, terms gain theirmeanings in relation to one another. Thus, “male” carries its mean-ing in relation to “female”, “masculinity” in relation to “feminin-ity”, and conversely. In the Lacanian tradition, this is the Freudianreference point, and it deals both with genital difference (to have ornot have a penis) and with developmental differences concerned

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with generational relationships (the Oedipus complex differs forboys and girls). In the final contribution to this volume NancyChodorow attacks this model at its roots—at the clinical level—andclaims that sexual difference is not the organizing principle for menand women in her consulting-room.

Chodorow chooses the clinical option, because, she argues, thesexual difference perspective ignores precisely what is implied inthe clinical perspective: the uniqueness of each individual. Thismeans, however, not that she abstains from generalizing, but thatshe opts for the generalizing assertions that tally with her ownexperience. In this light, it is “same-sex, cross-generational rela-tions and comparisons”, which means that femininity defines itselfas much through woman–girl relationships as through male–fe-male ones, and vice versa in the case of masculinity. The motheringfunction is, of course, central to this view, and therefore the focus ison pre-oedipal relations and developments. This does not mean,however, that the traditional heterosexual oedipal constellation isrepudiated. Nancy Chodorow takes for granted that the impor-tance of these aspects is already sufficiently demonstrated. How-ever, their importance is diminished.

One basic component in Chodorow’s theory is that the empha-sis on difference, whether it be the self–other distinction or male–female difference, is a defensive theory produced by psychologicalconflicts that are characteristically male. Psychoanalytic phallo-centric theory has conflated the universality of some problems thatdemand psychic representation with the almost infinite variety ofunconscious fantasies met with in the consulting-room. NancyChodorow describes the creation of gender as a developmentalproduct, where the “masculine–feminine” divide is no more funda-mental in any universal sense than are many other forms of organi-zation. Further, she argues that even when in a particular case itplays a fundamental role, it does not necessarily privilege theactually observed genital difference.

As Nancy Chodorow wants to stay close to the experiences ofeach individual, she arrives at the conclusion that for some peoplegender is a non-central part of identity, and sexuality is relativelyuncharged and unnoticed. (Others would, of course, challenge thispoint of view, claiming that this is the type of denial of sexualityand the unconscious so typical of some American writers.)


The perspective of Horney, Kestenberg, and others that estab-lished the theory of primary femininity was a great advance as acritique of the phallocentric viewpoint. However, according toChodorow, it did not really free itself from the comparative male–female difference perspective. It is as rooted in the anatomicalcomparisons as is the traditional conception. She argues that bodily(and external genital) configurations can be very important to anindividual, but they have to be invested with affects related not tosexual difference but, rather, to same-sex cross-generational com-parisons. Finally, she presents some case material to support herradical suggestion.

Some final words

After this survey it seems clear to me that there are multifariousways to organize our self-experience—as women and as men. Doesthe term “gender” clarify or confuse in this process? Judging fromthe contributions to this volume, it does both. Could we talk aboutour different experiences in a sexed world without using the theo-retical categories of “femininity” and “masculinity”? But if we douse them, how do we define them? Words carry as well as createhistory at the same time; it is therefore important not only to namethings and experiences but also to analyse and take responsibilityfor what we have just said.

There are more questions than answers in this book—questionsthat are important and will continue to intrigue us. This book willbe needed to remind us of the different opinions and to help uscreate tomorrow’s theories.

Human experience cannot be reduced to sexuality, but there issexuality in everything human.

NOTE

1. At registration all participants in the conference were divided intodiscussion groups (with anywhere from 15 to 200 participants per group). Thegroups met four times during the course of the conference to discuss the paperspresented at the panel sessions. This was a much appreciated part of theconference.

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2. Reports from Group 1 (Cecilia Annell) and Group 6 (Harriet BjerrumNielsen).

3. Reports from Group 1 (Cecilia Annell), Group 4 (Svein Haugsgjerd), andGroup 6 (Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen).

REFERENCES

Freud, S. (1905d). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. S.E., 7.Freud, S. (1931b). Female sexuality. S.E., 21.Lacan, J. (1975). Le Séminaire livre XX. Encore, ed. J.-A. Miller. Paris:

Seuil.Laplanche, J. (1987). Nouveaux fondements pour la psychanalyse. La

séduction originaire. Paris: PUF. English edition: New Foundations forPsychoanalysis. London: Basil Blackwell, 1989.

McDougall, J. (1995). The Many Faces of Eros. New York & London:Norton.

Mitchell, J. (2000). Mad Men and Medusas. Reclaiming Hysteria and theEffects of Sibling Relations on the Human Condition. London: PenguinBooks.

Moi, T. (1986). Preface. In: T. Moi (Ed.), The Kristeva Reader (pp. vi–vii).Oxford: Blackwell.

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CHAPTER TWO

Freud and female sexualities

Joyce McDougall

In the Victorian era, sexuality was more or less regarded as amasculine privilege, whereas women were relegated to “con-jugal duty”, sacrifice, frigidity, or simulated pleasure. This was

Freud’s epoch, and in this respect Freud was an eminent Victorianin that he tended to take the Victorian woman as the model offemininity.

Today’s woman would have astonished him and shaken manyof his cherished beliefs concerning female sexuality. In point of factthe so-called sexual liberation has mostly concerned women, sincein the past it was generally accepted that men could escape theconstraints of conjugal life by having recourse to women who were,supposedly, exempt from the austerity of the Victorian pattern:prostitute or mistress. Woman’s sexual life today not only beginsmuch earlier in adolescence—frequently with the complicity of theparents—than would have been considered proper in Freud’s dayand age, but due to contraception and the legalization of abortion itis also released from the association of intercourse with pregnancy.Thus we are in the presence of a revolution in the social representa-tions of sexuality and sexual relationships.

24 JOYCE MCDOUGALL

However, coming now to the unconscious, we still find re-pressed fantasies of archaic and pregenital sexualities and fierceprohibitions stemming for the most part from the interiorizationof biparental fears and wishes. Then there is an added problem fortoday’s woman in that she is, in a sense, obliged to feel guilty ifshe does not achieve a vaginal orgasm and, as often as not, isdirected to a sexologist to resolve her problem. Thus this era of so-called liberated sexuality is as conflictual as it was in the past,even though the complaints and symptoms may have been modi-fied.

Let us now review Freud’s concepts concerning the little girl’saccession to womanhood and motherhood. Many analysts, particu-larly women, have been highly critical of Freud’s conceptual limi-tations in this field of research. This was, admittedly, an area inwhich Freud was particularly vulnerable. It is interesting to recall,however, that Freud owed to women the initial insights that ledhim to the concept of the unconscious: Anna O, Lucy R, Irma,Emmy von N, Dora, Katharina, and many others were the foun-tainhead of his inspiration. And of course it is noteworthy that, inhis day and age, he actually listened to them and regarded every-thing they recounted as significant and important. In Freud’sdominantly phallocratic epoch, this receptivity in itself was revolu-tionary. Of all explorers into the functioning of the human mind, hewas the first to take a serious and scientific interest in women’ssexuality, even if the ideas he came up with were to find disfavouramong analysts—particularly women analysts—for decades tocome. Obviously Freud was fascinated by the mystery of feminin-ity and by the female sex itself: a characteristic, he claimed, that heshared with men of all centuries.

But it is evident that Freud was also a little afraid of the objectsof his fascination. His metaphors repeatedly revealed a represen-tation of the female genital as a threatening void, a lack, a darkand disquieting continent where you cannot see what is going on.My own clinical observation with many male analysands leads meto wonder whether this fear of the unknown interior space isperhaps a projection onto the woman of man’s fear of his own innerspace and all the early libidinal longings with which it may be in-vested . . . such as the fear of a longing for the father’s penis, anxi-

25FREUD AND FEMALE SEXUALITIES

ety over the wish to be able to bear a child, as well as many otherpotential pregenital fears that have been repressed since earlychildhood. “Let’s put all of that back into the women” may be partof the message.

Freud himself insisted that he was obliged to proceed from hisknowledge of male sexuality. (In fact, the theory of the libido is aneminently male concept.) Thus we are not surprised at his deduc-tions of the little girl’s extreme envy of the boy’s visible andinteresting organ. In other words, Freud appears to be saying, “If Iwere a girl, my only desire would be to possess a penis of my own.”The notion that boys might also be envious of the girl’s vagina, ofher capacity for bearing children, and of her potential attraction forthe male precisely because she did not have a penis does not seemto have occurred to Freud.

But it was also Freud himself, with his typical honesty, who firstexpressed feelings of deep dissatisfaction and uncertainty concern-ing his theories about women and their psychosexual develop-ment. In fact, he waited until 1931 to publish “Female Sexuality”,his first paper on the subject. He was then 75 years old! Perhaps atthis stage of his life he felt less fear of the female and of revealinghis theories about her.

In his second famous and much criticized paper entitled “Femi-ninity”, which was published two years later, he wrote: “Psychol-ogy . . . is unable to solve the riddle of femininity” and noted that“. . . the development of a little girl into a normal woman is moredifficult and more complicated, since it includes two extra tasks, towhich there is nothing corresponding in the development of aman”. The “tasks” refer to Freud’s two major concepts concerningthe difficulties in growing to womanhood: the little girl must firsteffect a change in the organ of excitement from clitoris to vaginaand, second, she must effect a change of object. “When and whydoes she give up her fixation to her mother in favour of her father?”Freud asked.

Although these two dimensions do present a certain challengeto the attainment of adult femininity and sexual pleasure, they arenevertheless far from exhaustive as explanatory concepts for theunderstanding of woman’s psychosexuality. Let us examine themmore closely.

26 JOYCE MCDOUGALL

Anatomy as destiny?

Can we agree with Freud that the most authentic conception ofwomen derives from the notion that penis envy is the motivatingfactor in inaugurating femininity? Perhaps we must look for theprecursors of the era of penis envy, going back even to the begin-ning of life at which the earliest transmission of the sense of sexualidentity is laid down.

The essential relationship that infants normally share with themother in the first months of life provides the baby girl, in contrastto the boy, with a double identification. The somatopsychic imagesthat are destined to become mental representations of her femininebody and its erogenous zones are already being formed. It is at thisearly stage that mouth and vagina become linked in their erogenoussignificance and, along with other erogenic organs and internalsensations, are integrated into the somatopsychic representations.

To these must be added the clitoral sensations stimulated by themother’s physical handling and cleaning of her baby. These spe-cific sensations were the only erogenous body links to which Freudgave much attention in his theory of the development of feminineeroticism. For reasons of his own, Freud assimilated the femaleclitoris into the male penis, thus “bisexualizing” the female genita-lia: the vagina is “feminine and passive”, the clitoris “masculineand active”. And to achieve femininity the clitoris is to be elimi-nated as an erogenic zone. Freud was unaware of the fact that theclitoris is an extremely complex organ and, in view of its consider-able extensions into the female body, a relatively large structure.1

In addition to his anti-clitoridian stand, Freud further holds thatthe vagina will only be discovered many years later. So meanwhilewe are left with the impression that the girl is in a genital desertfrom infancy to adolescence. Also, Freud makes no attempt tojustify a theory of infantile sexuality in which there is only onegenital organ. This suggests that, for the young Freud, severerepression may have taken place regarding the various possiblerepresentations of the female sex and the female body and itsfunctions.

It is tempting to attribute Freud’s denigrating portrait of femi-ninity to some unrecognized envy of woman on his part—or in-deed on the part of the Victorian era as a whole. Let us take his


description from the New Introductory Lectures, published in 1933,in which we read that woman suffers, from the beginning ofchildhood, from an “initial sexual inferiority”, and that “jealousyand envy play a greater part in the mental life of women than ofmen”; she also suffers from “superego defects”, because, lacking apenis, she has no longer to fear castration. Instead, Freud notes thather “physical vanity [is] a compensation for her original sexualinferiority”. Women suffer only “conventional shame” . . . andmerely to “conceal their genital deficiency”. Moreover, they “havemade few contributions to . . . the history of civilization”. Theirlove partners are chosen narcissistically—that is, “in accordancewith the narcissistic ideal of the man whom the girl had wished tobecome”. After this debased portrait of womanhood Freud contin-ues by proclaiming that “women must be regarded as having littlesense of justice” and are also “weaker in their social interests [anddisplay] less capacity for sublimating their instincts than men”. Hethen goes on to propose that a woman of thirty “often frightens usby her psychical rigidity. . . . Her libido has taken up final positionsand seems incapable of exchanging them for others. There are nopaths open to further development . . . as though . . . the difficultdevelopment to femininity had exhausted the possibilities of theperson concerned.”

He concludes with “that is all I had to say to you about feminin-ity.” However, he adds: “[woman’s] nature is determined by [her]sexual function . . . but we do not overlook the fact that an indi-vidual woman may be a human being in other respects as well”!

Motherhood

It is hard to avoid the suspicion that Freud had elevated Victorianprejudices to the rank of a theory! The reference to woman aspossibly “possessing some human characteristics” is perhaps avague recall of Freud’s beliefs regarding motherhood in which hestates categorically that “A mother is only brought unlimited satis-faction by her relation to a son” (because he has the penis of whichshe feels deprived), and Freud continues by claiming that themother–son relationship is “the most perfect, the most free fromambivalence of all human relationships”. Perhaps this tells us more

28 JOYCE MCDOUGALL

about Freud and how he hoped his mother felt about his birth—inwhich the mother’s attachment to the father appears to play no rolesince the son is now the centre of her universe.

As Mary Jacobus—professor of the Humanities at Cornell Uni-versity—phrases it: “motherhood . . . was the only known Freudian curefor the neurosis of femininity” (Jacobus, 1995).

Thus Freud’s theory of femininity may be summarized as fol-lows: The little girl is at first a little boy, and her earliest libidinalwish is to possess her mother sexually; she then replaces this aimwith the desire to possess a penis, then to have a child from herfather, and, finally, to have a male child of her own. Apparently, itseemed to Freud that no woman would particularly want a daugh-ter and that, once in possession of a son, she desired nothingfurther. The implacable logic of Freud’s chain of signifiers suggeststhat the girl’s desire for a baby is merely a substitute for the penis shedoes not possess, and her love for her father a mere consequence of penisenvy! This is admittedly a rather pitiful view of the place of thefather in the little girl’s psychic universe. Furthermore, Freud’sconcept of object substitutions implies that the girl-child’s pro-found homosexual ties to her mother are simply eliminatedthrough penis envy!

There were, of course, in psychoanalytic writings many exten-sions and additions—as well as criticisms—of Freud’s theoriesabout women: the leading feminist psychoanalysts of that epochbeing Karen Horney, Joan Riviere, and Melanie Klein. Today mostanalysts would agree that the envy of her father’s penis is a verypartial explanation of the difficulties that lie on the path to maturewomanhood. It should also be noted that boys as well as girls sufferfrom their own characteristic form of penis envy, invariably find-ing their penises too small in comparison with that of their fathers,and clinical experience confirms that the boy’s envy and admira-tion of his mother’s body and sexuality is similar to the girl’s envyand admiration of her father’s penis and sexual prowess. Childrenof both sexes are aware that mother embodies the magical power toattract father’s penis and make the babies that both parents desire.

I would like to point out here that, for both males and females,monosexuality remains one of humankind’s major narcissisticwounds—a scandalous affront to our childlike omnipotence! Inter-


nalizing a symbolic representation of the complementarity of thetwo sexes requires a renunciation of the childlike wish to be and tohave both.

Female body image

I should now like to turn to certain aspects of femininity that havebeen of particular interest to me over my years of analytic practice(and of self-analysis!): first of all, the importance of the little girl’sexperience of her body and the representation of her genital as aninner space, since this affects the global psychic representation ofher femininity and of sexual relations to come. I would like there-fore to explore the anatomical issues inherent in the girl-child’sdevelopment of her sense of gender identity from this viewpoint.As the girl’s sex is a portal into her body, the vagina is destined tobe equated in the unconscious with anus, mouth, and urethra andis therefore liable to share both the masochistic and the sadisticlibidinal investments and fantasies carried by these zones. Thelittle girl—and frequently the woman-to-be—is more likely thanher male counterpart to fear that her body will be regarded as dirtyor dangerous because of these zonal confusions, in addition to theanatomical fact that there is no visible organ that can be controlledand verified.

Even the adult woman frequently experiences her body as adark continent in which anal and oral monsters lurk. Of coursemuch of her unconscious representation of her body and her geni-tals will reflect the libidinal and narcissistic significance that themother gave to her daughter’s physical and psychological self, as well asthe extent to which she may have transmitted unconscious fearsconcerning her own bodily and sexual functions. The non-verbal sensu-ous and later verbal communications between mother and daugh-ter determine, in large part, whether oral erotism triumphs overoral aggression and whether anal-erotic impulses become moreimportant than, or combine harmoniously with, anal-sadistic ones.

A further aspect of feminine anatomical destiny involvesautoerotic experience. Since the little girl cannot visually verify hergenitals, she tends to create an imprecise or zonally condensed

30 JOYCE MCDOUGALL

psychic representation of them, particularly since she has difficultyin locating the sexual sensations of which she has been aware sinceearly infancy. In this way clitoral, vaginal, urethral, and otherinternal sensations tend to be confused. This blurring of sensationshas important repercussions, among others, on female fantasiesconcerning masturbation.

Masturbation and femininity

Although masturbation is the normal sexuality of children, it iseventually inhibited by parental constraints. All children learn thatit is not permissible to defecate, urinate, or masturbate in public.Even when these restrictions are imposed with kindness and un-derstanding, they leave an imprint on unconscious fantasy life.When they are imposed harshly because of the parents’ own inter-nal disquiet and subsequent need to diminish their anxiety throughcontrolling their children’s bodies, the risk of later neurotic prob-lems is notably increased.

When told to give up masturbating publicly, a little boy is apt toimagine that if he fails to do as he is told, his father will attack hispenis, believing also that father has guessed his sexual desire formother as well as his ambivalent feelings towards his Dad. In thesame phase of oedipal reorganization, the little girl is more likely tofear that her mother will attack and destroy the whole inside of herbody as a fantasized punishment for her wish to take her mother’splace, to share erotic games with her father, and to make a babywith him. In other words, the little boy fears that the punishmentfor his masturbatory fantasies is castration, whereas the little girlfrequently equates the retribution for masturbation and erotic day-dreams with death.

In a panel on “Female Sexuality” at a meeting of the AmericanPsychoanalytic Association, the Californian analyst Phyllis Tysononce remarked that failure in the integration of primary femininityfrequently had an inhibitory effect on the normal masturbation ofadolescence, and she pointed out that in masturbation the younggirl not only derives new pleasure from her body but also “furtherconsolidates her feminine identification with her mother”. I myself


have made the clinical observation that when the ban on autoeroticpleasure is lifted, there frequently follows a series of newintrojections and new sublimations.

Woman and time

I would like to point out that woman has a specific psychologicalrelationship to time as compared with man. It seems highly prob-able that, among other factors, women experience time differentlyfrom men in large part because of their biological rhythms: beforeeach monthly period, during and after the period, the suddenstopping of periods when a new baby is on the way, and, of course,the drama of menopause, which all, in one way or another, aretime-related and all require a mourning process. These biological–psychological rhythms also underline the significance of blood forthe woman and are inscribed in a symbolic register in whichtime—before and after—plays an essential role.

Geneviève Say, a French therapist and research writer, oncepresented a paper entitled “Pas de règles, pas de corps” [“Withoutperiods, no body”], proposing that “without the experience ofmenstruation there is no fundamentally feminine body; thus it isessential that these biological time-rhythms be integrated andgiven meaning in order to allow the adolescent girl to achieve whatis termed ‘genitality’”.

In an article entitled “Le temps des femmes” [which we mighttranslate as “time and woman”], Julia Kristeva describes woman’ssense of time as “cyclic, monumental and symbolic” and suggeststhat we might contrast this to time that is, as she puts it, “lineal,chronological, historical, political—and imprinted with masculinesubjectivity . . .” (Kristeva, 1993).

I would like to add at this point that in many long years ofsupervision with candidates and also with quite experienced ana-lysts, I have been struck by the fact that the majority of maleanalysts seem to avoid—or appear highly hesitant about—asking afemale patient any questions concerning her menstrual cycle, per-haps because of a feeling that such interest may be received by theanalysand as intrusive.

32 JOYCE MCDOUGALL

As Helene Deutsch pointed out long ago: puberty and meno-pause both encircle the present—one looking ahead, the otherlooking backwards (Deutsch, 1944). This is surely an importantdimension of time requiring analysis and one that may be over-looked for countertransference reasons.

Sexuality and creativity

I should like in this context to quote a brief clinical example thatillustrates the inhibitory effect on creative work in women for whomall manifestations of childhood sexuality have been severely con-demned, and in whom primitive body fantasies have persisted inan unintegrated form.2

“Tamara”, a talented violinist, suffered such paralysing anxietybefore a performance that she often had to cancel her engage-ments at the last minute. After many months of mutual re-search, in which we attempted to reconstruct the unconsciousscenario that was being enacted before every anticipated con-cert, she was able to capture the following fantasy: “I fool thewhole world. Everybody will see that all I produce is excre-ment, and that I myself am as valueless as a pile of shit.” Inaddition, she felt that she both hated and loved her musicalinstrument. Following a dream in which she was caressing herviolin which then turned into a woman’s body, she became able, forthe first time in her life, to love and caress her own body, andshe subsequently came to experience her violin as an extensionof her body, which she could now permit herself to touch andthink about with affection.

As the analysis proceeded, she began to feel freer to contem-plate allowing others to see this libidinized extension of herbodily self into her musical instrument and even to imagine thatshe might give a performance with unequivocal affection oneday. With the new investment of her corporeal being came a re-evaluation of her body’s natural functions. At one session sheannounced, “You know, you have led me to understand thatthere is ‘good shit’ and ‘bad shit’. Why can I not accept that Iwant to offer good things to the public?”


In the sessions that followed we came to understand that,beneath her fear that she would exhibit what she believed to bean ugly and sexless body, there slowly emerged anotherTamara who was beginning to live within her body and tobelieve that she had valuable gifts to offer to the outside world.Once her primitive libidinal fantasies were well integrated intheir positive aspects, her severe inhibitions stemming fromthese sources were alleviated. A year after the termination ofher analysis, she sent me two tickets for a concert in which shegave a most moving performance.

Sexual deviations in women

The value of Freud’s legacy to the topic of female sexuality and itsrelation to sexual perversion can be debated for several reasons.First of all there is the problem of his phallocentrism. His reasoningwas founded entirely on a male standpoint from which came hisover-emphasis on penis envy. In addition, his idealization of moth-erhood—in accordance with the social discourse of his era—hassince played a role in impeding research into the question ofperverse motherhood. Mothers are not universally good or evenalways “good enough”: the challenge to the psychoanalyst is tounderstand what lies beneath the behaviour of mothers who abusetheir children either physically or sexually. Almost invariably thepattern of abuse goes back three generations or more. The mother’srelationship to the child who is destined to be treated perverselycan frequently be traced to factors that gave rise to traumaticevents in the parents’ own childhoods—factors often affecting theplace or destiny that this child, even before her birth, is expected tofulfil. Sometimes the parents implicitly impose that the child “pay”for what they, the parents, have suffered, or that she embodycertain aspects of the parents—either negative or positive qualitiesand attributes—for which they themselves do not assume responsi-bility.

I am reminded here of a young girl of 13 years of age whotestified that her father had had incestuous relations with herfor a number of years. At the time I saw her, the father was in

34 JOYCE MCDOUGALL

prison, and the daughter felt very guilty about having de-nounced him. Later came an interview with the mother who, asis so often the case, was in complicity with the incestuousrelationship but turned a blind eye. When asked why this was,she said, “Well, these things do happen in families, don’t they?”“And how was it in your family?” “My brother, three yearsolder than me, forced me to have sexual relations with three ofhis friends while he watched from behind a curtain. . . . When Itold my mother, she said that boys were like that, and that Ishould try to keep out of their way in the future. She alsowarned me not to say anything to my father.”

Coming now to the question of what might be deemed “perversemotherhood”, much of the pioneering work into this field of re-search has been initiated by Estela Welldon, a psychiatrist andpsychoanalyst at the Portman Clinic in London—a clinic foundedby Edward Glover and set up to deal principally with individualssuffering from any aspect of their sexuality, as well as those in-volved with drug addictions. Describing her work with sexualinhibitions in women (Welldon, 1989), the author points out thatmothers obviously occupy a unique place in the lives of theirnurslings and therefore possess unique power over them. Welldonemphasizes that the misuse of this power frequently manifestsitself through battering children, or through committing incestwith them. Verbal abuse—which, I would like to emphasize, isfrequently revealed to be even more damaging than physicalabuse—is another misuse of maternal power. Similarly, givingfalse or frightening information about gender and sexual realitiesmay have effects as destructive as incest, with regard to the attain-ment of one’s sense of sexual identity and gender role.

One of the conceptual difficulties in discussing and exploringperverse behaviour in women stems from the fact that, sinceFreud’s time, sexual perversion has been closely identified withmale sexuality and the penis. Deviant sexual constructions wereunderstood as defences against castration fears and the conflictsengendered by the male Oedipus complex. Thus the literaturesuggests that women have no need to create sexual deviations.Freud believed that the Oedipus complex of the little girl was


resolved once she accepted the fact that she could imagine receiv-ing a child from her father instead of a penis. This view implies thatwomen have no need of perverse sexual creations—they simplyhave babies instead!

In contrast to Freud’s formulation, female castration anxiety—as already indicated—is more intense and more pervasive thanthat of man, since a young girl’s fears are centred on her wholebody with a particularly intense focus on her “inner space” whereher genital sensations are experienced. In her remarkable bookMother, Madonna, Whore, Welldon states that, whereas in men per-verse acts are aimed at an external part-object, in women these areusually carried out “against their own bodies or against objectsthey see as their own creation: their babies. In both cases, babiesand bodies are treated as part objects.”

There are nevertheless many features shared by both boys andgirls. For example, in both sexes there is marked anxiety at thephase of oedipal genital wishes and fantasies, and beyond this wealso find deep insecurity regarding one’s subjective identity. Theseanxieties are one primal cause for the creating of deviant eroticscenarios; in addition, the insecurity that assails small children, andlater the adolescent-to-be, invariably releases affects of anger andviolence that must also find a solution and gratification in thesexual invention. It is perhaps observations of this kind that ledRobert Stoller (1976) to define perversions as “the erotic form ofhatred”.

For both sexes, the original hate objects—or part-objects—arerelatively unconscious. The little girl who in adulthood developsdeviant forms of sexual acts or relationships—such as exhibition-ism or sadomasochism—often felt unwanted, ignored, or smoth-ered by her own mother. Others experience themselves as apart-object belonging to the mother and therefore treated as anarcissistic prolongation of her. Each of these forms of relationshipcreates raging hatred. From being victims, these women maysometimes become victimizers, in which case the “other”—child orlover—is, in turn, treated as a part-object. Such forms of relation-ship often serve as a manic screen against a deeply unconsciousterror of losing the mother or the mother’s love and consequentlythe loss of all sense of identity.

36 JOYCE MCDOUGALL

As already discussed, eroticization may often serve as a defenceagainst shocking childhood experiences. This frequently gives risein the adult woman to a search for partners who will join in deviantsexual practices in which pain, humiliation, or violent attack arecoupled with intense erotic excitement. Thanks to the constructionof such complex erotic games, childhood traumata may be ren-dered tolerable—and not surprisingly—such sexual inventions areusually marked by an inexorable compulsivity. This brings me to theconsideration of the complicity of the couples involved in deviantsexual scenarios.

Couples and shared deviancy

I have observed that those of my female analysands who engagein sexual practices dominated by pregenital, fetishistic, or sado-masochistic acts frequently did so at the insistence of their loversor husbands. Although each woman complained about this, inmost cases we were able to reconstruct her infantile past in such away as to understand why she had chosen this particular mateand how she, too, gained secret satisfaction from their sexualrituals.

In my Eros I gave two examples of such unconscious complicitybetween couples: In the first case, a young woman complainedfrom the beginning of her analysis of her dislike for her husband’sinsistence that she urinate upon him in the course of their sexualrelations. She was eventually able to recapture a hitherto repressedmemory in which a group of little boys had asked her to take offher panties, climb up a tree, and show them how girls urinate. Thisshe did with alacrity and great excitement but was caught by themaid and severely reprimanded by her parents. In the second case,a woman who had received a daily enema from her father fromearly childhood until adolescence was married to a man whosecretly engaged in a solitary fetishistic sexual game in which headministered an enema to himself while imagining that he wasgiving this enema to a woman partner. In each case the partnersseemed to have chosen each other because of unconscious pregeni-tal erotism of a rather intense kind.


Primary homosexuality

Before concluding, I would like to summarize briefly the elementsof primary homosexuality in the girl-child. But first of all let usrecall Freud’s conception of the little girl’s accession to adult femi-nine sexuality: according to him, the girl-child’s first wish is to takesexual possession of her mother; then follows the desire for a penis;this, in turn, leads to the wish to receive a baby from her father andfinally to her deepest longing—according to Freud—to be themother of a boy-child. As stated in my Eros, this chain of signifierssuggests that, for the woman, a baby is a mere equivalent of thepenis she does not possess and, indeed, that her love for her fatheris little more than the consequence of her “penis envy”.

From my own analytic work with children and many long yearsof clinical observation of adult woman patients, I would proposethat not only does the little girl wish to possess her mother sexu-ally, as Freud suggests, but she would also like to create childrenwith her and be singularly loved by her, in a world from which allmen are excluded. At the same time she also wants to resemble herfather and possess his genitals, as well as the idealized qualities sheattributes to him. In this way she dreams of fulfilling in her moth-er’s life the important erotic and narcissistic role of the father inrelation to her mother. It is obvious that, through lack of fulfilment,these drives tend to become associated with narcissistic injury. It isperhaps this additional factor that gave Freud the impression thatpenis envy was the predominant dimension in the psychosexualstructure of woman.

Although the universal bisexual wishes of infancy are equallystrong in both sexes, the girl’s problem is more intricate than herbrother’s in that the girl-child and her mother are not sexuallycomplementary. She is not able, as her little brother is, to believethat she has a uniquely different sexual configuration and perhapsa specific value for this reason in her mother’s eyes. Thus it isconceivable that the little girl has more conflictual internal mothersin her psychic universe than does the boy-child. The mother is, atone and the same time, adored, desired, resented, and feared.

This is one of the reasons that, during adolescence, the daughtertypically rejects her mother in many ways but will turn towardsher with renewed attachment when she herself becomes a mother.

38 JOYCE MCDOUGALL

It is at this point that many girls finally forgive their mothers for alltheir infantile resentments. Just as every child that a daughter bearsrepresents, in unconscious fantasy, a baby she has made with herfather, so too her babies are often felt to be a gift to the motherand—in the deeper layers of her unconscious—a baby she hasmade with her mother.

Some women identify with the mother as a sexually desiringadult but do not themselves desire children. In this case, they areliable to experience their professional, intellectual, or artistic activi-ties as giving birth to symbolic children. But here again specificfeminine problems arise. Many women in analysis reveal a fearthat they must choose between motherhood and professional activi-ties; others express a similar feeling of dichotomy between theirlives as lovers and their lives as mothers. Accomplishing thesethree distinct feminine desires—the sexual, the maternal, and theprofessional—requires a delicate balance if women are to avoid theconviction that they are impelled to sacrifice their own narcissisticand libidinal needs in any one of these areas.

In conclusion

While I am aware that there are many aspects that remain to beexplored concerning femininity, female sexuality, and the place ofwoman in today’s world, may I say, paraphrasing Freud: “That isall I have to tell you (today) about female sexuality.”

NOTES

1. It is interesting to note that the complete clitoral organ with its internalappendices was neither charted, nor even named, until relatively recently—asis clearly set forth in a remarkable book, A New View of a Woman’s Body,compiled by the Federation of Feminist Women’s Health Centers (1981).

2. This vignette is taken from a work of mine entitled The Many Faces ofEros (McDougall, 1995).


REFERENCES

Deutsch, H. (1944). The Psychology of Women. New York: Grune &Stratton.

Federation of Feminist Women’s Health Center (1981). A New View of aWoman’s Body. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Freud, S. (1931b). Female sexuality. S.E., 21.Freud, S. (1933a). New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. S.E., 22.Jacobus, M. (1995). First Things. London: Routledge.Kristeva, J. (1993). Les Nouvelles Maladies de l’Âme. Paris: Fayard.McDougall, J. (1995). The Many Faces of Eros. New York and London:

Norton.Stoller, R. (1976). Perversion: The Erotic Form of Hatred. New York:

Aronson.Welldon, E. (1989). Mother, Madonna, Whore. New York: Aronson.

41

CHAPTER THREE

Some observations on female sexuality

Julia Kristeva

The primary oedipal phase: seduction and invasion

Female psychosexual development involves two versions ofthe Oedipus complex, as several authors including Freudhave stated, and I would now like to put forward a revised

interpretation (cf. Kristeva, 1996a, 1996b).The earliest period, from birth to the so-called phallic phase

starting at between three and six years of age, I shall term theprimary oedipal phase. It is true that, in his concluding works onfemale sexuality (1923e, 1925j, 1931b), Freud emphasizes what isgenerally termed phallic monism: “the main characteristic of this‘infantile genital organisation’ . . . consists in the fact that, for bothsexes, only one genital, namely the male one, comes into account.What is present, therefore, is not a primacy of the genitals but aprimacy of the phallus” (1923e, p. 308). In other words, psychicallyspeaking there is an inherent masculinity in the child irrespectiveof its anatomical sex: “the little girl is a little man”. This axiom,which was initially considered to refer to infantile—and notadult—sexuality or to a fantasy, finally emerges here from Freud’spen as a sine qua non fact of all sexuality.

42 JULIA KRISTEVA

However, in his last writings, Freud reveals a particular cling-ing and intense relationship between the little girl and her motherthat is not easily accessible to analysis because it is encysted inpreverbal sensory experience, which the founder of psychoanalysislikens to “Minoan–Mycenaean civilization behind the civilizationof the Greeks” (Freud, 1931b, p. 372). It forms the basis of psychicbisexuality, which “comes to the fore much more clearly in womenthan in men” (p. 374). However, Lacan, who strongly emphasizesthe “primacy of the phallus”, supporting the “symbolic function”and the name of the father [nom du père] in the psychic organization ofthe subject of either sex, comments in passing that “maternal in-stinct” is a part of female sexuality that is irreducible by analysisbecause it eludes the ascendancy of phallic primacy.1

Finally, on the basis of contemporary clinical observation, sev-eral psychoanalysts suggest that at the origins of infantile sexualitythe early maturation of human beings exposes the infant to adult,and especially maternal, intrusion. The protective nature of paren-tal support does not make it any less seductive: straight away,infantile sexuality develops under the influence of these parentaland primarily maternal “enigmatic signifiers” (cf. Laplanche, 1987,p. 125). These signifiers imprint the mother’s unconscious on thechild’s erogenous zones, along with the erotic link she has with thefather and the father’s own unconscious. This initial co-excitationbetween mother and baby thus seems a long way from the idyllicmodels of Minoan–Mycenaean civilization evoked by Freud, orfrom a serenity of “being” preceding the drive-related behaviourdescribed by Winnicott. Infantile sexuality, which is not that of theinstincts but that of the drives understood as psychosomatic con-structions, pre-existent biology-and-meaning is thus formed fromthe outset in the newborn’s interaction with his two parents andunder the ascendancy of maternal seduction. The fact that it is themother who takes care of the child, thereby becoming the agent ofthe unconscious intrusion, does not prevent her female desire forthe father—the father of the child or her own—or the child’s father’sown actions and speech from being the means by which the fatherplays a part from the outset as the subject of this original imprint-ing, for the girl as for the boy, and differently according to the sex.

The child, who allows himself to be seduced and seduces withhis skin and his five senses, engages by the very fact of his orifices:

43SOME OBSERVATIONS ON FEMALE SEXUALITY

mouth, anus; and vagina for the little girl. Usually this femaleorgan is not appealed to, but it is hard to imagine that it should becovered in the only insensitive membrane, as Freud bizarrely andincautiously suggests in his simile of the “harder wood” (1905d, p.143)—unless this supposed insensitivity were to have a defensivefunction. The founder of psychoanalysis rightly points to the ab-sence in either sex of an unconscious representation of the vagina,other than as something “lacunar” or “cloacal”, lent to the anus, asLou Andreas-Salomé (1980, p. 107) expressed it. But does thisvisual deficit not make the representative of cavernous—particu-larly vaginal or cloacal—excitation, by that very fact, more unfath-omable and problematic for the future unity of the subject?

The seduced, orificial, invaded child: At the origins of Minoan–Mycenaean sexuality, we find a sexual being, the “perverse poly-morph”, prefiguring the penetrated being of the woman.Throughout this first phase of psychic sexualization, the sexualityof the primary oedipal phase, abandoned to the maternal–paternalseduction, however passive, is nonetheless both reactive and ac-tive, as is aggressively emphasized by the expulsion of stools andof vocal and gestural expressions. In the boy, penile excitation—later intensified by the phallic phase—is superimposed on thecomplex range of reactions that result from this original invasion–seduction, underlying and structuring the “feminine position” ofthe male subject. This position continues to characterize the man’ssexuality, specifically his desire for oral and anal possession of thefather’s penis and for its destruction in the maternal breast, whichis fantasized as containing this penis, and so forth.

Interactive subjectivity and psychization

For the girl, the primary oedipal phase contains some more com-plex ambiguities. On the one hand, her “skin-ego” (Anzieu, 1985)and orificial2 ego lend themselves to the seduction–passivizationthat simultaneously engages narcissism and masochism, with itssadistic abreactions—devouring the breast with the penis, bom-barding it with stools, and so on. Clitoral excitation, varying fromsubject to subject and naturally less intense than penile excitation,

44 JULIA KRISTEVA

is nevertheless also mobilized to direct the girl towards activepossession of the first object that is constituted by the unconsciousseducing mother. But this erectile activity seems to be heavilymasked, and even surpassed, by orificial excitation and by theerotic participation of the oral–anal–vaginal cavernous body in theearly link with the mother. Whereas Karl Abraham, followed byMelanie Klein and the English school, emphasized this early in-volvement of a vaginal–anal femininity in the oedipal phase, par-ticularly for the girl, Freud refers to it only rarely, for example inthe case of Dora (1905e [1901]; 1919e). As Jacques André comments,it is highly significant that this text is contemporaneous with . . .Freud’s analysis of his own daughter Anna! This was in fact anexceptional opportunity for an analyst, both as man and as father,to confront the little girl’s early genital seduction . . . by her father!The strong vaginal–cloacal mobilization, like the little girl’s clitoralexcitation, structure her earliest sexuality as a psychic bisexualitythat is simultaneously passive and active. Thus bisexuality is morestrongly accentuated in the girl than in the boy.

More interestingly, what this perspective seems to reveal—asthe treatment of adult women confirms, if only by discovering thedefensive symptoms—is that the primary oedipal phase with itslocation of the defensive symptoms is governed not by a simplepassivization but, above and beyond this, by the installation of aninteractive subjectivity that is not adequately accounted for by theactive–passive dichotomy. The orificial invasion is compensatednot only by clitoral excitation but also by the early elaboration of anidentificatory and introjective link with the seductive and intrusive objectconstituted by the mother (insofar as she also relays the father’sdesire).

The girl introjectively installs the seductive mother inside her:the excited cavity of the inner body mutates into an internal repre-sentation. Thus begins a slow and long-lasting work of psychizationthat is later accentuated by the secondary oedipal phase, in which thefemale tendency to privilege psychic or loving representation–idealization over erotic drive excitation can be recognized. Thisfemale psychization is, however, placed in difficulties by identifi-cation with the agent of the parental seduction—an identificationreinforced by the resemblance between girl and mother and by theprojection onto the girl of maternal narcissism and depressivity.


For the girl, this process results partly in an early psychization ofthe object that the young ego introjects by identification and partlyfrom this identification with the mother, the additional creation ofa real link of possession and dependence with the same object. Thelittle girl’s cavernous excitability and its attendant psychic interi-ority are stabilized by a clinging to the real external object. In otherwords, the sensory reality of the object and the real presence of themother are demanded as a compensation for the invasion of thecavernous body and the psychic introjection that are constantlytaking place. This real need for the link latches on to a place such as thecloacal interior, claiming an imaginary insatiable premium for theoral, anal, and vaginal pleasures that are undergone rather thantaken by the little girl. The latter’s link with her maternal object iscoupled with the mother’s symmetrical attachment to her infantgirl: rather than set up her daughter as a phallic substitute, as isgenerally the case with the boy, the female parent projects her ownnarcissistic fantasies and latent masochistic or depressive tenden-cies, echoing with the little girl’s orificial pleasures.

The economy of the primary oedipal phase—invasion andpassivization of the orificial body by the other, aggression towardsand oral, anal, and clitoral possession of the other, and compensa-tion by psychic hypercathexis of the object that early on creates aninteriority dependent on the object—proves to be more accentuatedfor the little girl than it is in the little boy’s monovalent oedipalphase. Because of the anatomical difference between the sexes, aswell as for historical and cultural reasons determining the ambiva-lence of the parental seduction with regard to the “second sex”, thegirl’s primary oedipal phase precipitates her into a later developmen-tal stage that is both more fragile and more complex than theboy’s.

The girl is more exposed to passivization because clitoral excita-tion does not eliminate orificial pleasure, unlike the boy, for whomphallicism is supposed to surpass, if not eradicate, oral and analreceptivity. However, the little girl already appears more protectedby the formation of an early interiority in which the introjection ofthe other (of the mother as mediator of the father), relayed by thegirl–mother identification, transforms this maternal other into anindispensable object, as a vital co-presence of a link to others,experienced as a need that is ready and waiting, like an understudy

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for desire, that is to be cultivated and maintained in external realityand that will endure as an absolute necessity of female psycho-sexuality.

In other words, the little girl’s dependence on her mother’s lovedirectly prepares the status of the woman’s erotic object. Onlyrarely is the woman’s object a “partner” in desire, but, more exclu-sively, a “lover” whom she asks to understand her as if he were . . .a mother. The psychic link with him that the female lover requiresis not easily interchangeable, and this asymmetry inexorably deter-mines the discord between the sexes. As for the possibility of awoman blossoming in the erotic quest itself, she would need a verystrong phallic identification to conceal her invaded interiority andneed for a psychic link, so as to be satisfied with those “thousandand one” objects, petit “a”, which fail to gratify the fetishisticlongings of Don Juan himself.

Beyond the two pitfalls of narcissism and passivizing maso-chism, the complexity of the primary oedipal phase therefore estab-lishes the little girl as a psychic being and a binding agent. With theemergence of the little girl’s sexuality, we witness the dawn of loveand sociability. Of course, this economy is also the one that tovarying degrees governs the man’s femininity, which remains re-pressed by conquering phallicism, providing that it is not abre-acted in a contrary manner by passage to the homosexual act.

My reflections on the girl’s primary oedipal phase are not in-tended to diminish the structuring role that phallic authority andits attendant castration anxiety play in the psyche. My intention isonly to assign them to their place as organizers of the unconsciouswhile bearing in mind that they appear in the infant’s psyche bymediation of the parental seduction, adding to the reactive excit-ability of the seduced child.

The secondary oedipal phase:encounter with phallicism

In post-Freudian treatment, it is maintained that the structuringphallic component, participating in the repression of excess infan-tile excitation, is matched by an other libido that is not exclusivelypassive but is worked through with support from a stable link with


the object that founds psychic interiority and the link with others.The hypothesis I am putting forward, that the feminine position ofboth sexes—and particularly the little girl’s—is immediately ac-companied by the phallic experience in the primary oedipal phase,presupposes a bisexuality from the beginnings of the psyche. Is itnot precisely this feminine position, taking shape from the primaryoedipal phase, more violently than the castration anxiety that,strictly, appears in the phallic phase, that underlies the fact that thefemale is “the more inaccessible”, in Freud’s words, to both sexes(cf. Freud, 1937c)? The female constitutes the first working out ofthe infant’s phobias—fears of passivization, of narcissistic andmasochistic regression, of losing the visible reference points ofidentity through a sensory engulfment that risks dispersing thesubject into an endogenous if not pathological autism—and it isrepressed by the subsequent accession to the phallic.

