Sexual Ambiguities

Genevieve Morel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429919015
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

How does one become a man or a woman? Psychoanalysis shows that this is never an easy task and that each of us tackles it in our own, unique way. In this important and original study, the author focuses on what analytic work with psychotic subjects can teach us about the different solutions human beings can construct to the question of sexual identity. Through a careful exposition of Lacanian theory, the author argues that classical gender theory is misguided in its notion of 'gender identity' and that Lacan's concept of 'sexuation' is more precise. Clinical case studies illustrate how sexuation occurs and the ambiguities that may surround it. In psychosis, these ambiguities are often central, and the author explores how they may or may not be resolved thanks to the individual's own constructions. This book is not only a major contribution to gender studies but also an invaluable aid to the clinician dealing with questions of sexual identity.

Introduction

“I don’t know how to be a woman, because nobody ever showed me” (woman aged 30).

“I’ve always had a vague sadness about not being a woman. But then, it’s what allows me to see that there is such a thing as making a choice to be a man” (Mr T, aged 50).

“It’s not just that I wear the trousers—I am the man, because everything at home depends on me. Without me, the whole thing wouldn’t exist at all. All I need in order to be a man is a willy” (Mrs H, aged 50).

“Later on, I’ll turn into a boy, so I won’t ever have babies” (Lea, aged 5, following the birth of her brother).

“I was impotent for ten years. It helped me to communicate with women, because I was really close to them” (Mr B, aged 35).

“I want to leave women behind” (young homosexual woman).

“Being a man meant being nothing. For me, to be something meant becoming a woman ... . Before, I was a man or a woman, and I could cross the border between the sexes. When I became a father, I could no longer reverse the process of turning from a man into a woman, or a woman into a man” (Mr H, aged 40).

A psychoanalyst hears ideas such as these from the couch, but also outside the consulting room. For example, an actress claimed that her favourite role was that of Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando”: she had enjoyed changing sex on the set. Another actress, who had played a feminine G.I., explained her feelings during the filming of a scene which had put her body to the test: on the one hand there were men, and on the other, there were women, and then there was her, belonging to neither category. A transsexual writer, who had written numerous biographies of famous men, said during an interview that she wanted to “reconcile the opposites”. “He” had been a husband and father before undergoing an operation to “transform” him into a woman. “So”, she said, “men and women feel at home with me; I belong to both groups”.

These statements are all very different from each other. Some of them bear on sexual identity. There may be uncertainty—“Am I a man or a woman?”—which can slide into perplexity. There may be an attempt at defining something that slips away into infinity—“What is a woman?”—which risks becoming complete disarray in the absence of an instruction manual saying how to be one. It may be a case of inability—“I can’t be a man”—which can cause impotence, but may also entail the benefit of an identification with the other sex, even though there is no possible rapport, let alone any possible sexual relation. It may be a question of refusal: “I don’t want to be a woman”, with gradations from denegation to the most radical rejection: “I am a man in a woman’s body”. Finally, one may encounter the desire, voiced with or without humour, to belong to a special, exceptional category: “I am impossible to classify sexually”.

Some people aim at a knowledge of the unimaginable that the other sex experiences, like Tiresias¹ who, by being a man and then a woman, and then a man again, was able to say who enjoyed the sexual act more intensely. This can range from play to the theatrical role² to the most severe sexual disturbances.

Others aspire to what Zeus accomplished, according to Aristophanes in The Symposium:³ cutting human beings in two. Does not “reconciling the two”, putting the two back together to make one, contain an echo of this? It is not without irony, yet it could possibly happen, with the aid of a scalpel. Indeed, some individuals, confusing being and appearance, insist on metamorphosis in the flesh. Modern surgical techniques mean that the offer is there⁴ and, if we are to believe the statistics, it is being taken up in increasing numbers.

