Sexual Difference in Debate Bodies Desires and Fictions

SEXUAL DIFFERENCE IN DEBATE
SEXUAL DIFFERENCE
IN DEBATE
Bodies, Desires, and Fictions
Leticia Glocer Fiorini

First published in 2017 by
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Copyright © 2017 by Leticia Glocer Fiorini
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To Héctor, Daniela and Verónica, Fernando and Marcelo, Santiago
and Tomás. Their presence was the indispensable encouragement
that made this project possible.
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi
ABOUT THE AUTHOR xiii
PREFACE xv
INTRODUCTION xix
PART I: MASCULINE–FEMININE
CHAPTER ONE
A transdisciplinary view with intradisciplinary effects 3
CHAPTER TWO
The sexed subject and current realities—their impact on
conceptualisations of sexual difference 11
CHAPTER THREE
Freud’s epistemic context and discourse 27
vii
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER FOUR
The Oedipus–castration complex and sexual difference 35
CHAPTER FIVE
Freudian logic—meta-theories on sexual difference 49
CHAPTER SIX
Post-Freudian and contemporary controversies 57
CHAPTER SEVEN
Otherness in the field of sexual difference 63
PART II: ITINERANT SEXUALITIES
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sexual and gender migrations 69
CHAPTER NINE
Homosexualities 79
CHAPTER TEN
Unconventional parentalities and subjective production 87
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Bodies, fictions, and desires in contemporary maternities
and paternities 97
PART III: SEXUAL DIFFERENCE—TOWARDS A POSSIBLE

DECONSTRUCTION
CHAPTER TWELVE
Desire for a child: ideals, discourses, and mandates 115
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Power relations and sexual difference 127
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sexual difference and binary logic 135
CONTENTS ix
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Deconstructing the paternal function—paternal function
or third-party function? 149
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Conclusions and openings 161
REFERENCES 181
INDEX 191
ACKNOWL EDGEMENTS
I wish to thank Silvia Acosta, Janine Puget, Rodolfo D´Alvia, and Juan
Tesone, whose comments enriched the proposal of this book; Beatriz
Zelcer, for her inestimable commitment in the final revision of the man-
uscript; and Aída and Abel Fainstein for their affection and support
through our dialogues and exchanges.
xi
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leticia Glocer Fiorini, MD, is past President (2012–2016) of the

Argentine Psychoanalytic Association (APA) and training and super-
vising analyst of this society. She is a former chair of the Publications
Committee of both the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA)
and the APA. She received a Master’s degree in psychoanalysis at the
University of Salvador-APA, and was awarded the Celes Carcamo Prize
(APA) in 1994, for her paper “The feminine position: A heterogeneous
construction”. She is the author of Deconstructing the Feminine. Sexuality,
Gender and Theories of Complexity (2007) and co-editor of On Freud’s
“Femininity” (2010), On Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia” (2007), and
The Experience of Time. Psychoanalytic Perspectives (2009).
She has also published “The sexed body and the real—its meaning in
transsexualism” (in Masculine Scenarios, 2003); “The bodies of present-
day maternity” (in Motherhood in the Twenty-first Century, 2006), and
numerous papers in books and psychoanalytic journals concerning
femininity, motherhood, and sexual diversities, in Spanish, English,
Portuguese, and Italian.
She was the General Editor of the series International Psychoanalysis
Library and Contemporary Freud. Turning Points and Critical Issues, edited
by the Publications Committee of the IPA (2005–2011).
xiii
PREFACE
Now well into the twenty-first century, we observe relevant changes

in symbolic codes that organise social bonds. Important modifications
regarding the model of the nuclear family in Western society, the vicissi-
tudes of desire and changing identities, advances in biotechnology and
informatics, as well as phenomena of globalisation, lead us to question
conceptions of the masculine–feminine polarity, challenging the notion
of sexual difference.
The psychoanalytic field involves theories of sexual difference
through the Oedipus/castration complex and its ideal resolution. Iden-
tifications and sexual object choice determine positions for each subject
and heavily influence clinical practice.
In this frame, our proposal focuses on the analysis of theories and
meta-theories of sexual difference and the masculine/feminine pair. We
investigate not only these theories but also their grounding: the logics
and ways of thinking supporting both explicit and implicit theories of
sexual difference. They are found in narratives and beliefs infiltrating
accepted discourses.
The logics underlying these theories impact heavily on interpreta-
tions and constructions made in analytic practice, and also condition
transference–countertransference.
xv
xvi P R E FA C E
We also need a particular epistemological and interdisciplinary