In the woman, however, the polymorphous femininity of the pri-mary oedipal phase remains a continent that is scarcely repressed.More precisely, it becomes masked by reactional femininity and theattendant displays of beautification or narcissistic reparation withwhich the woman’s later phallicism reacts to the castration com-plex. It is in the course of the phallic phase, which situates thesubject in the oedipal triangulation between the ages of three andfive years, that the female subject carries out a further psychicmutation by which the choice of sexual identity is definitivelyaccomplished.

There is a widespread view that so readily pictures psy-choanalysis as a “biologization of the essence of man” that it isworth reminding ourselves at this point that the psychoanalytictheory of sexuality is a theory of the copresence of sexuality withthought. Optimal frustration, mother–child separation, the depres-sive position, lack, primary identification, sublimation, idealiza-tion, attainment of the ego ideal and the superego are only a fewwell-known stages by which the subject is positioned in the web ofboth energy and meaning, both excitability and law, that character-izes human sexuality in the analytic perspective. The phallic phaseconstitutes its exemplary experience, which I have for this veryreason termed a “phallic kairos”, the Greek term kairos evoking amythic encounter or a fated parting. How is this encounter organ-ized?

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Following neurobiological maturation and optimal experiencesof separation from the object, the phallic stage becomes the centralorganizer of the copresence of sexuality and thought in both sexes.Having already developed language and thought, the child, notsatisfied with cathecting his genital organs and their excitability,associates the cognitive operations that he applies to the externalworld with the interior movements of his drive excitability. Anequivalence emerges between the pleasure of the phallic organ andaccess to language and to the functioning of speech and thought. Atthis stage of development, the subject in formation is able to estab-lish that the father is not only the person he wants to kill in order toappropriate the mother. From now on, he perceives what must betermed the father’s separability: as a third figure, regulating thesensorial mother–child dyad, the father becomes a symbolic father,authority of prohibition and of the law. As bearer of the penis, thelittle boy’s cathexis of this organ of pleasure is only strengthenedby the fact that it is first and foremost the father’s, whose organiz-ing role in his familial and psychic world the child is now in aposition to recognize. Many authors have noted the specific fea-tures that destine the penis to be cathected by both sexes to becomethe phallus—that is, the signifier of privation and lack of being, butalso of desire and the desire to signify: all the components thatmake the phallus the signifier of the symbolic law. Visible andnarcissistically recognized, erectile and laden with great erogenoussensitivity, detachable and thus “culpable”,3 capable of beinglost—the penis is, by this fact, suited to become the medium fordifference, the privileged actor in the 0/1 binarism that forms thebasis of all systems of meaning (marked/unmarked), the organicmaker (therefore real and imaginary) of our psychosexual com-puter.

For the little girl as well, a decisive encounter [kairos] betweenthe mastery of signs and sexual excitation fuses her being as athinking and desiring subject. It is no longer oral or anal excitationbut principally clitoral excitation, with or without the perceptionof the vagina, that predominates at this period that we will callthe secondary oedipal phase and in which, unlike the boy, the littlegirl changes object: the father replaces the mother as the target ofdesire.

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The ambiguity of the female secondary oedipal phase

Let us examine, however, the ambiguity of this change. On the onehand, like the boy, and like all subjects of speech, of thought andlaw, the girl identifies with the phallus and with the father whorepresents it: without this phallic assumption she would be unableto maintain her role in the universal human condition, a conditionthat makes her a speaking being according to the law. At the heartof this phallic position, however, the girl is at a comparative disad-vantage to the boy. Deprived of a penis and devalued by this fact inall known patriarchal and patrilineal cultures, she adheres to thephallic order while carrying the unconscious trace of the primaryoedipal phase, of its polymorphous sensoriality, dedicated to desirefor the mother, which imprints on her an indelible mark of endog-enous female homosexuality. From then on, the girl accomplishesher access to the phallic order—constructed on the depths of the“dark” or “Minoan–Mycenaean” continent—within the “as-if”, il-lusory modality of “I am playing the game, but I know very wellthat I am not part of it because I do not have it.” Accordingly, unlessthe woman freezes the phallic position in the pose of the virago, thefeminine phallic position then establishes the female subject in theregister of radical strangeness, of an intrinsic exclusion, of an irrepa-rable solitude.

Furthermore, as if this necessary but artificial phallicism werenot already conflictual enough to accept, it then has to be modu-lated by a new psychic position for which the primary oedipal phasehas already prepared the way but which is accomplished onlyduring the secondary oedipal phase: as a phallic subject of speech,thought, and the law, the girl falls back not on the passive position,as is usually suggested, but on the receptive position to become theobject of the father. As a speaking being, she is a phallic subject of thesocial symbolic order; but as a woman she nevertheless desires toreceive the penis and obtain a child from the father, from the placeof the mother with whom she is constantly settling the scores of theoriginal coexcitation in the primary oedipal phase.

By tracing the twists and turns required of the female subject byher accession to the secondary oedipal phase, we can understand theirreducible strangeness that a woman feels in the phallic–symbolic

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order, and which leads to a display of anxiety or conversion symp-toms in the hysteric when she settles for denial of the phallus andof castration. At best, this strangeness takes on the aspect of an anti-authoritarian dissatisfaction that is incomprehensible to social ra-tionality; hence, “what do women want?”—the insistent questionthat Freud is not alone in having posed. But this strangeness can berefined into revolt or insubordination, which Hegel acclaimed inwomen as the eternal irony of the community. If this exile thatestablishes the woman in the phallic–symbolic universe happens toturn out to be more irreconcilable, it can shift into chronicdepressivity or even intractable melancholia. Alternatively, it canlead to anorexia and bulimia, those failed suicidal consequences ofthe “rejection of femininity” (that of the primary oedipal phase en-countering the rejection of castration with which the hysteric reactsto the secondary oedipal phase), equally morbid symptoms in whichthe gaping excitability of the (passively erotized) cavernous bodyof the primary oedipal phase is accentuated, incapable of defendingitself against the intrusion of the maternal–paternal seduction ex-cept by force-feeding or filling the erogenous zones.

By contrast, when the female subject manages to negotiate thecomplex turnstile imposed on her by the primary and secondaryoedipal phases, she can have the good fortune to acquire thatstrange maturity that the man so often lacks, buffeted as he isbetween the phallic pose of the “macho” and the infantile regres-sion of the “impossible Mr Baby”. With the benefit of this matu-rity, the woman is able to encounter her child not as a phallic ornarcissistic substitute (which it mostly is) but as the real presenceof the other, perhaps for the first time, unless it is the only possibleone, and with which civilization begins as a totality of connectionsbased no longer on Eros but on its sublimation in Agape (Kristeva,2001).

Freud, who thought that only “a small minority” of humanbeings were capable of “displacing what they mainly value frombeing loved on to loving” (1930a, p. 291), interpreted this sublima-tion as a defence against object loss, without deciphering in addi-tion to this a working through of narcissistic love, as suggested bythe Biblical and evangelical injunction to “love thy neighbour asthyself”. He was more than willing to admit that it was mystics


such as Francis of Assisi who “went furthest” in the “interior life”created by such methods, but he stressed that this interiority “withan inhibited aim” (p. 291), this “evenly suspended, steadfast andaffectionate feeling”, bore, however, “little external resemblance[any more to the stormy agitations of genital love]” (p. 291). Had heforgotten, in saying this, to consider motherhood? In fact, thefounder of psychoanalysis separates this “work of civilization” (p.293) that entails the “readiness for a universal love of mankind” (p.291) from the “interests of the family” to which women committhemselves, criticizing these women who had nevertheless “laidthe foundations of civilization by the claims of their love” (p. 293)for being incapable of a “work of civilization” on the grounds of anincapacity for instinctual sublimation (p. 55). Had he perhaps notanalysed the experience of motherhood enough? When the mothermanages to go beyond the dominion over the child as a phallicsubstitute and to calm the intensity of the link with others, beyondthe time of desire which is that of death, the cyclical time ofrenewal and rebirth opens up for her.

The female and femininity

Henceforth, this woman is no longer playing a game of masquer-ade, however amusing and attractive, which constructs femininityas a simulacrum of the female. She has metabolized the cavernousreceptivity of the primary oedipal phase into a psychic depth: this isthe female. She is aware, however, of the femininity that knows howto pretend in order to protect itself from the female, by excelling atseduction and even in masculine competition. What we perceive asa harmonious feminine personality is one that manages to create acoexistence between the female and femininity, receptivity andseduction, acceptance and performance—a “mental hermaphro-dite”, diagnoses Colette. This calm polyphony of flexible connec-tions confers a peaceful social and historical existence on thelacunar female of the origins. That is to say, in effect, that Womandoes not exist: rather, there is a plurality of versions of femininity,and the female community is only ever one of women in thesingular.

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NOTES

Translated from French by Sophie Leighton, MA (Oxon), MA (Sussex).1. It is worth mentioning here that it does not follow from the fact that

everything that is analysable is sexual that everything sexual is accessible toanalysis. What is not drained off by phallic mediation would in fact be theentire current of maternal instinct. (Cf. Lacan, 1966, p. 730.)

2. Cf. Jacques André’s (1995) commentary and discussions.3. Translator’s note: there is a pun in the French “coupable”, which implies

“cuttable” [coup-able] as well as “culpable” here.

REFERENCES

André, J. (1995). Aux origines féminines de la sexualité. Paris: PUF.Andreas-Salomé, L. (1980). L’Amour du narcissisme. Paris: Gallimard.Anzieu, D. (1985). Le Moi-Peau, Paris, Dunod. The Skin Ego (trans. C.

Turner). New Haven, CT & London: Yale University Press, 1989.Freud, S. (1905d). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, S.E., 7.Freud, S. (1905e [1901]). Fragment of an analysis of a case of hysteria,

S.E., 7.Freud, S. (1919e). A child is being beaten. S.E., 19.Freud, S. (1923e). The infantile genital organisation. S.E., 19.Freud, S. (1925j). Some psychical consequences of the anatomical

distinction between the sexes. S.E., 19.Freud, S. (1930a). Civilization and Its Discontents. S.E., 21.Freud, S. (1931b). Female sexuality. S.E., 21.Freud, S. (1937c). Analysis terminable and interminable. S.E., 23.Kristeva, J. (1996a). Encore l’Œdipe, ou le monisme phallique. In: Sens

et non-sens de la révolte (pp. 141–195). Paris: Fayard, 1996.Kristeva, J. (1996b). De l’étrangeté du phallus ou le féminin entre

illusion et désillusion. In: Sens et non-sens de la révolte (pp. 197–223).Paris: Fayard.

Kristeva, J. (2001). De la passion selon la maternité. In: La Vie amoureuse(Convention of the Société psychanalytique de Paris, November2000). Revue française de psychanalyse, Débats de psychanalyse (July):105–120.

Lacan, J. (1966). Propos directifs pour un Congrès sur la sexualitéféminine. In Écrits. Paris: Seuil.

Laplanche, J. (1987). Nouveaux Fondements pour la psychanalyse: Laséduction originaire. Paris: PUF.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Phallacies of binary reasoning:drive beyond gender

Paul Verhaeghe

Taking Julia Kristeva’s chapter as a starting point, I wouldlike to embroider on a number of ideas in her work. Likeher, I agree that woman, or the feminine component of

human sexuality, cannot be understood in terms of passivity. Onthe contrary, I will argue that femininity is more open to thesymbolic than to the real. In this type of discussion, a form ofbinary reasoning is always in attendance in one way or another. AsI read her chapter and her latest work, Kristeva is still attemptingto take leave from it, but she does not completely succeed in this.Each of us continues to wrestle with this inheritance of our patriar-chal social system. Here I will discuss three critical propositionsconcerning this dualism and how it affects our conception of gen-der. I will then advance four theses designed, in some measure, toprovide an answer to them.

My propositions regarding the gender/sex binary are as fol-lows. First, classical dualism in general—and the division betweenanatomical sex and psychosexual identity in particular—imply anendless mirroring that necessitates a final or ultimate element thefunction of which is to provide an ostensibly final ground and anontology. Second, this dualistic mirroring process lends itself to a

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number of problematic analogies. Third, the focus on the phallusand masculinity itself is an artefact of this type of thinking.

1. Ever since Plato, Western thought has imposed some form ofbinary thinking in which two elements are opposed to one another:soma versus psyche, matter versus form, nature versus culture,semiotic versus symbolic, primary oedipal versus secondary oedi-pal, sex versus gender, masculine versus feminine. The system iscreated in such a way that it requires one final element to close andground the binary. Without it, the system runs mad in an incessantmirroring process of ever more remote underlying elements, eachresembling the other. This can easily be illustrated by a well-known critique of homunculus theory: a man’s headache is causedby a headache in a smaller man inside his head, indicating that thissmaller man must have an even smaller man in his brain with aheadache, meaning than an even smaller man in the head of thesmaller man must have a headache, and so on (Lacan, 1946, pp.160–161, 1998, pp. 96–100).1

For Aristotle, this final element was the unmoveable sphere,which was later interpreted as God: and, what is more, God theHoly Father. We can detect the same process in Freud, who wasobliged to construct his myth of the primal father to ground theoedipal father. At the level of the subject, this has an ontologicaleffect: through identification with the father, the subject copes withthe drive and its divisive effects. Identity is experienced as substan-tial, authentic, pre-discursive, and so forth: “That’s me!”—al-though, of course, it is not. It is a socially induced way of copingwith the unbearable lightness of being.

This form of reasoning furthermore implies a presumed iden-tity between the two terms. The psyche mirrors the body and musttherefore be identical with this body. But in relation to the ground-ing term, this identity implies a reduction: the subject is con-structed according to the image of God, albeit in a lesser form; thechild is the image of the father, albeit in a lesser form; and so on. Inother words, the apparent correspondence between the two ele-ments of binary thought is nothing but an imaginary implementa-tion of the mirror stage through which the child acquires ahypothetical identity and unity from the big Other, if always ina slightly “lesser” form. As regards gender, this gives rise to a

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particular reading of the phallus (see Point 3), as the missingelement the presence of which would complete the subject andpermit it to attain the status of the father. No wonder, then, thatthere is a confusion of the father and the phallus, as the formerneeds the latter to take up his position.

2. My second point concerns the analogies that this type of binaryreasoning induces. When we examine the original binary of bio-logical sex versus psychosexual identity, it is clear that gender andconstructivism have had the upper hand right from the start.Psychosexual identity is considered an effect of discourse, inde-pendent of the biological body that from then on can be discarded.Nevertheless, it did not take long for the original division betweensex and gender to reappear in gender itself—more specifically, inthe division of feminine and masculine identity. Woman becamealigned with nature and the real, man stood for culture and dis-course, and the same discussion resumed. In both binaries—theoriginal sex/gender and the ensuing feminine/masculine withingender—one term appears to be the primary one. Thus considered,the introduction of the idea of gender as a solution turns out to benothing but another formulation of the same problem within thesame dual line of reasoning.

Closer scrutiny of the list of the usual binaries (nature/culture,etc.), moreover, reveals a number of curious analogies based on thepatriarchal way of thinking from which we have not yet suffi-ciently extricated ourselves. It seems as if woman stands for nature,drive, body, semiotic, and so on, and man for culture, symbolic,psyche, and so forth. Yet this is not confirmed by day-to-dayexperience, nor by clinical practice. Both feminine eroticism andfeminine identity seem far more attracted to the symbolic than aretheir masculine counterparts. Biblically or not, woman conceivesfor the most part by the ear and is seduced by words. In contrast, anunmediated, drive-ridden sexuality seems much more characteris-tic of masculine eroticism, whether gay or straight. Nor does moth-erhood’s apparent linking of woman and Nature stand the test. Inmy clinical practice, I have seen far too many mothers who rejecttheir children or—even worse—have no interest in them whatso-ever. The maternal instinct is a myth, and maternal love is an effectof an obligatory alienation. Many new mothers must face the fact

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that their reactions to their new baby fail to coincide with thisanticipated love.

3. The presumed connection between masculinity and the sym-bolic is the result of a certain reading of the phallus, which bringsme to my third point. The exclusive focus on the phallus and itsaccompanying privileging of man misses the point and is again anartefact of the reasoning itself. As we saw previously, in binarythought, the two terms require a supreme or grounding term thatprovides them with substantiality. The fullness of the supremeterm involves the presence of an exceptional characteristic missingfrom the ordinary terms. For Aristotle, this came down to theimmovability of the supreme sphere. In gender, it is called thephallus. Freud put this down to the absence of a penis in women;the early Lacan interpreted this as the lack of a signifier to signifyfemininity. The later Lacan makes it clear that the phallic interpre-tation of this lack is, once again, an artefact of a patriarchal thinkingthat is founded on the master discourse.

Clinical practice testifies to the fact that the only phallus thatcounts is the mother’s phallus—in other words, the missing phal-lus. The sum of the mother plus the phallus would be the unbarredor non-lacking Other—that is, the phallic mother. Consequently,the phallus is always lacking, it is the One Thing that is notmirrored during the constitution of the subject. The reason is verysimple: the Other also lacks the phallus, so there is no question ofmirroring it.

Such a concentration on the phallic is not very helpful, either fora man or for a woman. As a focal point, it belongs to the range ofpsychopathology. A man will never meet the phallic standard; theonly result is an ever-increasing alienation because of the other’sassumed phallic demand. Under normal—that is, neurotic—condi-tions, this leads to the typically masculine form of hysteria: theGuinness-Book-of-Records hysteria, with its emphasis on the big-gest instrument. One step further, his desperate attempts to fusewith woman land us in the perverse structure (Lacan, 1974). Thatis, man identifies with the missing maternal phallus in a desperateattempt to make her whole. For woman, attempting to receive thephallus ends either in the phallic masquerade of the woman, or in


maternity—as Freud long ago made clear—although the emphasismust be more on pregnancy than on maternity, which alreadycontains a loss. Where woman tries to unite with the phallic masterhimself, the result is mysticism or psychosis (Lacan, 1974, p. 63).

In both cases, whether masculine or feminine, an endless Encoreis put into play as an attempt to master what is lost. As we willsee, this encore, which typifies the repetition compulsion, increas-ingly endorses the very problem it attempts to solve, providing anadmirable illustration of the circular effects of this kind of binarythinking.

* * *These are my three critical propositions regarding the gender/sexdualism. In answer to them, I would like to develop four theses.First, I aim to show how the main problem confronting the ques-tion of sex and gender is in fact the drive and its antinomical aims.In this respect, Freud’s original conceptualization of Eros andThanatos will prove indispensable. Second, within the dynamics ofthe drive, gender is discovered to be a secondary issue, along withcastration. Third, in place of the binary dualism I propose tosubstitute a circular, non-reciprocal relationship between two ele-ments, which are themselves less important than the representativerelationship. Fourth, to the extent that a binary differentiation canbe made, the main elements are considered not masculine/femi-nine but active and passive and are understood as such in therelation between the subject and the drive.

1. It is striking how little attention has been paid to the drive andto sexuality in contemporary gender studies. Freud himself pro-vides us with two main points of entry: on the one hand we havethe component or partial drives, most evident in clinical practice,which supply us with a direct link to sexuality. The aim of thesepartial drives is to recover and rejoin a supposedly original objectthrough its different pregenital forms. By itself, the study of thepartial drives is already enough to show the relative unimportanceof the question of gender—there is no genital partial drive as such,the focus is on the various different bodily orifices. Nevertheless,what seems far more interesting to me is the second Freudian

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approach—namely, his concepts of the life and death drives, Erosand Thanatos.

With these concepts, Freud addresses the question of the funda-mental aim of the drive or, to be more specific, the fundamentalaim of the drive’s primary element—that is, its driving force. Inanswer to this, he postulates the existence of two primary drivesthe aim of which is to return to a previous state (Freud, 1920g). Theproblem is that each drive aims at an opposite state, with the resultthat they work against each other.

The easiest one to understand is the Eros or life drive, whichattempts to return to a previous stage of wholeness and fusion bylinking together as many elements as possible, with coitus as themost salient example. It is striking how, even in Freud, the relationbetween Eros and the symbolic is clearly visible, together with itseffect on identity formation. Freud first encountered it in his Studieson Hysteria, where he called it “false connections”: a word-presen-tation is wrongly associated with another word-presentation forlack of an original, accurate association with something that isinexpressible (Freud, 1895d, pp. 67–70). He generalized this ten-dency, which he called the “hysterical compulsion to associate”.Later, he was to encounter a variation of this compulsion: therepetition compulsion, a primary characteristic of traumatic neuro-sis, which attempts to master the real by binding it to word-presentations (1920g). Consequently he could no longer restrict itto hysteria but had to turn it into a general characteristic of theego—that is, its proclivity to synthesis, to associate separate thingsinto an ever larger synthesis, the One of phallic fusion.

The problem is that this Eros drive never succeeds in reachingits final goal. The failure of the pleasure principle has to do with theother drive: Thanatos, or the death drive, and its opposing aim. Thedeath drive works against the tendency towards synthesis andinduces a scattering of Eros. It disassembles everything that Erosbrought together into One and makes this unity explode into aninfinite universe. Moreover, this other drive works in silence; it hasno connection whatsoever with the symbolic or the signifier(Freud, 1923b, p. 46, p. 56).

In our post-Freudian era, the concepts of the life and deathdrives have almost entirely disappeared. One of the reasons has todo with their names, which are misleading in their imaginary


signification effect. As we will see, considering them from anotherperspective, one could just as easily say that the life drive aimstowards death and the death drive towards life. Freud himselfreferred to another classic couple that implies a different significa-tion effect—that is, Philia [love] and Neikos [strife]. By this it is clearthat he is referring to something that supersedes mankind as such,something that must have to do with the bare properties of life(Freud, 1937c, p. 246).

For me, this opposition does indeed have to do with the ques-tion of origins—more specifically, the origins of sexually differenti-ated life forms. The original state to which Eros tries to return is theeternal life, the classic Greek Zoë, dating from before the introduc-tion of sexually differentiated life forms through the particularform of cell division, meiosis. In principle, sexually undifferentiatedforms of life possess eternal life; death is an accident for them. Afterthe introduction of sexual differentiation, however, death becomesa structural necessity. Interpreted in this way, Eros or Zoë aims ata return to a previous sexually undifferentiated state by fusingwith the supposedly lost element. The price paid for this return isthe disappearance of a sexually differentiated individual in thefusion; it must die so as to make the return possible.

This explains the opposite tendency: aiming at the continuationof life as an individual through defusion from the originally undif-ferentiated whole. The continuation of this form of life is alwayslimited, because of the structural necessity of death, as introducedby sexual differentiation. Freud’s Thanatos drive ensures the con-tinuation of individual life against its disappearance in the other.Interpreted in this way, the death drive is a bios drive, bios beingthe ancient Greek name for the individual life that dies but also forhow an individual conducts his or her own life. Zoë, on the otherhand, is eternal life itself: the thread that runs through the limitedbios and is not broken when the particular perishes. Read in thisway, Freud’s Eros is a Zoë drive, and Thanatos is a bios drive.

As I said, this antinomy in the drive is much more fundamentalthan the gender antinomy, which is itself a consequence of it. Butbefore going into this, I shall address the question of the relationbetween the drive and identity formation. Reading Freud, it is clearthat he links the formation of the ego to Eros and its tendencytowards synthesis. This idea is confirmed both in Lacan’s theory of

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subject-formation and by contemporary attachment studies.2 With-out going too far into this, let me just say that identity formation isbased on the very same motives as those governing the two drivesand implies the very same antinomy. Moreover, this connectionpermits us to discern a logical time sequence.

The child is born with an innate tendency to stick to the other asclosely as possible. This is why primary anxiety concerns the sepa-ration from this other. As a result of this tendency, the childincorporates and identifies with as many parts of the other aspossible, thus trying to bridge the gap caused by birth. In themeantime, identity is acquired, which in my reading is an effect ofEros. Once this process has sufficiently taken place within a secureenvironment, the other tendency becomes patent, actively aimingfor diffusion and autonomy from this other. It is not by chance thatthis takes place simultaneously with language acquisition and par-ticularly with the emergence of the signifier “I” during the so-called period of negation. This is an effect of the Thanatos drive,privileging separation this time and a life of one’s own. These twotendencies will continue to function alongside one another in apeculiar way, which will not be very well understood if we con-tinue to name it “dualism”. Even for Freud, the two basic driveswere almost always commingled in what he called the “Trieb-mischung”. We return to this admixture in my third thesis, but letus now address the relationship between the primary drives andgender.

2. My second thesis reverses this relationship. The drive is notone element within the problem of gender; on the contrary, genderis just one expression of the larger problem of the drive. My thesisis that gender and sexuality are an attempt to regain the originalEros fusion, albeit in such a way that failure is structurally built in.

This is beautifully expressed in Aristophanes’ well-known fablein Plato’s Symposium. Reading the whole story, it is clear howgender and even sex enter the picture only at a secondary stage,being absent from the first part. Indeed, once the original doublebeing was bisected, each half was perpetually searching for itscorresponding half, but not, as we might think, for the purpose ofhaving sex:


Now, when the work of bisection was complete, it left each halfwith a desperate yearning for the other, and they ran togetherand flung their arms around each other’s necks, and asked fornothing better than to be rolled into one. So much so, that theybegan to die of hunger and general inertia, for neither woulddo anything without the other. [Plato, 1994, pp. 543–544]

Zeus took pity on them and introduced yet another change to theirbodies: he moved their reproductive organs to the front (originally,they were placed on the outer side of the body), thus making sexualintercourse possible. This change, particularly the subsequent pos-sibility for genital union, temporarily set the human being freefrom its longing and made it possible for it to turn to the activitiesnecessary for survival.

The beauty of this fable is that the transition thus described isnot from a “rounded whole” to a bisection into a male and femaledifferentiation, but from a rounded whole into two parts (of what-ever gender), with a total longing for one another that renders allother considerations insignificant. The genital–sexual interest en-ters the scene at a later stage, turning the original total process intoa partial one because of the lethal nature of this first process. Bothgender and genital sex are a secondary although necessary issue, akind of desperate solution for a primal division—this is Plato’smessage.

Looking at this fable from the perspective described above, it isclear that it corresponds perfectly with our previous thesis. Theloss of eternal life is the loss of an original wholeness and simulta-neously implies a gender differentiation. The solution for this lossis sought in phallic copulation; moreover, the original loss can besecondarily interpreted as a phallic loss or castration. The paradoxof this solution is that this attempt re-endorses the original prob-lem. Indeed, the differentiation into two different genders is pre-cisely the cause of the problem. Trying to solve it through thisgender differentiation is nothing but a repetition of the originalloss. The net result is a never-ending repetition, because eachphallic act repeats the loss and makes another attempt necessary—hence Lacan’s stress on the “Encore” effect. One can even say thatphallic sexuality in itself is aim-inhibited because it can never reachthe original aim of enduring fusion.

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It is instructive to reconsider the theory of the phallus and ofcastration in this respect. The foundation of human fantasy isthat—if one did indeed possess The Phallus—it should be possiblethe reinstate the original union through The Perfect Sexual Rela-tionship. Yet the phallus in itself is nothing but a reformulation ofan original loss that was caused precisely by the introduction ofphallic sexuality. As such, the phallus creates the illusion of asolution while at the same time reintroducing it. Whatever solutionthere might be, it has to be looked for beyond the phallic imagi-nary.

If we return now to the relationship between the primary drivesand gender differentiation, it can be said that the latter is a conse-quence of the death drive and its proclivity for defusion. Further-more, it makes death necessary for every sexually differentiatedindividual life form. Sexual fusion and copulation are a conse-quence of Eros and are attempts to annihilate the differentiation.The relation between gender and drive is secondary, but neverthe-less at a primary level—that is, male and female as prior to mascu-line and feminine—there must be some kind of link. It is as thoughthe female had lost the male part and needs it in order to becomewhole again. This explains the female proclivity for fusion and Eros(and her propensity for the symbolic). The result is penetration andthe swelling up of pregnancy, an attempt at fusion. Separationmust be avoided. The male part, on the other hand, has differenti-ated itself from the original alma mater, hence its proclivity forseparation and Thanatos: fusion must be avoided. The result ispenetration and deflation. We find an echo of this in Freud’s paperon the theme of the three caskets where he talks about the threewomen in man’s life: the woman that gives birth to him, thewoman he makes love to, and the woman to whom he returns afterdeath (Freud, 1913f, p. 291).

The same line of reasoning can be expanded to psychopathol-ogy. There is an evident link between Eros, fusion, identification,hysteria, and femininity, just as there is a link between Thanatos,separation, isolation, obsessional neurosis, and masculinity. Ofcourse this may sound dreadfully politically incorrect [mais çan’empêche pas d’exister, dirait Charcot3], but things are even morecomplicated than this. As I said above, gender differentiation is a


secondary item that ought not to be interpreted in a binary fashion.On the contrary, male and female are always combined, just likeEros and Thanatos, and it is the peculiarity of this combination thatgets neglected in binary studies of it. This brings me to my thirdthesis.

3. The life and death drives are not two separate entities. WhatFreud called the “Triebmischung”, the admixture of the drives, boilsdown to a circular but non-reciprocal interaction between twoelements. One operates as a force of attraction for the other, whichsimultaneously tries to return and move forward. Their interactionis staged on a different level each time, which establishes andreiterates the fact that there is no reciprocal relationship betweenthem.4

First, we have the appearance of the sexually differentiated lifeforms at the moment of birth. This implies the loss of the eternallife, Zoë. It functions as a force of attraction for the individual life,the Bios, that tries to return. The price that is to be paid for thisreturn is the loss of individual life as such, and this explains theother tendency, the one that flees from it in the opposite direction.The usual solution reiterates the original problem, thus maintain-ing the interaction. Indeed, the Bios tries to join the Zoë throughsexual reproduction, which involves a repetition of the originalloss.

Second, we have the formation of the I—that is, the primaryidentification of the mirror stage. The living being acquires aninitial identity through the unified image of his body coming tohim from the Other, but at the same time this “I” loses the real of itsbody: hence its never-ending attempts to join its body again but,conversely, the price to be paid for this fusion would be the disap-pearance of the “I”—hence the tendency to flee in the other direc-tion as well. Finally, the solution will only provide the “I” with thebody as prescribed by the Other, thus confirming the loss of itsbeing.

Third, we have the arrival of the subject. The subject attempts tofuse with the (m)Other, but if it were to succeed, the result wouldimply a total alienation, meaning the disappearance of the subject.Hence the other tendency towards separation. Again, this solution

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implies a structurally impossible relationship, because the subject’sattempts to fuse with the Other necessarily must pass through thesymbolic, thus repeating and endorsing the original deadlock.

If we continue this series, we arrive at a fourth moment whereinthe subject acquires a gender identity. This is what the Oedipuscomplex does, in its own peculiar way—that is, by interpreting theoriginal loss in terms of castration. This phallic interpretation willbe applied retroactively to all preceding occurrences, meaning thateach loss is read in a phallic way. This process entails the construc-tion of the body—not the body we are, but the body we have, whichis clothed in a gender identity. This identity is the final stage of thiscircular but non-reciprocal relationship. The original gap betweenlife and death, between the body and the I, between the subject andthe Other is reproduced and worked over in the gap between manand woman.

Moreover, this repetition produces the same effect: no matterwhat efforts the subject makes to fuse his body by way of thesymbolic, s/he will never succeed, because the gap is due preciselyto the symbolic. Regardless of the masculine subject’s efforts tofuse with woman by way of the phallic relationship, he will neversucceed, because the gap is due precisely to the phallic signifier.The double-sided relationship between subject and drive reap-pears in the very same kind of relationship between a man and awoman.

4. More often than not, this relationship is conceived as a conflict,with patriarchy and female emancipation the landmarks of thisbattle. In light of what we saw above, this battle is just one expres-sion of the way the two primary drives relate to one another inevery subject. This brings me to my final thesis. Rather than inter-preting this opposition as masculine versus feminine, it is muchmore illuminating to read it as active versus passive. However, thisdoes not imply that passive represents feminine and active mascu-line. Freud describes a “drive for mastery” through which thesubject tries to master the object. Both man and woman fear beingreduced to the passive object of enjoyment of the Other becausesuch a reduction entails the disappearance of a separate existence.As a result, every subject actively strives for independence and


autonomy. At the same time, however, everyone—whether mascu-line or feminine—aims to fuse with the lost part and be reduced toits passive object. This explains why every subject suffers fromseparation anxiety as well.

The resulting ambivalence is present in every individual as theexpression of the two primary drives. Its enactment between twodifferent subjects, whatever their biological sex, is indeed an enact-ment of a more original problem. For as long as we can fight withour partner, we need not address our inner division. . . .

* * *By way of conclusion, let us return to the original problem. Thetendency towards mastery and the fear of passivity has to do withour anxiety about death. All human activity, sexual or not, isdirected against our final disappearance into the unknown, beyondthe Symbolic.

NOTES

Julia Kristeva could not, at short notice and due to family reasons, person-ally attend the conference in Stockholm. Mariam Alizade, president ofCOWAP, presented a summary of her paper, and the full paper was distributedto all the participants. Due to the circumstances the organizers of the Confer-ence asked Paul Verhaeghe not only to comment on Kristeva’s paper but also topresent his own ideas. [I.M.]

1. The page numbers refer to the original French edition, included in theEnglish translation.

2. For Lacan, see his theory on the mirror stage and on alienation andseparation. For the attachment theory, see Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, & Target(2002).

3. “But that doesn’t stop it from existing”, Charcot would have said.4. For a more detailed discussion, see Verhaeghe (2001), pp. 65–133.

REFERENCES

Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E., & Target, M. (2002). Affect Regulation,Mentalization, and the Development of the Self. New York: OtherPress.

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Freud, S. (1895d). Studies on Hysteria. S.E., 2.Freud, S. (1913f). The theme of the three caskets. S.E., 12.Freud, S. (1920g). Beyond the Pleasure Principle. S.E., 18.Freud, S. (1923b). The Ego and The Id. S.E., 19.Freud, S. (1937c). Analysis terminable and interminable. S.E., 23.Lacan, J. (1946). Propos sur la causalité psychique. In: Ecrits (pp. 151–

193). Paris: Seuil, 1966.Lacan, J. (1974). Télévision. Paris: Seuil.Lacan, J. (1998). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX. Encore (1972–

73). In: J. A. Miller (Ed.), On Feminine Sexuality. The Limits of Loveand Knowledge. New York: Norton.

Plato (1994). The Collected Dialogues. In: E. Hamilton & H. Cairns(Eds.), Bollingen Series, LXXI (pp. 543–544). Princeton, NJ: Prince-ton University Press.

Verhaeghe, P. (2001). Beyond Gender. From Subject to Drive. New York:Other Press.

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CHAPTER FIVE

The difference between genderand sexual difference

Juliet Mitchell

In Monika Treut’s film My Father Is Coming (1990), as he drivesalong, the hero repeatedly muses about his face in the carmirror. He shows a young woman a photograph: “Is that your

sister?” she asks; “closer than that”, he replies. Brothers and sistersrepresent the minimal distance between people that must be pre-served if incest is to be avoided. The photograph is not of the hero’ssister: it is of himself before he had a “sex-change” operation. Iwant to suggest that the term “gender” has come to prominence (atleast in the Anglo-Saxon world) even within psychoanalytic dis-course because what is being described is not the maximal differ-ence between mothers and fathers but the minimal difference ofsibling sexual relations, which themselves are only a shade awayfrom a narcissistic economy in which the other is the self: “closerthan that”. Treut’s transgendered hero can stand as an icon of howpsychically and physically close siblings can be.

I shall argue that “sexual difference”—the correct term forpsychoanalytic understanding of masculinity and femininity—im-plicates reproduction. “Gender”, which is now used indiscrimi-nately, has been deployed unwittingly to express a sexuality that isnot primarily or predominantly procreative. Sibling relations may

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be—indeed, in some circumstances, such as Ptolemaic Egypt, mustbe—reproductive, but I contend we should confine the word “gen-der” to non-procreative sexuality, to sexuality that is bound upwith survival and hence violence. The prevalence of gender as aconcept, in my argument, has come about because since the 1960s,dominant sexual modes in the West have been non-reproductive.Though it may seem to be stretching the point, I would include inthis observation the new reproductive technologies, which seem tome to be in some ways about gender relations rather than sexualdifference.

It is not, of course, a case of the reproductive and sexual driveeconomies being distinct in real life—but I believe that it will helpus to understand a number of phenomena if we separate themanalytically. As Freud wrote in another context, in the clinicalsituation the colours are blurred; after we have made them distinctlike a primitive painting for the purposes of analytical understand-ing—we murder to dissect—we must allow them to merge togetheragain. For Freud, “reproduction” is impregnated with sexualitybecause it is the result of channelling the explosiveness of sexualityinto oedipal desires and then repressing them. But reproductionwithin psychoanalytic theory—and more generally—constantlyslips back into an ideology of an asexual dynamic. This asexualityprobably arises because (again, in the modern Western world)reproduction is linked to women. Mothers—even wives, andwomen generally—are not seen psychologically as subjects of de-sire. In the ideology women either have too much sexuality or noneat all. The Victorian idyll of woman as asexual mother can be takenas the icon of reproduction.

Confining “sexual difference” to the construction of reproduc-tive relations and “gender” to the wider category of sexuality must,then, not be taken in an absolute sense. Yet, despite this caution, Ibelieve the distinction is useful in a number of ways, not leastbecause it helps to explain the question André Green (1995) ad-dressed to psychoanalysis: “What has happened to sexuality?” andto return us to sexuality’s insistent, if neglected, history. I shallcontend that the clinical and theoretical subjugation of sexuality toreproduction is a hidden version of the repudiation of sexualityitself. Such a subjugation, which, Freud argued, was central to eachand every deviation from psychoanalysis from Jung onwards, is, of

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course, what is supposed to happen (at least hitherto) in humanhistory: the polymorphously perverse infant must be transformedinto the post-oedipal child. (This history overlooks deviants such asWilhelm Reich. In other words, either we argue that opposition topsychoanalysis is opposition to sexuality, or we ignore the opposi-tion of the psychoanalytic sexual radicals.)

What is more, our theory and practice may be moving awayfrom its focus on reproduction and sexual difference towards aconcern with gender, but at a time when the notion of gender hasitself become etiolated as far as sexuality is concerned. The histo-rian Joan Scott writes of “gender” as a category of historical analy-sis; what she writes is: “The use of gender emphasises an entiresystem of relationships that may include sex, but it is not directlydetermined by sex nor directly determining of sexuality” (Scott,1996). For a psychoanalyst to first substitute gender for sexualdifference and then contemplate a notion of gender without sex orsexuality at the centre must be problematic—yet that, I believe, iswhat has happened. In proposing that we reconsider both “gen-der” and “sexual difference”, one of my aims is to prevent usslipping away into psychotherapies that find no key role for sexu-ality in the construction of the psyche or ones that believe thatsexuality is only out there in the actual world of abuse. Siblingsshow us just how crucial a force sexuality is in a psycho-socialdynamics.

Robert Stoller, the Californian psychoanalyst, notoriously intro-duced the distinction between “sex” as the biological factor and“gender” as the social contribution to a person’s being (Stoller,1968). Feminist sociologists, such as Ann Oakley (1972) in Britain,and anthropologists, such as Gayle Rubin (1975) in the UnitedStates, adopted the distinction. As the distinction entered sociol-ogy, the sexuality vanished. However, over recent decades “gen-der” has shifted meaning and come also to stand for therelationship between women and men (feminine and masculine;female and male) in any given context and on a par with race: it canthus have both a biological and a sociological dimension; thisrestores a possible place for sexuality. While I see this as a usefulmove, I think we need to try to specify “gender” further and weneed, too, to interrogate it in the interests of sexuality—not to letsexuality slip out of the picture again. To do this, it is simpler to

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start with the concept it has largely replaced but which, I argue,should be retained while being distinguished from it: the conceptof “sexual difference”.

When Jacques Lacan “returned” to Freud, it was, in this connec-tion, to emphasize the castration complex—the psychic play of atraumatic prohibition around which sexual difference came to besymbolized. Female and male were both equally subject to thepossible loss of the phallus, but differently so. This distinct subjec-tion depends on the future differences between mothers and fa-thers. In all instances it is sexed reproduction that necessitatespsychic sexual difference—whether, as for some theorists, suchdifference is introduced by God (Ernest Jones) or the biologicalbody or, as for others, it is enjoined by the conditions of humansociality. All children fantasize making and giving birth to babies.How our psyches construct the coming-to-knowledge of the post-oedipal child that it takes two different beings—or, rather, twobeings whose differences are conceptualized to do this—is the condi-tion of sexual difference.

Reproduction, in dominant discourses, is counted on the side ofthe woman, and the fantasies we hear from patients or observe inchildren endorse a preoccupation with the mother. If the child isOedipus, then it will be his mother who is the focus of attention.The repeated claims that Freudian psychoanalysis is phallocentricand patriarchal forget that the preoccupation with motherhoodwith which it was hoped to counteract patriarchy is, instead, theother side of the same coin. The recent attempt to make the mothernot the object of the baby’s needs and the child’s enquiries but,instead, a subject in her own right and to see the task of the psycheas one of subject–subject interaction corrects the subject–object ofoedipality and pre-oedipality, but only at the expense of takingsexual difference for granted rather than as constructed with diffi-culty. Where sexual difference is concerned, does not one sexalways take the other as its object? Is not that the point? Subject–subject interaction, I contend, takes place in the zone of siblinghoodwhere “gender difference” also belongs.

Subject–subject interaction has long been the focus of feministanalyses, as in Simone de Beauvoir’s phenomenological renditionof Hegel. This subject–subject interaction is now attracting somepsychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic attention. However, sexual


reproduction demands first the attraction and then the overcom-ing, both in orgasm and in procreativity, of the otherness of theother, so that the otherness of the other turns into “we are as one”.That the feminine is constituted as in itself an object as a result ofthe identifications that follow from the absence of the phallus as acondition of the castration complex makes that fact a crucial prob-lem for feminism. There seems to me no intrinsic reason why eachsex could not take the other as object in a more egalitarian manner.But that is not my concern here. My point is simply that sexedreproduction demands some conceptualization of sexual differ-ence, which in turn entails both a subject–object dynamic andheterosexuality. There are other ways of having a child, but not asyet of procreating and giving birth to one.

As soon as Freud had discovered and formulated the Oedipuscomplex, psychoanalytic theory entered the realm of “object rela-tions”. And as the perspective was from the pre-oedipal or oedipalchild, the focus would inevitably become the mother as object.From the very conditions of phallocentricity arose the focus onfemale sexuality that, it had been hoped, would be its obverse.Clinically we talk about our mothers: the effort to write aboutfathers is an attempt to right the balance, to bring the reproductiveman in as object of our attentions. For this reason it has been malehysteria—what happens to the boy’s wish to give birth—ratherthan the female hysteric as a proto-feminist that has interested me.

The ego is a body ego—female/male bodies are different, mor-phologically, hormonally, endocrinally, functionally—although, ofcourse, they are very much the same if we compare them withgiraffes. Sexual difference is not what leaps to mind when we firstlook at most animals. However, for humans with regard to sexualdifference, the bodily difference is perceived representationally asa reproductive difference. Eggs, sperm, menstruation, menopause,vagina, clitoris, penis, womb, body-hair, voice timbre, pelvicshape, height, weight, and size—whether or not they directly affectdifferent reproductive roles—are given their meaning in relation tothis: they contribute to the fantasies of sexual difference, to therepresentations of women and men in their difference from eachother. So too do clothes, hair-cuts, verbal idioms, and a wide rangeof other cross-culturally and socially various insignia. Our egos arethus always sexed egos, and they are sexed around reproduction.