It is this variety that I want to explore in Sexual Ambiguity. In language, “ambiguity” is the double meaning that gives rise to uncertainty, and on which the enigma depends. It is the equivocation which, according to Freud,⁵ always endows the symptom with two opposing significations. It gives rise to indecision, and sows the seeds of doubt. It is tempting to slip in and out of both, being neither one nor the other, neither man nor woman. Or to believe that one is both at once, a combination of man and woman. We can find these positions in the two great Freudian neuroses, hysteria and obsessional neurosis.

Others may wish to cross to the other side, by “throwing a switch”, as some transsexuals put it, or even continuously, believing they have been there since birth. Some will feel at the mercy of powers beyond their control, subjugated to a will that they experience as external and foreign to them, in spite of their intimate and determined resistance, which nonetheless weakens over time. This was the case with President Schreber,⁶ whose delusion transformed him into God’s wife. Sexual ambiguity can be imaginary, as in the case of the heightened femininity of the tomboy, or in the unisex game of androgynous fashion. It can be symbolic, when it becomes the metaphor of the hysterical symptom.⁷ It can be real, when it forms the substance of a conviction which impacts on the body itself, notably by surgical means, or which torments the mind with an invasive delusion.

In the face of the complex nature of sexual ambiguity, is it appropriate to appeal to gender, that grammatical notion of the opposition between masculine and feminine in language? Is there really such a thing as a definable entity called “gender identity”, which would refer to “the very being of a person”⁸ and which in some way would be their psychical sex? “You play a role, you are your identity”, says Robert Stoller, author of a number of studies of transsexualism. What exactly is the “being” entailed in gender identity? Is it sufficient to believe oneself to be a man or a woman in order to function effectively as such, in relation to a partner of the opposite sex, or of the same sex? Is it reasonable to think of the enforced feminization in the Schreber case, as the covering-over of a male “core of gender identity” by a delusion which is supposed to be a defence against his “unalterable knowledge” of being a male?⁹ What could possibly be the motive for such a successful defence? Despite the interesting clinical research that gender theories have produced, they are conceptually inadequate, and miss what we can deduce from the practice of psychoanalysis. I have tried to explain why this is, and to put forward an alternative.

Sexual ambiguity is too widespread, and it affects too many people, for us to be able to postulate a “core of gender identity”, or even to affirm that it is covered over by these ambiguities, which would then be secondary. I have chosen to posit sexual ambiguity as being fundamental. In doing this, I could have allied myself with the famous Freudian idea of bisexuality. But this theory, for which Fliess claimed paternity, is based on the anatomical model; and Freud was not fooled by that. From 1905¹⁰ onwards, he said he did not know what constituted this “bisexual predisposition”, “beyond anatomical conformity”, and points the reader in the direction of the development of the sexual drive. In 1929¹¹ he confirmed: “The theory of bisexuality is still surrounded by many obscurities and we cannot but feel it as a serious impediment in psychoanalysis that it has not yet found any link with the theory of the drives [‘instincts’ in Strachey’s translation]”.¹² While gender theory (the theory of gender identity) nowadays focuses our attention on identifications, Freud suggested we study the drives and their vicissitudes, rather than bisexuality.

If human beings have so much difficulty in finding an orientation with regard to sexuation, if it is so hard for them to line themselves up on the side of man or woman, should we not be thinking in terms of there being a real void at the beginning,¹³ rather than a core of identity?

This void is postulated by Freud when he affirms that there is no feminine drive, but just one single libido, which is masculine in nature,¹⁴ or when he situates the phallus and the castration complex at the centre of the sexual life of both boys and girls.

The first part of this book maps out the psychoanalytic field of sexuality. We will see how language forms a barrier to any sexual rapport, and confronts human beings with a specific reality, that of jouissance. From this position we can rethink questions of death, reproduction, and the body, as they take on completely different values from those that they have in biology. Underpinning this exploration are a contemporary “psychopathology” and a clinic at the limits of psychoanalysis and medicine.

