by Gertrudis Van de Vijver | Vol 41 (2) 2023
Summary: This paper articulates the idea that the drive to know is the key to sexuality, and that sexuality is the key to subjectivation. It approaches Lacan’s formulae of sexuation starting from the background of Frege’s distinction between function (predicate) and object (argument) on the one hand, and propositional function and quantifier on the other hand. On this basis, the two sides of the Lacanian formulae are interpreted as ‘the all predicative’, le tout prédicat on the one hand, and the courage of the indecision on the other. That a radically escaping point is not without subjective effect, and does make a difference, epistemologically, ontologically and ethically, is what these formulae are seen to illustrate. Where possible, a comparison is being made with Kant’s transcendental philosophy and logics.
by Arthur Sollie | Vol 41 (2) 2023
Summary: The common sense idea about sexuality is at odds with Lacan’s counterintuitive formula that ‘there is no sexual relationship’. But there is also a common sense idea about how to understand Lacan’s formula: sexuality will never be fully satisfying, it will forever remain an ideal or even a private affair, it is only a momentary event that will never stand the durability of a long relationship, … Such a moralizing reading is at odds with psychoanalysis. Sexuality is indeed not without limit. But sex happens, not despite, but because of its limit. Moreover, satisfaction happens. It happens where we least expect it. And even more so in the attempt to avoid it. This is precisely why sexuality is so surprising. If Freud points out anything, it is that sexuality and satisfaction are far more widespread than people think. Moreover, there are relationships, quite a few, and some even quite enduring, that are endowed with symptomatic formations that are neither without satisfaction nor without sexuality. By making some cross-links between the rather conceptual and formal character of Lacan’s later conceptualizations, Freud’s theory of infantile sexuality and some anecdotes, this paper aims at highlighting the stakes of sexuality in psychoanalysis, both in practice and in theory, up until how it grounds its most fundamental concept – the unconscious.
by Jens Anthoons | Vol 33 (3) 2015
Pasolini describes himself as a “scandal of self-contradiction” (Pasolini, 1957). He brings a subject who assumes the radical split that runs through the subjective field. With his poetry of permanent dissidence he taunts power in which desire and her laws are inscribed. By postponing the exemplary symbolic suicide his subject manages to avoid the deadlock of turning a blind eye and alienation in the symbolic other. Terence Stamp embodies this subject in Teorem in the role of mysterious guest. Pasolini’s theorem seems to be that, via regression to pre-genital forms of sexuality (a pre-symbolic state), one not only escapes to a mythic (poetic) reality, but also takes possession of a weapon one can use against the oppressor. Desire emerges in disturbances that shred the symbolic order and release the Real. Filmic truth is exposed as a core of pure nonsense and sexuality appears as the root of a perverted society.
by Daniëlla Provost | Vol 25 (1) 2007
The author explores working with adolescents in three different settings: non-voluntary therapy for drug addicts; a centre for homeless men and women; and a youth information centre. With regard to each of these groups, we tend to encounter similar discourses. And within each setting different elements of these same discourses resonate.. These elements reveal a lot about the positioning of these adolescents: the young drug abuser as ‘dangerous’; the adolescent victim of violence as object of compassion; and the ‘normal’ adolescent who should enjoy him/herself but in moderation. The author uses clinical fragments to illustrate. What effects do those labels and signifiers have on work with adolescents themselves? And how can psychoanalysis prevent us from falling into the trap of disdain, compassion or indifference?
by Rudi Loontiens | Vol 21 (1) 2003
This article deals with the case-study of a psychotic subject in which jouissance and the fragmented body play a dominant role. The jouissance of an abusive mother is inscribed on the body of this subject, a subject who is compelled to mutilate his or her body in order to ensure its unity and as such to make it his or her own. It is the same mother with her same jouissance, that appears in the Real to this subject. Through discussion of elementary phenomena – which, within the Lacanian structure of psychosis, can be divided into two categories: one the symbolic, as that which is signified by the Name-of-the-Father (P°) and consequently one which concerns the body and the jouissance (?°) of the Other signified by the phallus – it is argued that this case is situated beyond the two sexes by negating sexuality as a non-sexed being.