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The hysteric who has not taken on board sexual difference, nor thatit takes two different sexes to reproduce, is, to that degree, alsorelatively ego-less, his “I” a wandering will-o’-the-wisp, “empty ofhimself” or grandiose. This hysterical “mirror stage” precedes thesymbolization of sexual difference.

Sexual difference, reproductive difference, although it may finda resting-place in biology, is no more “natural” than the ego of themirror stage: it is constructed as a representation; it is constructedin the mirror of the other’s desire. Why, asks Freud, when male andfemale are in all important respects alike, do we do so much todifferentiate them? The answer, surely, is in order to mark psychi-cally the sexual difference of sexed reproduction.

I would argue, however, that there is no reproductive drive—only reproductive fantasies. If reproduction is measured along theline of the woman, sexuality (in the West) is the province of theman. What did Freud mean by saying that there is only one libidoand it is a male one, if not that this was so for women as well asmen? Psychoanalytic (Freudian) theory is certainly phallocentric,in that Western ideologies equate the male with sexuality and thefemale with asexual motherhood.

Because psychoanalysis has followed culture into subordinat-ing sexuality to reproduction, it has lost sight of its own revolution-ary insight into the importance of sexuality; it has necessarilymoved from the understanding gained from grasping the psychicsymptom as a sexual manifestation to following the interplay offantasies. The clinical transference, which should represent theimpasses produced by fantasies (Lacan, 1982), can become the be-all and end-all of therapeutic resolution and theoretical research, tobe or not to be married, to have or not to have a baby, the mark of“the cure”. To restore sexuality to its central place would entailresolving the symptom back into the unconscious representationsof the sexual drive that composes it; a large part of this sexual driveis “perverse”.

To re-read The Three Essays on Sexuality (Freud, 1905d) is to beconfronted with a paradoxical sensation: the essays’ theses—inparticular the presence of infantile sexuality—have long been com-pletely accepted, yet one is faced with what is still today a brief butrevolutionary volume. This is not only because what it argued in1905 was path-breaking then, but because it still is today: the


argument has not now, nor ever in the past, collapsed back intocommon sense or acceptable ideologies—despite apparently beingaccepted, it is as radical as it ever was.

Octave Mannoni called The Three Essays “the book of the drive”(Mannoni, 1968). It is in this book that we can find the lost sexualityof psychoanalysis: a book that starts with the human being asnecessarily perverse and puts into question any idea of naturaland normal sexual desires, of “sexual difference” and reproduction.The radical implications of the concept of “gender” within psy-choanalysis should be heir to The Three Essays, for “gender” does notimply the necessity of genitality nor of a fixed sexual object nor ofreproduction. Although gender is deployed in the construction ofdifference, it is not structured around it. The difference between thesexes to which gender necessarily refers lies outside its framework,thus no explanation of hierarchy is called for—the term appliesindifferently to women as to men. Analogously to race, genderproduces its own differences; difference is not intrinsic to theconcept as it is to “sexual difference”. “Gender” is the polymor-phously perverse child, grown up. Its morality comes from else-where than the subjection of sexuality to reproduction. It comesfrom the relationship between sexuality and violence in the strug-gle for psychic survival which at a certain stage is interpreted asdominance.

I suggest, then, that the morality of gender has to do not withaccepting sexual difference but with the resolution of violence,being able to accept instead of murdering the other who is so likeone. This self-same other is both the same as the self in humanneeds while simultaneously other than oneself—likeness inunlikeness, unlikeness in likeness. In reproductive “sexual differ-ence” relationships, the other object illusorily offers what the sub-ject has not got; that is not the case with gender. “Gender” does notrevolve around what is constituted as “missing”—such as theabsent phallus—nor implicate its replacement such as its compen-sation in the baby (the equation “baby = phallus”). The Three Essaysare on the perversions, infantile sexuality, and puberty. Thereneeds to be a fourth to complete the stress on non-reproductivesexuality, a fourth that might have been quite as shocking as thenotion of infantile sexuality in its time: the sexuality of the post-menopausal woman. [This was noted early: Helene Deutsch (1947)

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recorded with pleasure a response of Princess Metternich whenasked about sex in the elderly woman: “You will have to asksomeone else, I’m only sixty.” As with the “discovery” of infantilesexuality, everybody except the experts has known about it allalong.]

Since the 1960s reproduction and sexuality have become un-locked—Freud once remarked that whoever found the means ofachieving this would have accomplished something of untold ben-efit to mankind. In the Western world there are now very fewcountries that are replacing their populations through births; thehigher the economic success of the woman, the greater the chanceof “childfree-ness”. Where children are wanted, this can be so-cially detached from heterosexuality, from reproductive age—even, partially, from life. This is not quite so biologically, althoughnow reality is nearly in line with fantasy sex and the anus will beable to house the embryo. It is not, I believe, that these social ortechnological changes play out immediately into psychic life: it is,rather, that there is something latent in psychic life that respondsto them, indeed that must have been part of their pre-condition—because asexual reproduction is a prevalent fantasy with manyversions, in time it can be realized technologically. Judith Butler,the promoter of “gender trouble”, asks questions that are pointingnot so much to something universally radical as to a potentiality ofa particular historical time in a very limited geographical place(Butler, 1999):

Is the breakdown of gender binaries . . . so monstrous, sofrightening, that it must be held to be definitionally impossibleand heuristically precluded from any effort to think gender?[p. viii]

[This] text asks, how do non-normative sexual practices callinto question the stability of gender as a category of analysis?How do certain sexual practices compel the question: what is awoman, what is a man? [p. xii]

For “non-normative” I believe we should substitute “non-repro-ductive”. More fundamentally, I would argue that we can chal-lenge “gender binaries”, as Butler suggests, precisely becausegender, unlike sexual difference, is not constructed as a binary.


A plurality of sexual relationships has been on the agenda sincethe very onset of second-wave feminism in the 1960s; that was theconclusion to my own first work in this field (Mitchell, 1966). I nowbelieve that the very notion of gender came into being as anexpression of this proposed pluralistic programme. However,where we have hitherto looked for a relationship between socialchange and the psyche along the lines of a very slow alteration inthe content of the ego, I would now argue for a much greaterinteraction between the two spheres.1

At the end of the nineteenth century the patriarch was the mostvisible social force—Freud’s theories of the mind implicated thefather. However, subterraneously the period saw the rise of theoverwhelming importance of the child and, with it, the mother. Itwas not only that this social change eventually impacted, some twodecades later, on psychoanalytic theory with the so-called “moth-ering of psychoanalysis” (Sayers, 1991), it was that the child and itsmother were always crucial aspects of psychic fantasy, which be-came more dominant with changing social practices. These latentpsychic factors assisted the social change. So too with the recent useof a recognition of siblings. The point is obvious—however, it isdifficult for any of us to perceive what has not yet emerged.

My argument is threefold, my third point being my greatestconcern: (1) that the shift from the deployment of the concept of“sexual difference” to that of “gender” indicates a move from thedominance of reproductive object-relations, oedipal and pre-oedi-pal–maternal, to a gamut of “polymorphously perverse” sexualarrangements; (2) that the previous dominance of reproductionwas, in part, responsible for the demise of the determinative role ofsexuality within psychoanalysis; and (3) that, although there isalways interaction, the perpetuation of the polymorphously per-verse, non-reproductive sexuality takes place through lateral, notvertical relationships, starting with siblings in the context alwaysof peers and later of affines. In other words, as the infant–maternalwas latent in the heyday of patriarchal psychoanalysis, so thesibling/the lateral has been latent throughout the reproductive(inevitably more matriarchal than patriarchal) period. The evi-dence and suppression/repression of this can, I think, be noted inwork arising from the two world wars.

76 JULIET MITCHELL

What would/will this lateral gender sexuality look like? Howwill it affect our theory? What follows are some suggestions forclinical research into this question. The advent of a sibling (orawareness of the older other who is so like the emergent infantilesubject) produces ecstasy along narcissistic lines and despair occa-sioned by the sense of annihilation of being displaced/replaced orjust “not there”. The baby, no less than the parent, is entranced bythe child’s self-sufficient playfulness. But the other child, usuallythe sibling, delights for its own reasons too. What are the psychicmechanisms involved?

Instead of Oedipus Rex we will have Antigone: murderous broth-ers, a sister, Antigone, who knows the meaning of death, and one,Ismene, who does not. My suggestion of an “Antigone complex”negotiates the life-and-death conflict of the “self and other”. Itimplicates power, violence, love, and hate. Then instead of thefather’s “no” phallus for the mother of the castration complex (andwhat earlier I have argued is the mother’s “no”, you cannot bepregnant), we have a sister, Antigone, insisting that one mustacknowledge two brothers, not just one—even if they are differentfrom each other and at war, they are equal in death. Instead of thehiatus of “latency” between Oedipus and puberty (dyphasic “sexu-ality”), lateral sexuality is subject to the social/educational enforce-ment of Antigone’s law: different but equal. Lateral desire does notinvolve the symbolization that comes about through the absence ofthe phallus (or womb): it involves seriality. As a part of a series,girls and boys are “equilateral”—in other words, they are notdefined by what is missing. Girls and boys explore what is there,not what is not.

There seems to be no use of an intrinsic difference here in theway that marks the social construction of sexual difference forreproduction. Gender sexuality can be realized in transgendering,homosexuality, and heterosexuality. “Latency” has been noted tobe less marked than in earlier historical periods; this may well bebecause the increasing role of the school in relation to the familyprivileges lateral and peer relations over vertical child–parentones. The dominance of a lateral peer-group facilitates non-repro-ductive sexual exploration of all kinds. But the violence that is theresponse to the danger of “death” or the subject’s annihilation


marks the sexuality and may be what establishes the enforcementof male supremacy. Sisters and brothers mark the nuclear point ofsameness and difference: is that your sister? “Closer than that” forthe transsexual or transgender but further than that for the affinewhom one might marry. At one end of laterality is a minimaldifferentiation, at the other much greater separation when brothersand sisters love, cherish and protect, kill, rape, or simply losetouch. An “Antigone complex” is only one aspect of laterality—Shakespeare’s comedies can provide a playground in which wemight search for the pleasures of sibling sameness and difference:the joy of the child in the child.

NOTES

This chapter has been adapted from a chapter in J. Mitchell, Siblings: Sex andViolence (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2003).

1. In a forthcoming study, Mauthner (2003), claims that sistering contrib-utes to feminine psychology as much as mothering and daughtering. Thisconfirms my argument that the neglect of sibling relations underlies ourblindness to this social shift. On the greater interaction of the social and psyche,see my own volume (Mitchell, 1984, Ch. 3); from the outset the neonate takes inthe social as well as its own bodily experiences.

REFERENCES

Butler, J. (1999). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.Tenth Anniversary edition. London: Routledge.

Deutsch, H. (1947). The Psychology of Women: A Psychoanalytic Interpre-tation. Vol. II: Motherhood. London: Research Books.

Freud, S. (1905d). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. S.E., 7.Green, A. (1995). Has sexuality anything to do with psychoanalysis?

International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 76 (5): 871–883.Lacan, J. (1982). Intervention on transference. In: J. Mitchell & J. Rose

(Eds.), Feminine Sexuality and the École Freudienne (pp. 61–73). Lon-don: W. W. Norton.

Mannoni, O. (1968). Freud and the Unconscious. New York: PantheonBooks.

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Mauthner, M. (2003). Sistering: Power and Change in Female Relation-ships. London: Palgrave, Macmillan.

Mitchell, J. (1966). Women: The longest revolution. In: Women: TheLongest Revolution. Essays on Feminism, Literature and Psychoanaly-sis. London: Virago, 1984.

Mitchell, J. (1984). Women: The Longest Revolution. Essays on Feminism,Literature and Psychoanalysis. London: Virago.

Oakley, A. (1972). Sex, Gender and Society. London: Maurice TempleSmith.

Rubin, G. (1975). The traffic in women: Notes on the political economyof sex. In: J. W. Scott (Ed.), Feminism and History (pp. 105–151).Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Sayers, J. (1991). Mothering Psychoanalysis. London: Hamish Hamilton.Scott, J. W. (1996). Gender: A useful category of historical analysis. In:

J. W. Scott (Ed.), Feminism and History (pp. 152–180). Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Stoller, R. (1968). Sex and Gender. London: Hogarth.

79

CHAPTER SIX

Gender and sexual difference

Colette Chiland

For a full discussion of Juliet Mitchell’s very stimulatingchapter (Chapter 5, this volume), several points would re-quire further clarification and therefore deserve to be devel-

oped in much greater detail than is possible within the confines ofone chapter; I shall therefore have to put many of these to one side.In reading her chapter, I found myself in complete agreement withcertain of her statements and in disagreement with some others. Itis not enough, of course, simply to say, “I do not agree”; we shouldtry to understand what gives rise to this kind of disagreement.

I am in complete agreement with Juliet Mitchell when shestresses the importance of sexual difference. I myself lay a greatdeal of emphasis on this in my book, Le Sexe mène le monde [Sexmakes the world go round] (Chiland, 1999), though I would notdefine sexual difference only with reference to reproductive sexu-ality, as she does. As far as I am concerned, gender has not replacedsexual difference, nor does the “subject–subject construction” liewithin the area of gender and the sexual drive (therefore beinglinked more to the relationship between siblings than to the par-ent–child relationship).

80 COLETTE CHILAND

I have essentially five points that I discuss here:

1. the importance of the sexual difference;

2. the dissociation of sexuality from procreation;

3. gender;

4. gender and the sexual difference;

5. what we mean by “man” and by “woman”.

The importance of the sexual difference

The importance of sexual difference was dismissed by a somefeminists, in part because of the confusion that existed betweenfacts and rights. As regards facts, the recognition of the reality of aparticular difference between men and women is unavoidable; todesignate it, I use exactly the same phrase as does Juliet Mitchell:sexual difference. But this fact does not and should not implyinequality of rights between men and women; this is the point ofthe—perfectly legitimate—struggle that feminist movements haveconducted. My impression, however, is that we have not thoughtdeeply enough about the reasons why, in different cultures andover the centuries, women have allowed themselves to be debasedand oppressed—and still continue to do so in many places—andwhy they have consented to their destiny, a destiny that is not adirect consequence of anatomy or biology, but of the social inter-pretation of these elements.

What, then, do we mean by sexual difference? Here, as I haveindicated, my own point of view diverges somewhat from JulietMitchell’s. I would say that sexual difference involves not only therole of each partner in procreation (the man impregnates, thewoman gives birth and provides milk), but also the “position” ofeach of them in actual intercourse (the man penetrates, the womanis penetrated); it involves also, even before intercourse and pro-creation come into the picture, the experience of one’s body, thepsychosexual cycle of life. All of this has to do with the genitals, butin a way that appears more complicated than at first glance—andthan what used to be the case in the past: we must, after all, have athought for the intersexed, transsexuals, and paraplegics, for ex-

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ample. It is not the actual performance of intercourse and subse-quent fertility that characterizes a man or a woman, but the possi-bility or potentiality of these—though it is true that some societiesdo demand actual performance: an unmarried woman is not con-sidered to be a “proper” woman, a sterile man or woman is notconsidered to be a “proper” man or woman, a man without sons isnot considered to be a “proper” man, and so on. Though the sexualdifference is indeed based on bodily characteristics, it is always“interpreted” by the society in which we live.

A woman’s experience of her body is obviously a little morecomplicated than the fact of not having a penis. Many differentexperiences have to be lived through and accepted, and there aremarked caesuras: the menarche, menses, defloration, pregnancyand childbirth, and, finally, the menopause—the keynote sign in allof these stages being blood: from when it first appears to the daywhen it ceases to flow. Menstrual blood is tremendously important:the female genitals are interpreted in terms of a wound (we haveonly to look at the wall-paintings in prehistoric caves); menstrualblood is seen as dirty and dangerous, yet at the same time powerfulbecause of its connection with fertility; women are ashamed andfeel guilty, and this leaves the way open to all kinds of submissive-ness. “For indeed, a Baruya woman has merely to see blood start toflow between her thighs for her to hold her tongue and mutelyconsent to whatever economic, political, and psychological oppres-sion she may be subjected” (Godelier, 1982, p. 353; 1986, p. 233).

There are no such occurrences in the sexual life of men; theirfirst ejaculations are not a particularly dramatic event. Conse-quently, society creates rites of passage for men; these may at timesbe cruel in the extreme, for men have to prove their strength; theyhave to cut themselves off from the feminine world in which theirmothers brought them up as young boys and expel any trace offemininity that they may still be carrying within.

The dissociation between sexuality and procreation

I have the feeling that it is the question of the dissociation betweensexuality and procreation that leads Juliet Mitchell to link, on theone hand, sexual difference with procreation, the parents, and the

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Oedipus complex and, on the other, gender with the sexual driveand the relationship with siblings.

In fact, among mammals, the dissociation between sexualityand procreation is specific to human beings, given the disappear-ance of oestrus (the period during which fertilization is possible) asa prerequisite for copulation. That is one reason why some col-leagues maintain that all human sexuality is perverse in nature:pleasure replaces procreation as its aim.

Socially and psychologically, however, this dissociation raisesvarious problems. There is no natural expression of drives inhuman beings; everything is regulated by society: human beings“marchent à la représentation” [“function by representation”], wroteMaurice Godelier. We are frightened by the sheer power of ourdrives. It is for this reason that religion has had such an enormousimpact; in the Christian world, sexuality is suffused with guilt,unless its primary aim happens to be procreation.

In his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud (1905d)affirmed the existence of infantile sexuality, which has no connec-tion with procreation, and integrated perverse sexuality within thewider domain of human sexuality. It is not only the brother–sisterrelationship that has no connection with procreation, it is the wholeof infantile sexuality.

For Freud, children are polymorphously perverse, because theirerotogenic zones are not under the primacy of the genital zone andthe relationship with the object. But perverse children stricto sensudo exist, even though Freud made no mention of them; I suggest asan example a six-year-old boy who forced little girls to suck hispenis in the stairway of the apartment block where he lived. Ac-cording to Freud, the perverse adult is fixated at or regresses toinfantile sexuality and can only reach orgasm by inflexible andexclusive acts that have little to do with “normal” adult sexualpractice. I am using the term “normal” to designate the final stageof sexual development: union of the genitals with the aim of pro-creation.

Other authors have linked perversion with the seduction of ason by his mother and his humiliation because of his impotency(Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, throughout her works), or with thehumiliation of the boy as a male, with a consequent threat to hisgender identity (Robert Stoller, throughout his works).


The brother-and-sister relationship does not represent “theatom of kinship” as defined by Lévi-Strauss. Lévi-Strauss’s atom ofkinship consists of a man, his wife, and their son—an “atom” thatcombines kinship by descent and kinship by marriage. All of thisauthor’s descriptions focus on the male ego, perhaps because heaffirms that men exchange women and not the converse; all rules asregards prohibited categories of marriage are described in terms ofa man’s choice of woman, never the other way around. I know ofonly one author who defines a “family” atom as a man, his wife,and their son and daughter, thus ensuring the reproduction of thespecies and the relationship with the universe: Bernard Saladind’Anglure (1985), who studied the Inuit and the importance theyattach to the fact of having children of both sexes. This is linked tothe importance of the brother–sister pair in Inuit mythology(p. 141).

Gender

Gender was introduced as a concept in 1955 by John Money—notby Stoller, as is often claimed—when he wrote about “genderroles” in his study of the intersexed (Money, Hampson, &Hampson, 1955). Children have an ingrained feeling that theybelong to the sex in which they have been reared. For example,mutatis mutandis, a child with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, XXchromosomes, an oversized clitoris, ovaries, and womb will, infact, feel him- or herself to be a girl or a boy depending on his or herassigned sex; a child without a penis or with a micropenis and XYchromosomes will still feel him- or herself to be a boy or a girl,depending on his or her assigned sex. The crucial factor is theparents’ conviction as regards their infant’s sex, because they willbring him or her up in accordance with these innermost feelings.Traditionally, societies assigned sex on the basis of the appearanceof the external genitalia. The assignment proposed by Money wasbased on the feasibility of plausible genitals; if I may say so—though the precise reference escapes me—someone once wrotesomething about a hole being easier to make than a pole. . . .

If the parents have reared their child in the firm belief that he orshe is a boy or, mutatis mutandis, a girl, that assigned sex is more

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important than biological givens. Where there is conflict betweenbiological data and psychological forces, the latter may well provestronger than the biological forces.

After “gender role” appeared “gender identity”, a term firstused by Evelyn Hooker, according to Money (1985); then came thedivision between sex and gender due to Stoller, again according toMoney (1985). The concept of “core gender identity” was coined byStoller and that of “gender role identity” by Ovesey and Person(1973).

Robert Stoller’s two volumes entitled Sex and Gender (1968,1975) are well known. “Core gender identity” is the feeling of beinga male or a female (or a hermaphrodite, in rare cases), while“gender identity” is the feeling of being masculine or feminine. Sexis biological, gender is social and psychological. But, for Stoller,gender is not entirely distinct from sex. Masculinity and femininityare very difficult to define because they do not exist per se—theyare culture-dependent, interpretations of maleness and femaleness(Stoller, 1980). Stoller’s study of transsexualism (a word coined byHarry Benjamin in 1953) followed on from his study of theintersexed.

Gender holds a tremendous attraction for sociologists and forfeminists, though they have gone beyond what was said by Money,Stoller, and others, by claiming that gender is wholly a creation ofsociety. We may object that had the sexes not existed, societywould not have invented genders; in fact, it did not invent genders:it gave arbitrary meanings to the sexes—it invented grammaticalgender, which is not strictly connected with sex and does not existin every language (Corbett, 1991).

Finally, sex itself came to be considered as an invention ofsociety, because all our thinking about sex is filtered through socialrepresentations. Some go as far as to speak of “biological gender”,though this nullifies the original sense of the term “gender”. I preferto speak, in addition to biological sex, of psychological sex, andsocietal or social sex (birth certificates in France specify “sexe fém-inin” or “sexe masculin”—that is, a reference to sex, not to gender),and I support the struggle for sexual equality. It can be seen that,instead of clarification, the idea of gender may generate confusion.

Many of those who use the notion of gender are involved in thestruggle against the dichotomy between the sexes as source of


discrimination; they are concerned also by issues such as the cat-egorization of sexual orientation. I would surmise—without anycertainty, of course—that Juliet Mitchell would tend to see in thesibling relationship, with its non-reproductive sexuality, the root ofsexual variations (i.e. any kind of sexuality that is not heterosexual-ity). For me it is strange to think of the Oedipus complex as notrelated to the sexual drive. In general, the child feels excluded fromthe relationship between the parents, a relationship in which he orshe wants to occupy one and the other position. For Freud, bisexu-ality, defined as involving both homosexual and heterosexual im-pulses, was related to this complete form of the Oedipus complex.For the person who refuses his or her gender, the way the parentsexperience both their sexed identity (gender identity) and theirsexuality as a couple is important.

Gender and the sexual difference

I would argue that gender as such does not express any form ofsexuality, reproductive or not. It is an expression of “being”. I findit important also to distinguish between “sexed”, which deals withsex differences, and “sexual”, which deals with sexuality. In myview there exists a sexed identity (gender identity), but it is prob-lematic to affirm the existence of sexual identity, either hetero- orhomo- or bisexual.

Juliet Mitchell claims that the ego is always sexed, and is sexedas regards sexuality. I would argue that the self is always sexed,and sexed as regards narcissism. By “self” and “identity” I mean,following Winnicott (1958, p. 248): “the individual human being’scontinuity of being”. A child’s sex is in the mind of his or herparents before he or she becomes aware of it; later, children inter-pret the experience they have of their body through the consciousand unconscious messages communicated by their parents. This isthe register of narcissism and its development. Parents contributeto the development of healthy or pathological narcissism.

I do not think, as Juliet Mitchell suggests, that gender is heir tothe Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. It is, rather, heir to culturalanthropology, as expressed in Margaret Mead’s seminal work, Maleand Female: A Study of Sexes in a Changing World (1948). I wonder

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why that book is not referred to more often. Without employing theword “gender”, Mead shows that every society has a concept ofhow males and females should feel and behave and how, throughthe educative and other child-raising procedures it sets up, itshapes children in such a way that they become the men andwomen that society expects. Every behaviour and psychologicalfeature has been labelled masculine in one culture and feminine inanother, with the exception of war and motherhood; but even inthese two cases, women have sometimes gone to war, and men havepracticed the “couvade”, an imitation of pregnancy and childbirth.

Freud did not pay much attention to social aspects—they weremerely conventional, he argued—nor to psychological traits, sincethey were subject to individual variation. He made no distinctionbetween heredity and inheritance, believing that acquired charac-ters were in fact inherited. Feminine and masculine were definedby the characteristics of sexual cells and organs: the spermatozoidis active, the ovule is motionless and passive. Little girls were boysuntil puberty because they masturbated a masculine organ, theclitoris, considered by Freud to be an abortive penis.

He was not helped by the fact that there is only one word inGerman for sex and gender, Geschlecht, and one adjective for maleand masculine, männlich, just as for female and feminine, weiblich(the task of the translator into English or French is difficult: theconcepts have to be interpreted, not simply translated). Also, thenotion of personal identity was not used by Freud.

I would not say that gender has replaced sexual difference.Gender as a social construct was first distinguished from sex as abiological given and now tends to replace sex, at least outside thefield of psychoanalysis; sex also is now seen as a social construct.Within psychoanalysis, in object-relations theory, the search for theobject replaced pleasure-seeking; then drives and instincts disap-peared in relational psychoanalysis. In another context, the simpledichotomy between two sexes or two genders was called intoquestion: hence the introduction of a third sex/gender. Nowadaysthe dichotomy between sex and gender is also being questioned(Herdt, 1994):

Of course, there are conceptual dangers involved in breakingprecipitously with the past convention of distinguishing arbi-


trarily between sex (as biology and nature) and gender (asculture and nurture). However, we aim in this volume torenew the study of sexual and gender variation across time andspace, critically looking at the pitfalls of continuing to objectifythe dichotomy of sex and gender, which is probably culturallybound and scientifically misleading. [p. 21]

And, finally, “transgenderism” attempts to suppress gender, thedichotomy, and any categorization whatsoever.

Let us take transsexualism as an example of another way ofdealing with sexual difference. People may ask for hormonal andsurgical sex reassignment: some are transvestites, others prosti-tutes, and so on. I will consider those whose main problem relatesto their identity. They acknowledge the fact of a sexual differenceand are ready to accept it . . . but “over the sex border”, as GeorginaTurtle (1963) said—that is, on condition that they be allowed tobelong to the other sex. They acknowledge the sex of their body,but they claim that it is not “their” sex; their sex is that of theirmind and their soul. They want the surgeon to give them their“true” body. This is a denial of reality, for it is impossible to obtainthe “true” body or the “true” genitalia of the other sex. Neverthe-less, for these individuals, their neo-sex (by this I mean the recon-structed genitals) is the proof of the truth of their discourse whenthey say that they belong to the other sex.

They seem to have forgotten (sometimes they say they want toforget) the split that is operating here as regards their childhood,which they lived through as members of the abhorred sex. I havenot seen Monika Treut’s film. But, in my experience, no transsexualreveals anything of him/herself in the initial sex, the one assignedat birth (in this specific instance, female). Either they show photosof themselves proving that they have always been a member oftheir present sex, the target sex (in this case, a boy or man), or theydestroy the hated photos that show them as members of the sex towhich they refuse to belong. In the case of a female-to-male trans-sexual, the young man would hardly describe himself as “closerthan a sister”; the female figure (himself as he was in the past) ishated—it is as though she had never existed, as though she were acomplete stranger living in his body, as Domenico Di Ceglie andDavid Freedman (1998) put it.

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The transsexual puts us in a very difficult position. Transsexu-alism is still an enigma. It has been argued that the transsexualsuffers from having a female brain in a male body (or the converse,as the case may be), because of the structure of a small nucleussuch as the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the striaterminalis, around 2 mm3, the development of which may havebeen influenced by prenatal hormones (the role of this structure isknown in the behaviour of rats, but not in that of human beings,and of course we know nothing of the gender identity of rats).So the transsexual is an intersexed person who ought not to feelguilty for anything that has happened. If psychopathogenesis isevoked, transsexuals experience it as an accusation; they are not atall ready to explore what may be going on in their minds; whatthey want is a change of body. If parents consult for their youngchild who refuses his/her assigned identity without there beingany sign of an intersex condition, we see changes occurring as thework we do with the child and his/her parents progresses. Thusgender identity disorder may be the consequence of problems inthe parent–child relationship early on in life (only in rare cases isthere evidence of siblings playing a role in gender identity disor-der). There should be no more guilt attached to early psychologicalinfluences than to disharmony between the various biologicalcomponents of the body. Nevertheless, transsexuals tend to berejected, just as, in former times, the intersexed found themselvesrejected.

What do we mean by “man” and by “woman”

Once upon a time, I was satisfied with the following definitions: aman is a male who, accepting himself as masculine and wanting tobe recognized as such, broadly conforms to the masculine stere-otypes of the culture of which he is part; a woman is a female who,accepting herself as feminine and wanting to be recognized assuch, broadly conforms to the stereotypes of the culture of whichshe is part. I took for granted the fact that there were males andfemales, without the idea of “betwixt and between” ever crossingmy mind; I wanted simply to emphasize that refusal of one’s


assigned sex was different from the wish to fight the social preju-dices and inequalities of one’s culture.

But the problems of the intersexed (1.7 % of the population) aresuch that we can no longer avoid the question: what do we meanby “male” and “female”? In clear-cut cases there is no problem,because every individual fits the criteria: chromosomes, gonads,internal organs, appropriate hormone level, sensitivity to hor-mones, genitals, secondary characteristics. But what about peoplewho feel themselves to be men (or women) without being able tosatisfy the requirements of the sexual difference? They feel them-selves to be men without a penis, they cannot penetrate women,and they are sterile. Or they feel themselves to be women with noovaries, womb, periods, fertility, or vagina—though, as Stoller(1968, second ed., 1974, p. 51n) wrote: “If Freud had worked with awoman without a vagina, I think he would have seen that the onlything a woman wants more than a penis is a vagina. It is only whena woman has normal genitalia that she can afford the luxury ofwishing she had a penis.”

To come back to transsexuals (who number anything from 1 outof 30,000 to 1 out of 1,000,000 in the general population). Had theyremained within their initial sex, they could have led the perfectlyordinary life of a man or a woman (as the case may be). Surgery cangive them the appearance of a changed body, but not the real bodyof the other sex. They identify with the cultural values of theirtarget sex. Is it enough to be a man or a woman, a father or a mother(adoption, insemination by donor)? I am simply raising the ques-tion, with no pretence at having found the answer.

Certainly we need another kind of treatment—other, that is,than hormonal and surgical sex reassignment. But “to change whatis in the mind”—which is what some patients hope for, sincecomplete physical change is impossible—is still to invent (Chiland,1997a, 1997b, 2000). In the meantime, are they to be condemned tolive in a no man’s/no woman’s land? They are, after all, humanbeings.

We are tossed about like some frail skiff in a storm, as weoscillate between the desire for openness and the need, for the sakeof mental well-being—our own as well as that of other people—tohold on to what I call in French “la boussole du sexe” [the “sex

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compass”]: in other words, acknowledgement and acceptance ofthe sexual difference.

NOTE

Translation from the French revised by David Alcorn.

REFERENCES

Benjamin, H. (1953). Transvestism and transsexualism. InternationalJournal of Sexology, 7 (1): 12–14.

Chiland, C. (1997a). Changer de sexe. Paris, Odile Jacob. English edition:Transsexualism: Illusion and Reality (trans. Philip Slotkin). London:Continuum & Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2003.

Chiland, C. (Ed.) (1997b). Approche psychothérapique du transsexual-isme. Perspectives Psy, 36 (4): 256–296; 36 (5): 388–397.

Chiland, C. (1999). Le sexe mène le monde. Paris: Calmann-Lévy.Chiland, C. (2000). The psychoanalyst and the transsexual patient.

International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 81 (1): 21–35.Corbett, G. (1991). Gender. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cam-

bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Di Ceglie, D., & Freedman, D. (Eds.) (1998). A Stranger in My Own

Body. Atypical Gender Identity Development and Mental Health.London: Karnac Books.

Freud, S. (1905d). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. S.E., 7.Godelier, M. (1982). La production des Grands Hommes. Pouvoir et domi-

nation masculine chez les Baruya de Nouvelle-Guinée. Paris: Fayard.English edition: The Making of Great Men: Male Domination andPower among the New Guinea Baruya (trans. R. Swyer). Cambridge,UK & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Herdt, G. (Ed.) (1994). Third Sex, Third Gender, Beyond Sexual Dimor-phism in Culture and History. New York: Zone Books.

Mead, M. (1948). Male and Female: A Study of Sexes in a Changing World.New York: William Morrow.

Money, J. (1985). The conceptual neutering of gender and thecriminalization of sex. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 14 (3): 279–290.


Money, J., Hampson, J. G., & Hampson, J. L. (1955). Hermaphroditism:Recommendations concerning assignment of sex, change of sex,and psychologic management. Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital,97: 284–300.

Ovesey, L., & Person, E. (1973). Gender identity and sexual psychopa-thology in men: A psychodynamic analysis of homosexuality,transsexualism, and transvestism. Journal of the American Academyof Psychoanalysis, 1 (1): 53–72.

Saladin d’Anglure, B. (1985). Du projet “PAR.AD.I” au sexe des anges:Notes et débats autour d’un “troisième sexe”. Anthropologie etSociétés, 9 (3): 139–176.

Stoller, R. J. (1968). Sex and Gender, Vol. 1: The Development of Masculin-ity and Femininity. New York: Science House; second edition, NewYork: Jason Aronson, 1974.

Stoller, R. J. (1975). Sex and Gender, Vol. 2: The Transsexual Experiment.London: Hogarth Press.

Stoller, R. J. (1980). Femininity. In: M. Kirkpatrick, Women in Context:Women’s Sexual Development (pp. 127–145). New York: Plenum.

Turtle, G. (1963). Over the Sex Border: London: Gollancz.Winnicott, D. W. (1958). Mind and its relation to the psyche-soma.

Collected Papers, Through Paediatrics to Psycho-Analysis (pp. 243–254). London: Tavistock.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

From femininity to finitude:Freud, Lacan, and feminism, again

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For a long time I used to think that feminists ought to chooseLacan’s femininity theory over Freud’s. Although I considerFreud the greater thinker, his eternal harping on penis envy

and motherhood as the solution to the “problem” of femininitystruck me as intellectually wrongheaded, and misogynist too. In apassage that I particularly dislike, Freud claims that a woman ofabout thirty

often frightens us by her psychical rigidity and unchange-ability. . . . Her libido has taken up final positions and seemsincapable of exchanging them for others. There are no pathsopen to further development; it is as though the whole processhad already run its course and remains thenceforward insus-ceptible to influence—as though, indeed, the difficult develop-ment to femininity had exhausted the possibilities of theperson concerned. [Freud, 1933a, pp. 134–135]

These words are terrifying. Freud appears genuinely to believe thatat the age of thirty these women will never change.1 Their lives aredeprived of transcendence, Simone de Beauvoir would have said,for she thought of the future as the horizon towards which all

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human beings constantly reach. On this view, it is because thefuture is open, because we live in time, that human existence is acontinuous becoming and not a fixed essence. This continuousbecoming only stops at death. Deprived of a future, these rigid,unchanging women of thirty are the living dead, the Nosferatus ofthe soul. No wonder Freud finds them frightening.

Compared to this, Lacan seemed positively upbeat. For him,femininity is a position constructed in language, a position that canbe taken up by men as well as women. Here, I thought, there wasmore of a promise of freedom for women. Moreover, I have alwaysfelt particularly constricted by essentialist theories about women’snature: if the difference between Freud and Lacan was that Freud’sfemininity theory was essentialist whereas Lacan’s was construc-tionist, I knew which one I preferred.

Over the years, however, I came to change my mind—not aboutFreud’s theories about women, but about their relative meritscompared to those of Lacan. Reading Simone de Beauvoir andMaurice Merleau-Ponty, for whom the concrete, living body is ahistorically embedded situation, constantly created through inter-actions with others and the world, I came to see that Freud’sgeneral theory about the relationship between the body and sexedsubjectivity (as opposed to his specific theory of women’s differ-ence) was not so different from theirs, that he, too, thought of thebody as concrete, historical, and open to change. In such theoriesthe opposition between essence and construction does not apply.2

Lacan’s famous linguistic turn, on the other hand, transformsthe body into an abstract cipher, a purely idealist construct. Lacandoes not explicitly reject Freud’s theory about the way in whichpsychosexual subjectivity is developed in relation to the person’ssexed and gendered body. Lacan’s work still presupposes thattheory. Yet Lacan never really engages with this aspect of Freud’sthought, and as he moves towards post-Saussurean linguistics, theconcrete, living body is increasingly left unmentioned. This is apity, for Freud’s understanding of the body and subjectivity ispromising material for feminists. (In my view, Beauvoir’s analysisof how one becomes a woman draws on a very similar understand-ing of the body.3) When Freud himself tries to theorize women,however, the results are pitiful. He is, for example, mistaken aboutpenis envy, clitoral and vaginal pleasure, motherhood as a com-

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pensation for penis envy, women’s general preference for sonsover daughters, the unchangeability of women of thirty, and aboutmuch more too. (Is it really true, for example, that women have aless punitive superego than men?4)

At the same time as I was reading Freud with Beauvoir andMerleau-Ponty, I was also studying Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L.Austin, and Stanley Cavell. Their understanding of language andmeaning made the post-Saussurean view of language that under-pins Lacan’s theory appear flawed. I also came to feel increasinglyuneasy about the opposition between “construction” and “essence”that had pushed me towards Lacan in the first place.5 Soon Ireached the point where I could no longer understand somethingthat had once seemed luminously clear: namely, exactly what itmeans to say that something—femininity, for example—is “outsidelanguage”, or “beyond the phallus”.

In this situation, the old feminist accusations against psy-choanalysis returned to haunt me. Castration, in particular, hasalways been particularly troublesome to feminists. Women arecastrated. Femininity is an effect of castration (often euphemisti-cally renamed “lack”), woman is a void, a nothingness. Why wouldwomen have anything to do with a theory that makes such claims?Of course, the counterarguments instantly come to mind: don’tworry, we are all castrated; femininity is nothing but a slidingsignifier that can attach itself to any body. Yes, of course. Butalthough we are all castrated, all marked by lack, women somehowcome across as more castrated than men, just as the signifier offemininity gets attached to female bodies far more often than tomale ones. And why are women, but not men, exhorted to be,remain, become feminine? If women fail to conform to the theo-rist’s particular picture of femininity, why is this always presentedas a problem for women, but not for the theory?

In short: the old certainties were gone. It was time to return toFreud and Lacan, yet again. This essay is the result of that reread-ing. But why reread Freud and Lacan on femininity today? Thegreat majority of practicing analysts have long since abandonedclassical Freudian and Lacanian femininity theories and quiterightly insist that they do not analyse women with such notions inmind. Some analysts, not least in France, nevertheless remain in-spired by Lacan’s understanding of sexual difference. And even

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analysts who have no time for Lacan may be interested in seeingwhat insights a new reading of some classic psychoanalytic textswill yield. In contemporary cultural and literary theory the situa-tion is different. In these fields Lacan’s concepts of castration andfemininity, as well as Lacanian ideas about what is or is not “out-side language”, are still central, and every year all over the worldprofessors teach Lacan’s texts on femininity to new generations ofstudents.6

In this article I focus mostly on Lacan. But since Lacan’s theoryis based on a close reading of Freud, before turning to the relation-ship between the penis and the phallus (yet again), I start by takinga brief look at some aspects of Freud’s understanding of femininitythat are not so frequently discussed. I pay special attention toLacan’s post-Saussurean “linguistic turn”. I show that when thephallus becomes a signifier, an already dubious theory of feminin-ity as an effect of castration is wedded to a theory that postulatesthe existence of a realm “outside language”, to which femininityand its metaphysical ghost, jouissance, are relegated. An importantpart of my argument is that Lacan’s post-Saussurean linguisticsencounters serious challenges from recent interpretations ofWittgenstein’s philosophy of language. Then I show that theLacanian concept of castration slides between three different defi-nitions, in ways that make it both muddled and sexist. Finally, Isuggest that we can become clearer on what work the concept ofcastration can and cannot do for us if we reconsider it in the light ofa different concept—namely, finitude. I take this concept fromCavell but revise it in the light of work by women analysts such asJoyce McDougall and Colette Chiland.

This essay is based on the assumption that psychoanalysis doesnot need a theory of femininity at all. (Feminism does not need oneeither, but there is no space for that discussion here.) Freud’s questfor the “riddle of femininity” is never matched by a similar questfor the “riddle of masculinity”. Both Freud and Lacan appear tothink that psychoanalytic theory can get along fine without atheory of masculinity. In this way, femininity and sexual differencecome across as synonymous terms. Men become the norm, womenthe problem to be explained; men embody humanity, women re-main imprisoned in their feminine difference. Psychoanalysis doesnot need such a theory of sexual difference. What it does need is a


new understanding of the wide range of different ways of becom-ing a woman in the world.7

My critique of femininity theory does not presuppose a returnto any kind of “equality” theory.8 As Beauvoir herself was the firstto stress: to encounter the world in a female body is simply not thesame thing as to encounter it in a male body. We note, for example,that when a man is described as feminine, whether by femininitytheorists or by anyone else, the meaning of the word is no longerexactly the same as when a woman is described as feminine. Weneed more historically specific, more situated, and far more clearlydefined accounts of women’s lived experience and women’s sub-jectivity than femininity theories can produce.9 To reject femininitytheory, then, is not to reject the fact of sexual difference. It is toreject theories that equate femininity and sexual difference, as ifwomen were the only bearers of sex. Femininity theories inevitablyand relentlessly turn women into the other.

A final introductory point: This is not an essay on the relation-ship between feminism and psychoanalysis in general. To developthe history and theory of that complex interaction would require abook, not just one essay. I take for granted that psychoanalysis hasbeen and will remain an immensely useful theory for feminism.Psychoanalysis has given us a whole series of concepts that areinvaluable to feminists and other cultural critics: the unconscious,desire, fantasy, identification, projection, transference, counter-transference, alienation, narcissism—the list could continue for along time. This essay is not about those concepts.10 The task I haveset myself here is simply this: to work out a critique of two majorpsychoanalytic concepts—femininity and castration—through arereading of some fundamental texts by Freud and Lacan. I bring tobear on these texts a perspective informed by Beauvoir andWittgenstein. As far as I know, this has not been done before.

Freud: the riddle of femininity

Freud recognized that he spoke about femininity in ways that didnot “always sound friendly” to women.11 The most obvious reasonfor his churlishness is his failure to grasp the cultural and historicalspecificity of his own insights. Freud writes as if the women in

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analysis with him embodied eternal femininity. Yet any clear-headed reading of his descriptions of women will find massiveevidence of the time-bound nature of his views.12 His remark aboutthe women of thirty is just one example.

Of course, Freud was unhappy about the sorry psychologicalstate of women of thirty. “As therapists we lament this state ofthings”, he writes (Freud, 1933a, p. 135). Yet—and this is what Ifind hard to forgive—he is as unable to envisage change as theneurotic women he describes. Just as they horrify him by theirrigidity, Freud horrifies me. When he writes that the “difficultdevelopment to femininity had exhausted the possibilities” ofthese women, he is at once perceptive and blind. Yes, I want to say:these women are paying the price for having to play the part of“normal” women in a rigidly (hetero)sexist society. But it is theirsituation, not the intrinsic demands of their reproductive andsexual tasks, that has frozen their psyche.13 If Freud had acknowl-edged that he was talking about socially oppressed women in ahistorically specific situation, then he would surely have hesitatedto generalize about some mysterious entity called “femininity” thatnecessarily exhausts women by the time they are out of theirtwenties.