The second part is concerned with sexual difference. Does believing oneself to be a man or a woman, even unconsciously, equate to being one or the other? Are identifications sufficient to determine sexuation? The clinic offers answers to these questions in cases where there is a denial of the real. The study of contemporary theories (gender theory and anthropological theory derived from structuralism) shows where all sexual classifications break down: they fail to deal with alterity, by reducing it to a system of signifying oppositions. Freud had already observed this when he discovered that theories of infantile sexuality were unable to capture the essence of femininity; but did he not overestimate the importance of anatomical difference, and the value of the phallus for the child of either sex? A study of misogyny and a relativization of the importance of the discovery of anatomical difference will show how problematic this is. In order to introduce the necessary concepts, I have emphasized examples rather than definitions, since the former are more reliable—without, however, neglecting the latter, and tracing them back to their sources. The discussion of these points leads to the introduction of different functions of jouissance, notably the phallic function and the function of the symptom. Following Lacan, I propose a formalization for neurosis and for psychosis which is simple and clinically useful. Then I construct a theory of sexuation which comprises three logical moments articulated around the phallic function, which takes account of anatomy and the symbolic and social environment, while retaining the function of choice on the part of the subject. The choice of being a man or a woman is thus rooted in the subject’s modes of jouissance. This theory is, in my opinion, more coherent and closer to clinical experience than the opposition between nature and nurture, which Freud had denounced as early as 1905, and which we find barely disguised in the contemporary debate between the adherents of social construction and those of pure biology. The theory is put to the test in relation to cases of people who have been assigned to one sex, only to be assigned later on to another by their entourage.

The third part, entitled “Sexuation and psychosis”, puts this theory to the test of analytic practice in the field of the psychoses. It contains what inspired me to undertake this research: six analytic treatments which produced a plethora of questions and a few answers. What happens if a subject does not have access to the phallic function in order to find an orientation within the field of sexuality? What can the subject rely on if the Name-of-the-Father and the phallic function are foreclosed?

Transsexuals want to belong to the other sex, and do not shy away from bodily alterations which in some cases are irreversible. But is it not the phallic function that they are refusing, as Lacan suggested in his debate with Stoller? Analysis of cases from both sexes shows the importance of certain early identifications that are anchored in the mother’s desire. However, in analysis, a transsexual subject may find solutions to the problem of sexuation other than the mutilation of surgery (e.g., transvestism, or a “classifying” identification). Having observed that it is love for a woman that is the determining factor here, we are then led to study the Lacanian concept of the “push-to-the-woman” (“pousse-à-la-femme”), which at times is a source of sexual ambiguity, and is often mortifying. The multiple facets of this concept are put into perspective within the transferential dynamic of the analytic treatment of the psychotic subject. From this we can deduce the singular solution which each individual invents to the problem of sexuation, as well as new perspectives on the treatment of sexual ambiguity through the medium of speech.

Notes

1. Ovid. Metamorphoses, pp. 60–61. cf. also Loraux N. Les expériences de Tirésias, Le féminin et l’homme grec, 1989.

2. Regnault, F. “Pourquoi les hommes jouent-ils une femme sur le théatre?”, Les énigmes du masculine, “Les parchemins du midi”, May 1975, pp. 19–41.

3. Plato, The Symposium, p. 60.

4. Chiland, C. Transsexualism: Illusion and Reality, 2004.

5. Freud, S. “The paths to the formation of symptoms”, Lecture XXIII of Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1916, p. 360.

6. Schreber, D.P. Memoirs of my Nervous Illness, 2000.

7. For example, in Freud’s case of Dora, her identification with male impotence through her infantile enuresis. cf. Freud, S. “Fragment of an analysis of a case of hysteria” (Dora), 1905, p. 74.

8. Stoller, R.J. Presentations of Gender, 1985, pp. 11 and 17–18.

9. Stoller, R.J. Sex and Gender, Vol. I. The Development of Masculinity and Femininity, 1968, p. 47.

10. Freud, S. “Three essays on the theory of sexuality”, 1905, p. 9.

11. Freud, S. “Civilization and its discontents”, 1930a, p. 64.

12. The German term is Trieblehre, which should be translated as the theory of the drives, not o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• CONCLUSION
• REFERENCES
• INDEX