We need to distinguish between Freud’s general understandingof psychosexual development and his theory of femininity. Theidea, for example, that children’s discovery of bodily sexual differ-ences is crucial to their development of a sexed and genderedidentity does not have to lead straight to the claim that when a littlegirl discovers that her brother has a penis, then she will instantlyfeel inferior. Yet that is the claim that grounds the whole theory ofcastration and lack for Freud. One can object to this particular storywithout objecting to a more nuanced, historically and culturallyspecific account of the many different psychosexual options avail-able to little girls when they discover that there are at least twosexes and that their own sex is only one of them. To reject thisparticular story is not to reject psychoanalysis, for nondogmaticpsychoanalysts, whether feminist or not, have tried to develop abetter story ever since Freud first launched his.

Many feminists have tried to rescue Freud’s story by saying thatwhat girls discover is not the superiority of the penis, but the socialinferiority of their own sex.14 But even this presupposes too much


homogeneity in culture and among women, for some girls grow upin families or in subcultures dominated by women. The discoveryof sexual difference and the discovery of sexism are not necessarilysimultaneous, and they certainly cannot always be summed upunder the heading of “lack” or “castration”.

A point that has not generally been noticed is that in so far asFreud’s theory of femininity is based on a story of what all girlsmust feel when they discover anatomical sexual difference, it actu-ally runs counter to his own understanding of the nature of psycho-analytic inquiry. This becomes clear if we look at the 1920 essay“Case of Homosexuality in a Woman”. In this essay Freud tries tofind out why a specific young woman became a lesbian. Puttingtogether quite a plausible narrative, he stresses the girl’s strongoedipal desire for her father, which suffered a bitter blow at the ageof 16 when the young woman’s mother gave birth to her thirdbrother. Freud then stresses that he would never claim that any girlin the same situation was bound to become a lesbian:

So long as we trace the development from its final outcomebackwards, the chain of events appears continuous, and wefeel we have gained an insight which is completely satisfactoryor even exhaustive. But if we proceed the reverse way, if westart from the premises inferred from the analysis and try tofollow these up to the final result, then we no longer get theimpression of an inevitable sequence of events which could nothave been otherwise determined. We notice at once that theremight have been another result, and that we might have beenjust as well able to understand and explain the latter. Thesynthesis is thus not so satisfactory as the analysis; in otherwords, from a knowledge of the premises we could not haveforetold the nature of the result. [Freud, 1920a, p. 167]

To use metaphors occasionally used by Freud: the analyst is like adetective or an archaeologist: piecing together the analytic evi-dence, she is an expert at unravelling what has happened, not atpredicting what will happen. (This makes analysis more like liter-ary criticism and less like the social and natural sciences than Freudprobably wanted to admit.) Insofar as femininity theory tells astory about what is bound to happen when a little girl discovers thatshe does not have a penis, it is a troubled attempt at “synthesis andprediction”, with predictably flawed results.

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To be fair, Freud openly admitted that his femininity theorygave him trouble. Yet his most explicit admission of trouble doesnot refer to castration (on the contrary, as we shall see, his last wordon the matter of femininity reaffirms the belief in castration as thebedrock of femininity), but to an earlier idea, first formulated in1905 in Three Essays on Sexuality, that femininity was passivity. In afootnote added to the text in 1915, Freud writes: “‘Masculine’ and‘feminine’ are used sometimes in the sense of activity and passiv-ity, sometimes in a biological, and sometimes, again, in a sociologi-cal sense. The first of these three meanings is the essential one andthe most serviceable in psychoanalysis” (Freud, 1905d, p. 219). Theobvious counterargument is that if Freud wants to speak of passiv-ity, why can’t he just do so? Why does he need to claim thatfemininity is synonymous with passivity, particularly when this hasthe unfortunate side-effect of implying that all women are passiveand that no man is?

Freud saw the force of the objection, for in the same footnote hewrites: “Every individual . . . displays a mixture of the character-traits belonging to his own and to the opposite sex; and he shows acombination of activity and passivity whether or not these lastcharacter-traits tally with his biological ones” (Freud, 1905d, p.220). (This concession inspired many theories concerning bisexual-ity, a fact he later explicitly deplores, as we shall see.) But theconcession does not clarify the matter. Rather, confusion now setsin. For if men and women do not display unmixed masculinity andfemininity, how can we tell what qualities “belong” to either sex? IfI see a bit of passive behaviour, how am I supposed to know that itis feminine even if it occurs in a man? Isn’t the sex of the person inquestion, after all, the bedrock on which Freud’s adjudications offemininity or masculinity rest? Or, to put it differently: on whatgrounds does Freud decide that the most fundamental meaning offemininity is passivity? Why is this not simply an arbitrary meta-phor determined not by scientific insight but by sexist ideology?

Despite his own misgivings, Freud nevertheless stuck to thetheory of femininity as passivity for almost 20 years. Perhaps it hadsomething to do with his steadfast conviction that women had togive up “active” clitoral pleasure for “passive” vaginal pleasure ifthey were to become fully feminine. However that may be, in the


1933 essay on femininity that contains the distressing passage onwomen of thirty, Freud finally acknowledged the force of theobjection:

Even in the sphere of human sexual life you soon see howinadequate it is to make masculine behaviour coincide withactivity and feminine with passivity. . . . Women can displaygreat activity in various directions, men are not able to live incompany with their own kind unless they develop a largeamount of passive adaptability. If you now tell me that thesefacts go to prove precisely that both men and women arebisexual in the psychological sense, I shall conclude that youhave decided in your own minds to make “active” coincidewith “masculine” and “passive” with “feminine”. But I adviseyou against it. It seems to me to serve no useful purpose andadds nothing to our knowledge. [Freud, 1933a, p. 115]

This is a strong indictment of his own previous theory. Yet Freuddoes not conclude that he should give up defining femininity. It isas if some picture of how things must be held Freud captive, forcinghim to produce an account of femininity that did not correspond tothe full range of his own analytic and theoretical insights.15 TheFreudian quest for femininity is fuelled by the idea that all womensimply must be psychologically different from all men. This differ-ence is imagined to be something like an entity, a new element tobe uncovered, analysed, and described by intrepid discoverers. We“must conclude”, Freud writes, “that what constitutes masculinityor femininity is an unknown characteristic which anatomy cannotlay hold of” (Freud, 1933a, p. 114). This “unknown characteristic” isthe mysterious “riddle of femininity” (p. 116), the Holy Grail ofpsychoanalytic inquiry.16

But must we imagine femininity as a thing or a quality? Here Ihave reached the same terrain as Stanley Cavell, who notes that wehave yet to determine “how it is that the question of sexual differ-ence turns into a question of some property that men are said tohave that women lack, or perhaps vice versa—a development thathelps to keep us locked into a compulsive uncertainty aboutwhether we wish to affirm or to deny difference between men andwomen” (Cavell, 1996, p. 98). Simone de Beauvoir registers thesame uncertainty as the experience of being offered an impossible

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“choice” between being imprisoned in her sexed subjectivity or ofbeing forced to repress it entirely.17

Freud’s picture makes him believe that without a theory thatexplains women’s difference, psychoanalysis is not complete. Yetpsychoanalysts have never set off on a quest for the key to the“riddle of masculinity”. Freud’s male patients are studied as casesof obsession, hysteria, sadism, or masochism, not as cases of moreor less stunted “masculinity”, and they are never said to be “femi-nine” if, say, they choose not to have children. For Freud, to speakof sexual difference is to speak of femininity, and vice versa. Menare human beings, women are sexed; masculinity is universal,femininity particular. In The Second Sex Beauvoir ironically sumsup the attitude: “Just as for the ancients there was an absolutevertical with reference to which the oblique was defined, so there isan absolute human type, the masculine. Woman has ovaries, auterus: there we have specific circumstances that imprison her inher subjectivity; one often says that she thinks with her glands”(Beauvoir, 1953, p. xxi18).

The quest for femininity seriously damages the credibility ofpsychoanalysis.19 Descartes thought that the pineal gland was thesite of the soul (or, to be specific, the place where the soul encoun-ters the body). A century ago biologists were still trying to isolatethe “vital force” [élan vital]. Just as philosophy has long since givenup trying to pinpoint the soul, biologists have given up looking fora single essence to explain all biological mechanisms. It is time togive up the fantasy of finding the key to the “riddle of femininity”.Women are not sphinxes. Or, rather: they are no more and no lesssphinxlike than men. There is no riddle to solve.

The phallus and the penis:bodies, norms, and symbols in Lacan

Since Lacanian theory defines femininity as a specific relationshipto the phallus, no discussion of femininity in Lacan can afford tooverlook what he has to say about this contested symbol. The firstthing to note is that all who approach Lacan are ritually warned notto confuse penis and phallus.20 Feminists are usually singled out asparticularly obtuse in this respect. Even the otherwise sensible

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Joyce McDougall cannot resist a cheap shot: “[T]he word phallus isoften used indiscriminately in English to mean penis. Feministwriters engaged in detecting and denouncing denigratory attitudestowards women fulminate against the use of the word phallus. Thatthey equate penis and phallus suggests, paradoxically, a hiddenphallo-centric attitude on their part!” (McDougall, 1995, p. 6).There appears to be a little psychoanalytic tradition here, for Freudtoo enjoyed making jokes at the expense of feminists who persist inasking for equal rights, as if they had not noticed the obvious“morphological” differences between the sexes.21

The taboo on confusing phallus and penis stems from Lacan’sown writing. In his famous 1958 essay “The Meaning of the Phal-lus”, Lacan insists that anyone can take up the symbolic positionslabelled masculine and feminine: “[The clinical facts] go to showthat the relation of the subject to the phallus is set up regardless ofthe anatomical difference between the sexes” (Lacan, 1958, p. 76).The word “regardless” [sans égard à]22 is a strong one. It has usuallybeen taken to mean that anatomical configuration has absolutelynothing to do with symbolic position, or, in other words, that therelationship between phallus and body is arbitrary. This view hasbeen particularly appealing to feminists looking for an anti-essen-tialist theory of sexual difference.

But is it true? Does this interpretation find support in Lacan’sown text? And what about the more fundamental objection, whichanyone who has ever taught Lacan will recognize, for there isalways someone who asks: “Why does the phallus have to be calledphallus, if it has nothing to do with the penis?” A variation on thisquestion is: “Why does femininity have to be called femininity if ithas nothing to do with women?” Such questions deserve moreattention than they usually get, for both have to do with therelationship between symbols and bodies, and the second alsoraises the question of the relationship between symbolic functionand social norms or ideology.

What is one to reply? We can start by rereading “The Meaningof the Phallus”, where it appears that Lacan, too, transgresses thetaboo on confusing the phallus with the penis: “[T]his test of thedesire of the Other is not decisive in the sense that the subjectlearns from it whether or not he has a real phallus [un phallus réel],but inasmuch as he learns that the mother does not”, he writes

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(Lacan, 1958, p. 8323). There is, then, such a thing as a “real phallus”,and the one thing we know about it is that mothers do not have it.24

The crucial explanation of why it is that the “phallus is the privi-leged signifier” in the first place (Lacan, 1958, p. 82) is equallyrevealing: “One might say that this signifier is chosen as whatstands out [le plus saillant] as most easily seized upon in the real ofsexual copulation, and also as the most symbolic in the literal(typographical) sense of the term, since it is the equivalent in thatrelation of the (logical) copula. One might also say that by virtue ofits turgidity, it is the image of the vital flow [flux vital] as it istransmitted [passe] in generation” (Lacan, 1958, p. 8225).

Lacan chose the phallus as the privileged signifier because itjuts out in sexual intercourse; because in that act it functions as acopula (a verb of predication, a verb conferring being); because itsturgidity illustrates both the way in which semen is transferred inintercourse and the way in which the generations succeed eachother. (The reference to generation, moreover, makes it obviousthat throughout this chapter Lacan is thinking only of heterosexu-ality.)26

Now we can see that the question “why is the phallus called thephallus if it has nothing to do with the penis?” is somewhat off themark. Lacan does not at all deny that the symbol of the phallus isbased on the image of the erect penis; on the contrary, he flauntsthe fact that it is. But so what? Lacan is simply inviting us to graspthe difference between the phallus as a symbol, as a signifier, andthe penis as an ordinary part of male anatomy. Is this really toomuch to ask? Let us grant the case. It is obvious that the wordphallus will conjure up images of penislike objects. It is also clearthat some human beings have a penis, and others do not. But oncethe symbol has been defined in sophisticated, theoretical terms assomething nobody has, then it is absurd to reduce the symbolicphallus back to the ordinary penis, supporters of Lacan might say.

This is a perfectly reasonable point. It is obvious that inLacanian theory the phallus soon comes to mean a lot more thanjust the (erect) penis. To deny this would be obtuse. What feministsobject to is not, of course, the use of symbols, but the particularsymbol chosen to signify difference and lack, as well as the theory ofsexual difference that supports itself on the phallus/penis equa-tion. However much we approve of symbolic uses of words for

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body parts, we may still object that if the relationship betweenanatomy and symbol is entirely arbitrary, then there really is noreason to choose the phallus rather than the breast as the transcen-dental signifier of difference.

Because the phallus represents the threat of castration, it pro-duces sexual difference, the Lacanian theory goes. By taking up aposition in relation to the phallus, we become at one stroke sexedand subjects. This is the entry into the symbolic order, into lan-guage, the subjection to the Law, our fundamental subjection tocastration, to lack. (This sentence is based on the observation thatLacanians usually treat “language”, “the Law”, and “the symbolicorder” in the same way. If this obscures some necessary distinc-tions, I am looking forward to being corrected, for a serious ac-count of the way in which Lacan and Lacanians actually use theseterms is much needed.) The phallus distributes humankind in twosexes, but the sexes we are talking about are entirely symbolic,entirely psychosexual. On this theory, however, women should nottake up a position as feminine more often than men. Yet—and thisis what generations of students are struck by—in “The Meaning ofthe Phallus” Lacan clearly thinks that women will take up thefeminine and men the masculine position. What he means when hesays that the “relation of the subject to the phallus is set up regard-less of anatomical difference”, is that there will always be exceptionsto the rule, not that there is no rule whatsoever.

Feminine subjects, Lacan writes, will struggle in vain to be thephallus; masculine subjects will struggle in vain to have the phallus(see Lacan, 1958, p. 84). As a result, both sexes end up acting in acomedy, but femininity in particular is a masquerade, an endlessperformance in which women try to mask the lack of the phallus.27

Here I just wrote “women”. Shouldn’t I say “feminine subjects?”—not necessarily, for Lacan writes “women” too (or “the woman”, tobe exact):

Paradoxical as this formulation might seem, I would say that itis in order to be the phallus, that is to say, the signifier of thedesire of the Other, that the woman will reject an essential partof her femininity [de la féminité], notably all its attributesthrough masquerade. It is for what she is not that she expects tobe desired as well as loved. But she finds the signifier of herown desire in the body of the one [celui] to whom she addresses

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her demand for love. Certainly we should not forget that theorgan actually invested with this signifying function takes onthe value of the fetish. [Lacan, 1958, p. 84]

If I understand Lacan correctly here, he is saying that because thewoman does not have a penis, she will perform a masquerade inwhich she aims to be the phallus. He then says that this entailsrejecting an essential part of femininity [de la féminité]. But sincefemininity is defined as the masquerade the woman performs, howcan that masquerade in itself be a rejection of an “essential part offemininity”? The answer can be found if we consider that the wordfemininity here is a translation of the French féminité.28 Dependingon the context, that word can mean “feminine”, “female”, “wom-en’s” or “of women”. If we translate féminité here as “femaleness”,the sentence makes perfect sense, since it now introduces a dif-ference between the psychosexual féminité acted out in the mas-querade and the anatomical féminité disavowed by the samemasquerade. What the woman rejects, then, is something specificto women’s bodies or genitals—namely, the absence of a penis.[This is exactly Freud’s point in “Analysis Terminable and Intermi-nable” (Freud, 1937c), which Lacan invokes at the beginning of“The Meaning of the Phallus” and to which I shall return.]

In this passage, Lacan speaks of women, not men. Women willtake up the feminine position; by fetishizing the male organ, womenwill find the phallus they desire on the body of their male lover.This appears to contradict Lacan’s claim that the “relation of thesubject to the phallus is set up regardless of anatomical differencebetween the sexes”. Yet the only word that causes the contradictionis “regardless”, which now appears as an overstatement. I am ledto conclude that Lacan’s theory cannot live up to that “regardless”,for it seems to go as follows: The difference between the sexes turnson their different relationship to the penis—one sex has it, the otherdoes not. This fact, then, structures the relationship of each sex tothe phallus. But anatomy is not the final arbiter of symbolic posi-tion, for it is acknowledged that exceptions to the rule will occur.Some men will take up a feminine position, just as some womenwill take up a masculine position.

Lacan’s femininity theory, then, is based on normative expecta-tions about the psychosexual position women will take up (as arule), and the one men will take up (as a rule). In most cases the


presence or absence of a penis determines the relationship to thephallic signifier; to a very large extent anatomical sex does predictone’s symbolic position. For Lacan, then, the relationship betweenbody and sexed subjectivity is neither necessary (that would bebiological determinism) nor arbitrary (that would be a form ofidealism, a denial of the material structure of the body), but contin-gent. It is contingent and not necessary, because not all women willtake up a feminine position, just as not all men will take up amasculine position, nor arbitrary, since there is a general expecta-tion that women on the whole will take up a feminine position.Structurally, then, Lacan’s femininity theory is exactly the same asFreud’s.29

There is nothing sexist about this kind of theory about therelationship between bodies and psychosexual identities. All itmeans is that for Lacan, as for Freud and Beauvoir, one is not borna woman but, rather, becomes a woman30: “Psycho-analysis doesnot try to describe what a woman is—that would be a task it couldscarcely perform”, Freud wrote in 1933, “but sets about enquiringhow she comes into being, how a woman develops out of a childwith a bisexual disposition” (Freud, 1933a, p. 116). Problems onlyarise when normative expectations are coded into such theories;this is where Beauvoir differs from Freud and Lacan, for Beauvoirdoes not presume to define any kind of normative femininity,whereas Freud and Lacan do.

Lacan’s understanding of the relationship between the body andsexed subjectivity, then, is neither better nor worse than Freud’s: itis the same. Feminists who choose Lacan over Freud because theybelieve that Lacan’s theory is less essentialist are mistaken. NeitherFreud nor Lacan are essentialists. They both consider the relation-ship between the body and the psyche to be contingent. The dif-ference, as I have already stressed, is in their understanding ofthe body. Freud always remained concerned with the concrete,phenomenological body, whereas Lacan turns the body into anentirely abstract and idealist concept.

Different critics have reacted differently to the connection be-tween phallus and penis (I mean those critics who, like me, admitthat there is one). Jane Gallop’s brilliant analysis of the intricaterelationship between penis and phallus ends with a plea for con-fusion, perceived as a way to connect the body with history: “To

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read for and affirm confusion, contradiction is to insist on thethinking in the body in history. Those confusions mark the siteswhere thinking is literally knotted to the subject’s historical andmaterial place” (Gallop, 1988, p. 132). Inspired by Gallop, CharlesBernheimer recommends that we insist on the “phallus’s penilereference” since this would force psychoanalytic theory to accountfor historical specificity and bodily materiality (Bernheimer, 1995,p. 323). Lacan’s elevation of the phallus to universal signifyingstatus, Bernheimer writes, amounts to the “body’s strangulation bythe signifying chain and the consequent elimination of such mate-rial factors as history, race and power from the theorization ofsubjectivities” (p. 337). I have much sympathy for Gallop’s andBernheimer’s general wish to reconnect the Lacanian body withhistory, but in my view Lacan’s concept of the body is so abstractthat it can never be successfully historicized.31

Lacan’s theory of sexual difference also strikes me as worsethan Freud’s.32 While both Freud and Lacan make their stories offemininity turn on castration and lack, only Lacan gives the penis/phallus a linguistic turn. For Lacan, the phallus is not just a symbol,it is a signifier, and not just any signifier, but the transcendentalsignifier, by which he means that the phallus is the signifier ofsignification, the very signifier that enables meaning to arise in thefirst place. Because the phallus is at once the signifier of sexualdifference and of meaning, Lacan’s system is one in which feminin-ity (a position that, as we have seen, Lacan expects most women totake up) can only ever be marginal to the symbolic. By definition, awoman’s symbolic activities will always be called phallic. (Anysymbolic activity is phallic.) A woman who does not conform to theLacanian idea of femininity will be called masculine, just as adeviant man will be called feminine. There is powerful socialnormativity embedded in such language, a social normativity thatbecame only too apparent in the French debates in the 1990s overparité (equal political representation for women) and pacs (pacts ofcivil solidarity for gay, lesbian, and heterosexual couples), in whichmany Lacan-inspired analysts took extremely reactionary posi-tions.33

From a feminist and historicizing point of view, Lacan’s intro-duction of post-Saussurean linguistics into psychoanalysis was amistake. Precisely because the relationship of femininity to the


phallus is a purely symbolic equation for Lacan, patriarchy cannever disappear. Lacan’s theory of sexual difference is a watertightsystem, one that will always impose its own normative language ofsexual difference on whatever people actually do. The historicalcontent of the structure will change, but the structure itself willremain forever intact.34 I may find that sixteenth-century notions ofwhat counts as “feminine” are vastly different from our own, butthe grid that produces the notion of “the feminine” in the first placeremains unchanged. What I am objecting to, then, is that Lacaniantheory is structured so as to formally require the “gendering” or“sexing” of a vast array of human activities. Lacanian theory is aprinting machine for gender labels. It is incumbent on those whobelieve that this is an excellent thing for feminism and for psy-choanalysis to justify their belief.

Jouissance, femininity, and the “outside of language”

So far, I have only discussed Lacan’s femininity theory as itemerged in the late 1950s, when it was characterized by two things:its close reading of Freud and its introduction of post-Saussureanlinguistics (“the phallus is a signifier”). Fifteen years later, in theseminar on femininity entitled Encore (1972–73), Lacan takes thelogic of his commitment to a post-Saussurean theory of languagefar beyond Freud (Lacan, 1998).35 In the 1958 “Phallus” essay femi-ninity is still fundamentally a matter of castration and the attemptto mask that castration. In both texts the phallus is the transcenden-tal signifier. But Encore casts femininity as inextricably linked withjouissance, understood as an experience or state beyond significa-tion, “beyond the phallus”. (For the purposes of this chapter I take“beyond the phallus”, “beyond language”, and “beyond significa-tion” to be fairly equivalent expressions.)36

But what exactly is jouissance? We have all heard that jouissancecannot be translated (I have certainly said so myself).37 English-language texts have usually left jouissance in French. The result isthat the concept comes to look particularly esoteric and mysterious.From a purely linguistic point of view, however, it is difficult tounderstand how a word like jouissance has gained this reputation.When I compared the entry for jouir in Le Petit Robert to the entry

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for “enjoy” in the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, I foundthat both verbs can mean to take pleasure, to enjoy, to possess,to have the use of. Many of the examples in the two dictionariesare exactly the same (to enjoy a view, to enjoy good health). Themajor difference is that enjoyment no longer means orgasm ineveryday English (although once it did), whereas that’s exactlywhat jouissance means in everyday French. To any experiencedtranslator, this is hardly an insuperable challenge. Readily avail-able translations abound: “enjoyment”, “pleasure”, “orgasm”, and“orgasmic enjoyment” all have something going for them. Anyremaining difficulties could be explained in a footnote, if it wasfelt to be necessary. All translation involves betrayal, no doubt, butwhen it comes to treachery, jouissance cannot be compared toFreud’s Nachträglichkeit, Derrida’s différance, and Hegel’s Auf-hebung. So why has it gained a reputation for being so particularlydifficult to convey in English?38

It may be not the word itself but what Lacan wants to do with itthat makes jouissance seem untranslatable. Any conscientioustranslator would feel awkward writing sentences proclaiming thatwomen’s “enjoyment” or “orgasm” is “beyond the phallus”, some-thing that cannot be spoken, and so on. Surely this cannot be allLacan means by jouissance, she would think; he must have somekind of extraordinary phenomenon in mind, something that noordinary English word could possibly convey. Better, then, to leavethe word in French, so as to allow it to benefit from the mystery ofthe exotic and the unknown. My point is that any word said todenote something “beyond the phallus” would quickly come toseem untranslatable.

There is no doubt that the enjoyment in question is ascribed towomen. If we were in doubt, the picture of Bernini’s St. Teresa onthe front cover of the French edition of the twentieth seminarconfirms the point. In Encore, Lacan writes of a “jouissance of thebody which is . . . beyond the phallus” (Lacan, 1972–73, p. 145). Healso states that “There is a jouissance proper to her and of which sheherself may know nothing, except that she experiences it—thatmuch she does know. She knows it of course when it happens. Itdoes not happen to all of them” (p. 145).

Female/feminine jouissance is beyond the phallus, outside lan-guage, and therefore potentially threatening to the cohesion of the


symbolic/social order. But what, exactly, it is that escapes lan-guage and other social structures here? Are we being invited tobelieve that female orgasms, splendid as they are, belong to somemystic, extralinguistic, yet revolutionary realm to which male or-gasms provide no access? And why is jouissance accorded thisextraordinary status in the first place? Are female orgasms moreextralinguistic than any other human experience? It would seem tobe at least as difficult to capture in words the smell of a rose or theexact nuance of an experience of shame as it is to describe anorgasm. If one objects that “orgasm” is too pedestrian a word forjouissance, we have to ask what Lacan means when he says that “wedesignate this jouissance, vaginal” (Lacan, 1972–73, p. 146). It wouldseem that he still clings to the old myth about the differencebetween vaginal (truly feminine) and clitoral (masculinized) or-gasm. In short: what does such a concept of femininity tell us aboutwomen? Femininity here becomes a full-blown metaphysical con-cept, rightly linked by Lacan to mysticism.39

Femininity and jouissance are imagined to be “outside lan-guage”, “beyond the phallus”. (This they have in common with awhole cluster of Lacan-inspired concepts that have enjoyed quite avogue over the past twenty or thirty years, namely the “unspeak-able”, the “real”, “the beyond”, “trauma”, “psychosis”, and so on.)There is a specific picture of language and meaning at work in suchconcepts. First of all, we are encouraged to imagine language as akind of spatial territory, which can have an outside and an inside.This spatial imagery underpins the Lacanian theory of languageand so comes to seem compulsory. But there are alternatives. Wecould, for example, think of language as a human practice thatchanges over time.

As soon as it has been established, the picture of the outside andinside of language (of the symbolic, of signification, etc.) gives riseto an urge to deconstruct the inside/outside opposition. This urgeis the effect of the spatial picture of language. If that picture loses itshold on us, then the deconstruction comes to seem less urgent. Thebelief in the beyond of discourse as well as the further belief thatentities beyond discourse are always struggling and straining todisrupt it, always threatening to make our language nonsensical ormeaningless, leads to an obsession with boundaries, borderlines,and limits, which will be proclaimed as the place where “represen-

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tation” or “intelligibility” breaks down, where meaninglessnessand chaos begin.40

But something else also emerges in this picture, namely theextent to which Lacanians and other post-Saussurean theoristsimagine that “language” means “representation”. For if we askhow the spatial picture of language gets going, the answer seems tobe that it arises when we think of language primarily as consistingin nouns. In post-Saussurean linguistics, nouns are always used asexamples of language. Just think of all those primers in post-structuralism that first print tree for the signifier, then “tree” toillustrate the signified, and finally a drawing of a tree to explainwhat the referent is. That this is a horribly impoverished notion ofwhat language is, is Wittgenstein’s starting point for the whole ofPhilosophical Investigations. In §1, he first quotes Augustine’s ac-count of how he learned to speak (by hearing adults say words andthen point to the things represented by the words) and then goeson to comment:

These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of theessence of human language. It is this: the individual words inlanguage name objects—sentences are combinations of suchnames.—In this picture of language we find the roots of thefollowing idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning iscorrelated with the word. It is the object for which the wordstands.

Augustine does not speak of there being any differencebetween kinds of word. If you describe the learning of lan-guage in this way you are, I believe, thinking primarily ofnouns like “table”, “chair”, “bread”, and of people’s names,and only secondarily of the names of certain actions and prop-erties; and of the remaining kinds of word as something thatwill take care of itself. [Wittgenstein, 1953, §1]

The point, then, is not that Lacan and other post-Saussureans arewholly wrong. By definition, the referent of a noun is “outsidelanguage”. A tree is neither an acoustic pattern or black mark on apage, nor just a concept in our mind. In the language game called“representation”, it makes sense to distinguish between an insideand an outside of language. But “representation” is only one of thegames we can play with language. In §25, Wittgenstein himself


mentions “commanding, questioning, recounting, chatting” asthings we do with language. Think also of crying for help, praying,confessing, bargaining, promising, predicting, thanking—the listis, if not endless, at least very long. The point is, simply, that atheory of representation is not a theory of language. As Wittgensteinsays, such a theory thinks primarily of nouns and a few othernounlike categories and leaves all the “remaining kinds of word assomething that will take care of itself”. In short: what would wedraw to illustrate the working of words such as “help!”, “albeit”, or“haphazardly”? I do not imagine that this is a full-scale philosophi-cal analysis of the question. My point is simply this: the Lacanianpicture of language can no longer be taken for granted. Its veryfoundations require justification and defence.

But even within the terms of a theory of representation it isdifficult to follow Lacan’s mysticism about jouissance. If all refer-ents are outside language, why would the jouissance of women beradically different from other nouns of sensation, such as the scentof a rose, the taste of a soup, the exact colour of a car? I get theimpression that in Encore Lacan is overcome by the idea thatwomen’s experience of orgasm is beyond the reach of his knowl-edge. But if this is so, then Lacan’s quest for the unreachablejouissance of the woman is a version of scepticism. Again I find thatI have reached the same ground as Cavell, who notes that in EncoreLacan “is casting his view of women as a creed or credo (“Ibelieve”), as an article of faith in the existence and the difference ofthe woman’s satisfaction” (Cavell, 1996, p. 102). This, Cavell adds,means that Lacan is “letting the brunt of conviction in existence, thedesire of the sceptical state, be represented by the question of thewoman’s orgasm. . . . So sceptical grief would be represented forthe man not directly by the question “Were her children caused byme?” but by the double question “Is her satisfaction real, and is itcaused by me?” (pp. 102–103).

On Cavell’s reading, the question of the woman’s jouissance is aquestion that arises specifically for men. His own highly pertinentexamples are Othello’s jealousy of Desdemona and Leontes’s fero-cious suspicion of Hermione in The Winter’s Tale.41 Read in thisway, Encore tells us something about the way scepticism can begendered. It can tell us why some men find women deeply enig-

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matic. It also throws light on Freud’s conviction that femininity isa riddle, whereas masculinity is not. But this way of taking Encorealso tells us that insofar as Lacan tries to turn his own perception ofwomen’s secret enjoyment into a general, universally valid theoryof sexual difference (and he does: Encore is the text that contains allthose algebraic formulas for sexual difference), he is universalizinghis own gendered experience.

Let me turn now to one other aspect of the claim that femininejouissance is beyond the phallus. According to Lacanian theory,there is no meaning outside language, since meaning is an effect ofthe chain of signifiers in the symbolic order ruled by the phallicsignifier. Nevertheless the entities beyond the phallus are said tothreaten to return to break up, subvert, or undermine the precari-ous stability of symbolic signification. We are, then, asked to be-lieve that in the outer darkness beyond representation dwell theshadows of potentially meaningful entities: jouissance, femininity,and so forth. That they are there is proved by the fact that theyexert pressure on ordinary, organized symbolic language, some-times breaking it down entirely.

Given such a picture of femininity and the inside and outside oflanguage, it may seem logical enough to argue, as Luce Irigarayonce did, that women cannot express themselves in ordinary lan-guage but must instead utter “contradictory words, somewhatmad from the standpoint of reason” (Irigaray, 1977, p. 29). There isa strong implication that the “language of reason” is to be imaginedas male or masculine. In everyday life, however, there is no evi-dence that women actually are more contradictory than men. Butthis has no impact on theories of this kind, for femininity has nowbecome a full-blown metaphysical concept.

There is another unformulated philosophical assumption here,one that James Conant succinctly defines (in a different context) asthe “doctrine that there are certain aspects of reality that cannot beexpressed in language but can nonetheless be conveyed throughcertain sorts of employment of language” (Conant, 2000, p. 178).Cora Diamond puts the same assumption in slightly differentterms: “[T]here are some sentences which are nonsense but whichwould say something true if what they are an attempt to say couldbe said. The unsayability of what they attempt to say precludes itsbeing said, but we can nevertheless grasp what they attempt to


say” (Diamond, 2000, p. 158).42 Irigaray’s “contradictory words,somewhat mad from the standpoint of reason”, fit precisely intothis category. The idea is that such language, “mad from thestandpoint of reason”, tells us something about the nature of femi-ninity, something that evaporates or disappears as soon as we tryto rephrase it in the “language of reason”.

But it is not self-evident that it makes sense to speak of mean-ingful yet incomprehensible language in this way. If we postulatethe existence of a kind of “mad language” in addition to the usual“rational language”, we seem to end up with a version of the logicWittgenstein refuses to recognize in the preface to the Tractatus:

What can be said at all can be said clearly; and what we cannottalk about we must pass over in silence.

Thus the aim of the book is to draw a limit to thought, orrather—not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for inorder to be able to draw a limit to thought, we should have tofind both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to beable to think what cannot be thought).

It will therefore only be in language that the limit can bedrawn, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simplybe nonsense [einfach Unsinn]. [Wittgenstein, 1922, p. 3]

If I understand this difficult passage correctly, Wittgenstein issaying that we can draw no limit to thought, for if we did, weshould have to be able to think on both sides of the limit. But thenthe limit thought up by us would not be a limit; all such attemptsare self-defeating. In other words: anything we can think is bydefinition thinkable. From this point of view, the post-structuralistattempt to “think the unthinkable” is meaningless.43 The limit inquestion, then, is not a limit in thought but a limit in language (“theexpression of thoughts”). Wittgenstein, however, has in mind not alimit between language and some quasi-meaningful realm beyondlanguage, but one between language that makes sense and lan-guage that does not. The passage denies that language that fails tomake sense in the ordinary way actually still makes (extraordinary,hidden, metaphysical, profound) sense. Either language is mean-ingful or it is not. We do not have to read this as a defence of arationalistic ideal of lucidity and transparency of meaning.44 It doesnot follow that Wittgenstein believes that it is always easy to findthe sense of an utterance. Difficult language, language that requires

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us to use all the procedures available to human beings looking forthe meaning of words, is not meaningless. In other words: “to makesense in the ordinary way” is not a subcategory of sense-making.

On Wittgenstein’s logic, Irigaray’s subcategory of language thatsounds “mad from the standpoint of reason” loses its metaphysicalstatus and becomes just one form of language use among others.Then it becomes open to analysis, not “from the standpoint ofreason” but from the standpoint of the ordinary procedures we useto make sense of words.45 It is quite possible that in some cultureswomen are trained to listen for certain kinds of sense that men arenot trained to listen for. But this would be a fact about some womenand some men in a certain place and time, not about femininity andreason as such. There would, in particular, be no assumption thatthe women’s strategies for interpreting certain utterances would bemore “mad from the standpoint of reason” than the men’s. Theadvantage of this approach is that it avoids the reification of sexualdifference and returns us from metaphysics to the ordinary. Cavellmakes a similar point about the tendency to postulate sexuallydifferent knowledge in men and women—a tendency that we findin Encore:

The reification, let me put it, of sexual difference is registered,in the case of knowledge, by finding the question of a differ-ence in masculine and feminine knowing and then by turningit into a question of some fixed way women know that men donot know, and vice versa. Since in ordinary, nonmetaphysicalexchanges we do not conceive there to be some fact one genderknows that the other does not know, any more than we con-ceive there to be some fact the skeptic knows that the ordinaryhuman being does not know, the metaphysical exchanges con-cerning their differences are apt to veer toward irony, a senseof incessant false position, as if one cannot know what differ-ence a world of difference makes. [Cavell, 1996, p. 99]

If we come to doubt the post-Saussurean picture of language, somecrucial concepts in Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory no longer soundso compelling. (Clearly, the critique does not affect the less “linguis-tic” areas of Lacan’s thought, particularly the theories concerningalienation, the mirror stage, transference and countertransference,and the subject presumed to know.) The post-Saussurean view of


language shared by Lacan has been normal science, institutional-ized doxa, in departments of language, literature, and culturalstudies for thirty years now. To speak of “normal science” and“doxa” is to speak of principles and assumptions that have come tobe taken for granted. I think it is time for a reconsideration of thelinguistic foundations of post-structuralist theory. A serious en-counter between post-structuralism and the so-called “new”Wittgensteinians would do much to clarify the philosophicalpremises of post-Saussurean (Lacanian and non-Lacanian)thought.46

Muddling the meaning of castration

So far, then, I have claimed that it is useless to set off in quest for ageneral psychoanalytic theory of femininity and that it is sexist toassume that femininity and sexual difference are synonyms. I haveclaimed that the phallus is not unrelated to the penis and that it isnot true that the relationship between psychosexual subjectivityand bodies is arbitrary in Lacanian theory. I have also claimed thatthe concept of jouissance is sexist, metaphysical, and bound up witha theory of language that there are serious grounds to doubt. Now,finally, I shall look at the ways in which Lacan’s concept of castra-tion drifts between different meanings in ways that are “not alwaysfriendly to women”, to echo an expression of Freud’s.

The concept of castration got off to a bad start. Both Lacan andFreud define it in a way that makes it synonymous both withfemininity and with sexual difference. This makes castrationcomplicit with the “othering” of women denounced by Beauvoir.That this is so becomes clear if we turn yet again to Lacan’s 1958essay on “The Meaning of the Phallus”, which begins with a discus-sion of castration, namely with a reference to Freud’s 1937 essay,“Analysis Terminable and Interminable”.47 This is where Freudtries to explain why psychoanalytic treatment always fails to per-suade a woman to give up her wish for a penis, and why it also failsto persuade a man that “a passive attitude to men does not alwayssignify castration” (Freud, 1937c, p. 252). In women, Freud calls thissyndrome penis envy, and in men he labels it masculine protest: “We

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often have the impression that with the wish for a penis and themasculine protest we have penetrated through all the psychologi-cal strata and have reached bedrock, and that thus our activities areat an end. This is probably true, since, for the psychical field, thebiological field does in fact play the part of the underlying bedrock.The repudiation of femininity can be nothing else than a biologicalfact, a part of the great riddle of sex” (p. 252). At this point, afootnote informs us that: “In other words, the ‘masculine protest’ isin fact nothing else than castration anxiety” (pp. 252–253). In bothsexes, then, castration is violently opposed. The difference is thatmen fear castration, whereas women realize to their dismay that ithas already happened. Repudiation of femininity is repudiation ofcastration, and this is a biologically based attitude in both sexes.

This interpretation will be controversial to some. Surely I havenot properly understood what castration means for Lacan. Castra-tion, or the lack it opens up, is the entrance ticket to the symbolicorder for everyone, a Lacanian would say. What is at stake here isthe phallus, not the penis. In an attempt to explicate this doctrine,Juliet Mitchell once wrote: “But because human subjectivity cannotultimately exist outside a division into one of the two sexes, then itis castration that finally comes to symbolize this split. The femininecomes to stand over the point of disappearance, the loss” (Mitchell,1986, p. 393). This admirably concise formulation claims that allhuman beings are marked by lack. To have to belong to only onesex is a traumatic loss, for both sexes.

So far, so good. But why is it the feminine that comes to standover the point of sexual division? This only makes sense if weassume that the feminine means that which is castrated. But howdo we get that idea? Why is that which is castrated defined asfeminine? Why not call it masculine, just to drive the point home,particularly if we are speaking of a position that has nothing to dowith anatomical attributes, as so many Lacanians claim? The an-swer can only be that the feminine is called the feminine anddescribed as castrated because, well, because women do not have apenis. (The relationship between body and subjectivity is not arbi-trary, it is contingent.)

On this theory, women are doubly castrated: first by having tobe only one sex (they are marked by sexual finitude, like everyoneelse—see below), and second, by having to be the sex that does not


have a penis. Lacanian terminology thus creates the following setof distinctions between symbol (left-hand side) and social phenom-enon (right-hand side):

phallus | penis

femininity | women

castration | castration

We are sternly admonished to keep the two sides apart, to under-stand that anyone can be feminine, that nobody actually has thephallus, and so on. In this list, however, castration must show upon both sides: this is where the cohesion of the symbolic and thesocial, the psychic, and the anatomical surfaces.

The human and ideological effects of conflating castration withfemininity are distressing. Moreover, the conflation could beavoided. For what Freud describes as the “repudiation of feminin-ity” in both sexes is the human reluctance to accept the realityprinciple, to give up the dream of being all, of living forever, ofnarcissistic omnipotence, of living in a world that never frustratesour desires. Why not call this a reluctance to accept our humancondition? But what exactly has this got to do with femininity, letalone with women? Freud’s own text shows that to call this generalrepudiation of lack “femininity” or “castration” is to place womenin an impossible position:

[T]he female’s wish for a penis . . . is the source of outbreaks ofsevere depression in her, owing to an internal conviction thatthe analysis will be of no use and that nothing can be done tohelp her. And we can only agree that she is right, when welearn that her strongest motive in coming for treatment was thehope that, after all, she might still obtain a male organ, the lackof which was so painful to her. [Freud, 1937c, p. 252]

Given his conviction that to be a woman is to be castrated, Freudcan only conclude that his depressed female patients are right tomourn the penis they will never have. For women who strive invain to accept their so-called femininity, Freud counsels despair; towomen who try to claw their way out of depression by doingsomething productive in the world, all he has to say is that they arephallic and suffer from penis envy. Lacan’s theory does not lead to

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different conclusions. The problem, then, is that the very languageof castration and femininity imprisons women in their sexual dif-ference and blocks their access to general existential categories.

If both men and women fear “castration”, and castration turnsout to mean “femininity”, women cannot win. We need to findbetter and less sexist language for experiences shared by men andwomen. In one discussion of “Analysis Terminable and Intermina-ble”, Cavell translates Freud’s castration into “victimization”. Thisis a good example of how to avoid unnecessary gendering ofgeneral terms (Cavell, 1996, p. 111).

In Freudian and Lacanian theory “castration” is used in threedifferent senses, namely: (1) to signify lack as a general humancondition; (2) to signify sexual difference or femininity; and (3) tosignify the discovery of our own “one-sexedness”, that is to say, thediscovery that we can only ever be one sex, in the sense that we canonly ever have one body. (Desire remains as polymorphous andinfinite as it ever was, but it is now confronted with the traumaticdiscovery of sexual finitude. I shall return to this.) Meaning 1encourages us to believe that as soon as something can be called“lack”, it can also be theorized as castration. It is difficult to under-stand why this is considered a sign of theoretical sophistication.Meaning 2 is the clearly sexist theory of femininity with which thischapter has been concerned. Meaning 3, however, is just fine, butprobably not very successfully conveyed by the word castration.

The indiscriminate use of castration encourages us to roamfreely between the three meanings, collapsing them into each otheras we please. The resulting confusion of categories is responsiblefor a distinctly (hetero)sexist “oversexualizing” or “overgender-ing” of human existence. It also has a tendency to generate a lot ofempty language. Imagine a cultural theorist who observes some-thing that resembles a cut (a blank screen? a black screen? a suddenhiatus? a pause?) and starts the theory machine. A cut evokescastration, which evokes lack, which conjures up the woman’s sex,and from there we go to nothing, death, the real, the beyond,psychosis, madness—nothing can stop the machine. This is lan-guage on holiday.48 Such language produces far more problemsthan it solves, and the biggest problem of all is that it projects adeeply sexist notion of sexual difference onto every human phe-nomenon.


What we need, then, is a psychoanalytic theory that truly seeksto understand the consequences of human “one-sexedness” with-out thinking in terms of either castration or femininity, but alsowithout denying the fact that male and female bodies are different.Many different kinds of analysts are producing such theories. Thischapter is not trying to say that we do not need psychoanalysis—itis trying to say that psychoanalysis does not need a femininitytheory.49

From castration to finitude

Here is a beginning of such a theory. Joyce McDougall has pro-vided an interesting definition of psychoanalysis. She considerspsychoanalysis to be a form of thought that attempts to understandthe psychic consequences of three universal traumas: the fact thatthere are others; the fact of sexual difference; and the fact of death.50

We note that only one of the three traumas has to do with thediscovery of sex and sexual difference, yet Lacanian theory tends touse the concept of castration as a general term for all three traumas.As we have seen, this amounts to projecting an ideologically dubi-ous notion of sexual difference onto the two other traumas—that is,to just about everything. Castration is simply too sexist a term to beuseful as a general term for human limitation or lack. I want topropose that on this general level, we speak, instead, of “finitude”.Following McDougall, we can then understand psychoanalysis as atheory devoted to the exploration of the many different ways inwhich human beings deal with the traumatic discovery of theirfinitude, not as a theory that declares castration to be the key tohuman existence.

I take the concept of finitude from Stanley Cavell’s analysis ofscepticism in The Claim of Reason. “In the face of the skeptic’spicture of intellectual limitedness”, Cavell writes, “Wittgensteinproposes a picture of human finitude” (Cavell, 1979, p. 431). ButCavell is not the only one to speak of human finitude, in the senseof our finiteness, our limitedness, the fact that we are not all, noteverything. A distinguished psychoanalyst of transsexuality alsospeaks of finitude (Chiland, 1997, p. 246). From different perspec-tives, then, philosophers such as Cavell and Wittgenstein and

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analysts such as Chiland and McDougall claim that the discoveryof our separate, sexed, mortal existence is traumatic, and that thehuman task par excellence is to try to come to terms with thisdiscovery and this trauma. In a passage displaying striking affini-ties with psychoanalytic thought, Cavell writes:

If Rousseau can be said to have discovered the fact of child-hood in human growth, and Wordsworth the loss of childhood,then romanticism generally may be said to have discovered thefact of adolescence, the task of wanting and choosing adult-hood, along with the impossibility of this task. The necessity ofthe task is the choice of finitude, which for us (even after God)means the acknowledgment of the existence of finite others,which is to say, the choice of community, of autonomous moralexistence [Cavell, 1999, p. 464]

To this fundamental insight I want to add something. I wantto suggest that we need to distinguish between three differentaspects of finitude. This is partly inspired by McDougall’s threetraumas, partly by Colette Chiland’s explicit reference to our“ontological, sexed and temporal finitude” (Chiland, 1997, p. 247).On this view, to acknowledge finitude would mean to undertakethree different tasks. First we need to acknowledge our spatialfinitude—that is to say, our bodily, existential separation fromothers.51 Then we need to acknowledge our sexual finitude, tounderstand that we cannot be more than one sex. McDougallwrites of the traumatic discovery of our “monosexuality”(McDougall, 1995, p. 6). Chiland writes of the transsexual’s refusalof “sexed finitude” (Chiland, 1997, p. 247). Intersexed people, bi-sexuals, transsexuals, transvestites, and other transgendered peo-ple are neither more nor less sexually finite than anyone else. Ourdesires may be infinite; our bodies certainly are not.52 The thirdtask is to acknowledge the temporal finitude—the inevitabledeath—of those we love, and of ourselves. Of course, these tasksare beyond our powers. Only a saint could accomplish them all.Yet if we fail in them entirely, we will not be able to live.

For over a hundred years now, psychoanalysis has patientlyshown how difficult it is for human beings to accomplish the “taskof adolescence”, to choose finitude. This is the strength and glory ofpsychoanalytic thought. We cling to fantasies of merger with oreradication of the other, we want to be all sexes or none, we want


immortality and omnipotence. His Majesty the Baby, as Freud callsthis mightily egocentric creature, has no capacity for coexistencewith others. Only those who have a sense of their own and otherpeople’s finitude can hope to create something like a human com-munity, Cavell writes. Lacan would perhaps have said that “Onlythose who have taken up a position in relation to the phallus canenter into the symbolic order.” My point is that the same funda-mental idea is at stake in these two formulations, but that Lacan’sformulation is sexist (and philosophically unclear) in a way thatCavell’s is not.

The realization of finitude is traumatic for everyone. Here it iscrucial to disentangle relevant from irrelevant sexualization (or“genderization”) of psychic issues. I agree with Freud and Lacanthat there is probably sexuality in everything. But to say this is notto say that there is sexually different sexuality in everything, nor tosay that everything can be reduced to sexuality. It is unlikely, to saythe least, that all women experience finitude differently from allmen in all its three aspects. To use castration or the more euphemis-tic lack as a general term for finitude is to impose a generalizingtheory of sexual difference on all three traumas. Apart from ideo-logical obfuscation, I fail to see what is achieved by doing that.Freud himself writes: “There is only one libido, which serves boththe masculine and the feminine sexual function. To it itself wecannot assign any sex” (Freud, 1937c, p. 131). Freud here acknowl-edges, if only for a moment, that there may be phenomena, evenintensely sexual phenomena, that have no sex (or gender, if oneprefers). This moment of wonderful promise is instantly squashed,and Freud never returns to the possibility of human as opposed tosexed drives.53

To summarize and clarify: I have said that Lacanian and Freud-ian theory uses “castration” in three different senses:

1. general human lack, finitude;

2. specific feminine lack/sexual difference;

3. discovery that we can only ever be one sex.

In this picture, sexual difference tends to become the difference, thelack, that grounds all other differences. Finitude, on the other hand,is the traumatic discovery of three irreducible facts:

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1. There are others.

2. There are others of a sex that is different from mine.

3. There is death.

In this scheme, finitude does not have to be figured as lack.54 Sexualdifference is a crucial element, but it is neither more nor lessimportant than the two other aspects of finitude. In particular, it isnot the foundation or paradigm of all kinds of finitude and differ-ence. Yet the discovery of one’s sexual finitude, one’s “one-sexedness”, is a foundational human trauma and needs to beacknowledged. The big question is how to do this in ways that donot result in sexism and injustice. To eradicate awareness of sexualdifference usually amounts to assimilating women to the malenorm. To overemphasize sexual difference is usually tantamount tolocking women up in their female difference. (My argument in thischapter has been that classical psychoanalytic femininity theorydoes both.) This scheme, moreover, gives us no grounds on whichto go around “gendering the world” by projecting sexual differ-ence on to all kinds of human qualities and activities.

Analysts and theorists ought to reserve the term “castration”for cases where people actually do fantasize, fear, worry aboutlosing their sexual powers. (It makes no sense to call a sexuallypowerful woman castrated just because the theory implies that shemust be.) They should also stop speaking of castration when whatthey have in mind is the most general sense of lack, for thisamounts to imposing a sexist and sexualizing term on all of humanexistence.

For a philosopher of finitude, human psychic pain arises fromthe finitude of the human body. It is our bodies that are separate,sexed, and mortal. This is our human condition; and the task offinitude is to acknowledge it. No wonder that religions, vast phi-losophies, and innumerable works of art have arisen in the attempt.Psychoanalysis has always been a distinguished participant in theattempt to teach human beings to come to terms with finitude. Butfinitude is not the same thing as lack. Must the fact of finitude, thefact of being separate, sexed, and mortal, be figured as lack?

A final point: Lacanians will inevitably find that I have misun-derstood and misinterpreted Lacan. (To some Lacanians the very


fact of disagreeing with Lacan is evidence that one has failed tounderstand him.) They should bear in mind that my most funda-mental critique of Lacan is external to Lacanianism and cannot betranslated into Lacanian terms without significant distortion. Evenif I have totally misunderstood what the phallus is and quite mixedup the meaning of femininity, masculinity, and jouissance, thatwould not invalidate my major claims. I have claimed that Lacan’stheory of sexual difference is a machine that churns out genderlabels; that the spatial image of language that underpins Lacaniantheory requires defence and justification; that Lacanian theoryreduces language to representation and thus fails to have a theoryof language; that Lacan’s gendered fascination with women’sknowledge of sexual pleasure cannot yield a theory of women (orfemininity). I have also claimed that the muddled and generalizeduse of the term castration is sexist and that the concept of finitudeoffers better and less sexist ways of theorizing the same aspects ofhuman existence. Above all, I have claimed that psychoanalysisdoes not need a femininity theory, and that femininity theoriesinevitably turn men into the norm and women into the other.Anyone who wants to defend Freud or Lacan’s femininity theoriesneeds to show that these claims are wrong, misconceived, or irrel-evant.

NOTES

This chapter was first published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture andSociety, Vol. 29, No. 3 (2004): 841–878. Reprinted by permission of the Univer-sity of Chicago. Copyright 2004 by the University of Chicago Press.

1. Freud’s interest in the decay of women of thirty had deep cultural rootsin Europe. The best example is probably Balzac’s La Femme de trente ans [Thewoman of thirty],which the author started to write in 1842, at the age of twenty-nine.

2. In an essay called “Is Anatomy Destiny?” (reprinted in What Is aWoman?, Moi, 1999, pp. 369–393) I show how I arrive at this conclusion. Thepresent chapter returns to some of the questions left unanswered in “IsAnatomy Destiny?”

3. See Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1953), particularly the chapter, “Child-hood”.

4. See, for example, Benjamin, 1988; Chodorow, 1993; Horney, 1973;McDougall, 1995; Mitchell, 1974, 2000, just to mention a few important works inEnglish.

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5. I write at length about this opposition in the title essay of What Is aWoman? (Moi, 1999, pp. 3–120).

6. This is not just a Western phenomenon: Lacan is taught in humanitiesdepartments all over the globe.

7. Freud and Lacan are, of course, not the only psychoanalysts who try totheorize women. To investigate post-Freudian femininity theories from KarenHorney and Helene Deutsch through Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray to JessicaBenjamin and Nancy Chodorow would be the task of a book. Perhaps thisessay can be thought of as a kind of preface to such investigations.

8. I hope to write an essay about equality, difference, and feminist theorysome day.

9. Beauvoir’s The Second Sex is an example of the kind of investigation ofwomen’s lived experience that I am looking for. Beauvoir at once rejectsfemininity theories and tries to account for the specific ways in which the factof being a woman comes to matter to the individual woman and to society.

10. Some of Lacan’s most brilliant ideas are not at all caught up in feminin-ity talk and have nothing to do with the nature of language and the beyond.His account of subject formation as an effect of alienation in the mirror stage,for example, so impressed Beauvoir that she made it foundational to The SecondSex (see Lacan, 1938). William F. Bracken’s dissertation, “Becoming Subjects:The Agency of Desire in Lacan’s Return to Freud”, shows how philosophicallyinteresting this theory is (Bracken, 1998).

11. “That is all I had to say to you about femininity. It is certainly incom-plete and fragmentary and does not always sound friendly”, Freud writes inhis 1933 essay on “Femininity” (Freud, 1933a, p. 135).

12. This is not just a feminist gripe, for many analysts have said the samething. Joyce McDougall, for example, writes: “Although he believed himself tobe an objective observer, Freud’s two renowned articles on female sexualityreveal, in limpid fashion, the extent to which he was imbued with the conven-tional, moralistic attitude of his day” (McDougall, 1995, p. 220).

13. The best theorist of the concept of situation in relation to women is, ofcourse, Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex. See also my discussion of theconcept in Moi, 1999, pp. 59–83.

14. The most famous exponent of this view is Juliet Mitchell (1974).15. The kind of “picture” I have in mind is this: “A picture held us captive.

And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemedto repeat it to us inexorably” (Wittgenstein, 1953, §115).

16. Anyone interested in further investigation of the concept of femininityin Freud should also look at the following texts, which I do not discuss here:Freud, 1908d, 1912d, 1918a, 1924d, 1930a, 1931b.

17. See my discussion of this dilemma in Moi, 1999, pp. 202–207.18. Translation amended. For the French text, see Beauvoir, 1949, Vol. 1,

p. 14. Some people think that Beauvoir’s ideas of femininity are as retrogradeas Freud’s. I cannot engage in that discussion here, but I have tried to showwhy this is wrong, for example in the title essay of What Is a Woman? (Moi,1999).

19. In Mad Men and Medusas Juliet Mitchell claims that Freud’s theory offemininity is a theory not of femininity but of hysteria. By the late 1920s,


Mitchell argues, all the features Freud used to consider characteristic of hyste-ria had been transferred to the concept of femininity: “When at the end of hislife, Freud claimed that the bedrock beneath which psychoanalysis could notpenetrate was the more or less biological one of a universal tendency by bothsexes to repudiate femininity, he was making the mistake that has been widelyreiterated: it is hysteria that cannot be tolerated, the conditions of hysteria thateveryone wishes to repudiate” (Mitchell, 2000, p. 186). I do not know whetherMitchell thinks that there still could be a good psychoanalytic theory of feminin-ity.

20. Jane Gallop puts it well: “Probably all Lacan’s advocates somewheremake the point that his detractors misread him by failing to distinguish thephallus from the penis” (Gallop, 1985, p. 134).

21. “Here the feminist demand for equal rights for the sexes does not takeus far, for the morphological distinction is bound to find expression in differ-ences of psychical development” (Freud, 1924d, p. 177). Colette Chiland suc-cinctly rejects the belief that anybody who fights for equal rights for womenmust deny all sexual differences (see Chiland, 1999, p. 15).

22. For the French text, see Lacan, 1966, p. 686.23. For the French text, see Lacan, 1966, p. 693.24. Many readers of Lacan have stumbled over the “real phallus”. In

Reading Lacan Jane Gallop proposes that we read it ironically, yet not withoutcriticism: “Thus his ‘real phallus’ would be simply an ironic use of the term, hismockery of the way others understand it. So be it. But nonetheless I think thatsuch subtleties of irony never leave their user uncontaminated” (Gallop, 1985,p. 144). Irony is a matter of tone: I do not hear irony in the sentence in question.Be that as it may. Tim Dean thinks the “real phallus” has to do with theLacanian real: “The way in which the real functions as a logical limit promptsLacan to speak of a real phallus, for jouissance is real, and the phallus signifiesa limit to the jouissance we can access” (Dean, 2000, p. 88). I think it is highlyunlikely that Lacan’s reference to the real phallus in 1958 has anything to dowith setting a limit to jouissance, which was only theorized in 1972–73.

25. For the French text, see Lacan, 1966, p. 692.26. Lacanian theory has indeed been used to support heterosexist posi-

tions, for example in the French debates about the so-called pacs (pacts of civicsolidarity, a form of marriage for homosexuals and heterosexuals). Tim Deanwould disagree with me. He is critical of the concept of the phallus butnevertheless finds explicit criticism of heterosexuality in the essay I am discuss-ing here. Lacan, he writes, “consistently pokes fun at the heterosexist idée reçu[sic] that genital relations between the sexes represent an idea for psychologicalmaturity” (Dean, 2000, p. 49). The passage he adduces for this claim is thefollowing, which I quote in Rose’s translation: “Admittedly it was Frenchpsychoanalysts, with their hypocritical notion of genital oblativity, who startedup the moralizing trend which, to the tune of Salvationist choirs, is nowfollowed everywhere” (Lacan, 1958, p. 81). I think that Dean misreads thispassage. The key phrase here is “genital oblativity”, which means somethinglike “self-sacrificing genitality”. This is a critique not of heterosexuality but ofDaniel Lagache. Lagache was Lacan’s contemporary and a leading Frenchanalyst in the 1950s. His two-volume opus La Jalousie amoureuse contains a

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theory of different types of love (Lagache, 1947). One is “oblative love” [amouroblatif], defined as totally self-sacrificing, heterosexual love (Lagache makespatient Griselda look like the ideal wife). To criticize the idea that heterosexualsexuality is devotedly self-sacrificing is hardly to criticize heterosexuality assuch. (For more information about Daniel Lagache, see Roudinesco, 1986, pp.227–235.)

27. Lacan writes: “This follows from the intervention of an ‘appearing’which gets substituted for the ‘having’ so as to protect it on one side and tomask its lack on the other” (Lacan, 1958, p. 84).

28. For the French text, see Lacan, 1966, p. 694.29. Received opinion is that whereas Freud was a biological determinist,

Lacan theorizes gender in a more progressive manner. Ellie Ragland-Sullivan isone among many to voice such a view: “Freud’s error was to mistake astructural, symbolic, and representational drama for a natural one based onbiology. . . . [Lacan] argued that a person becomes male or female by identify-ing (or not) as the phallic signifier, and not by any innate mechanism”(Ragland-Sullivan, 1987, p. 269). My argument is that neither Freud nor Lacanare biological determinists but that Lacan’s structuralism makes him far moremetaphysical than Freud.

30. Beauvoir drew on Lacan for her understanding of girls’ psychosexualdevelopment. The key Lacanian term for her was alienation and the key text along encyclopaedia entry by Lacan from 1938, published separately much lateras Les Complexes familiaux dans la formation de l’individu (Lacan, 1938).

31. Judith Butler sets out in the opposite direction. She considers that thephallus “both stands for the part, the organ, and is the imaginary transfigura-tion of that part” (Butler, 1993, p. 79). To her, it follows that the phallus is animaginary effect, which means that we are free to think of it as a transferableobject of pleasure available to anyone, including lesbians. “Indeed, ‘the’ lesbianphallus is a fiction, but perhaps a theoretically useful one”, writes Butler (1993,p. 85). Tim Dean thinks that the phallus is a “giant red herring” (Dean, 2000, p.14)—that is to say, a concept made obsolete by Lacan’s later theory (particularlythe theory of the objet a, so that all we need to do is to “move beyondinterminable and increasingly sterile debates over the phallogocentric biases ofLacan’s account of the phallus toward a more interesting ‘60s Lacan’ of theobject” (Dean, 2000, p. 50).

32. Let me stress again that I think we should distinguish between threedifferent theories in Lacan and Freud—namely, between their theories of (1)the body, (2) the relationship between the body and sexed and genderedsubjectivity (here we should further distinguish between the general under-standing and the specific story being offered as an exemplification of thatunderstanding), and (3) sexual difference.

33. By far the best discussion of the connection between the pacs and paritydebates is Anne F. Garréta’s “Re-enchanting the Republic: Pacs, Parité and LeSymbolique” (Garréta, 2001). Joan W. Scott’s essay remains the most thoughtfulone on the parity debate (Scott, 1997); it was included as part of a special sectionon parity in the journal differences (1997), which also contained interestingpapers by Françoise Gaspard (1997) and a very interesting roundtable discus-


sion (Rosanvallon, Collin, & Lipietz, 1997). The French journal Nouvelles Ques-tions Féministes published two special issues on parity, one in favour and oneagainst (see Gaspard, Viennot, & Lipietz, 1994; Le Doeuff, Varikas, & Trat,1995). The sociologist Eric Fassin’s analysis of Mona Ozouf’s successful and—to non-French feminists—deeply annoying Women’s Words: Essay on FrenchSingularity contains a wealth of information on French discussions of Americanfeminism (Ozouf, 1995), as well as an astute analysis of the sexual ideology atwork in the parity debates in France (Fassin, 1999). Anyone interested in seeingexamples of the reactionary uses of Lacanian theory in the parité and pacsdebates may consult Agacinski, 1999; Anatrella, 1998, 1999; Lamizet, 2001;Sausse, 1999; Tincq, 1999; Trigano, 1998. A welcome Lacanian exception to therule of sexism and heterosexism is Tort, 1999. Note that quotations from LeMonde without a page reference come from the Web. They can be found on twodifferent websites by searching for the name of the author: Le Monde’s own webarchives (http://archives.lemonde.fr) and Lexis-Nexis Academic (http://web.lexis-nexis.com).

34. In Antigone’s Claim, Judith Butler also refers to the reactionaryLacanian positions in the controversy over the pacs. On this point, her conclu-sion is similar to mine: “The [Lacanian] structure is purely formal, its defenderssay, but note how its very formalism secures the structure against criticalchallenge. . . . [This] structure works to domesticate in advance any radicalreformulation of kinship” (Butler, 2000, p. 71).

35. Lacan (1998) is the only complete English translation of Encore.Strangely, the translator makes no mention of Jacqueline Rose’s excellentand widely used 1982 translation of important excerpts (see Mitchell & Rose,1982).

36. As mentioned before, I have yet to find a serious investigation into thedifferences and similarities of the uses of these terms.

37. In “Beyond the Phallus”, Gallop provides a nice set of quotationsclaiming that jouissance is impossible to translate (see Gallop, 1988, pp. 119–120).

38. Gallop rightly thinks this has something to do with Roland Barthes’sdistinction between plaisir and jouissance in Le Plaisir du texte (Gallop, 1988,pp. 120–121). For Barthes’s French text, see Barthes, 1973; for an English trans-lation, see Barthes, 1975. The date of Barthes’ book is significant: he may wellhave attended Lacan’s, 1972–73 seminar.

39. Rose summarizes the problems arising from Lacan’s talk of women’sorgasms as an ecstasy “beyond the phallus”: “Jouissance is used . . . to refer tothat moment of sexuality which is always in excess, something over and abovethe phallic term which is the mark of sexual identity. The question Lacanexplicitly asks is that of woman’s relation to jouissance. It is a question whichcan easily lapse into a mystification of woman as the site of truth.—This iswhy Lacan’s statements in Encore, on the one hand, have been accused ofbeing complicit with the fantasy they try to expose, and, on the other, haveled to attempts to take the ‘otherness’ of femininity even further, beyond thelimits of language which still forms the basis of Lacan’s account” (Rose, 1982,p. 137).

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40. Wittgenstein’s discussion of concepts with “blurred edges” is alsorelevant here, for it gives us reason to ask whether there are situations andconcepts where boundaries and limits are not particularly useful metaphors(see Wittgenstein, 1953, §71).

41. Cavell’s essays on Othello and The Winter’s Tale are collected in Cavell,1987.

42. This is Diamond’s summary of Elizabeth Anscombe’s point. In thesame essay Diamond argues that Wittgenstein in the Tractatus makes a power-ful argument against the idea that there is a distinction to be drawn between“good nonsense and bad, [between] illuminating nonsense and dark murkymuddle” (Diamond, 2000, p. 160). Whether or not this is a fair reading of theTractatus is a question I do not feel equipped to answer. Diamond’s other path-breaking essays on Wittgenstein are collected in The Realistic Spirit (Diamond,1995).

43. I note here that the very first sentence of my own preface to The KristevaReader is: “To think the unthinkable: from the outset this has been JuliaKristeva’s project” (Moi, 1986, p. vi).

44. Wittgenstein does not declare, either, that only easy or simple oruncomplicated language makes sense. I imagine that he might agree that it isnot always easy to determine whether or not language makes sense. Fewwriters are as difficult to read as Wittgenstein himself. Yet his difficulty iscaused by an attempt to get clear on difficult issues. It is not caused by anyunderlying belief in the ultimate meaningfulness, let alone the revolutionarypower, of foggy and incoherent language.

45. To refuse the idea that there is something called femininity that givesrise to some special kind of “mad language” is self-evidently not to reject theidea of the unconscious. Ordinary procedures for making sense of wordsinclude the techniques used by analysts and literary critics. The analyst knowsonly too well that the analysand can use all kinds of language as forms ofdefence and resistance. She also knows how to listen for the whole speech act:the context, the silences, the tone, the affect, the body language. The fundamen-tal assumption of the analyst and the literary critic is always that the languagein question is the way it is, whether highly organized or utterly fragmented, forgood reasons. To say that some or all of those reasons are unconscious is to saythat the speaker or writer in question does not know, or does not want to know,what they are. To listen for the unconscious is to listen to what we are actuallysaying, not to something else. Both Freud and Lacan take for granted that theunconscious shows up in language. The same is true for Julia Kristeva’spsychoanalytic linguistics, which are based on the assumption that desire is inlanguage. Kristeva’s first collection of essays in English was called, precisely,Desire in Language (Kristeva, 1980).

46. For some thoughts on what it would take to bring about an encounterbetween psychoanalysis and philosophy in general, see Stanley Cavell’s essay“Psychoanalysis and Cinema: Moments of Letter from an Unknown Woman”,reprinted as Chapter 2 of Contesting Tears (Cavell, 1996). So far, the bestattempts to bring about an encounter between post-structuralism and the“new” Wittgensteinian perspective are Cavell’s critique of Derrida’s reading of


J. L. Austin (Cavell, 1994, pp. 53–127) and Martin Stone’s “Wittgenstein onDeconstruction” (Stone, 2000, pp. 83–117). The earliest and most accessibleintroduction to these questions remains Cavell’s “The Politics of Interpreta-tion” (1982). For a challenging presentation of the “new” Wittgensteinians, seeCrary & Read, 2000.

47. Lacan writes: “One of [Freud’s] last articles turns on the irreducibilityfor any finite [endliche] analysis of the effects following from the castrationcomplex in the masculine unconscious and from Penisneid [penis envy] in theunconscious of the woman” (Lacan, 1958, p. 75).

48. Wittgenstein writes: “For philosophical problems arise when languagegoes on holiday” (Wittgenstein, 1953, §38).

49. Many contemporary analysts write about psychic pain and pleasurewithout indulging in generalizations about sexual difference or femininity.Names such as Jonathan Lear, Adam Phillips, Christopher Bollas, Nina Coltart,and Joyce McDougall instantly come to mind, but there are so many others.

50. I am elaborating on McDougall’s brief formulation. She does not relatethis brilliant thought to castration and sexual difference (see McDougall, 1995,p. xv).

51. In “Psychoanalysis and Cinema”, Cavell notes that in his reading of E.T. A. Hoffmann’s “The Sand-Man” Freud explicitly denies the possibility thatthe question of “our knowledge of the existence of other minds” can be a sourceof the uncanny in the tale. Instead, Freud insists that “the uncanny inHoffmann’s tale is directly attached to the idea of being robbed of one’s eyes,and hence, given his earlier findings, to the castration complex” (Cavell, 1996,p. 110). In this way Freud loses out on an opportunity to reflect on the widerconsequences of human separation.

52. To me, this is one way of glossing Freud’s famous speculation that“Something in the nature of the sexual instinct itself is unfavourable to therealization of complete satisfaction” (Freud, 1912d, pp. 188–189).

53. I say the moment of promise is squashed because Freud’s sentencedoes not stop here: “To it itself we cannot assign any sex”, he writes, “if,following the conventional equation of activity and masculinity, we are in-clined to describe it as masculine, we must not forget that it also covers trendswith a passive aim” (Freud, 1933a, p. 131). This comes only a few pages afterhis stern warning against equating femininity with passivity (see p. 115)! It isdisheartening to note that Lacan converts Freud’s half-hearted alignment of thelibido with masculinity into a clear espousal of the primacy of the phallus:“[O]ne can glimpse the reason for a feature which has never been elucidatedand which again gives a measure of the depth of Freud’s intuition”, he writes,“namely, why he advances the view that there is only one libido, his text clearlyindicating that he conceives of it as masculine in nature” (Lacan, 1958, p. 85;emphasis added).

54. The formulation owes something to a comment in a brilliant exampaper written in February 2003 by Magdalena Ostas, a graduate student in theLiterature Program at Duke University, in the context of a discussion of Cavell,Wittgenstein, and Derrida: “The fact of finitude does not have to be expressedas lack”.

132 TORIL MOI

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Hill and Wang.Beauvoir, S. de (1949). Le Deuxième sexe (2 vols.). Paris: Gallimard

(Coll. Folio). 1986.Beauvoir, S. de (1953). The Second Sex (trans. H. M. Parshley). New

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Problem of Domination. New York: Pantheon.Bernheimer, C. (1995). A question of reference: Male sexuality in

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Bracken, W. F. (1998). Becoming subjects: The agency of desire inJacques Lacan’s return to Freud. Ph.D. dissertation, Department ofPhilosophy, Harvard University.

Butler, J. (1993). The Lesbian phallus and the morphological imagi-nary. In: Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”(pp. 57–91). New York: Routledge.

Butler, J. (2000). Antigone’s Claim: Kinship between Life and Death. NewYork: Columbia University Press.

Cavell, S. (1979). The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality,and Tragedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Cavell, S. (1982). The politics of interpretation (politics as opposed towhat?). In: Themes Out of School: Effects and Causes (pp. 27–59).Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Cavell, S. (1987). Disowning Knowledge in Six Plays of Shakespeare.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Cavell, S. (1994). A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises. Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Cavell, S. (1996). Contesting Tears: The Hollywood Melodrama of theUnknown Woman. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.


Chiland, C. (1997). Changer de sexe. Paris: Odile Jacob.Chiland, C. (1999). Le Sexe mène le monde. Paris: Calmann Lévy.Chodorow, N. (1993). Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities: Freud and

Beyond. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.Conant, J. (2000). Elucidation and nonsense in Frege and early

Wittgenstein. In: A. Crary & R. Read (Eds.), The New Wittgenstein(pp. 174–217). London & New York: Routledge.

Crary, A. & Read, R. (Eds.) (2000). The New Wittgenstein. London &New York: Routledge.

Dean, T. (2000). Beyond Sexuality. Chicago, IL: University of ChicagoPress.

Diamond, C. (1995). The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and theMind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Diamond, C. (2000). Ethics, imagination and the method ofWittgenstein’s Tractatus. . In: A. Crary & R. Read (Eds.), The NewWittgenstein (pp. 149–173). London & New York: Routledge.

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Analysis. S.E., 22.Freud, S. (1937c). Analysis terminable and interminable. S.E., 23.Gallop, J. (1985). Reading Lacan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Gallop, J. (1988). Beyond the phallus. In: Thinking through the Body

(pp. 119–133). New York: Columbia University Press.Garréta, A. F. (2001). Re-enchanting the Republic: “Pacs”, Parité and Le

Symbolique. Yale French Studies, 100: 145–166.Gaspard, F. (1997). Parity: Why not? In: differences, 9 (2): 93–104.

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Gaspard, F., Viennot, E. & Lipietz, A. (1994). La Parité “pour”.Nouvelles Questions Féministes. 15 (4): 1–90.

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Lacan, J. (1938). Les Complexes familiaux dans la formation de l’individu:Essai d’analyse d’une fonction en psychologie. Paris: Navarin, 1984.

Lacan, J. (1958). The meaning of the phallus (trans. J. Rose). In: J.Mitchell & J. Rose (Eds.), Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and theÉcole freudienne (pp. 74–85). London: Macmillan, 1982.

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Lacan, J. (1975). Le Séminaire livre XX. Encore, ed. J.-A. Miller. Paris:Seuil.

Lacan, J. (1998). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: On FeminineSexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge. Encore, 1972–1973, ed. J.-A. Miller (trans. B. Fink). New York: W. W. Norton.

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McDougall, J. (1995). The Many Faces of Eros: A Psychoanalytic Explora-tion of Human Sexuality. New York: Norton.

Mitchell, J. (1974). Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A Radical Reassessmentof Freudian Psychoanalysis. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Mitchell, J. (1986). The question of femininity and the theory of psy-choanalysis. In: G. Kohon (Ed.), The British School of Psychoanalysis:The Independent Tradition (pp. 381–398). London: Free AssociationBooks.

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Moi, T. (1986). Preface. In: T. Moi (Ed.), The Kristeva Reader (pp. vi–vii).Oxford: Blackwell.

Moi, T. (1999). What Is a Woman? And Other Essays. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

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Ragland-Sullivan, E. (1987). Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of Psy-choanalysis. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Rosanvallon, P., Collin, F., & Lipietz, A. (1997). Parity and uni-versalism (I). differences 9 (2): 110–142.

Rose, J. (1982). Introduction to Lacan, “God and the jouissance ofwoman”. In: J. Mitchell & J. Rose (Eds.), Feminine Sexuality: JacquesLacan and the École freudienne (pp. 137–138). London: Macmillan,1982.

Roudinesco, E. (1986). Histoire de la psychanalyse en France. 2: 1925–1985. Paris: Seuil.

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Tincq, H. (1999). Front commun des religions. Le Monde, 1 February.Tort, M. (1999). Homophobies psychanalytiques. Le Monde, 15 Octo-

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November.Wittgenstein, L. (1922). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (trans. D. F. Pears

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M. Anscombe). New York: Macmillan, 1968.

137

CHAPTER EIGHT

Femininity theory, theories of women,or feminist theory?

Ebba Witt-Brattström

In “What Is a Woman?” Toril Moi argues that Freud may havebeen a man with biased views on women, but he was not abiological determinist, despite his belief that “our anatomy

and our biological needs will make psychic conflict inevitable”(Moi, 1999, p. 380). This argument is the background to Moi’schapter, “From femininity to finitude: Freud, Lacan, and feminism,again” (Chapter 7, this volume). Moi’s speciality as a scholar can besaid to be “appropriating” (note the Marxist flavour!), in the nameof feminist theory, “appropriate” supposedly gender-neutral, thatis, patriarchal theories such as psychoanalysis (Freud, Lacan,Kristeva), existentialist phenomenology (Simone de Beauvoir,Merleau-Ponty, Sartre), and Bourdieu’s sociology and philosophyof language (Austin, Cavell, Wittgenstein). In Chapter 7, one findsan excellent although short example of Moi’s appropriationmethod. Working from Freud’s own methodological reflection in“The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman”(Freud, 1920a), Moi is able to show how the generalizing tendencyof traditional psychoanalytic “femininity theory” becomes the an-tithesis to Freud’s own psychoanalytic method, defined as an in-quiry into individual cases, which looks backwards instead of

138 EBBA WITT-BRATTSTRÖM

forwards and therefore does not predict or regulate the subject’sfuture.

In a more edifying sense, Moi has been able to appropriateSimone de Beauvoir’s theories in The Second Sex. “I read as thewoman I am”, writes Moi in What is a Woman? (Moi, 1999, p. 205).This assertion is the distinctive feature of a typical Moi text: atheoretical, philosophical, feminist essay that is personal and theo-retical at the same time. Moi has found Beauvoir’s theory of theembodied, sexually different human being useful in her quest for atheory of subjectivity that does not exclude women’s experiencesor their agency: “Subjectivity (and agency) has always been at theheart of my interests” (p xii). So, when Moi confronts psychoanaly-sis, or specifically Freud and Lacan, with the question “what is awoman?” (defined in Beauvarian terms), she finds no answersaside from castration as a synonym for femininity. All his womenpatients wanted psychoanalysis to give them a penis, Freud statedin 1937—the year Freud lost his dearest correspondent, LouAndreas-Salomé, for whom the concept of penis envy was cultur-ally constructed, a token of mistaken modernity, when womenstarted to compete with men on their premises (Andreas-Salomé,1928, p 241). With Lacan, women became doubly marked by ab-sence, lack, and castration. Such theories of castration, penis envy,and the phallus are clearly sexist in Beauvoir’s sense: they denywomen universality as women, without losing their particularity.Moi’s critique of the self-willed use of the concept of castration ismerciless, and her dismissal of “femininity theory” for the good of“theories of women” is stimulating. But what happened to “femi-nist theory”?

* * *Let me first state that this is an exciting chapter, going straight tothe core of feminism’s problem with “the holy Grail of psychoana-lytic inquiry: the riddle of femininity”. Although I definitely shareMoi’s weariness of the patriarchal equation of woman with castra-tion, I have my doubts about dumping femininity theory in thedustbin of history. Her solution to the problem of female particu-larity and her strategy for an egalitarian future—the suggestionthat psychoanalysis should be the theory and therapy of human

139FEMININITY THEORY

finitude—is to me, despite its elegance, something like throwingthe baby out with the bathwater. Moi runs the risk of using humanfinitude as a political alibi, a moral shortcut through the swamps offemininity to the Valhalla of universality (at the cost of the particu-larity of both men and women, I would add). What is more, I donot believe that the three aspects of human finitude specified byMoi with the help of Joyce McDougall—the discovery of the other,the discovery of one-sexedness, and the discovery of death—arenot gendered in any way. If, as Freud’s concept of epistemophiliateaches us—and Moi has written brilliantly about it (Moi, 1999, pp.348–368)—intellectual work begins in and with the body, then thedesire for knowledge—about the nature of the other, about themeaning of sexual difference and procreation, about death—has tobe gendered since our bodies are gendered, which consequentlymakes psychic conflict “inevitable”, to quote again Moi’s rehabili-tation of Freud in “What is a woman?”

I would ask you to consider my own dilemma. Am I to followMoi’s recommendation to stop studying femininity theories (andthe Freudian is the most interesting one)? Trying to give my ana-lytical attention to individual cases as they are put forward by thefemale literary tradition, I find it impossible to choose betweenfemininity theories and theories of women. My own experience ofthirty years as a literary scholar specializing in women authors ofvarious periods has taught me that the material given to us by theliterary tradition is hard to understand without knowledge ofhistorically pervasive discourses on women’s so called nature. Inorder to do theories of women, to understand their testimonies, ifyou like, in history, but also in contemporary literature, we need toapply femininity theory.

And I would never want to choose between Freud and Lacan inthis respect. Does one have to? I would rather stick to JulietMitchell’s recommendation of 1974: Freudian and Lacanianthought does not offer a recommendation for, but an analysis ofpatriarchal society. Mitchell (and Jacqueline Rose) offered to awhole generation of intellectual feminists a shift from a literalreading of feminine sexuality in terms of penis envy to the struc-tural role of lack in the gender binary (Mitchell, 1974; Mitchell &Rose, 1982). Theirs might not be the solution for today, but it


marked a historical moment in our quest for an analysis of howsexual differences operate in society, for an understanding of thegenesis of gender formation and an explanation for the asymmetri-cal power relations constituted by sexual difference.

I do, however, agree with Moi that we now have to take adecisive step out of the grips of phallic feminism, but I will ventureto propose another way for women to claim universality aswomen. Is “feminist theory” (this contradiction in terms) perhaps asynonym of “theories of women”? To me, feminism has to do withpolitical advocacy and agency that questions the confusion of biol-ogy with culture when it comes to women, and theory is but astatement of the facts on which practice depends. (Theory, accord-ing to the Oxford English Dictionary, derives from the Greek word“thea”, which is the root for looking at, viewing, contemplating.) Inthe term “feminist theory”, politics and subjectivity combine todisrupt the “scientific” objectivity that patriarchal theory claimsfor itself. Thus, “feminist theory”, to my understanding, wouldbe enough to solve the absurd choice between particularity anduniversality. Given its focus on particular cases and individualexperiences, feminist theory should avoid the trap of undue gener-alization that, according to Moi, characterizes femininity theories.This, as Moi points out, is Beauvoir’s method in The Second Sex,where she freely uses women’s literature to exemplify differentfemale experiences. Thus, Beauvoir, but not Moi (although herselfan eminent reader of literary texts) seems to know what a treasure-chest of female experiences women’s literary tradition is for mak-ing theories about women.

* * *This brings me to my last argument and my modest proposal forthe future of feminist psychoanalysis. Allow me a methodologicalreflection. When we accept the debates around Freud as the privi-leged starting point of our feminist–philosophical project, the con-cern with fighting against the phallus keeps us shut up in a“picture” that leaves us ignorant about everything outside it. Moiwrites in Chapter 7 (note 15): “A picture (penis) held us captive.And we could not get outside (beyond) it, for it lay (stood) in ourlanguage (theory) and language (theory) seemed to repeat it to us


inexorably.” In the picture in which we find ourselves today,where are the founding mothers of psychoanalysis and their dia-logue with the phallic monism of this theory? Lou Andreas-Salomé, Karen Horney, Ruth Mack Brunswick, Melanie Klein, andall the others—what were their opinions on Freud’s femininitytheory, and why do we not bring their arguments into play? Howlong will we go on inventing the wheel, or the Anti-Phallus, inevery generation? Why does psychoanalysis not have a femalecanon as well as a male? Why do we always have to go to Beauvoirin order to learn that feminist theory needs its foremother’s experi-ences of being othered in order to avoid this fate for our grand-daughters? Because of “the discontinuity in the story of women’sintellectual effort” (Lerner, 1993, p. 275), are we not all, as GerdaLerner has suggested, victims of amnesia when it comes to thedevelopment of a feminist consciousness, which has lived on forthousands of years in women’s literature but has never been trans-mitted to us in terms of “theories of women”?

This “her-story” or collective memory entails an epistemologi-cal tradition, a body of knowledge, figures, and other rhetoricalstrategies for depicting more or less repressed human experiences(childbearing, heterosexual as well as lesbian desire, female aging,and so on). While working as editor on Nordic Women’s LiteraryHistory, I realized two things: First, women represent, historically,a different tradition of knowledge. The female author is a kind ofpolitical philosopher: she must produce her own system of under-standing the world. Surprisingly, this system often turns out to bea universe of ideas, experiences, observations that differ from thoseof men. Second, this worldview often challenges and underminespatriarchal ideologies and calls into question traditional hierar-chies of the sexes (and summons men to take responsibility fortheir gendered behaviour). The fact that such a great part of wom-en’s literature has been a literature of testimony—speaking ofstructural subordination (for example, cultural representations ofwoman as sexual object) and individual oppression (for example,sexual violence)—is a major reason for its suppression. Another isthe fact that, although the subject positions offered to women inhistory have always been connected with the processes of othering,there is a tradition of resistance to being othered in authorships as


different as St. Bridget of Sweden (fourteenth century) and DorisLessing, not to mention a thousand more. In women’s literature thequestion “What is a woman?” can be answered in a thousand ways.More important to us today is that this situation applies to thequestion “What is a man?” as well.

* * *In other words, most women authors refuse to choose betweenbeing a woman and being a human being (particularity and univer-sality), and, to this end, they adopt different strategies. One way ofresisting the false dilemma is to refuse particularity as a mark onlyof femininity. I call this strategy genderizing or particularizingmen, often experienced by men as a “degradation from universal toparticular”. Moi writes that men can be particular and universal atthe same time, but I doubt that they are allowed to (except inliterature and perhaps in love relationships), since there is no onethere to recognize them as such. Beauvoir reflects on this in a well-known passage of The Second Sex:

[W]oman is defined exclusively in her relation to man. Theasymmetry of the categories—male and female—is mademanifest in the unilateral form of sexual myths. We sometimessay “the sex” to designate woman; she is the flesh, its delightsand dangers. The truth that for woman man is sex andcarnality has never been proclaimed because there is no one toproclaim it. Representation of the world, like the world itself, isthe work of men; they describe it from their own point of view,which they confuse with absolute truth. [de Beauvoir, 1988, p.174–175]

Simone de Beauvoir points to the shocking truth that for womenmen are as much body as gender—that is, they are marked byparticularity just as much as women are for men. In the femaleliterary tradition, this is a forbidden or muted truth that has had tobe given with precaution, in coded language, especially in histori-cal times (when male particularity was often depicted with thedefensive use of irony).

To summarize: to do theories of women, or feminist theory, goto the foremothers in literature and in psychoanalysis. In order tocreate symmetry between the terms “man” and “woman”, create a


new, “particular” entry for men (which would be much the sameentry as for women who do not want to trade their particularity foruniversality). The time is (over)ripe to give the question “What is awoman?” its counterpart: “What is a man”?

REFERENCES

Andreas-Salomé, L. (1928). Was daraus folgt, dass es nicht die Fraugewesen ist, die den Vater totgeschlagen hat. In: I. Weber, & B.Rempp (Eds.), Lou Andreas Salomé. Das “zweideutige” Lächeln derErotik, Texte zur Psyhoanalyse. Freiburg: Kore Verlag, 1990.

Beauvoir, S. de (1988). The Second Sex. London: Pan Books.Freud, S. (1920a). The psychogenesis of a case of homosexuality in a

woman. S.E., 18.Lerner, G. (1993). The Creation of Feminist Consciousness. From the

Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Mitchell, J. (1974). Psychoanalysis and Feminism. London: Allen Lane.Mitchell, J. & Rose, J. (Eds.) (1982). Feminine Sexuality. Jacques Lacan &

the école freudienne. London: Macmillan Press.Moi, T. (1999). What Is a Woman? And Other Essays. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

145

CHAPTER NINE

Revisiting the riddle of sex:an intersubjective viewof masculinity and femininity

Jessica Benjamin

In this chapter my aim is to show the consequences of the wayFreud (1933a) posed and solved “the riddle of the nature offemininity” for our view of both sexuality and gender. I con-

sider how the problem of “excess” generates the split betweenactivity and passivity, which Freud—for all his warnings againstequating them with gender positions—still took as points on thecompass. Here I am following up on some of my ideas (Benjamin,1988, 1995, 1996) of how the complementarity of gender is the effectof splitting. I show how we can read Freud’s own interpretation offemininity as the turn towards a passive attitude in relation to thefather as the expression of the oedipal boy’s attitude. This view offemininity expresses the oedipal boy’s need to projectively createan object that can contain excitement and can hold the place ofpassivity. This projection, most particularly, into the figure of thedaughter, is a clue to how Freud shifted from early writings abouthysterical daughters with abusive or intrusive fathers to later writ-ings in which he defined passive aims in relation to the father as theessence of the feminine.

I will contend that femininity is not a pre-existing “thing” or“essence” that is repudiated by the male psyche: rather, it is actu-

146 JESSICA BENJAMIN

ally constructed by it. The daughter position, in which the girlfunctions as container, helps shore up a masculine self threatenedby oedipal loss, exclusion, or over-stimulation. We might say thatthe daughter position is in a double sense the solution to theproblem of sexual passivity as we find it represented by Freud andcorrespondingly expressed in the male psyche. Perhaps this isanother way of showing why it is impossible to speak of femininityas a “thing”, separate from masculinity, for the two are trulyconstructs created in the same moment, for the same purpose.Finally, I close by suggesting another possible processing of passiv-ity in an intersubjective economy based on working through ratherthan repudiating experiences of excess.

An underlying premise of my argument is that passivity is notin itself intolerable: quite the contrary, it is often pleasurable, but itbecomes so when there is a failure of self-regulation based ondeficient responses by the other—responses variously conceptual-ized as holding, containment, and mentalization. This failure, ini-tially an intersubjective one, generates the experience of excess.By excess I mean, to begin with, more tension than is felt to bepleasurable or even bearable, particularly by the immature psyche.One aim of this discussion is to reconsider the experience of passiv-ity in order to highlight underrepresented, intersubjective solu-tions to the problem of excess.

The problem of excess

Freud’s notion of sexual pleasure and pain emphasized how weseek mastery over tension; he conceived of a one-person economyin which pain is defined as too much tension. But what is it thatmakes for too much? From an intersubjective point of view, pleas-ure and pain occur within a two-person relationship. They arepsychic experiences having to do with how we register the re-sponses of another and how the other registers us. Psychic pain inits intersubjective aspect is linked to failures of recognition andregulation, to arousal caused by inadequate or overwhelming re-sponses, and to absence of mentalization (Fonagy & Target, 1996).Eigen (1993), in a viewpoint parallel to my own, stressed the

147REVISITING THE RIDDLE OF SEX

overwhelming of the psyche by its response to the other’s stimula-tion.

Without the outside other, the originally helpless self cannotprocess internal tension or external stimulation. Without themother’s containment of pain and excitement, the baby cannotself-regulate. But this is a two-way process: the individual’s self-regulation of arousal and affect and the process of mutual regula-tion are interdependent (Beebe & Lachmann, 2002). Thus anindividual’s state of internal tension is inextricably tied to theintersubjective tension of recognition between self and other. Rec-ognition includes not only gratifying but meaning-giving re-sponses that hold affect as well as giving coherence to the self’sneeds, intentions, and acts. From my perspective, the failure oftension regulation—excess—is generally linked to failures in rec-ognition.

Laplanche helped to shape contemporary discussion of excessby emphasizing the general over-stimulation and mystery attend-ant on the adult’s transmission of the sexual in the “enigmaticmessage” (Laplanche, 1987, 1992, 1995). However, I wish to supple-ment Laplanche’s view with an intersubjective perspective onsexuality that also considers how excess results from both specificand structural misrecognitions: from the lack of direct interper-sonal recognition of the child’s sexual experience (Davies, 2001) aswell as the general over-stimulation and mystery attendant on theadult’s transmission of the sexual in the “enigmatic message”(Laplanche, 1987, 1992, 1995). In Laplanche’s reframing of the se-duction theory, the excess that is sexuality always begins with anunconscious communication from the other—the parent’s sexual-ity as not yet comprehended by the child. Laplanche contends thatFreud was too concrete in thinking that seduction must be eitherreal or imagined and missed the category of the message, thetransmission of affect and excitement without literal seduction. InLaplanche’s view, the enigmatic message is constitutive of thechild’s unconscious. Sexuality is inherently mysterious becausethe child cannot comprehend what the adult wants from the child.Stein (1998) has elaborated how the enigmatic message generatesthe poignancy of sex and how the excessive takes us beyondrepresentation into an experience of otherness and mystery.


My reading of the enigmatic message here is somewhat dif-ferent from Stein’s because I want to distinguish more sharplybetween the otherness that is mysterious and that which is mystify-ing: in the mystifying aspect, affective tension that could not beunderstood, represented, or “bound” in dialogic exchange appearslater as though self-originating, a one-person fantasy (a real ap-pearance). Thus the position of passivity can be analysed as aneffect of a particular relation to an other rather than seeing it as aninnate instinctual position.

For instance, Isabelle, a daughter who learned to be a containerfor her mother, tells of her mother’s invasive excitement, dancingaround the room while her daughter practiced piano. This messageabout her mother’s internal state, which reappeared in Isabelle’sfantasies about herself, made her own desires confusing—werethey mother’s or her own? The vicissitudes of excitement and theability to contain arousal is linked in complex ways to the con-scious and unconscious aspects of communication with a specificother. This relational aspect, as Stein points out, disappears inLaplanche’s abstract conception of parental sexuality as a “general-ized other”.

Psychoanalysis has in recent decades elaborated a far richerunderstanding of specific experiences between self and other. Sincethe groundbreaking work of Stoller (1975, 1980) and McDougall(1989, 1995), we recognize how sexual fantasies can be used to solveproblems of differentiation and gender identification, to expresstraumatic loss and pain, wishes for reparation and revenge, fears offragmentation and destructiveness. They opened up our work tothe insight that the peremptory nature of the sexual might beattributed to the intensity of object loss and not the paramounteffect of the drive.

We now think about how sexuality functions to contain other-wise unrepresented, unmentalized experiences with significantothers, or how bodily contact can be metaphorically equated infantasy with the entry into the other’s mind, the experience ofbeing recognized or held, invaded or excluded. We consider thegradations of the desire to reach the other, the frustrated despera-tion to get in accompanied by urgent need to discharge, the differ-ent inflections of the wish to enter or be entered: from the wish to


be held safely to the urge to break in forcibly, from the wish to beknown to the wish to be cracked open. We may think of sexualityas a means of expressing the need to get me into you, or get youinto me; but conversely, we may think that the experience ofexcitement generates or intensifies the need to get in, as in, “Helpme contain this tension; let me put this tension into you.” Thus wehave a whole lexicon of experiences involving the causes andeffects of uncontained sexual excitement and unmanageablearousal, in which we alternately see sexuality as a motive and as avehicle of expression.

Along these lines, Stein (1998) has suggested that we find “sexu-ality suitable to serve as one of the most powerful coins in themental trade between different levels and contents” (p. 254). Ana-lysts now work in both directions, not only “discovering sexualthemes and motivations behind the ostensibly non-sexual” (p. 254)but finding other motives in the sexual.

Thus the introduction of intersubjective considerations does notobviate a notion of the intrapsychic perspective: each is alternatelyvaluable. But adding the intersubjective does delimit the place ofthe intrapsychic. Unprocessed, undigested affect can, in the ab-sence of a transforming, regulating other, still be intrapsychicallyprocessed through forms of sexual excitement, more or less disso-ciated from other affective experience. Failures in affective contain-ment may be reworked and translated into sexual tension—theymay or may not reflect some interpersonal transmission of uncon-scious sexual content. As Stein has put it, “it seems that the humanorganism has the capacity to [use sexualization] to deal with theexcess . . . in other words, sexualisation is a capacity, a positiveachievement . . .” (p. 266). Sexual fantasy, on this view, serves theneeds of human creativity and expression. It often stands in for theoutside other; it becomes an Other within. We may wonder to whatdegree sexuality serves this function precisely because, as Davies(2001) put it, a child’s sexuality has not been “embedded in proce-dural memories of interpersonal safety and containment, they re-side in large measure in unformulated, oftentimes dissociatedrealms . . . unprocessed, unmetabolized” (p. 764).


Excess and the mind–body split

If sexuality provides an alternative register for processing tensionand managing excess, when it functions in lieu of the outside otheror substitutes for communicative and symbolic processes, this canonly work by dint of a split in the self. Above all, by splitting mindand body, the self can play two parts, with the body as containerfor experience that the mind cannot process symbolically. Thebody can be employed as an alternative part-self to hold anddischarge the tension of split-off experience with important others.Painful affect and overwhelming excitement that are leftunprocessed and unrepresented in communicative dialogue can berepresented in sexual fantasy and then discharged physically.

In this manner the patient “Isabelle”, whom I have just men-tioned and have described elsewhere (Benjamin, 1995), used des-perate autoerotic activities and fantasies beginning in earlychildhood to process her mother’s “enigmatic message”.

Isabelle was referred for analysis by a doctor she had consultedbecause she feared that her sexual practices—putting hard ob-jects inside her—had damaged her vagina. She felt her motherto have been intensely over-stimulating, transmitting enormousexcitement and anxiety, using Isabelle as a container for herown excess. Initially, Isabelle would say that she wished Iwould be more stimulating and complained of not understand-ing why I did not give her direction. In one session she wishedthat I would say “one really perceptive thing”, would be likethe consulting analyst who referred her, whose comments were“amazingly pointed . . . and deep . . . hitting a nerve”. Her agita-tion subsided somewhat when I articulated her fear that I wasnot potent enough to penetrate her and handle her sexuality,that it would overwhelm me.

In effect, Isabelle felt that only if I entered her and structuredher with my mind, containing the tension that had over-whelmed her mind, could she be safe. But while she expressedthis in terms of being penetrated, it appeared that she needed tobe held and taken into my mind as much as she needed to beentered. My ability to contact this longing was not unduly


affected by her invidious comparisons and her frustration be-cause of the transparency of her wish to be recognized by me,one with which I could readily identify.

In the following session, she began to describe her compulsiveautoerotic activities, which had begun in early childhood. Asshe grew older, she felt that she took her mother’s part in hersexual fantasy, reworking her mother’s scolding assaults intoher sexual experience. She would try to talk to her mother, shesaid, “but when I did open up, she’d attack me, but I’d feelguilty, like I brought it on because I had wanted to talk toher. . . . If I opened up too much, she’d attack me, so maybe Itook on the role of my mother pushing me. In fact, when Imasturbated, and even now, but then I mean, a voice of powerthat I take on tells me I have to do it, and then I endure a stateof orgasm: “You’re gonna do it.” I was like master and slave . . .there was a giant split between the two sides, a nondescriptvoice with complete control versus one that just wanted. I couldonly open up to my own inner voice, I could not do it withanyone else. You are in the camp of anyone else.”

Isabelle describes, in effect, how she has created a splitcomplementarity of mind and body within herself: the activedoer allied with the observer mind, the passive body self hav-ing to hold a state of excitement, leading to dissolution of self.The active master is disembodied, and the embodied self servesor submits to it. All this within the omnipotence of her ownmind, which cannot dare let the other in. The other is danger-ous, both shutting her out (as she remembers her mother doingwhen her brother was born) or violently intruding (as she,Isabelle, might have wanted to in her rage at being left out). Inthe absence of intersubjective regulation by the other, the ex-cited sexual body became a split off container for unrepresent-able pain and for aggression. Both her mother’s aggression, andher own—as well as the rage she experience in early adoles-cence which she was forbidden from turning back against hermother. It is only after this confession of her core anxieties thatIsabelle was able to bear for the first time, at the beginning ofthe next session, a moment of silence, a space, a presence that is


non-invasive. That is, she can imagine being held safely in another’s mind, without penetrating or being penetrated, in sucha way that her internal tension is regulated.

Isabelle’ story illustrates a mother–child dyad in which excess isprocessed through sexualization, through fantasy that explicitlytakes the body as a container for the unbearable. This sexualizationtakes the well-known form of complementarity between doer anddone-to, enacted in the intrapsychic fantasy world, we might say,within the monadic sexual economy. The principal movement inthis economy is not the exchange of recognition, the communica-tion of affect between subjects, but, rather, a fantasmatic seesaw ofactivity and passivity. There is no mutual penetration of minds—rather, a fantasy of a powerful doer and “the one who submits”.

The monadic economy

The regulation of tension in the monadic economy takes placethrough bodily discharge of tension—sometimes compulsively asfor Isabelle. Dimen (2003) has proposed that discharge befits a one-person model. Freud’s economy of libido as opposed to the idea ofpleasure [Lust] is associated with a kind of sexual hygiene in whichdischarge is “the bridge between sexuality and sanity”. I woulddistinguish discharge from the two-person economy insofar as thepoint is only to regulate one’s own tension, not to enjoy the other orto contact another mind. Discharge, when it is detached from thosepurposes, means the use of the body to solve the problem of mentalexcess, that which cannot be held in the dialogically created mentalspace.

I believe that these formulations about how we regulate tensionmight begin to contribute to a psychoanalytic idea of energy, mov-ing it out of the instinctual economy of the isolate individual andrecasting it in terms of the intersubjective economy. In introducingthe term “energy”, I am trying to take a step in the dialectic beyondthe relational reversal (e.g. Mitchell, 1988) according to whichsexuality expresses relational configurations. I wish to develop aneconomic idea, that within relational configurations we producesomatic/affective tension—that is, energy—that becomes (materi-


alizes as) sexuality. Work in attachment theory and infancy re-search has related to the idea of organisms sharing information andsignals as a basis for connection and for some kind of energetictransformation within the self (e.g. Sander, 2002).

I am suggesting that the concept of energy as a mental, psycho-logical phenomenon may deepen our intersubjective psychoana-lytic understanding that the regulation of tension within theindividual includes the transmission of tension and its regulationor recognition via communication between subjects (see Beebe &Lachmann, 2002). If we follow Sander’s logic that more specificrecognition allows the dyadic system to contain more complexity,we might conclude that greater specificity of recognition (under-standing) allows more tension to be contained and processed. Interms of energy, we can conceptualize dyadic systems based onboth intrapsychic and intersubjective economies, which interactwith each other. But my argument is that phenomena that appearas solely intrapsychic productions in the individual should be un-derstood in terms of intersubjective failures in the original dyadicsystems that resulted in experiences of excess. For instance, whenthe other is absent or mentally missing, this may result in an excessof pain, loss, or flooding.

In addition, I propose that action directed towards discharge onthe part of one partner (a parent)—as we saw with Isabelle’smother—increases excess. It readily devolves into looking towardsthe child as a holding other reduced to the position of passivecontainer. Such actions represent a version of discharge whether ornot they are overtly sexual. Such actions, as when an adult con-scripts a child to contain his sexual energy or tension, appears tome to be an important dimension of Laplanche’s enigmatic mes-sage, which, as he suggests, is to be distinguished from concreteseduction.

Activity and passivity

What are the consequences of uniting such economic ideas oftension and excess within an intersubjective framework of un-conscious transmission? These ideas suggest how the polarcomplementarity of active–passive is a function of the intrapsychic


economy of discharge—either you put into me or I put into you. Itimplies some failure in the intersubjective economy of recognitionand mutual regulation. It would follow that the templates wedefine as masculine and feminine and their corresponding appealsto our impulses towards activity or passivity may be traced back tothe problem of transmission and the processing of excess. Activityand passivity in the realm of excess can generate a destructive cyclein which the other is experienced as shutting out, excluding,uncontaining, thus stimulating or provoking invasion.

I will suggest that the traditional gender solutions to the prob-lem of excess perpetuate this vicious cycle. Recently, viewingBernini’s extraordinary sculpture portraying Apollo and Daphne, Iwas struck by the powerlessness and desperation of both maleand female figures locked in an eternal vicious cycle. The male godenacts a violent grabbiness, as the violated young woman evadeshim by hardening her body into bark, her arms reaching away andupward as they transform into branches. How deeply are our pastand present sexual mythologies, our templates of masculine andfeminine, shaped by this dynamic of invasion and shutting out,shutting out and struggling to get in?

In this light, let us reprise Freud’s idea of seduction as a trau-matic experience of helplessness in the face of over-stimulation orbeing shut out by the other. I suggest how this experience of excessleads to a splitting between an active part-self (phallic, mental) anda passive part-self (container, bodily). We can see how the con-struction of what Freud understood as femininity actually reflectsan important aversion of the male solution to the problem ofexcess.

To begin with, let us consider how the discharge of tensioncomes to be associated with activity and to acquire a genderedmeaning as masculine. As I have discussed elsewhere (Benjamin,1998a, 1998b), an insight into this process was suggested to me by adiscussion of Freud’s (1896b) “Further Remarks on the Neuropsy-chosis of Defense” (Christiansen, 1993). There Freud observed thatthe obsessional position of defensive activity is the characteristi-cally masculine way of dealing with overstimulation. It rescues thechild from the position of passivity, which is both intolerable andfeminine. Indeed, Christiansen (1993) proposed that we read this tosay that masculinity does not result in, but is first constituted by,


this repudiation of passivity in favour of defensive activity. In thesame defensive move, as the male psyche expels passivity, it cre-ates through splitting what is called femininity as a projected objectthat absorbs what it extrudes.

Now this move is a key to decoding the core fantasy that infusesthe gender positions organized in the Oedipus complex as de-scribed by Freud (1924d, 1926d)—and less so by subsequent, dis-senting theorists such as Klein. In the oedipal situation the boy isliable to feel over-stimulated by his own sexuality and his moth-er’s, by her message and his unsymbolized response. At the sametime he is in the grip of a disidentification from mother that oftenhas severe sanctions, in that shame and humiliation are the lot ofboys who wish to hang on to their mothers. Many forces, includinghis own need to separate, stimulate his longings for her yet make itimpossible for him to turn to her for containment. The sense of lossmay sound the dominant note, but then again impotence, shame,confusion, and a range of other affects may play their part. Theexperience of having the mother–son couple separated by the fa-ther can be coded as the fear of being entered by the father (Elise,2001). Thus the experience of being passively overwhelmed andabandoned needs to be defended against via projection and identi-fication with the father–aggressor. The boy establishes his ownactivity by projecting the experience of being the passive one ontothe other, creating the split complementarity. He says, in effect: it isnot I but the little sister, the girl, who must be the passive one. AsI see it, this position of being passively stimulated—now associatedwith the baby he once was—has traditionally been lodged by theoedipal boy–mind in the image of the feminine object.

In David Grossman’s (2001) epistolary novel Be My Knife, thewritings of his desperate character Yair exemplify this dilemma.Yair, in letters that read like monologues on the couch, tells of hisdesperate desire to be understood and his fear that he is nothingbut a screaming baby, a braying donkey foal, an “infantile weirdo.”He warns his epistolary lover Miriam to get back because (note thefemale body imagery) “disgusting rivers are flowing out of all hisorifices . . . the shedding layers of his slightly overexcited soul . . .”Then again he writes, “I have been the hole, how unmasculine.”When he speaks of his longing to just once “touch the target, touch,touch one alien soul”, he sees himself becoming the screamer, who


“screams in his breaking, reedy voice, which continues to changethroughout his life.” Tellingly, his invocation of feminine hysteriaincludes identifying himself as the container, the one who hasunderstood this scream “not with my ears but with my stomach,my pulse, my womb . . .” It is almost as if he is forced to be acontainer, who understands others but experiences this as emascu-lation—not unlike the gender-switching boy Coates (Coates, Fried-man, & Wolfe, 1991) describes, whose cartoon depicts a catscreaming because he is being forced to turn into a lady. He ought,Yair says, to contain himself phallically: “My father would say tome, the whole body wants to pee, but you know what to take out todo the job.” At the book’s climax, in a power struggle with his littleson, Yair tries to claim the position of that phallic father whosevoice appeared earlier: “You will return to me, crawling, as usual,says he dryly.” He shuts his little son—his little boy self—out of thehouse (the maternal container) until he gives in. Yair finally doesrequire the understanding intervention of Miriam, his “goodmother-container”, to rescue him from the tormenting alternativesof emasculated boy impotence or punitive paternal control.

Grossman’s story suggests how a boy’s sense of loss in relationto the mother impairs his sense of containment because it is com-pounded by the need to disidentify with both sides of the mother–baby couple: the mother’s womb, which hears and enfolds, thebaby who cries out. Repudiation of identification with mother andbaby contaminates, as we see in Yair’s plaint, the previous identifi-cation with the organs that signify the internal container. It is amark of weakness to identify with the womb that hears and recog-nizes the cry of the child for its mother, the scream of not beingheard. Disidentification is necessitated by the threat of being belit-tled, “castrated”, or seen as the crying, leaky baby by the father.This disidentification can impair the integration of everything con-solidated under the umbrella of maternal accommodating func-tions—receptivity, holding, and responsibility for one’s ownregulation—thus leaving the little boy uncontained, over-excitedand leaky. This can only be counteracted, as his father says, bymaking the penis the sole and powerful container of discharge.Accepting this unattainable phallic ideal as a signifier of his ownlack, he feels himself humiliated, effeminized. He is cut off by hisshame—thrown into catastrophic isolation, longing but unable to


touch even one other. Thus the problem of being heard and held, havingone’s excess contained, is expressed through gender signifiers as a prob-lem of masculine and feminine identifications.

In Grossman’s narrative we see how complex a man’s relation-ship to cast-off femininity becomes. I have been suggesting that thevery norm of femininity was constructed to hold unwanted experi-ences of vulnerability and helplessness, and that this occursthrough the defensive splitting of activity and passivity. This viewof the feminine corresponds to the classic image of daughter, theone who, Freud insists, must switch to the father. Here we see thelogic of Freud’s (1931b, 1933a) insistence that this switch is whatdefines femininity. Of course, Horney (1926) had already pointedout how Freud’s theory of penis envy and the girl’s sense ofinferiority reproduced exactly the thinking of the oedipal boy. Thisthinking performs a double move: the daughter as passive femi-nine object now becomes, via a symbolic equation, a receptacle forthe self’s active discharge; also (via projective identification) shenow stands in as the sacrificial masochistic self whose sexual im-pulse is turned inward. She will take on the role of accommodatingand absorbing unmanageable tension—like a containing mother,only more controllable. Another feature of this move is that themother is split, so that her accommodating aspect is attributed tothe girl and her active organizing aspect is reformulated as male,fatherly (“use your penis to do the job”). This active part of themother—for instance her anal control, often called phallic— iswhat the boy identifies with and recodes as masculine. What theboy often abjects is her sexuality, her organs: hence the disavowalof the vagina, which Freud took to be normal.

The daughter position

The construction of femininity and the daughter position in the“oedipal-boy mind” operate culturally, instituted and evolvedover the long history of patriarchy. How, exactly, they are createdand transmitted, I could not claim to describe, but I think we seethe residues of this process in the history of psychoanalysis and inmany common clinical appearances. I have termed this construc-tion of femininity the “daughter position” because its transmission


is encoded in the shift to the father, the role of passive container,caretaker, or incest victim such as we saw in the hysterical daugh-ters of Freud’s famous cases. Culturally it functions to help consti-tute many versions of patriarchy. But it might also be called the“sister position” insofar as it is perceived laterally as the role of ayounger sister by the oedipal boy.

We must also recognize how the daughter position not onlyserves the boy’s repudiation of mother but also often works as thetemplate for girls’ actual “turn to father”, allowing girls to separatefrom their mothers. Here is the sense in Freud’s idea that thecomplementary relation to father, rather than the identificationwith mother, constitutes femininity. It is not that the girl’s identifi-cation and love for mother are superseded, as Freud suggested inspeaking of a change of object. There has been much discussion(Chodorow, 1976; Ogden, 1987) of the fact that such a break withthe mother is not necessary: rather, it is pathogenic. But a girl’ssense of her relation to mother will be differently inflected when/if the girl imagines herself or her mother to be the father’s passiveobject. In many cases, the embrace of femininity seems to offer ordefine a girl’s path into the world of men. Of course, as Dinnerstein(1977) noted, the feminine escape from the maternal may turnliberation into another form of servitude.

The feminine position can be mixed with other, contradictorystances, which I cannot elaborate here: tomboy, rebel, seducer, andmother’s helper. This constellation of femininity also leads to manyseemingly contradictory encodings of sexual excitement, such asthe waif-like, boyish girl who barely disguises her impersonationof the oedipal father’s boy-self, the helpless child he used to be.Here I am merely emphasizing how the figure of feminine daugh-ter functions in and, in a sense, originates with imperatives of themale psyche: to absorb the position of helpless, stimulated babyand retain the function of the early accommodating containermother. Unfortunately, insofar as the daughter embodies themale’s split-off helpless sexuality, she can be overwhelminglystimulating to an adult man, to her own father. And so the solutionrepeats the problem for the incestuously stimulated father.

But what about the girl who chooses the route of concealing herloss and longing for mother as well as her need to please father byadopting the role of denigrated, precociously sexualized feminine


object? Isabelle, feeling at once unloved and controlled by motherand adoring of her unavailable father, took refuge from her motherin her early teens by hanging out behind the skating rink, havingsex with boys. When a girl, especially one who lacks identificationwith a holding mother, seeks access to men by accommodating andpleasing, formulaic versions of “feminine masochism” appear.

Another woman, “Deirdre”, found her adolescent flight intofemininity so disturbing and shaming—so degraded in the eyes ofher father—that she was entirely unable to integrate her earlyactive tomboy self, developed in childhood when she was herfather’s buddy, within her adult life as a woman. She retired fromher aspirations as artist and teacher into the role of nurturing earth-mother, giving to her children the attention her mother had alwaysdenied her. She yielded in everything to her artist husband, whoincreasingly turned to his fragile, waif-like female students for hissexual life. Deirdre, feeling she had forfeited her own sexuality andidentity, sought analysis. Her wish to reclaim her sexuality andcompete for the prize of femininity led her into affairs with inap-propriate, scary men. Her sense of losing herself was exacerbatedby a long period of nursing her father in his final illness.

Deirdre’s memories of her father included one defining of adramatic shift in their relationship from “buddy” to sexualobject. Until age ten or eleven she had been a tomboy, as daringand adventurous as her troop of male cousins who went fishingand hunting with her father. Suddenly one summer day herfather turned from her sharply, telling her that she was too oldto come along with the boys, and she should put on a shirt! Itwas then that Deirdre shifted into her feminine persona, andher father began to treat her as a degraded object—he wouldstare at her growing breasts, making comments about their size,but more painfully, would hike up her jeans at the waist, so thatthey cut into her crotch, and demand she dance on her toes “likea Spanish dancer.” Among the shameful memories of this timewas one in which Deirdre had allowed herself to be groped byone of her father’s friends at a party. In treatment, Deirdre nowdreams that a sexy but dangerous man is prowling the neighbour-hood. He comes to her door, and even though she thinks she should not,she lets him in. As she runs away from the house, she realizes that she


must rescue the kitten hiding there. For some reason it is a calicokitten, she says, and then realizes this refers to her father’s name,Cal. Confused, she wonders about whether the kitten is herselfor her father. Who is it, actually, that she must take care of?

Gradually we are able to formulate the link between her un-mothered baby self and her father’s, allied in their exclusion bymother. She allows invasion by her father in order to create arepaired, loving mother–baby couple in which she is the motherof her father. We begin to explore the way she was mystified byhaving absorbed all the aspects of shameful helplessness thather father evacuated into her. This link between father anddaughter, in which the girl’s role is to mother the hidden babyin the father alternates with the one in which the girl plays theman’s lost child self. Along with the fear of causing harmthrough sexual aggression and the traditionally noted fear ofuncovering the feminine identification as “castrated”, we alsofind a version of male fantasy, which includes an identificationwith the girl as the helpless child. When this identification isurgently sexualized, it takes the form we have increasinglyrecognized in cases of abuse. But there are countless less dra-matic instances that come to our attention.

Masculinity and the struggle to get in

The identification with and over-stimulation by the passive, tanta-lizing girl appears, for instance, in the film American Beauty, inwhich the perverse father comes to see his abandoned child-self inthe girl of his obsessional dreams. In the film, Lester’s wife isimpermeable and sealed, like the shining veneer in her perfecthouse. He cannot get into her mind or her body. His wish to enterher can only appear as attacking or as messy, invasive, and disgust-ing. Throughout the film, Lester fantasizes compulsively about thecheerleader friend of his daughter, an intentionally tantalizingnymph. But this irresistible stimulation shifts dramatically in themoment when she reveals that she is actually a virgin and aneglected child whose parents pay no attention to her. Suddenly, asif waking from the dream, Lester recognizes that this girl is a


subject with her own centre of feeling. He finds himself needing tofeed and take care of her, as if she were the little child and he themother. The bright lights of over-stimulation are shut off, andfeelings of abandonment and grief bring about an identificatoryconnection to the girl as person.

Lester’s recognition of himself in the girl was an unusual end-ing for Hollywood. More commonly, the feminine role is to em-body the unwanted, primitively feared experience of helplessover-stimulation and make of it an exciting invitation—one that, tothe relief of both men and women, the phallus can act upon,control, and structure. The phallic structuring is the function of themaster in Isabelle’s autoerotic fantasies, controlling what mightotherwise overwhelm the self. But this phallic role carries its owncontradictions. Discharge into the other, though ostensibly active,also becomes reactive. For instance, early ejaculation expresses thefear of being overwhelmed by tension, personified as the feared/desired object. Containing his own excitement through phalliccontrol can be difficult for a man, and without phallic controldischarge signifies feminine weakness: leakage in the container-self of the little boy who cannot attain the phallic control of thefather. The catastrophe of being uncontained and over-excitedbecomes gendered: it signifies emasculation.

These themes were replayed in a striking way by a male patientwho identified strongly with the character of Lester. Himself anactor, the patient believed that I did not sufficiently recognizehis aggressive and perverse character or the destructiveness ofhis fantasies about women. He reacted strongly to my interpre-tation, made in the form of a response to his comments on thefilm, along the lines of what I have just stated: that in the endLester actually uncovered his identification with the abandonedbaby part of the girl. The patient protested, telling me that I wasa “sucker” for Hollywood endings, calling me naïve and gulli-ble. He was far more capable than I of taking a hard look atLester’s character. Indeed, I found myself wondering whether Iwas “soft” on aggression, afraid to confront my patient, readyto be gulled. However, as I listened to the contempt that infusedhis protestations and reminded myself that this session fell onlya week before a scheduled absence on my part, I began to reflect


on the feeling of being the one who is the needy baby. I won-dered: was it I who cannot face the malevolence of the man—inthis case, my patient’s extremely contemptuous father whoused to deride men who were dependent upon women? Isuggested to him that in this debate we were enacting the verymatter at hand: perhaps it felt to him more masculine andpowerful to be the one who could see Lester’s depravity. At thesame time, as he persisted in identifying with a powerfulthough perverse father who despises the baby in himself andothers, he could ensure that I be that baby. I would be the onewho was in the position of the baby, the “sucker” who stillneeds a mother, who is dependent and gullible. He, with hishard clarity, surely did not need me to be his mother, did notfeel abandoned; instead, he could impress me with his mascu-linity. Keeping at bay his feelings of loss and helplessness aboutmy impending absence, he could impress me with his “badboy” aspects of independence and transgression.

Despite the availability of women to play the passive part, mascu-linity shaped around repudiation of dependency and fear of pas-sivity is always threatened. And while the objectified body of thegirl can take up the experience of helplessness and so becomepassivized, as Grossman illustrates and as Brennan (1992) hasargued, Daddy’s boy can also figure as passive container for excess,being fixed in the position of mirroring and providing attention tostabilize the father. Mother as well as father can occupy the domi-nance position, using the child of either sex in this way. Isabellebecame a container for her mother’s excess, whose voice she wasable to identify as the master. Yair became the despised weaklingsubject to his father’s contempt. Thus we are well reminded byFreud to regard masculinity and femininity as positions that can beassumed or fled by men or women. The constellation I have ana-lysed here shows the identity known as masculinity to be associ-ated with the position of defensive activity, dumping anxiety,mastering stimuli, and creating the abjected, containing otherwhile the position of femininity is to be that accommodating,receiving and mirroring other.

However, these positions, as Freud’s contradictory statementsshow him struggling to articulate, are not the whole story about


activity and passivity. Too often, though, Freud’s work seemed totake defensive activity and helpless passivity as the necessaryforms of those trends. Too often his schema—as I (Benjamin, 1998a,1998b) have said elsewhere—misses the dimension of pleasurablereceptivity and makes it seem that the position of receiving stimu-lation, holding tension, or directing it inward is necessarilyunpleasure, and that the pleasurable thing is to expel tension,evacuate through discharge, rather than take it in. Unconsciouslythis view assumes that tension is experienced only as excess, that itwill not or cannot be mentalized, recognized, and mutually held inan intersubjective relation. Such a viewpoint correlates, I suspect,with a traumatic experience of passivity as the condition of help-lessness in the face of impingement, seduction, or abandonment.Trauma, I propose, is indeed the hidden, unrecognized face of themasculine defence against passivity (see below).

Re-visioning gender, reformulating passivity

My aim here is to suggest that when we reformulate our under-standing of gender positions, we will see that they have arisen asan attempt to solve the problem of excess. To challenge thesepositions is to challenge that human beings cannot otherwise man-age tension. So, on the one hand, we could say that the masculine–feminine polarity has served important functions in managingexcess, but also that psychoanalysis is continually exposing how itfails: how it arises through splitting, how much suffering and painand internal contradiction such defences generate. Thus questionsare raised that I can only mention here: for instance, regardingpsychoanalytic assumptions about the necessary role of repudiat-ing femininity or disidentifying from mother in male develop-ment.1 Such questions, I am arguing, are seen differently when weconsider management of tension and individual self-regulation ofarousal and affect to depend on the intersubjective context ofmutual regulation and recognition.

I have already suggested that the intersubjective economy re-quires a concept of ownership, which we arrive at through a self-conscious reversal that reclaims the feminine or maternal functionsof containing and having an inside. Holding, traditionally ascribed


to maternal or feminine selves, and ownership must be recoupedand taken into our psychoanalytic notion of the sexual subject. Asubject who owns passivity, with its pleasure and vulnerability,need not passivize the other. Such a subject can have desire foranother subject without reducing the latter to a will-less or over-whelming object who, in turn, renders the former helpless beforehis/her own impulses. Insofar as being a subject is conflated withthe grabby, defensively active Apollonian sexuality, it is no subjectat all. As we have seen, the common flip-side of phallic control is aversion of male sexuality as uncontained, controlled by the object,lacking ownership of desire. In one such version, sexual excitementtakes on a dissociative cast, as the subject declares that the object isso compelling and tantalizing that he cannot even remember, letalone be responsible for, his action—a spectacle that unfortunatelyoccupied much prime time in the United States during the Clinton–Lewinsky affair. Agency, or activity, dissolves as the object be-comes the doer/actor, the subject the done to/acted upon. Theexperience “I desire you”, in which the subject owns desire, mustbe distinguished from “you are so desirable”—and certainly frombeing overpowered by the object of compulsion. This is not to saythat the fantasy “you are so attractive and so overpowering that Icannot contain myself, just the sight of you can drive me wild”cannot be enjoyable within a mutual relationship. But the mutualenjoyment of fantasy is predicated on owning of desire, holdingexcitement inside the body—a capacity often debased precisely byits conflation with the feminine passive receptacle. To own one’sown feelings while receiving an other is possible simultaneously.

Ownership implies a notion of sustaining tension rather thaneliminating it—holding over discharge, surrender rather thanmastery. It is not necessarily the same as “containing” a feeling forthe other, which one may do without owning it in oneself. Itdevelops within an energetic economy in which self-regulatingaction and mutual regulation are synchronized in a matrix ofrecognition (“just once, hitting the target, touching an alien soul”,as Grossman’s Yair pleads). In this economy subject-to-subjectrecognition makes tension a source of pleasure. It is possible toplay with complementarity and discharge without holding to rig-idly fixed gender positions. It is possible to bear excitement andfeeling in the sense of receiving, witnessing, and holding without


“doing” anything—a different experience of passivity. In the co-creating mutuality of union, both partners are receiving each otheras well as transmitting.

In addition, when we are able to alternate freely between com-plementary positions such as activity and passivity, when we canmove in and out of symmetrical positions, we are relying on anorientation to a third, to a dance jointly created or recognized(Benjamin, 1999; 2002). This orientation to the third changes therelational pattern. One formulation of this third position in relationto activity and passivity offered by the relational analystEmmanuel Ghent (1990) is the idea of surrender. It denotes a formof letting go of mastery and control that allows us to transcend theterms of dominance and submission, a letting go in which theperson does not give over to the other—although perhaps with theother. Ghent suggested that submission was a look-alike, a per-verse form of surrender—in effect, we could say that giving over tothe other is the form taken by longing for giving over to theinteraction in the presence of the other. Submission and domina-tion are the forms recognition assumes when only the twoness ofcomplementarity is available.

Trauma, surrender, and the third

I will suggest that in the space of thirdness, when excess is differ-ently held and processed, what we call passivity can be refiguredas surrender. In the re-appropriation of passivity, the internalexperience changes from submitting to a complementary othertowards surrendering to a process of exploration and recognition.This process transcends gender role reversal, although it mayinclude it, as we shall see.

What happens when the potentially traumatic experience ofpassivity is held, enjoyed, represented because it is experienced assurrender not to the other but to the process itself, to a third? Howwould the renewed integration of what we have called passivitychange our imagining of sexual subjectivity? I have suggested thatthere is a space in which the reversal of the active/passivecomplementarity takes us out of the power relation and into thesurrender to a process of mutual recognition.


This surrender can be distinguished from what appears as or islabelled as passivity but is actually a feature of such traumaticexperience with isolation or excessive stimulation. The attempt tobind, master, and represent such traumatic experiences has shapedour images of masculinity and femininity. In erotic life, as inanalysis, when we open ourselves to the sexual fantasies andfeelings surrounding these images, as we uncover their traumaticdepths and edges, we come to see mutual recognition not as theerasure of such experience but the possibility of its expression andcommunication. Thus Grossman’s Yair reveals his hole, his don-key-foal self, when he tries to reach out and transcend the damageof shame that has left the self in desperate isolation. His screamsand cracks and holes, with their sexual connotations, already incor-porate abraded longings for recognition that can only be reclaimedin a different relation to the other. His epistolary love-letter“therapy” seeks to use the erotic as a site of reparation.

Returning to the analysis of excess and its relation to passivity,we can see how the erotic can become therapeutic when trauma,passivity, and psychic pain are integrated in the relation betweenself and other. The film theorist Katja Silverman (1990) has offeredan interesting illustration of this issue. She was pursuing the ques-tion of what happens when defences are stripped by trauma, whenphallic masculinity fails to protect men and women from the in-sinuation of death. Silverman, trained in literary criticism, takes upthe notion of trauma as it appears in Beyond the Pleasure Principle(Freud, 1920g) and uses it to discuss the collapse of phallic mascu-linity in films about the Second World War, as exemplified by TheBest Years of Our Lives. As you recall, Freud portrays the protectionfrom trauma as provided by an internal shield, a psycho-physi-ological barrier, rather than by another person(s). For Silverman,the idea of this protective shield becomes a metaphor associatedwith masculine armour and phallic self-holding. She compares itsbreakdown with the breakdown of the organizing gender con-structs, the dominant fictions. The film portrays a double trauma:the individual men returning from the war have suffered traumaor shock, and the cultural schema of masculinity did not protectthem. The fabric of the “phallic fiction” was torn, failed them. Theylack any collective representation of suffering to enfold them.


The film shows how their wounding and symbolic castrationresults in a kind of gender reversal, in which women now gazeupon the spectacle of male lack. This spectacle is erotized, but notas humiliation or fetishistic denial. Without a fetish to embody anddisplace the wounding, the film nonetheless depicts the sexualexcitement of this role reversal. As the woman undresses the vet-eran Harold Russell who actually lost his arms, his hooks nowremoved, she is aroused and will make love to him. The ex-pilotwho suffers flashbacks and nightmares exchanges a gaze of mutualrecognition with the woman who gazes on the scene of his socialdisplacement.

Silverman cites a contemporary critic of the film who said that itshowed that now the man could be passive without guilt, that thefilm is a “projection” of the “familiar Hollywood (and American)dream of male passivity.” Apparently the critic failed to note that awoman might enjoy activity without guilt—not a dream but a realpossibility. We might, rather, think that the scene of gender re-versal seems to derive its erotic charge from an intersubjectiveprocess. The recognition of pain and vulnerability, the wound tothe phallic version of masculinity, offers a release: a letting go ofthe destructive illusion of the phallic contract, which prescribesstoic loneliness and denial. In the film, as the couple face the abyssof breakdown together, they break the circuit of defensive activityand perverse passivity. The sign of the wound functions as theopposite of a fetish, it signifies the possibility of overcoming disa-vowal, representing vulnerability, witnessing pain and suffering—the intersubjective moment of surrender.

The film suggests a vision of trauma transformed into a thera-peutic erotics of recognition, the energy of which derives notmerely from reversing the old gender opposition, but from re-claiming what it sacrificed. Eros begins with mourning the loss ofthe intact body and the ideal of manhood, to which so much hasbeen sacrificed. It is mourning in the presence of an other, adepressive solution, accepting passivity, loss, and death. Break-down of the phallic fiction opens fissures in what would otherwiseremain the seamless wall of repetition. It becomes possible towitness suffering and thereby bear mourning, to own desire andenjoy passivity.


In this way loss itself, shared and represented, becomes a thirdto which the couple surrender, and in this surrender find a tran-scendence of suffering. We might say that accepting passivity inthe process of intersubjective surrender forms a crucial element ofwhat has been conceptualized as the depressive position. Passivityis recouped and transformed into an experience of surrender, ofvulnerability in a therapeutic relationship. The very distinctionbetween passivity and surrender only becomes possible when fearof passivity is lifted. This, in turn, depends on the joint creation ofinterpersonal safety, each person’s gift to the other of a holdingpresence and an understanding witness, which ensures that vul-nerability will not plunge us into traumatic excess. But this canoccur only through awareness that strength derives not from de-nial but from acknowledging helplessness, damage, and the over-whelming of the psyche by suffering.

This vision is significant for our larger understanding of what istherapeutic and transformational in erotic life. The integration ofpassivity in surrender to an erotic third—the dance of love—allowsus to metaphorize psychic pain rather than act it out through asadomasochistic complementarity. When erotic partners can tran-scend the fixed positions of gender complementarity, when passiv-ity becomes an experience to be borne and integrated by bothsexes, gender conventions no longer need be used defensively.Rather, they can become conventions of play, forms of expression.In this space of thirdness desire can flow through the circuits ofpain and passivity, creating a new opening for the energetic ex-change between self and other.

NOTES

1. It has largely been accepted that the disidentification with mother isnecessary to constitute a masculine subject. But, as we explore the effects oftraditional forms taken by the boy’s disidentification, we may reconsider: doesthis take place as early as Greenson (1968) suggested, and is such sharpdisidentification pathogenic rather than essential (Benjamin, 1996; Corbett,1996)? Elsewhere I have argued, along with Aron (1995), Bassin (1996), andMay (1986), that renunciation of identifications with sexual organs and behav-iours attributed to the other sex (such as Fast, 1984, proposed) is not necessaryto consolidate one’s own identity. Nor does it even necessarily provide a good


basis for integrating sexual subjectivity and activity. Rather, sexual subjectivityis enhanced by identification with the other’s bodily experience. Indeed, thecapacity to hold in tension rather than splitting complementary aims andattitudes—the capacity for what I have called post-conventional gendercomplementarity—allows us to play with and treat as metaphors the bodilyconcretes of sexual roles. Lacking this development beyond oedipal repudia-tion of the passive “feminine” side of the gender, complementarity lays thebasis for anxiety about sexual union, with its ability to evoke repressedlongings for merger and surrender. Contrary to common wisdom about mas-culinity, a more positive identification with a holding mother or with bodilyreceptivity can often diminish male heterosexual anxiety.

NOTE

An earlier versions of this chapter was presented at the Fiftieth-AnniversaryConference of the Deutsche Psychoanalytische Vereinigung Tagung, Frankfurt,November 2000.

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Aron, L. (1995). The internalized primal scene. In: Psychoanalytic Dia-logues, 5: 195–237.

Bassin, D. (1996). Beyond the he and she: Toward the reconciliation ofmasculinity and femininity in the postoedipal female mind. In:Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 44 (supplement):157–191.

Beebe, B., & Lachmann, F. M. (1994). Representation and internaliza-tion in infancy: Three principles of salience. In: PsychoanalyticPsychology, 5: 305–337.

Beebe, B., & Lachmann, F. M. (2002). Infant Research & Adult Treatment,Co-constructing Interactions. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.

Benjamin, J. (1988). The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism & theProblem of Domination. New York: Pantheon.

Benjamin, J. (1995). What angel would hear me? In: Like Subjects, LoveObjects: Essays on Recognition and Sexual Difference. New Haven, CT& London: Yale University Press.

Benjamin, J. (1996). In defense of gender ambiguity. Gender and Psy-choanalysis, 1: 27–43.


Benjamin, J. (1998a). Shadow of the Other: Intersubjectivity and Gender inPsychoanalysis. New York & London: Routledge.

Benjamin, J. (1998b). “The marriage of heaven and hell: Intersub-jectivity and sexuality.” Keynote Address, Division 39 on Psy-choanalysis of the American Psychological Association, Boston,April 1998.

Benjamin, J. (1999). Afterword: Recognition and destruction, In: S. A.Mitchell & L. Aron (Eds.), Relational Psychoanalysis: The Emergenceof a Tradition. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.

Benjamin, J. (2002). The rhythm of recognition: Comments on the workof Louis Sander. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 12: 43–54.

Brennan, T. (1992). The Interpretation of the Flesh. New York & London:Routledge.

Chodorow, N. (1976). The Reproduction of Mothering. Berkeley, CA:University of California Press.

Christiansen, A. (1993). “Masculinity and its vicissitudes.” Paper de-livered at Seminar on Psychoanalysis and Sexual Difference, N.Y.Institute for Humanities, NYU.

Coates, S., Friedman, R., & Wolfe, S. (1991). The etiology of boyhoodgender disorder. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 1: 481–524.

Corbett, K. (1996). Homosexual boyhood: Notes on girlyboys. Genderand Psychoanalysis 1: 429–462.

Davies, J. M. (2001). Erotic over-stimulation and the co-construction ofsexual meanings in transference–countertransference experience.Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 70: 757–788.

Dimen, M. (2003). Sexuality, Intimacy and Power. Hillsdale NJ: TheAnalytic Press.

Dinnerstein, D. (1977). The Mermaid and the Minotaur. New York: OtherBooks, 2000.

Eigen, M. (1993). The Electrified Tightrope. Northvale, NJ: Aronson.Elise, D. (2001). Unlawful entry: Male fears of psychic penetration.

Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 11: 499–531.Fast, I. (1984). Gender Identity: A Differentiation Model. Hillsdale, NJ:

Analytic Press.Fonagy, P., & Target, M. (1996). Playing with reality: International

Journal of Psychoanalysis, 77: 217–233.Freud, S. (1896b). Further remarks on the neuro-psychoses of defence.

S.E., 3.Freud, S. (1920g). Beyond the Pleasure Principle. S.E., 18.


Freud, S. (1924d). The dissolution of the Oedipus complex. S.E., 19.Freud, S. (1926d). Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety. S.E., 20.Freud, S. (1931b). Female sexuality. S.E., 21.Freud, S. (1933a). New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis: Feminin-

ity. S.E., 22.Ghent, E. (1990). Masochism, submission, surrender. Contemporary

Psychoanalysis, 25: 169–211.Greenson, R. (1968). Dis-identifying from mother: Its special impor-

tance for the boy. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 49: 370–374.Grossman, D. (2001). Be My Knife. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.Horney, K. (1926). The flight from womanhood. In: Feminine Psychol-

ogy. New York: Norton, 1967.Laplanche, J. (1987). New Foundations for Psychoanalysis (trans. D.

Macey). Oxford & Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1989.Laplanche, J. (1992). Seduction, Translation, Drives, ed. J. Fletcher & M.

Stanton. London: Institute of Contemporary Arts.Laplanche, J. (1995). Seduction, persecution and revelation. Interna-

tional Journal of Psychoanalysis, 76: 663–682.May, R. (1986). Concerning a psychoanalytic view of maleness. In:

Psychoanalytic Review, 73: 175–193.McDougall, J. (1989). Theaters of the Body. New York: Norton.McDougall, J. (1995). The Many Faces of Eros. A Psychoanalytic Explora-

tion of Human Sexuality. New York: Norton.Mitchell, S. (1988). Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis. Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press.Ogden, T. (1987). The transitional oedipal relationship in female de-

velopment. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 68: 485–498.Silverman, K. (1990). Historical trauma and male subjectivity. In: E. A.

Kaplan (Ed.), Psychoanalysis and Cinema. New York: Routledge.Sander, L. (2002). Thinking differently: Principles of process in living

systems and the specificity of being known. In: PsychoanalyticDialogues, 12: 11–42.

Stein, R. (1998). The poignant, the excessive and the enigmatic insexuality. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 79: 253–268.

Stoller, R. (1975). Perversion: The Erotic Form of Hatred. New York:Pantheon.

Stoller, R. (1980). Sexual Excitement. New York: Simon & Schuster.

173

CHAPTER TEN

The economy of freedom

Gisela Kaplan

For the better part of two decades Jessica Benjamin has usedpsychoanalysis and her own creative impulses to theoreti-cally explore the depth of the human psyche. She has per-

haps given more emphasis to the affective domain than otherwriters, and one of her contributions to the ongoing debate is herdevelopment of the notion of intersubjectivity and the intersub-jective moment. When a subjective position of self is surrendered toanother only those two people alone know their situation in amanner no one else can. In the process, “thirdness” is created, asexplained in Shadow of the Other, as a communicative relationship,and as a way of recognizing difference and tensions between selfand another. In her chapter, Jessica Benjamin places before theaudience a proposal on how one can intellectually and emotionallytransform the dynamics of intrapsychic events (one-person econ-omy, as per Freud) into a two-person economy. As I read her text,the notion of a seesaw comes to mind as an image of an interde-pendence that will make one or the other respond to each other’semotional states. I come back to this later.

Apart from her obvious address to an audience of professionalpsychoanalysts, her chapter is also firmly anchored in a particular

174 GISELA KAPLAN

strand of social theory tradition, and I want to offer some com-ments arising from these linkages.

My first point is that the tensions and possibilities she describesin two persons is theoretically based on the notion of the dialectic,of a dynamic that is neither circular nor linear, that creates spiralsrather than fields, tensions and surrender rather than opposites,and movements rather than structural dyads. This is consistentwith her earlier work. In 1995, Jessica Benjamin argued that if wethink of sex and gender as oriented to the pull of opposing poles,then these poles are not masculinity and femininity. “Rather, gen-der dimorphism itself represents only one pole, the other polebeing the polymorphism of all individuals” (Benjamin, 1995, p.141). In today’s sometimes theoretically impoverished world, atheoretical position that is based on relational and dialectical mod-els of thought gives credence to the view that the complexities ofhuman emotions and actions are not entirely irrelevant to humanexistence. It is manifestly a hope that we continue to see the vastarray of experiences, and of human interaction with its environ-ment (Oyama, 1985, expands on such interactions) and considerthese worthy of exploration; and that we do so despite a climate ofbeliefs that argues for simple linear and often genetic explanationsof personalities and behaviour (Rose & Rose, 2000).

Whether in the theoretical domain or in the applied fields ofexploring the human psyche or, indeed, in everyday life, we oughtto remain aware that we are not just responding to stimuli but oftenalso altering the stimuli by our interactions with them; in conse-quence, we engage in dynamic exchanges that lead us to placeswhere we have not been before. One of the few recent studies thathave investigated this complex interplay between the sexes insome detail was concerned with human attractiveness. The studyfound that people who think of themselves as attractive opt for apartner who is more attractive in their own perception than theywould have chosen otherwise. The study asked each group to rankanother group according to a scale of attractiveness (Kowner,1994). They were then given bogus feedback that they wereranked top in attractiveness by the group and asked to make theirfinal choice. Immediately, they aimed for a different and—in theirjudgement—more attractive person. One important finding byKowner is the dialectic approach to a particular stimulus. The

175THE ECONOMY OF FREEDOM

stimulus (another human as being a potential partner) is not justone to whom one responds statically as in a simple stimulus–response pair. As we have argued elsewhere (Kaplan & Rogers,2003), there is a process involved in terms of an evaluation of itsintrinsic properties (an attractive male or female), but first it isprocessed according to how the observer’s intrinsic qualities rankwith respect to the other, and only after that initial assessment isthe judgement of attractiveness announced. Hence, the observermakes a judgement on the basis of how likely it is that access to theother will be possible and thus makes the preferred choice (and theranking of the other) according to self-assessment.

This example has some bearing on the second point I wish toraise in response to Benjamin’s chapter. A key to Benjamin’s expo-sition is the concept of desire. And here we suddenly find a tradi-tion emerging that Benjamin may fight against but yet stays within.Males, so Freud believed, lack desire because they discharge andexpel tensions, and this is uncontained and controlled by the object.If desire is to be felt, tensions must be held in order to create desire.Benjamin works with these concepts and changes them. However,one still feels bound by a powerful tradition, as is explained below.

In traditional philosophy—and also in legal structures—therelationship between men and women resembles more closely anideal of female subordination modelled on a master–slave relation-ship, than it does a mere contractual inequality, as so many femi-nist scholars have found. In studies on slavery, and on women, twowords have been used regularly: exploitation and power. Oneimportant conceptual addition is sexuality. It is a third dimensionin which exploitation and power are played out in more complex,at times interdependent, and often ambivalent ways. A slave couldbe but a slave, but similar power differentials when applied be-tween men and women may be tempered or heightened by sexualrelations. Even in the worst bonds—and then against the will of theactors—desire, dependence, and passion may be mingled in a brewof contempt, subjugation, and despair. Love is rarely a componentof either slavery or exploitative sexual relationships, but power isits axiom. Since the publication of Michel Foucault’s History ofSexuality (1978), we know that freedom from oppression and, muchmore deep-seated, from repression may not be just a matter oflifting a few prohibitions. Sexuality, he argued, does not exist

176 GISELA KAPLAN

beyond power relations and is not controlled by centralized power.It is actually produced by those power relations that both repressand saturate it. Foucault’s famous dictum is “Power is everywhere;not because it embraces everything but because it comes fromeverywhere” (p. 93). “Everywhere”, he would presumably agree, ismale-defined. Hence, Benjamin’s explorations of desire and sur-render, seen as two corner-stones of emotional states between twopeople that may lead to the subjective moment and to actualcommunication (thus to a relinquishing of power and control), arecontradictory and provide a strange twist to the Western tradi-tional notion of the feminine as the domain of affectivity and desireand the masculine of reason.

Coming back to the study of attractiveness, I can now makeanother point in which the concept of desire (a concept that alsoappears to have been a favourite in much post-structural writing ofthe last decade) is modified by the social. The applied study ofattractiveness raised before highlights that the social domain is acreator of desire as much as the self. Deborah Britzman arguedrecently that the self becomes a problem of desiring a self andhence is in need of a social. She continues:

Identification allows the self-recognition and mis-recognition.And through identification desire is made. But because identi-fication is a partial, contradictory, and ambivalent relation withaspects of objects or dynamics of others, it may be thought of asa means to make and direct desire. Many positionings arepossible: identification of, identification with, identificationagainst, over-identification, and so on. [Britzman, 1998, p. 82]

The question, then, arises whether the creation of desire (the hold-ing of tension) or its discharge is not also a question of identifica-tion (of self or mis-recognition). The citing of Katja Silverman’s filmThe Best Years of Our Lives in Benjamin’s chapter is very appropriatein this context, but we may ask how we interpret the intersub-jective moment in the context of identification and self-recognition.Heinrich Heine once wrote a brief but poignant poem:

Selten habt Ihr mich verstanden,Selten auch verstand ich Euch.Nur da wir im Kot uns fanden,Da verstanden wir uns gleich.


[Rarely have you understood me,rarely did I understand you,But thrown together in the gutter (sewer),we swiftly understood each other.]

It is possible to interpret Silverman’s film in terms of negativeconclusions rather than of a liberatory intersubjective moment thatmay have been created amidst misery.

And this brings me to my third point. In my reading of JessicaBenjamin’s chapter, her tone seems to me to reflect a very deepcultural pessimism. The darkness of mood may well fit our times,and the citation of various dark films has not helped to lighten theburden that, one feels, has descended upon us. Although the sub-tleties of intersubjective moments provide interludes of under-standing, it may be worth remembering that such moments canalso be created in conversations with convicted felons on deathrow. Perhaps we live in an age when pessimism does—and evenshould—hold pride of place, but it is not a mood to which I cansubscribe. More importantly, its expression in Benjamin’s chaptersuggests a path of therapy that is, in fact, not depressive butdepressing.

To exemplify this point, Benjamin interprets Silverman’s explo-ration of a relationship by saying:

Eros begins with mourning the loss of the intact body. . . It ismourning in the presence of an other, a depressive solution,accepting passivity, loss, and death. . . . It becomes possible towitness suffering and thereby bear mourning, to own desireand enjoy passivity. [p. 167 herein]

The gendered positions are emphasized, forcing a different psy-chological solution to precede the emergence of Eros.

On the subject of Eros, there are three rather immediate re-sponses that can be made. In Benjamin’s chapter, Eros reads verymuch like a possibility, but one that is shadowy and belongs to thegraveyard, to the night, to dark corners of our minds and souls. Itis perhaps culturally not surprising that, in Benjamin’s chapter, asin Silverman’s film, Eros is linked to surrender, death, loss, andmourning. The other response that is elicited here is my acknowl-edgment that Eros may well be the most taboo area of sexuality andemotional states in Western modern times. Indeed, the new lan-

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guage of evolutionary psychology has done away with Eros alto-gether by choosing to adopt a discourse of economics that speaksabout desires and feelings in terms of costs, benefits, investments,and the like (Buss, 1994). My third query is that, in Benjamin’schapter, we find Eros in a sense as a product of tensions of male-ness and femaleness, and one may well query this implied dynam-ics.

Frankly, Eros need not have anything to do with complemen-tarity or with male and female, masculinity or femininity. Eros mayinvolve subtleties of communication that may or may not be sexualat all (or even lead in that direction). One of the simplest and mostpowerful cinematographic vignettes of such expressions of “Eros”was shown in John Hurt’s performance in The Naked Civil Servant.The much-maligned and abused homosexual with an exaggeratedmake-up meets a group of sailors at night and, in this brief scene,they keep walking around him, smiling and relaxed, and he glowswith quiet joy because he knows that “nothing was going to hap-pen”. A fleeting moment of happiness, of suspension from socialcondemnation, and Eros can unfold its most attractive side: alightness of being.

Eros is almost the antithesis of reproduction because it exists forand in itself, without visible gain or purpose. Eros is fragile andpleasurable, but I doubt very much whether such mood dependson withholding stronger emotions and desires. It is a thorny path totravel even to arrive just at some agreeable basic definition, letalone one that can be operationalized—particularly in the absenceof cultural support for Eros.

The suggestion, however, to attribute some assumed hetero-sexuality to the blossoms of Eros may be still more problematic(although I am not entirely certain whether this is a fair comment,judging by Benjamin’s previous work). Still, in case such an inter-pretation is not all too far-fetched, I feel that one needs to bereminded of arguments as old as the early part of the last century:Ralph Linton, in his classic The Study of Man (1936), argued thatculture determines the perception of biological (and psychological)differences, not the other way around. It is not a new idea to claimthe historicity of psychology and of masculinity and femininity asvital parts of cultural perceptions and cultural constructs at a giventime. Indeed, psychic, erotic, and sexual energies may be present


without having to resort to parameters akin to the masculine andfeminine.

Let me exemplify this further by reference to a very influentialeleventh-century Islamic scholar, Imam Ghazali. His philosophyexposes the polarization of human sexuality into two kinds—femi-nine and masculine—as a Western idea. According to this earlyMuslim view, culture is not created by sublimation: only an emo-tionally and sexually fulfilled person is likely to be able to make acultural contribution. Virtue arises from a discharge of tensions,and culture springs from the satisfaction (hence not the sublima-tion) of the sexual drive. Of course, that idea of discharge is, tosome extent, also acknowledged in Western intellectual traditions(and in Benjamin’s chapter), but it is accorded only to the male and,as such, problematized. In some Muslim thought from Ghazalionwards, females, too, “discharge tension” and are sexually per-ceived as having ejaculations (Mernissi, 2002).

Gender organization of sexuality is not a new topic, but it is arelatively recent phenomenon (cf. Rubin, 1984), at least in Westerncultures, that sexuality and gender have finally been analyticallyseparated and discussed as separate, albeit reinforcing, concepts(Nakano, 1999). One is reminded here of Dorothy Dinnerstein’sremark that the sexual realm is “a wildlife preserve in the civilizedword, a refuge within which inarticulate, undomesticated privatecreative initiative is protected from extinction” (cited in Williams &Stein, 2002, p. 18).

* * *Finally, at the beginning of this chapter I raised the possibilitythat Benjamin’s two-person economy, while a significant extensionof previous ideas, creating literally a third space (the intersub-jective moment), is still dependent on a field of tensions betweenthe two gendered players or emotional states. One is contingenton the other, and in this field there is no escape, no individual“breaking out”. It is a seesaw from which, as I read her chapter,one ultimately cannot descend. My response was to look for an es-cape hatch, for freedom, for growth, for exploration which, inBenjamin’s seemingly pessimistic cultural explicative, I cannotfind. One is missing some clue to a sense of hope and strength. Myquestion is whether one cannot think with Martin Buber (1958) that

180 GISELA KAPLAN

relationships can go into nothingness, charting new territories andunknown fields.

REFERENCES

Benjamin, J. (1988). The Shadow of the Other. New York: Pantheon.Benjamin, J. (1995). Sameness and difference: “Overinclusive” model

gender development. Psychoanalytical Inquiry, 15: 125–142.Britzman, D. (1998). Lost Subjects, Contested Objects. State University of

New York Press, Albany.Buber, M. (1958). I and Thou. New York: Scribners.Buss, D. (1994). The Evolution of Desire: Strategies for Human Mating.

New York: Basic Books.Foucault, M. (1978). A History of Sexuality (trans. R. Hurley). New

York: Pantheon.Kaplan, G., & Rogers, L. J. (2003). Gene Worship. Moving Beyond the

Nature/Nurture Debate over Genes, Brain and Gender. New York:Other Press.

Kowner, R. (1994). The effect of physical attractiveness comparison onchoice of partners. The Journal of Social Psychology, 135 (2): 153–165.

Linton, R. (1936). The Study of Man. An Introduction. New York:Appleton-Century.

Mernissi, F. (2002). The Muslim concept of active female sexuality. In:C. Williams & A. Stein (Eds.), Sexuality and Gender (pp. 296–307).Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Nakano, G. E. (1999). The social construction and institutionalisationof gender and race: An integrative framework. In: M. M. Ferree, J.Lorber, & B. B. Hess (Eds.), Revisioning Gender (pp. 3–43). Thou-sand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Oyama, S. (1985). The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systemsand Evolution. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Rose, H., & Rose, S. (Eds.) (2000). Alas Poor Darwin: Arguments againstEvolutionary Psychology. New York: Harmony Books.

Rubin, G. (1984). Thinking sex. In: C. Vance (Ed.), Pleasure and Danger:Exploring Female Sexuality (pp. 267–319). Boston: Routledge.

Williams, C., & Stein, A. (Eds.) (2002). Sexuality and Gender. Malden,MA: Blackwell.

181

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Beyond sexual difference:clinical individuality and same-sexcross-generation relations in thecreation of feminine and masculine

Nancy J. Chodorow

In this chapter, I want to reflect upon how our theoreticalthinking about the psychology of the sexes—whether we callthis maleness and femaleness, masculinity and femininity, the

problem of gender, or the problem of sex—has been limited byviewing the problem through the lens of sexual difference. Thesexual difference perspective has been (over)determined by theway Freud initially posed the problem. It was selected especiallyby Lacan as the Freudian view,1 and it has been taken up in therecent rethinking of female psychology or femininity (there hasbeen little rethinking of male psychology or masculinity) more byEuropean and Latin American than by North American psycho-analysts. These psychoanalysts thus accept many of the Lacanianassumptions, whether or not they consider themselves Lacanian.The sexual difference perspective also characterizes much Euro-pean and North American feminism, whether psychoanalytic orpost-structuralist. I do not think that the specific observations Ibring to bear in what follows are new; rather, I am trying to usethese observations, that I and others have made, to locate a prob-lem and frame a position.

182 NANCY J. CHODOROW

The sexual difference position takes as given that the sexes canonly be and also are psychologically defined one in relation to theother, that male only gains meaning in relation to female, mascu-line in relation to feminine. It has both psychoanalytic and non-psychoanalytic roots. From Freud, it locates femininity andmasculinity in relation to the external genitals and to genital–oedipal levels of development, deriving specifically from Freud’sfocus on genital difference—the presence or absence of the penis—as the criterial experience in the boy’s and the girl’s development.The observation of genital difference, Freud suggests, leads tocastration anxiety/penis envy as determinative and central to thepsychology of the sexes and sexuality throughout life, and topresence/absence of the penis (castration fear or castration alreadyaccomplished) as generative of the boy’s versus the girl’s entranceinto and resolution of the Oedipus complex, differential superegodevelopment, and so forth. This is familiar territory that does notneed elaborating.

Both Lacan and post-structuralism presuppose this Freudianpsychoanalytic basis even as they move it from the realm ofanatomy into the realm of fantasy. However, their formulation ofthis way of seeing sex/gender comes not only from Freud but,equally, from a common rooting in Saussurean structuralist lin-guistics and the closely related Lévi-Straussian structuralist an-thropology. In these latter theories, that underlie or have beeninterlocutors for Lacan and post-structuralism, meaning never in-heres in a term itself but only in the relation it has to other terms.2

Thus, by fiat masculine can only gain fantasy meaning in relation tofeminine, and male in relation to female. This linguistic–culturaltheory is read back into psychology.

Following its proponents, I am calling this the “sexual differ-ence” perspective, though it could equally be called, for my pur-poses, the “gender difference” perspective.3 What is at issue for meis not whether we use the term sex or gender, or whether “sex”refers to the biological, unconscious fantasy, or sexuality, while“gender” refers to the preconscious or the sociocultural. What is atissue is whether, psychologically, in clinical and developmentallived experience—in the realms of unconscious fantasy, transfer-ence, the internal world, and affects—masculine and feminine, ormaleness and femaleness, must always be paired terms in which

183BEYOND SEXUAL DIFFERENCE

the dominant or exclusive meaning of one is in relation to theother. Although it is not relevant to my considerations here, Imyself find the term “gender” useful in helping us to distinguishbetween sexed or gendered self—the senses of femaleness andmaleness,4 or femininity and masculinity—and object choice, andin problematizing what is sometimes seen as a necessary linkagebetween these. As Freud puts it, “the choice of object on the onehand, and . . . the sexual characteristics and sexual attitude of thesubject on the other, as though the answer to the former necessarilyinvolved the answers to the latter” (1920a, p. 170). My inquiry takesus to our clinical consulting-rooms and thereby also to a reconsid-eration of how Freud posed the problem of difference in the firstplace.

In what follows, I suggest that if we begin from the clinical—from our experience and observation instead of from theoreticalfiat or an a priori, unquestioned reliance on Freud—and from therewe try to understand how individuals experience and constructtheir subjective gender and sexuality, then we find that sexualdifference—the contrastive set male–female, or masculine/femi-nine—while it may certainly be a central part of the picture, is notmore basic or more universally organizing than several other pos-sible psychological configurations.5 In building my account, I firstdescribe the constitutive components to femininity and masculin-ity that take these well beyond sexual difference. Secondly, I sug-gest that the sexual difference perspective ignores clinicalindividuality—the unique ways that individuals put together thevarious ingredients that go into their gender and sexuality. We canonly know in the individual case how a particular person will putthese components together. Finally, within this account of theconstitutive components of sex/gender and of clinical individual-ity, I extract out and elaborate upon my clinical observation thatsame-sex, cross-generation relations and comparison are often ascentral to or—depending on the individual case—more central tothe creation, definition, and experience of psychological sex thansexual difference, feminine/masculine, presence or absence of thepenis. Insofar as we theorize difference, then, I would claim that ona theoretical level, femininity defines itself as much throughwoman–girl as through male–female, and that masculinity definesitself as much through man/boy as through male–female.


It is not surprising that I am sceptical of the sexual differenceperspective, since my thinking has in some ways from the begin-ning indirectly implied an alternative stance. “Family Structure andFeminine Personality” (Chodorow, 1974) and The Reproduction ofMothering (Chodorow, 1978) begin their study of the psychology ofwomen (and the contrastive psychology of men) from the internalobject-relational world, especially the mother–daughter (ormother–son) constellation within that world, rather than fromFreud’s focus on the genital distinction and its sequelae. I am led viaa rereading of classical writings by Lampl-de Groot, Freud, MackBrunswick, Deutsch, and others to an analysis of the developmentof maternality and mothering as fundamental to femininity, to afocus on pre-oedipal components within this femininity, and to anemphasis on the female Oedipus complex (a possible gender oxy-moron that several have critiqued) as also a mother–daughter affair,in which heterosexual, oedipal, father–daughter components cer-tainly play a part but are by no means exclusive.6 My work, ofcourse, is partly reactive: I both take for granted as already suffi-ciently demonstrated, and thus I also minimize, male–female, fa-ther–daughter elements in female development and psychology.

As others pointed out over the years, and as I myself acknowl-edged (Chodorow, 1999c), psychoanalytic feminist thinking in theearly and mid 1970s was overly leery and critical of any acknowl-edgement of the psychic role of biology and anatomy (which par-tially accounts for so many feminists’ attraction to Lacanianpsychoanalysis in the first place, in addition to Lacan’s overlap, viatext and language, with the feminist humanities).7 Like most subse-quent American commentators, I acknowledge the potential role ofpenis envy in female development, but I am critical of the view thatpenis envy is either universal or the driving force in female psy-chology and development, including in girls’ and women’s desiresfor babies. The mother–daughter dynamics I describe, rooted asthey are in the pre-oedipal, would have led to a focus on “pregeni-tal” as well as “genital” components of femininity, as well as to anelaboration of reproductive female sexuality and drives. In thissense (if I had not been critical of anatomical determinism in thefirst place), my recognition of the demands of genital anatomywould probably have led me more in the direction of “primaryfemininity” theorists like Horney and Kestenberg. (Though the


term was, I believe, first used by Stoller in 1976, the widespreadand current usage of the concept of primary femininity comes afterthe 1970s period of which I am writing here.)

In “Gender, Relation, and Difference in Psychoanalytic Perspec-tive” (Chodorow, 1979), I take a more explicit stance, arguing thatthe sexual difference perspective derives from a more typicallymasculine than feminine consciousness, one that needs to separatemale from female and see the two as radically non-overlapping. Iwas at the time only beginning to be familiar with either Lacanianfeminism or its French feminist detractors, like Irigaray, Kristeva,and Cixous, who emphasized a female bodily-linguistic perspec-tive on difference, and I was not yet a clinician, but I argued that astrong emphasis on difference, whether it be the self–other distinc-tion or male–female difference, was a defensive theory borne ofpsychological conflict. Circling back on my female-centred devel-opmental theory, I claimed that the conflicts that required anemphasis on difference—whether difference inherent in a view ofseparation–individuation that stressed differentiation and differ-ence over continuing but changing connection, or in a view thatsaw gender mainly in terms of sexual difference, masculine as not-feminine—were characteristically male. Indeed, the sexual differ-ence perspective itself (even in primary femininity or women’svoice and body theorists!) already had a psychologically masculinerather than a gender-neutral cast to it.

My early implicit and explicit difficulty with the sexual differ-ence perspective came through my reading and interpretation ofpsychoanalytic texts, as I tried to understand and theorize feminin-ity and masculinity. Clinical experience expanded and groundedmy views. I have suggested (Chodorow, 1996, 1999b, 2003b) thatwe can best see lived intrapsychic gender and sexuality as com-posed of a number of constitutive ingredients, or components.These are on one level of abstraction universals, in that each per-son, developmentally and in their psychic experience and organi-zation, brings a clinically individual rendition of these componentsto their gender and sexuality, but they are only lived in clinicallyspecific combinations. In any individual, they are inextricably in-tertwined one with the other in a way that gives that individual hisor her own particular experience. I am trying theoretically torender what I have discovered clinically and to avoid what I think


is a problematic overgeneralizing and universalizing, on an inap-propriate level of concreteness, in much of our theorizing aboutgender and sexual difference. For example, we are taught that“the” Oedipus complex is universal, or that all children passthrough the stages of psychosexual development that Freud firstdescribed. But although we can find many boys (or former boys,now our adult patients) with the “fateful” combination of love forthe mother and hatred for the father as a rival, for example, we donot know much about any of these boys or men unless we know theparticularity of their particular love and their particular rivalry,and how these intermesh with their opposites—love for the fatherand hatred for the mother—and how these change and changedday to day, in particular manifestations. We learn about theseparticularities, not the generality Oedipus, from transferences andreconstructions, and we no longer read (or we are sceptical whenwe do read) in any case report that “the patient’s oedipal fantasieswere analysed and resolved.” And we find that for one man “oedi-pal” fantasies are a driving force in his psychology, whether in thearea of work or of love, and they are major themes in the transfer-ence, whereas for another such fantasies come up now and again.We also know that boys becoming gay typically bring a set ofdesires and fantasies to their oedipal love and rivalry that is differ-ent from that of boys who are on the way to heterosexuality(Corbett, 1993, Isay, 1989).

Similarly, to say that each child goes through an oral phase, oran early Oedipus conflict, or has unconscious fantasies about themother’s breast or insides, does not tell us about the particularity ofan individual’s oral phase or early fantasies about the mother’sbreasts or insides or the particular constructions of self and objectthat these produce through projective and introjective identifica-tions. To take my own work, The Reproduction of Mothering suggeststhat mother–daughter dynamics are central to feminine psychol-ogy and the reproduction of mothering—an observation that hasfor many entered the taken-for-granted theoretical lexicon—butthis knowledge only alerts us, in a way in which we might not havebeen alerted by classical theory, to notice a woman who does notbring maternal transferences or fantasies into her treatment. It doesnot tell us about what particular fantasies about the mother’s or theself’s uterus or reproductivity, or what particular intrapsychic


mother–daughter fantasies and transferences, will emerge in aparticular treatment and individual psychology. Psychoanalytictheory has conflated the universality of some problems that de-mand psychic representation or solution with the almost infinitevariety of unconscious fantasies and compromise formations thatrepresent or attempt to address these problems.

A clinical individual employs a number of components in creat-ing her personal gender and sexuality.8 These include, first, bodilyexperience: observation, arousal, comparison with others, changesin bodily configuration. Freud stressed the observation of genitaldifference in the just pre-oedipal child, but the affective tonalitybrought to bodily experience and bodily fantasies begin the minutethe child is born, if not before: we now know that from the momentof birth there are subtle, unconscious transmissions of affect, feel-ing, and fantasy from mother to child that help to shape the child’searliest senses of body. This must include sexed, genital, and repro-ductive body as well—the particular mother’s complex of feelingand fantasy about her child’s sex (itself not a generic sex, but theparticularity of her own feelings and history, the other representa-tions of the child in her inner world, in relation to her own familyof origin, the unconscious and conscious early communications shereceived from her own parents, her own cultural location, her ownconflicts and fantasies, etc.). Body and body experience in general,and because of their special physical intensity or startling absolut-ism genital and other sexual–erotic experiences (a first period,breast development, excitement and orgasm, pregnancy, child-birth, etc.), particularly call forth affective fantasy representation.Body gets embroiled in sexuality—desire, practices, sexual fanta-sies, erotization, all of which are so specific to the individual—which in turn gives further substance to the fantasy meaning of thesexed body. In theoretical shorthand, we might consider “Freud-ian” our recognition of the almost raw, self-evident demands ofsexual–bodily–genital experience and observation. The ingredientsthat go into bodily gender and sexuality will include some repre-sentation of sexual difference, but this may or may not be central ina particular clinical individual.

A second element that goes into femininity and masculinity canbe called, in shorthand, object-relational. Here, I mean that eachperson has a uniquely created internal world of unconscious fanta-


sies, about self and other, mother, father, siblings, both wholeobject and part object, created through a history of projective andintrojective affective fantasies. Freud’s originally theorized innerworld that relates to gender and sex is the oedipal world, but it isfrom Klein especially that we learn about the inner world’s com-plexity and infantile origins, and that every step in its creation willbe imbued with particular fantasy meanings about self and object,so that the mother’s breast, for instance, is unconsciously created asbeneficent, aggressive, devouring, withheld, toxic, and so forth,and that the relation to it is one of manic control, omnipotentdestruction, depressed longing, and so on. As with body experi-ence, the internal world that helps to create gender begins at birth,well before the observation of or capacity to label the sexes orgenital difference.

We cannot think about the psychological experience of sex andgender apart from the cultural and linguistic, since these categoriesare both driven by ordinary anatomy and named and createdwithin culture. From the point of view of the psyche, however,actual linguistic and cultural labelling is a latecomer. We knowfrom the research of de Marneffe (1997) that children recognizewhich genitals belong to them before they know that they are a girlor a boy, and we also know of the primacy of parental filtering: anyterm that a child learns is learned in the context of the parent’sunconscious and her or his own particularized femininity or mas-culinity, which is itself emotionally cast, shaped by fantasy, andincludes many elements of affective tonality and context that thatparent has built into gender. As Loewald puts it,

language is typically first conveyed to the child by the parentalvoice and in an all-pervasive way by the mother in the feedingsituation and in all her other ministrations to the infant. Inthese situations her speech and voice are part and parcel of theglobal mother–child interaction. . . The emotional relationshipto the person from whom the word is learned plays a signifi-cant, in fact crucial, part in how alive the link between thingand word turns out to be. [1978, pp. 180, 197).

On the other side, all linguistic and cultural labels are themselvesanimated and tinted by unconscious fantasy and affect, which haveto do with myriad experiences with body, self, and other that may


or may not have direct gender content. Thus, the role of masculineand feminine in the psyche, although having some basis inanatomic and parental reality, goes through what Klein (1940) calls“doubling”—a filtering through fantasy and transference such thatexternal reality is taken into account but only as it is internallyreshaped and created.9

Affective tonality, with or without associated explicit connec-tion to gendered or sexed fantasy content, as well as non-ostensiblygender-related fantasies, help to shape masculinity, femininity,and sexuality. One woman may imbue her sense of femaleness orfemininity with a depressive casting, another with anxiety. Envy,narcissistic humiliation, reparative fantasies, or self-destructive-ness and self-attack may shape the dominant affective fantasiesconnected to another’s sense of gender. In a set of patients frommore patriarchal cultures, I have noticed that mournful guilt,“weeping for the mother”, affectively tints their sense of gender(Chodorow, 1999b), and I have suggested elsewhere that a fantasyof timelessness or defensive denial of time passing, which has aseparate existence from gender-inflected fantasies and identity,nonetheless becomes constitutive of the sense of maternality insome women who have put off motherhood until it is too late(Chodorow, 2003c).

These components of body, internal world, the transferentialcreation of language and culture, and affective tonality all cometogether in any person’s sense of gender. Further, each personcreates a personally individualized “prevalent animation of gen-der” (Chodorow, 1996, 1999b), a conscious and unconscious fan-tasy constellation that puts these different components together,with a characteristic affective tonality and an organization de-signed to manage and contain particular anxieties and defences.Anyone’s prevalent animation of gender—an organization inwhich, out of many complex components of different sorts (body,internal world, language, affect, dominant fantasies of self andother), certain are selected, for reasons of fantasy and defence, tohave overarching valence—could be thought of as a compromiseformation. Prevalent animations of gender may bring to the foreparticularly charged affects or particular representations of or rela-tions to one parent alone. They may be so overwhelmingly drivenby bodily experience—because someone has been born with par-


ticularly strong genital, oral, skin, or other sensitivities, or becauseof a combination of innate sensitivities along with parental han-dling and the unconscious parental communications and responsesthat have gone along with this handling—that from the point ofview of the unconscious there is only one sex—that sex whichbrings with it all these myriad bodily experiences. For some, gen-der is a non-central part of identity and sexuality and the sexualdivide uncharged and relatively unnoticed. Others may be ob-sessed, conflicted, and defined by sexual difference, the absolute ofme as feminine in contrast to me as not-masculine, me with afemale and not a male genital.

Although anyone’s gender always includes some recognition ofthe difference between feminine and masculine, a particular per-son’s prevalent animation of gender may or may not organizegender around the masculine–feminine difference, and genitalawareness or feelings about the genital difference between thesexes may or may not form its centre. That is, masculine–feminineis not in any universal sense more basic than many other organiza-tions, and even when it is basic in a particular case, the componentsof difference do not necessarily privilege the actually observedgenital difference or its fantasy–symbolic representation. Further,in those for whom the sexual difference dominates both the preva-lent animation of gender and also the sense of self (where feminin-ity or masculinity are highly salient in psychic life compared toother elements that might differentiate or relate self and other),non-ostensibly gendered elements may or may not be projectivelyorganized into the feminine/masculine divide, so that the wholeworld is divided along gender lines. Here, culture, both as it isprelinguistically filtered and as it is learned, can help or hindersuch projective fantasies, as cultures themselves differ in the extentto which they make the sexual divide and difference absolute,salient, and central. As many feminists have noted, Western cul-ture projectively maps the binaries of emotion/reason, soft/hard,passive/active, and so forth onto sexual difference in what wemight call in the individual paranoid–schizoid fashion: the divideis absolute, with one side representing all that is good and desir-able and the other all that is bad and to be devalued.

Although I have described the creation of gender as a develop-mental product, I am thinking retrospectively, from the viewpoint


of the consulting-room. We discover our patients’ unconsciousconstructions and fantasies about gender in general and their owngender in particular, along with the psychodynamics borne ofanxiety and defence that have helped to shape these and theirpersonal prevalent animation of gender—and I came to think interms of these components of gender and sexuality—in piecemealfashion, over the course of years, and in the context of our attemptsto understand shifting unconscious fantasies and transferences. Inthis context of multiple ingredients and individual creations offemininity and masculinity, it has seemed to me that two relatedcreations of sex and gender especially take us beyond sexual differ-ence. One concerns the multiple ways that the body is experienced,noticed, and fantasied about, and the other concerns the extent towhich these fantasies and experiences seem to be organizedaround the generational rather than the sexual divide. My obser-vation is that the difference focus, whether beginning from thepresence or absence of the penis or from a non-biological fantasysystem that organizes itself in terms of the differential relation tothe phallus, does not reflect experiential and clinical reality formany patients, perhaps especially feminine experiential reality andthe bodily senses of sexuality and self that we discover in women.It is not news that presence or absence of the penis and phallocen-trism are male-centred, but I also fully expect that, if we were tobring back to the psychosexuality of men what we have learnedfrom women, we would find that such a narrow definition does notmatch masculine experiential or clinical reality either.

Beginning with Horney (1924, 1926, 1932, 1933), several clini-cians and theorists have pointed out that Freud’s original perspec-tive did not accurately portray the girl’s primary sexual and selforganization that emerges from her own body configuration andher direct bodily experiences. We now call this primary femininitytheory. Following Horney and Klein (1928), Mayer (1986),Bernstein (1990), Richards (1996), Elise (1997), and others haveargued that there exist specifically feminine genital representationsand experiences—openness, unseenness, diffuseness, a sense ofinternality or unboundedness—and female forms of genital (ratherthan “castration”) anxieties, for example, fear of penetration, rup-ture, and diffusivity, that derive from what the girl has rather thanwhat she does not have. These more specifically female experiences


are also sometimes seen to lead to more typical elements in femalecharacter or experiences of the other (Mayer, for example, notesthat women tend to fear being emotionally closed over and tonotice emotional closedness in men). Following Kestenberg (1956a,1956b, 1968), Fogel (1998), Elise (2001), and others suggest that menalso have inner genital awareness or fears of penetration similar towomen’s. I would add the observation that what we would con-sider severe and driven penis envy, desire for a penis, or even afantasy penis, may sometimes be found in women to defendagainst a much more profound, depressive sense of lack and in-completeness in comparison to other fully endowed females (forexample, women with breasts or fully functioning internal repro-ductive organs).

As critique, as theory, and in its closeness to clinical and devel-opmental observation, the primary femininity perspective was agreat advance. However, because it begins as an argument withFreud, it does not really get away from the comparative male–female difference perspective, and it still for the most part retains afocus on the external genitals—female genital experience and geni-tal anxieties. It assumes, that is, that the external genitals arepsychologically the criterial defining organs of sex and have, inwomen as in men, exclusive or near-exclusive primacy in bodilyfemininity. Now, of course, we cannot overemphasize the central-ity of genital configuration and experience to bodily awareness andrepresentation, to arousal, excitement, and desire, and to uncon-scious fantasies, not only about body but about self in the world.But for many women, certainly (and perhaps in correspondingfashion for men—we do not know), even when we want to stayclose to the body and to body experiences themselves, other organsequally define biological femaleness and are experientially and inunconscious and conscious fantasy as important and intrinsicallydefining for them of their femininity and (female) sense of self (seeNotman, 2003, for an excellent overview of “The Female Body andIts Meanings”).

Beginning developmentally, Notman points to the lack ofbreasts and subsequent breast development—visible to the littlegirl in comparison with her mother at least as early and as fully asthe sexual genital difference (this paragraph draws throughoutupon Notman). Our infant-centred theory has tended to refer to


“the” breast, but from the point of view of the girl and of women,it is the breasts, their size, their meaning, their early function in theinfant’s life, and later, their responsiveness to nursing and sexualstimulation that matter (Notman observes that the girl’s breastswhen they develop are a new organ, and we might add that theybecome a different organ again when they are used for nursing).The inner bodily potential to become a mother—knowledge of theuterus, the sense that there is a great difference between a little girlwho cannot get pregnant and a mother who can—are important toa girl from very early on, and as she gets older, the girl’s knowl-edge of the inner bodily potential to become a mother becomesconcretized and enveloped in fantasy through the experiences ofpuberty and menstruation. For some women and girls, reproduc-tive drives seem as potent and organizing as sexual drives, and weare as likely to find difficulties and disorders around reproduc-tivity and fantasies of the reproductive body (the uterus, the ova-ries, menstruation) as of sexuality in women. A focus on the genitaldifference (especially as such a focus has been, with the exceptionof Kestenberg, mainly on the external genital, even if this genitalhas an opening to internality) misses all of these bodily experiencesand their potential psychological concomitants, that are equallyfeminine, equally emerge from the body, and are developmentallyand clinically central to what many women mean by and experi-ence as their femininity. In addition, suggests Notman, we some-times find women centring their femininity around weight, whoseconnection to sexuality and gender can, we know, follow differentpaths in different women. We could add that facial hair, pubic hair,and bodily hairiness, among other non-genital or reproductivefeatures, may also play a role in women’s sense of femininity or itslack—facial hair “masculinizing” women, pubic hair giving themthe body of an adult woman as opposed to that of a little girl.Women vary in the extent to which they organize their bodilyfemininity around the genital difference, or even around genitalexperience and its representations over other aspects of body andreproductivity, and in the extent to which their prevalent anima-tion of gender is bodily in the first place.

In The Power of Feelings, I describe K. It was in thinking about Kthat I felt called upon to theorize how a woman could make bodilyand even external genital configuration, but not sexual difference,


central to her sense of femaleness (the following summarizes mycase description, pp. 84–86). For K, the most salient aspects ofgender were not primarily organized around the male–femalepolarity. Although these were present in her fantasy life, her com-parisons of herself to men were not that salient and were centredmainly in conscious fantasies about men and women in the workworld; whether or not she had a penis was not so noticed; and herdesires for men and fantasies about what a relationship to a manmight bring her (whether directly in terms of sexual gratification,for a sense of narcissistic completion or confirmation, for rescue,etc.) were not that elaborated. Yet although feminine versus mascu-line were not so central, K definitely organized her gender withreference to the genital body. She organized her bodily gender, withgreat feeling and fantasy elaboration, in terms of the little girl/mother polarity. She felt herself to be an inadequate little girl withinadequate little genitals, but her locus of comparison was grownwomen—originally her mother—with adult genitals. She had im-ages of this felt comparative inadequacy from as far back as earlylatency, and they were also active in early and middle adolescence.

Shame and disgust were the affective tonalities that character-ized K’s animation of gender and experience of her female body,whether she imagined herself as a little girl or as a grown woman.In one fantasy sense of body, she was an inadequate little girl withlittle-girl genitals, but both during development and currently, shealso felt that grown women’s bodies are intrinsically problematic.Pregnancy and menstruation, for example, give women cramps,make them weak, sluggish, and heavy, and remind women thatthey are tied to these uncontrollable bodies.

Heterosexual relationships posed a conflictual solution to K’sshame. A strong, masculine man could help her appreciate herfeminine body and make her feel successfully feminine, but he alsoby his presence served as a reminder of her weakness and thegeneral shamefulness and weakness of femininity. But when shewas involved with men whom she perceived as not so convention-ally masculine, even though she was not so reminded of her ownweakness, she felt inadequate as a heterosexual feminine woman,which was shameful in its own way. A further quandary for K washer conscious self-identification as a feminist, which made her, asshe put it, “hate to think that women are weak”.


K, then, was focused on external genital configuration as centralto femininity, and in this sense she followed the original Freudianclaim. However, her locus of comparison was not the penis andsexual difference, but, rather, the difference between having a littlegirl’s and a grown woman’s genitals. A same sex–different genera-tion comparison located in the external genitals constituted K’sprevalent animation of gender. Also according to the Freudianclaim, dominant affective tonalities were involved in K’s sense ofdifference, but for her the comparison elicited shame and disgust,not envy. Shame was prevalent when she thought of herself ashaving an inadequate little-girl body in comparison to that of afully formed woman, but the alternative was no better: when shefantasied the menstrual excretions, pregnancies, and sexual andmaternal excess that come with the fully adult woman’s body thatshe also felt she had, she felt disgust and disdain for weakness, out-of-controllness, and vulnerability.

Different women may parse the body and difference divide inother ways. For some women, the comparison and main constitu-ents of gender may also be bodily and, as with K, generational, butfocused on the adult woman–little girl difference more fully interms of reproductive internality. For one woman, a uterus, cervix,and internal vaginal opening—structured and elaborated insides—contrast with her own emptiness or nothing; for another, the all-too-present maternal uterus, which has produced too many babies,is attacked through an attack on one’s own all-too-present uterus,for instance, in multiple abortions (see Chodorow, 2003c; Pine,1982, 1990). In these cases, body is internal and reproductive ratherthan external and genital, but the main locus of difference andrelation remains same-sex. For still other women, the male–femaledifference may be primary but body secondary: they organizegender predominantly through internal objects that meet or do notmeet felt needs rather than through the body—we might sayanaclitically rather than narcissistically. I describe in The Power ofFeelings one woman who animates gender predominantly in lightof the man she cannot be, in terms of affective organization andbehaviour (a projective fantasy of her father’s and brother’s senseof entitlement) and another who animates it predominantly interms of the man she cannot have (a depressively toned longing fora divorced and thereby lost and romanticized father).


I am implying that, much as primary femininity theory is amajor advance over the phallocentrism of the traditional sexualdifference perspective, and much as it certainly describes thebodily–sexual animation of gender for many women, even thisnon-male-centred sexual difference perspective bypasses two ele-ments that I have found to be equally prevalent in sex/gender:first, difference, comparison, and relation that crosses generationbut is single-sex and, second, sexed-gendered body that is notcentred on the external genitals. Similarly, although male–femalewill certainly enter into any woman’s construction of femininity,femininity for women always involves not only their relation tomasculinity, but also (and sometimes with much more force) theirrelation to generational difference, to femininity as little girl orgrown woman, mother or not mother, what mother has and littlegirl does not have.

For men also, I have now come to theorize masculinity as notonly not-female, as I had emphasized in The Reproduction of Mother-ing, and as would be consonant with Freud’s centring sexual differ-ence on the presence or absence of the penis, but also as involvingthe man/boy dichotomy. When the developing boy compares him-self or fantasizes his masculinity, it is not only in relation to hisfemale, vaginal (“castrated”) mother (with breasts, Klein wouldadd). Difference also inheres in his comparison of himself, with hislittle penis and his small size, to his male father, with a large penisand testicles, pubic hair, large size, and seeming personal power,and in this comparison, humiliation and inadequacy, rather thancastration, are the threat (similarly, our case reports suggest thatmale patients are as likely to feel inadequate and humiliated asthey are to feel potentially castrated in relation to their male ana-lysts). When a man’s “masculinity” is threatened, it is as oftenbecause he feels like an inadequate and humiliated little boy vis-à-vis other (adult, masculine) men, created as a subordinate mascu-linity, rather than because he feels feminized, or “castrated.” As Iput it in “Hate, Humiliation, and Masculinity” (Chodorow, 2003a),where I discuss some of the psychodynamics of masculinity thatseem to underlie terrorism and homophobia:

I am suggesting that Freud was right, in “Analysis Terminableand Interminable”, when he suggested that men’s conflictsabout passivity with regard to another man are psychological


bedrock, but he was wrong to call this femininity: thesuperordinate–subordinate, male–male relationship is not re-ducible to a male–female relationship [Chodorow, 2003a, p. 99]

If we return to Freud and the other classical theories, my clinicalobservations of same-sex different-generation components to femi-ninity and masculinity are not completely a theoretical surprise.The theory of the Oedipus complex in both its simple and completeforms, while instigated by and in the classical account resolvedthrough castration anxiety or the desire for a penis, in fact makesgeneration as well as gender central. This dual focus on the psychicrole of gender and generation has been especially theorized byChasseguet-Smirgel (1984, 1986) and McDougall (1986), but theterms themselves mitigate against seeing that generation itself maybe intrinsically gendered. Both boy and girl evaluate the inad-equacy, as well as the vulnerability, of their organ in relation to thesame-sex parent, even as they also notice and make something oftheir organ’s difference from and capacity to satisfy the oppositesex (or, in the becoming-gay case, the same-sex) parent. In fact,same-generation—sibling—difference, which is often convention-ally alluded to in discussions of difference—“the little girl sees thelittle boy and knows that she wants what he has”—seems a lessercomponent in the cross-sex comparison for most people. Thatsame-sex different-generation components would be central tofemininity and masculinity could be predicted from this originarytheory: they are directly discussed in relation to father–son andcould be easily extrapolated in terms of mother–daughter bodilyrelations, difference, and comparison as well. When we add Klein’saccount of the early Oedipus conflict and her view that idealizationof the penis develops in both sexes as a defence against the child’ssense of the power of the maternal breast, we can especially seeclassical roots for the girl’s location in a non-phallocentric same-sexdifferent-generation complex that does not centre on the externalgenitals.

Of course, all of these classical theories have required majormodification and critique, as I have discussed throughout thischapter. Especially, psychoanalytic and feminist critics havepointed to the need to emphasize the primary meanings of thefemale body for women and girls and to challenge the near-com-plete lack of attention to maternality in all the classic accounts, with


the exception of Horney. It has been necessary to elaborate uponthe intrinsic, non-phallocentric development of reproductivity andmaternality in women and to rethink female sexuality to restoretheoretically to women the undoubted clinical and experientialreality of female sexual passion and desire that cannot be elicitedfrom Freud’s aseptic account. But even with the need for thesemajor modifications, the classical theories of the Oedipus complexthat we inherit from Freud, Lampl-de Groot, Horney, Klein, andothers, which include serious attention to generational object-rela-tions as well as to gendered body, provide more of a foundation forthe rethinking of femininity and masculinity than the sexual differ-ence perspective tout court.

I have suggested several problems with the sexual differenceperspective: First, it universalizes what is clinically individual andvariable, and it reduces to one component, through a structurallinguistics rereading of Freud’s emphasis on the presence or ab-sence of the penis, the many constitutive components that go intoanyone’s femininity or masculinity. Second, this perspective ig-nores other non-external genital but equally prominent bodilyobservations, comparisons, experiences, and fantasies that con-struct bodily imaged masculinity and femininity. Third, theseother forms of embodiment often arise from and lead to a differ-ence perspective that emphasizes same-sex cross-generation differ-ence. My observations arise from the clinical consulting-room, butthey result in a theoretical critique and an alternative theory. Femi-ninity and masculinity are created through comparison with theother sex, but they are equally created through the psychic process-ing of directly powerful bodily experience, through the ways theyare lived in the context of the entire psychic life of the individual,and through comparison with those of the same sex but of a dif-ferent generation.

NOTES

1. In “Freud on Women” (Chodorow, 1994) and my recent “Foreword”(Chodorow, 2000) to Freud’s Three Essays on a Theory of Sexuality, I suggest thatFreud had many approaches to the psychology of women and complex, non-polarized understandings of the sexualities.


2. Butler (1990) is the leading post-structuralist feminist who also drawsupon psychoanalysis, but Scott (1988), for example, also explicitly argues forthe exclusively relational meanings of male and female or masculinity andfemininity from a historical–culturalist post-structural perspective.

3. Scott would be an example of someone who uses the term “gender”more or less exclusively—that is, except when she is specifically discussingsexuality—but who at the same time always thinks in terms of gender difference.

4. The terms “sense of maleness” and “sense of femaleness” are takenfrom Stoller (1965, 1968), but I am using them to mean not just core genderidentity but all of the unconscious and conscious fantasies and constructionsthat go into a person’s subjective gender.

5. My starting from clinical experience, from a pragmatic rather thantheory-driven view, and from more iconoclasm towards Freud, may mark meas a North American—see Goldberg (2002); Special Issue of PsychoanalyticDialogues, 2004, “What’s American about American Psychoanalysis?”; also G.Klein (1973). Although many continental European, English, and Latin Ameri-can analysts begin from the clinical and a more inductive view of theory, thereis also perhaps within these non-North American psychoanalytic cultures atendency towards more textual and theoretical fidelity to Freud.

6. In “Freud on Women” (Chodorow, 1994), I suggest that the Demeter–Persephone story provides a better classical grounding for the Freud–Lampl-deGroot–Deutsch account of the female Oedipus complex, though I note that sucha reading minimizes the daughter’s hostility to the mother that these theoristsalso describe. (See also Foley, 1999, which reprints Chodorow, 1974, andHoltzman & Kulish, 2000, and Kulish & Holtzman, 1998.)

7. Within psychoanalysis itself at this point there was little rethinking ofthe psychology of women, with the very important exceptions of Kestenberg(1956a, 1956b, 1968) and Chasseguet-Smirgel (1964).

8. I use the term “clinical individual” to stress the distinction between theuniversals that our theory has tended to claim and the unique individualswhom we treat, whose particular instantiations of a theory will have beendevelopmentally particular and will be created in historically particular waysin the transference–countertransference and in other indications of uncon-scious fantasy over the course of treatment.

9. On the uses of Klein for understanding gender and sex, see Birkstead-Breen, 1999, and Chodorow, 1999a.

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205

INDEXINDEX

AAbraham, K., 44abuse, 4, 160

maternal, 33physical, 34sexual, 69

see also incestverbal, 34

active–passive polarcomplementarity as functionof discharge, 153

see also passivityaffect(s):

maleness and femaleness in, 182undigested, 17

affective fantasies, introjective andprojective, 188

affective tonality, and sense ofgender, 189

Agacinski, S., 129Agape, 50Alcorn, D., 90alienation:

and mirror stage, 65, 116

obligatory, maternal love as effectof, 7, 55

Alizade, M., xiv, 65Ambrosio, G., xivAmerican Beauty, 160–163anal-erotic/anal-sadistic impulses,

29anatomical difference between

sexes, 5, 13, 45, 103, 105–106anatomy as destiny, 26–27Anatrella, T., 129André, J., 44, 52Andreas-Salomé, L., 43, 138, 141“Anna O” [Freud’s patient], 24Annell, C., xiv, 22anorexia, 50Anscombe, E., 130anthropology, structuralist, Lévi-

Straussian, 182Antigone, 76

complex, 76, 77law of, 76

Anzieu, D., 43

206 INDEX

Aristophanes, 8, 60Aristotle, 54, 56Aron, L., 168arousal, individual self-regulation

of, 163asexuality, 68attachment theory, 153attractiveness, human, and desire,

174–176Augustine, 112Austin, J. L., 95, 131, 137autism, endogenous, 47autoerotic activities, 29, 31

compulsive [clinical example],150–152

BBalzac, H. de, 125Barkay, P., xvBarthes, R., 129Bassin, D., 168Beauvoir, S. de, 13–14, 70, 93–97,

101–102, 107, 117, 125–128,137–138, 140–142

Beebe, B., 147, 153Be My Knife (Grossman), 155–157Benjamin, H., 84Benjamin, J., ix, xiv, 3, 5, 10, 17–19,

125–126, 145–171, 173–180Bernheimer, C., 108Bernini, G. L., 110, 154Bernstein, D., 191Best Years of Our Lives, The, 166–171,

176binary oppositions, 6–9binary reasoning, 6–7, 53–66biological gender, 84Birkstead-Breen, D., 199bisexuality, 47, 85, 100

psychic, 5, 42, 44Bjerrum Nielsen, H., xiv, 22bodily experience, 77, 187–193, 198

identification with, 169body:

ego, 71experience of, 80–81female, 97

experience of, 194primary meanings of, 197

as idealist construct, 94image, female, 29–30–mind split and excess, 150–152sexed, fantasy meaning of, 187unconscious representation of, 29

Bollas, C., 131Bracken, W. F., 126breast:

maternal, relation with, 188as transcendental signifier of

difference, 105Brennan, T., 162Bridget, St, 142Britzman, D., 176Buber, M., 19, 179bulimia, 50Buss, D., 178Butler, J., 74, 128–129, 199Ccastration (passim):

anxiety, 5, 27, 46–47, 118, 182, 197female, 35

central to Lacanian and Freudiantheories of femininity, 3

complex, 47, 70–71, 76concept of, 15, 117–121

Freud’s, 117–121fear of, 34

as punishment formasturbation, 30

vs. finitude, 121–135Freud’s theory of, 97–135imaginary, 16Lacan’s theory of, 96–135repudiation of, 118senses of, 123symbolic, 16, 167

Cavell, S., 95–96, 101, 113, 116, 120–123, 130–131, 137

cell division, 8, 59Charcot, J., 62, 65Chasseguet-Smirgel, J., 82, 197, 199Chiland, C., ix, xiv, 9, 11, 12, 79–91,

96, 121, 122, 123, 127

207INDEX

child, seduced, orificial, invaded,42–43

childbirth, 81, 86, 187childhood trauma(ta), 36Chodorow, N., x, xiv, 10, 19–21, 125–

126, 158, 181–203Cixous, H., 185clinical individual(ity), 183, 187clinical scene, view from, 19–21Clinton, W., 164clitoris, 26, 86

excitation, 5, 25, 26, 43–45, 48significance of for Freud, 3

Coates, S., 156Collin, F., 129Coltart, N., 131communication, 176

unconscious, 147Conant, J., 114concept(s):

abstract:claim to generalizability, 2claim to scientific relevance, 2claim to universality, 1, 2as part of metapsychology, 1

formation of, 1congenital adrenal hyperplasia, 83constructivism vs. essentialism, 12constructivistic approach, 7container, 156, 161

body as, for mind, 150–152, 154daughter position as, 18, 146, 148,

150, 153, 158of discharge, penis as, 156for excess, 162maternal, 156mother as, 158

containment:affective, failure of, 149maternal, 147of tension, 18

Corbett, G., 84Corbett, K., 168, 186countertransference, 32, 116, 199couvade, 86Crary, A., 131

creativity and sexuality, 32–33, 149cross-generational relations, 20–21,

181–203cultural anthropology, 12, 85cultural pessimism, 177culture:

man aligned with in patriarchalbinary thinking, 7

vs. nature, 6and perception of biological

differences, 178transferential creation of, and

sense of gender, 189Ddaughter position, 18, 146, 157–160Davies, J. M., 147, 149Dean, T., 127, 128death:

as accident, with asexualreproduction, 8, 59

drive, 7–8, 58–59, 62–63see also Thanatos

as structural necessity, withsexual reproduction, 8, 59

as trauma, 121defloration, 81“Deirdre” [clinical example], 159–

160de Marneffe, 188dependency, repudiation of, 162depressive position, 47, 168depressivity, chronic, 50Derrida, J., 110, 130, 131de Saussure, F., 19Descartes, R., 102desire(s):

concept of, 19, 175, 176feminine, 38ownership of, 164

Deutsch, H., 32, 73, 126, 184, 199development:

psychosexual, 8female, 4, 41Freud’s theory of, 25, 98, 186

psychosomatic, 4theory of, female-centred, 185

208 INDEX

deviancy, shared, in couples, 36deviation, sexual, in women, 4dialectic, notion of, 174Diamond, C., 114, 115, 130Di Ceglie, D., 87differentiation, 185

active/passive, 57gender, 8, 61, 62, 148

Dimen, M., 152dimorphism, 18, 174Dinnerstein, D., 158, 179discharge:

of mental excess, 18of tension, 18–19

bodily, in monadic economy,152

male, 154, 175and virtue, 179

“Dora” [Freud’s patient], 24, 44drive(s):

death (Thanatos), 7–8, 58–59, 62–63

see also ThanatosFreud’s theory of, 7, 11, 57–60, 63–

66life (Eros), 7, 58–59, 63

see also Eros; Zoëreproductive, 193

dualism, 6, 57, 60binary, 57classical, 53gender, 7, 53

Eego:

body, 71ideal, attainment of, 47of mirror stage, 72sexed, 10, 71

Eigen, M., 146Elise, D., 155, 191, 192“Emmy von N” [Freud’s patient], 24energy, concept of, as mental,

psychological phenomenon,153

“enigmatic message”, parent–child,17, 147–148, 150, 153

enigmatic signifiers, 4, 42envy:

boy’s vs. girl’s, 28and sense of gender, 189

Eros, 7–8, 50, 57–60, 62–63, 167, 177–178

as antithesis of reproduction, 178and fusion, 8, 60

identification, hysteria,femininity, 62

lightness of being, 19, 54, 178scattering of, 58and surrender and death, 19see also life drive; Zoë

eroticization as defence, 36erotics of recognition, therapeutic,

167erotism:

oral, vs. oral aggression, 29pregenital:

and archaic, 2unconscious, 36

essentialism vs. constructivism, 12evolutionary psychology, 178excess, 145, 146

experience of, 17mental, and discharge of tension,

18, 146–147and mind–body split, 150–152problem of, 146–149, 154

and gender positions, 163male solution to, 154

and splitting, 154exhibitionism, 35existentialist phenomenology, 137exploitation, 175Ffantasy constellation, conscious and

unconscious, and sense ofgender, 189

Fassin, E., 129Fast, I., 168father:

–aggressor, identification with,155

female desire for, 42

209INDEX

girl as object of, 49incestuous, 158name of, 42oedipal, 54, 158passive attitude in relation to, as

essence of feminine, 145perverse, 160–163phallic, 156primal, myth of, 6, 54symbolic, 48as third figure, 48

Federation of Feminist Women’sHealth Centers, 38

femaleness, sense of, 194female position, 4–5female subordination, modelled on

master–slave relationship,175

feminine body, 97experience of, 194primary meanings of, 197somatopsychic images as mental

representations of, 4, 26feminine position, 47, 158

of female, 47, 106–107of male, 43, 47, 106

femininity:accommodating, receiving,

mirroring, 162as beyond phallus, 95and castration, 14as construction by male psyche,

17–18, 145Freud’s theory of, 3, 97–135generalization in, 140Lacan’s concept of, 3, 96, 97–135

and phallus, 102–109and masculinity, 6

constitutive components of,183

intersubjective view of, 145–171

as metaphysical concept, 14model of, Victorian woman as, 23normative, 14, 107open to symbolic, 53

as outside language, 95, 109–117and passivity, 100plurality of versions of, 51polymorphous, of primary

oedipal phase, 47as position constructed in

language, 94pre-oedipal components, 184primary:

failure in integration of, 30theory, 21, 184, 185

reactional, 5, 47rejection of, 50repudiation of, 15, 118, 119, 163riddle of, 12–13, 24–25, 96–102,

114, 138, 145–171vs. sexual difference, 13theory(ies), 13, 16, 95, 97, 99, 121,

124, 125, 138classical psychoanalytic, 12,

137vs. feminist theory, 137–143Freud’s, 14, 93–94, 100, 141Lacan’s, 14, 93–94, 106–107,

109primary, 191–192, 196

feminism, phallic, 140feminist(s), 80feminist theory vs. femininity

theory, 137–143féminité, meanings of, 13, 105, 106fertility, 81, 89fetish, 106, 167fetishism, 36, 46, 106finitude, 15, 16, 96

aspects of, 122–135and castration, 121–135human, 139

as political alibi, 139Wittgenstein’s picture of, 121

ontological, 122sexual, 118, 120, 122, 124spatial, 122temporal, 122

Flordh, C., xvFogel, G., 192

210 INDEX

Foley, H., 199Fonagy, P., 65, 146Foucault, M., 19, 175, 176Francis of Assisi, 51Freedman, D., 87Freud, A., 44Freud, S. (passim):

“Anna O”, 24bisexuality, 85castration, concept of, 15clitoris, assimilation of into penis,

26, 86concept of the unconscious, 3, 24debt of, to women, 24denigration of femininity, 26discharge as male, 19“Dora”, 24, 44drive for mastery, 64drive theory of, 7, 11, 57–60, 63–66

see also death drive; Eros; lifedrive; Thanatos; Zoë

“Emmy von N”, 24experience of excess, 17, 154on female psychosexual

development, 25, 98, 186on female sexualities, 2–4, 23–39on feminine passivity, 100–102,

146on femininity:

and castration, 14, 138normative, 14, 107theory of, 93–135, 139, 141,

145–171focus on genital difference, 182,

184, 187, 196idealization of motherhood, 33interest in women’s sexuality, 24“Irma”, 24“Katharina”, 24libido theory of, 11, 123, 131, 152“Lucy R”, 24motherhood, preoccupation with,

70Nachträglichkeit, 110Oedipus complex, 71

one-person economy, 17, 146passivity, definition of, 17patriarchal thinking of, 70, 75, 137phallic monism, 41phallocentrism of, 3, 11, 33, 70, 72polymorphously perverse infant,

82primal father, myth of, 6, 54protection from trauma, 166reproduction and sexuality, 68repudiation of femininity, 15, 118,

119riddle of femininity, 145seduction as traumatic

helplessness, 154significance of phallus for, 7theories of femininity, castration

as central point of, 3theories of sexual difference, 3Triebmischung, 8, 60, 63Victorian prejudices of, 23

elevated to theory, 27Friedman, R., 156GGallop, J., 107–108, 127, 129Garréta, A. F., 128Gaspard, F., 128, 129gender:

binary, structural role of, 139biological, 84as category of historical analysis,

69complementarity, 168as concept, introduction of, 83–85conception of, and dualism, 53–

66as developmental product, 20,

190differentiation, 8, 61, 62, 148as expression of “being”, 12, 85grammatical, 84identification, 148identity, 9, 29, 64, 82, 83–85, 88

core, 84disorder, 83, 88

211INDEX

intrapsychic, 185as invention of society, 84meaning of term, constructivistic

aproach to, 7organization of sexuality, 179positions, 145, 163–164

and Oedipus complex, 155reversal, 167re-visioning, 163role, 18, 83, 84

attainment of, 34reversal, 165

vs. sexual difference, 9–12, 67–78,79–91, 186

signifiers, 157as social construct, 86theory(ies):

vs. practice, 1 in psychoanalysis, 12

and violence, 11, 68gendered sexuality, conscious

beliefs vs. hidden agendas, 2genetics, recent developments in, 11genital representation of as inner

space, 29Gergely, G., 65Geschlecht, 86Ghazali, Imam, 19, 179Ghent, E., 165girl, target of desire of, 48Glover, E., 34Godelier, M., 81, 82Goldberg, A., 199grammatical gender, 84Green, A., 68Greenson, R., 168Grossman, D., 155–157, 162, 164, 166guillotine complex, 16guilt, mournful, and sense of

gender, 189HHärdelin, S., xivHaugsgjerd, S., xiv, 22Hegel, G. D. F., 50, 70, 110Herdt, G., 86

“her-story”, 16, 141heterosexuality, 71, 74, 76Hoffmann, E. T. A., 131Holtzman, D., 199homophobia, 196homosexuality, 76

female, 49, 99primary, 37–38

homunculus theory, 54Hooker, E., 84Horney, K., 21, 28, 125–126, 141, 157,

184, 191, 198Hurt, J., 178Hurtig, E., xivhysteria, male, 56, 71hysteric(s), 50, 72

female and male, and sexualdifference, 9, 71

Freud’s study of, 18, 145, 158hysterical compulsion to associate,

58Iidealization, 5, 44, 47identification:

with father, 54-aggressor, 155

feminine, 157, 160forms of, 176gender, 148with girl, 160and intersubjective moment, 176introjective, 186with mother:

feminine, 30, 45, 158–159repudiation of, 155–156

phallic, 46, 49primary, 47

mirror stage, 63projective, 157, 186sexualized, 160

identity:vs. anatomical sex, 53feminine and masculine, division

of, 55formation, and drive, 59

212 INDEX

identity (continued):gender, 84, 85

acquisition of, 9, 29, 64core, 84disorder, 88role, 84threat to, 82

imaginary, child’s, 6psychosexual, 7, 55

vs. biological sex, 55sense of, loss of, 35sexual, 26, 34, 85

choice of, 47subjective, 35

incest, 18, 33, 34, 67, 158individuality, clinical, 183, 187individuation, 8, 185infancy:

research, 153universal bisexual wishes of, 37

infant(s):phobias of, 47polymorphously perverse, 11, 69,

73, 82infantile sexuality, 26, 42, 72, 73, 74,

82inner space:

genital as, 29girl’s fears centred on, 35man’s fears of, projected onto

women, 3, 24inner world, complexity of, 188interactive subjectivity, 5interiority, 45–46, 51

early, 45psychic, 45, 47

internal shield, 166internal space, 5internal world, maleness and

femaleness in, 182intersexed, 80, 83–84, 88–89, 122intersubjective economy, 146, 152,

163of recognition and mutual

regulation, 154intersubjective failure, 153

intersubjective moment, 19, 173,176–177, 179

intersubjective sharing, 19intersubjectivity, 173intrapsychic events, dynamics of,

173intrapsychic gender, 185Irigaray, L., 114–116, 126, 185“Irma” [Freud’s patient], 24“Isabelle” [clinical example], 148,

150–152Isay, R., 186JJacobus, M., 28Jones, E., 70jouissance, 14, 96, 109–117, 125, 127,

129beyond phallus, 110, 114outside language, 111vaginal, 111

Jung, C. G., 68Jurist, E., 65K“K” [clinical example], 193–195Kaplan, G., x, xiv, 17–19, 173–180Kaplan, S., xiv“Katharina” [Freud’s patient], 24Kestenberg, J., 21, 184, 192–193, 199Kihlbom, M., xivKlein, G., 199Klein, M., 28, 44, 141, 155, 188–189,

191, 196–199knowledge, eternal pursuit of, 2Kowner, R., 174Kristeva, J., x, xiv, 4–6, 15, 17, 31, 41–

52, 53–66, 126, 130, 137, 185Kulish, N., 199LLacan, J. (passim):

castration, concept of, 15femininity:

and castration, 3, 14normative, 14, 107theory of, 93–135, 139

linguistic model of, 19mirror stage, 126

213INDEX

primacy of phallus for, 7, 42, 138symbols in, 102theories of sexual difference, 3

Lachmann, F. M., 147, 153Lagache, D., 127–128Lamizet, B., 129Lampl-de Groot, J., 184, 198–199language, 14–15, 95, 105

access to, phallic pleasure in, 6, 48acquisition, and individuation, 8Bourdieu’s theory of, 137development of, 48, 60essence of, 112femininity as position

constructed in, 94Lacanian theory of, 105, 111, 113,

125limit to, 115mad, 115–117normative, of sexual difference,

109“outside”, 95–96, 109–117post-Saussurean theory of, 14, 95,

109, 112, 116of reason, 114–115spatial picture of, 111–112symbolic, 114theory of, vs. theory of

representation, 112–117transferential creation of, 188

and sense of gender, 189Wittgenstein’s theory of, 96, 112–

113Lantz, P., xivLaplanche, 4, 17, 42, 147–148, 153latency, 76lateral gender sexuality, 76lateral relationships, 10, 75–76, 158lateral sexuality, 10, 76laterality, 77Lear, J., 131Le Doeuff, M., 129Leighton, S., 52Lerner, G., 141lesbian(s), 99Lessing, D., 142

Lévi-Strauss, C., 83Lewinsky, M., 164libido, 27, 46, 93

Freud’s economy of, 152male, 72

concept, 25only one, 11, 123

life drive, 7, 58–59, 63see also Eros; Zoë

lightness of being, 19, 54, 178linguistic model, de Saussure’s, 19linguistics:

post-Saussurean, 14, 94, 108–109,112

Lacan’s, 96structuralist, Saussurean, 182

Linton, R., 178Lipietz, A., 129Loewald, H. W., 188“Lucy R” [Freud’s patient], 24MMack Brunswick, R., 141, 184Mannoni, O., 73masculine–feminine polarity, 163masculine protest, 117masculinity:

defensive activity, 162vs. femininity, 6phallic, failure of, 166riddle of, 13, 96, 102and struggle to get in, 160–163and symbolic, link between, 7theory of, 96

masochism, 43, 46feminine, 159

masturbation, and femininity, 30–31maternality, 189, 197

development of:fundamental to femininity, 184non-phallocentric, 198

maternal instinct, 42, 52as myth, 7, 55

Matthis, I., x, 1–22Mauthner, M., 77May, R., 168Mayer, E. L., 191–192

214 INDEX

McDougall, J., xi, xiv, 2–4, 7, 15, 23–39, 96, 103, 121–122, 125–126, 131, 139, 148, 197

Mead, M., 12, 85meiosis [cell division], 8, 59melancholia, 50men, fear of women of, as projection

of inner pregenital fantasies,3, 24

menarche, 81menopause, 31, 32, 71, 81menses, 81menstruation, 31, 71, 193, 194mentalization, 146Merleau-Ponty, M., 13, 94, 95, 137Mernissi, F., 179metalanguage, rational, 16metapsychology, abstract concepts

as part of, 1Metternich, Princess, 74mirroring, dualistic, 53mirror stage, 6, 10, 54, 65, 72, 116

primary identification of, 63Mitchell, J., xi, xiv, 9–12, 67–78, 79–

91, 118, 125–129, 139, 152Moi, T., xi, xiv, 3, 12–17, 93–135, 137–

143monadic economy, 152–153Money, J., 83, 84monosexuality, trauma of, 28, 122Montelatici Prawitz, D., xvmother:

asexual, 68–daughter relationship, early, 4feminine identification with, 30rejection of, by daughter, 37seductive introjected, 5, 44

motherhood, 7, 24, 27–29, 51, 70, 86,94

asexual, 11, 72deferred, 189Freud’s idealization of, 33, 93and human reproduction, 10perverse, 4, 33–34, 55

mothering:function, 20

fundamental to femininity, 184reproduction of, 186

mourning, for loss of intact body,167, 177

Muslim tradition, 19, 179My Father Is Coming, 67NNachträglichkeit, 110Nakano, G. E., 179Naked Civil Servant, The, 178narcissism, 12, 43, 46, 85

maternal, 44pathological vs. healthy, 85register of, 85

narcissistic economy, 9, 67narcissistic humiliation, and sense

of gender, 189narcissistic omnipotence, 15, 119nature:

vs. culture, 6woman aligned with, in

patriarchal binary thinking,7

Necander-Redell, L., xvNeikos [strife], 59neurosis, traumatic, 58Norman, J., xivNotman, M. T., 192–193Nygren, L.-G., xivOOakley, A., 69object:

choice, 183link with, stable, 47loss, 148

defence against, 50relations, 10, 71

theory, 86oedipal father, 54, 158oedipal phase, 44

primary, 4–6, 41–47, 49–50complexity of, 46economy of, 45receptivity of, 6, 51vs. secondary, 6

secondary, 4, 6, 44, 49–50

215INDEX

ambiguity of, 49–51and phallicism, 46–48

Oedipus complex, 4, 20, 41, 64, 71,82, 85, 155, 186, 197, 198

female, 184gender identity as sequel to, 9girl’s, 34male, 34resolution of, 182

Oedipus conflict, 186, 197Oedipus Rex, 76Ogden, T., 158omnipotence, narcissistic, 15, 119one-person economy, 17, 18, 146,

173oral phase, 186orifices, significance of, 4, 7, 42, 57,

155orificial ego, 43Ostas, M., 131Ovesey, L., 84Oyama, S., 174Ozouf, M., 129Pparaplegics, 80parental sexuality, 148passivity, 17–19, 53, 65, 100–101,

145–148, 163–168, 196acceptance of, 177and activity, 153–157

split between, 145experience of, 165and failure of containment, 146fear of, 162male, 167ownership of, 164perverse, 167projection of, boy’s, 18receptivity in, 18

oral and anal, 45reformulation of, 163–165sexual, 17, 146and surrender, 165working through experiences of

excess, 146patriarchal ideologies, 141

patriarchal social system, 6, 49, 53,139, 189

patriarchal thinking, 7, 16, 55–56,137, 140

in Freudian psychoanalysis, 70,75

penis:desire for, and primary

homosexuality, 37envy, 28, 33, 37, 94–95, 117, 119,

138–139, 157, 182, 192Freud on, 93precursors of, 26role of in female development,

184idealization of, 197and phallus, Lacan’s theory of,

102–109vs. phallus, 13, 48

Person, E., 84perverse, human sexuality as, 82perverse motherhood, 4, 33, 34perversion(s), 73, 82

as erotic form of hatred, 35sexual, 4, 33, 34

perversity, 11phallic authority, structuring role

of, 5, 46phallic component, structuring,

46phallic fusion, 58phallic kairos, 47phallic loss, 61phallic phase, 5, 41, 43, 47phallic position, 49

feminine, 49phallic primacy, 42

ascendancy of, 4phallic stage, 5, 48phallicism, and secondary oedipal

phase, 46–48phallocentric metaphors, Freud’s,

3phallocentric theory, 3, 11, 20–21,

70–72phallocentrism, 33, 191, 196

216 INDEX

phallus (passim):denial of, 50identification with, 49and penis, Lacan’s theory of, 102–

109vs. penis, 13primacy of, 41as privileged signifier, 104real [un phallus réel], 103as signifier, 13

of meaning, 108of sexual difference, 108of signification, 108of symbolic law, 48transcendental, 108–109

Philia [love], 59Phillips, A., 131phobias, infant’s, 47Pine, D., 195Plato, 54, 60–61pleasure principle, failure of, 58polymorph, perverse, 43polymorphism, of individuals, 18,

174Portman Clinic, London, 34post-menopausal woman, sexuality

of, 73post-Saussurean linguistics, and

Lacan, 14, 94–96, 108–109,112, 116

post-Saussurean theory vs. post-structuralist theory, 117

post-structuralism, 112, 115, 181–182, 199

linguistic foundations of, 117vs. post-Saussurean thought, 117

power, male, 175power relations:

asymmetrical, and sexuality, 140and sexuality, 19, 176

pregenital fantasies, unconscious,men’s projetion of ontowomen, 3, 24

pregnancy, 23, 57, 62, 81, 86, 187, 194pre-oedipal society, 10

primal division, 61primal father, 54

Freud’s myth of, 6procreation and sexuality,

dissociation between, 9–12,81–83

projection, 3, 18, 24, 44, 145, 155,167

projective identification, 157, 186psychic bisexuality, 5, 42, 44psychic pain, 131, 166, 168

as failure of regulation, 146and finitude, 124

psychization, 43–46early, 45of maternal object, 5, 44sexual, 5

psychoanalysis and femininitytheory, 12

psychology:evolutionary, 178male and female, 3

psychosexual cycle of life, 80psychosexual development, 8

female, 4, 41Freud’s theory of, 25, 98, 186

psychosomatic development, 4puberty, 32, 73, 76, 86, 193RRagland-Sullivan, E., 128Raphael-Leff, J., xivreactional femininity, 5, 47Read, R., 131reality principle, 15, 119receptivity, pleasurable, dimension

of, 163recognition:

failure of, 147mutual, 165, 166, 167

Reich, W., 69relationships, lateral vs. vertical, 75,

76reparative fantasies, and sense of

gender, 189repetition compulsion, 7, 57, 58

217INDEX

representation, theory of, vs. theoryof language, 113

reproduction:asexual, 74human, 10in psychoanalytic theory, 68sexed, 70sexual, 10, 63, 70

vs. asexual, 8and sexual difference, 67and sexuality, 74

reproductive drives, 193reproductive fantasies, 72reproductive sexuality, 79reproductivity, 186, 193

development of, non-phallocentric, 198

Richards, A., 191rights, inequality of, 80Riviere, J., 28Rogers, L. J., 175Rosanvallon, P., 129Rose, H., 174Rose, J., 127, 129, 139Rose, S., 174Roudinesco, E., 128Rousseau, J. J., 122Rubin, G., 69, 179Ssadomasochism, 35, 36, 168Saladin d’Anglure, B., 83same-sex, cross-generational

relations, 20, 21, 181–203Sander, L., 153Sartre, J.-P., 137Sausse, S. K., 129Say, G., 31Sayers, J., 75scepticism as gendered, 113Scott, J., 69, 128, 199seduction:

as helplessness, 154theory, 147

seductive mother, introjected, 5, 44Seelig, B., xiv

self-destructiveness and sense ofgender, 189

self-recognition, and intersubjectivemoment, 176

self-regulation, 147, 163failure of, 146

passivity as, 17sensoriality, polymorphous, of

primary oedipal phase, 49separation anxiety, 60, 65sex:

assignment of, 83–84as invention of society, 84reassignment, surgical, 87, 89as social construct, 86

sexed ego, 10, 71sexed reproduction, 70–72sexes, anatomical difference

between, 5, 13, 45, 103, 105–106

sexism, 99, 124sexual development, 5

final stage of, 82sexual difference, 20, 181–203

anti-essentialist theory of, 103concept of, 70vs. femininity, 13, 15, 96–97, 117Freud’s theory of, 3, 108vs. gender, 9–10, 67–78, 79–91,

186importance of, 79, 80–81Lacan’s theory of, 3, 95–135morphological, 71, 103as trauma, 121

sexual deviation(s):in couples, 36in women, 4, 33–36

sexual drive, 11, 19sexuality:

containing function of, 148denial of, 20exploitation and power relations,

175feminine component of, 53gender organization of, 179

218 INDEX

sexuality (continued):human, polarization of, 179infantile, 26, 42, 72–74, 82lateral, 10, 76male, sexual perversion in, 4non-reproductive, 73, 75, 85parental, 148polymorphously perverse, 75and power relations, 19and procreation, dissociation

between, 9–12, 81–83psychoanalytic theory of, and

thought, 5, 47reproductive, 79repudiation of, 10, 68social representations of, 3, 23theory vs. practice, 1and thought, 5, 47, 48as vehicle of expression, 149and violence, 73

sexual liberation, 3, 23sexual orientation, 85sexual passivity, 17, 146sexual perversion, 4, 33–34sexual relationships, plurality of, 75sibling(s), 67

creation of, transsexuality as, 9relationships, 10, 77

importance of, 9, 83, 85sexual, 67

siblinghood, 70signifiers, enigmatic, 4Silverman, K., 166–167, 176–177sister position, 158skin-ego, 43Solberger, A., xvsplit, mind–body, 17, 150–152split complementarity, 151, 155splitting, 150, 155, 163

active/passive, 154, 157and complementarity of gender,

145Stein, A., 179Stein, R., 147, 148, 149stimulus(i):

dialectic approach to, 174

responding to vs. altering, 174Stoller, R., 35, 69, 82–84, 89, 148, 185,

199Stone, M., 131structuralist anthropology, Lévi-

Straussian, 182structuralist linguistics, Saussurean,

182subjectivity:

interactive, 5, 43–46theory of, 138

subject–object relationship, 10sublimation, 31, 47, 50, 179

instinctual, 51Sundén, M., xiv, xvsuperego, 47

defects, of female, 27development, 95, 182

surrender:intersubjective, 168trauma, and third position, 165–

171symbiotic relationships, 5symbolic activity as phallic, 108symbolic discourse, 14symbolic function, 42

and social norms or ideology,103

symbolic law, privileged signifierof, 6

symbols vs. bodies, 13T“Tamara” [clinical example], 32–33Target, M., 65, 146tension:

discharge of, 18–19bodily, in monadic economy,

152male, 154, 175of split-off experience, 150and virtue, 179

regulation, failure of, 147as source of pleasure, 164sustaining of, 164

terrorism, psychodynamics ofmasculinity, 196

219INDEX

Thanatos, 7–8, 57–60, 62–63and separation, 8

isolation, obsessional neurosis,masculinity, 62

see also death drivetheory of representation, 113thirdness, 173

space of, 18, 165, 168third position, 165

trauma and surrender, 165–171third space, 19, 179time, woman’s relationship to, 31–

32Tincq, H., 129Tort, M., 129transcendence, 93transference, 116, 186, 189, 191, 199

clinical, 72intrapsychic mother–daughter,

187maleness and femaleness in, 182maternal, 186

transgendering, 67, 76–77, 122“transgenderism”, 87transsexuality/ism, 9, 12, 77, 80, 84,

87–89, 121–122transvestism, 87, 122Trat, J., 129trauma(s):

childhood, 36surrender, and third position,

165–171universal, 3, 15, 118, 120–135

traumatic neurosis, 58Treut, M., 67, 87Triebmischung, 8, 60, 63Trigano, S., 129Turtle, G., 87two-person economy, 152, 173, 179two-person relationship, pleasure

and pain in, 17, 146Tyson, P., 30Uunconscious, the:

Freud’s concept of, 3, 24repressed fantasies in, 24

unconscious fantasy, maleness andfemaleness in, 182

Vvagina:

perception of, 48as portal, 29

vaginal–anal femininity, 44vaginal–cloacal mobilization, 5, 44Varikas, E., 129Verhaeghe, P., xi, xiv, 6–10, 15, 53–66Viennot, E., 129violence, 35, 76

and gender, 11, 68, 73sexual, 141and sexuality, 73

WWelldon, E., 34, 35wholeness, 7, 8

original, 58loss of, 8, 61

Williams, C., 179Winnicott, D. W., 42, 85Witt-Brattström, E., xii, xiv, 12, 15–

16, 137–143Wittgenstein, L., 13, 95–97, 112–117,

121, 126, 130–131, 137Wolfe, S., 156woman/women:

men’s fear of, 3phallic masquerade of, 56sexual deviation in, 4theories of, and femininity and

feminist theories, 137–143unconscious desires and fantasies

of, 3universality of as women, 138Victorian, as model of femininity,

23women’s literature, 16, 139–142

as literature of testimony, 141Wordsworth, W., 122YYassa, M., xivZZoë [eternal life], 59, 63

see also Eros; life drive

dialogues on sexuality gender and psychoanalysis

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