approach, since it is necessary to rethink these logics, expressed in the
tools we have for analysing discourses on sexual difference. In other
words, this revision focuses on the epistemic sources that support theo-
ries of sexual difference. These theories may be private or collective;
conscious, preconscious, or unconscious.
This conceptual analysis reviews the Freudian corpus and signifi-
cant authors, post-Freudian and contemporary, who have contributed
specifically to this topic, in the frame of debates generated from Freud
onwards.
We necessarily go beyond unconditional acceptance of basic
assumptions considered immutable, and advance towards their neces-
sary deconstruction. Only deconstruction may eventually lead to new
constructions.
This complexity requires analysis of individual and collective phan-
tasies detected in theories grounding clinical practice, from which no
analyst is exempt.
Ideologies, prejudices, and mythologies are an integral part of dis-
course, both shaping and expressing social norms. In this way, they
become imaginarily invariables that obstruct their genealogical analysis.
We focus on the hypothesis that this issue is not simply theoretical
but instead intimately intertwined with clinical practice and the ana-
lyst’s position.
Our perspective requires shunning pre-confirmed answers, self-
explanatory schemes, tautologies, closed systems, and essentialist theo-
ries, connecting instead with clinical work and contemporary realities
through “open listening” that may lead us to examine the many prob-
lematic aspects involved.
This book continues previous publications including Deconstructing
the Feminine. Psychoanalysis, Gender and Theories of Complexity (Glocer
Fiorini, 2007). These texts were points of departure on a road that led us
to analyse contemporary itineraries of desire, nomadic sexualities, and
identities in crisis.
The concept of sexual difference contains a persistent issue that is
binary, dichotomous thinking and its blind spots and aporias. For this
reason, we have turned to other epistemologies that offer novel forms
to think about the same problems, such as the paradigm of hyper-
complexity, as well as thinking at intersections and limits between dif-
ferent categories.
P R E FA C E xvii
This deconstruction of the masculine/feminine polarity also leads us

to review alternative thinking about the desire for a child. At the same
time we consider the consequences for men and women, regardless of
their sexual orientation and gender identity, of diverse conceptualisa-
tions of sexual difference.
INTRODUCTION
Complex problems
Contemporary societies are impregnated with cultural and technological
changes as well as phenomena of social violence, expressed in accepted
discourse. In these globalised and fragmented, unitary and multicul-
tural societies, we find gender violence, wars, ethnic, racial and reli-
gious conflict, terrorism, unemployment, generalised migrations, and
famines in the context of cyclical crises of capitalism. All this may be
reflected in changes in subjective presentations and in norms regulat-
ing social exchange. They certainly affect clinical practice. They may
produce different effects for women compared to men since these con-
ditions exacerbate complex problems in reference to sexual difference.
We are leaving behind modernity’s concept of the individual as a
unitary subject. In this regard, the Freudian concept of the unconscious
opened new possibilities to rethink the construction of subjectivity.
The subject of the unconscious, a split subject, fractured the idea of the
power of consciousness. However, we now confront other phenomena
as well, such as the ego fragmented or even razed by so-called post-
modernity. These phenomena of de-subjectivation require protracted
analysis.
xix
xx INTRODUCTION
In this context, other forms of subjectivity, for example, “sexual

and gender migrations”, open discussion regarding the way these
presentations challenge accepted psychoanalytic theories Here, an
opportunity emerges to think about these issues beyond reduction-
ist moralism while also avoiding acritical positions. We need to recall
their context: the fall of ideals occurring since the middle of the past
century, questioning of strict norms regarding sexuated and gender
positions, increased visibility of new modes of family structuring, and
accelerated development of biotechnologies, the internet, and virtual
worlds.
Consequently, we are able to observe an enormous variety of sex-
ual and gender presentations that challenge established knowledge
and do not fit into masculine–feminine polarity, a polarity that tran-
scends epochs and cultures. We cannot unify these diverse presenta-
tions: homosexualities, transvestisms, transsexualisms, transgender, or
queer positions. Therefore, we investigate the whole broad spectrum of
subjectivities that have no place in masculine–feminine duality. They
should instead be considered assemblies responding to different psy-
chic mechanisms and clinical configurations, because if we homogenise
them, we forego any possible understanding of these presentations.
We notice that some of them aim towards sexual or gender identity,
whereas others aim towards sexual object choice in the field of desire.
It is not the same to say, “I am a man” or “I am a woman” as to say
“I desire a man” or “I desire a woman”. There are other variants regard-
ing nomadic sexualities and gender, and all these may co-exist in the
same subject.
Revision of these theoretical limits involves debating and paus-
ing to question consensuses in psychoanalysis with respect to sexual
difference, the Oedipus complex, penis envy in women, and the cas-
tration complex, considered psychoanalytic “universals”. The same
consideration also extends to conceptions of the masculine and the
feminine and of homosexuality and transsexualism. To this list we
add implicit derivations to other areas of human life such as mater-
nity and paternity, their symbolic functions, and the desire for a child
regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation. Also involved are
sexual and gender violence and power relations, since they respond
to accepted norms and ideals woven into the social fabric. To broach
these questions we need to define the notion of subject with which we
are working.
INTRODUCTION xxi
Inquiries
In clinical work, we encounter the problem of sexual difference just
as it presents in contemporary societies. Do we detect elements here
that require review in regard to conceptions on masculine–feminine
difference?
Do homosexual couples, transvestism, transsexualism, queer pres-
entations, or the new kinds of family question the concept of sexual
difference? Are these presentations a degraded expression of classical
feminine-masculine sexual difference? In these cases, would the chil-
dren raised in unconventional types of families be excluded, abject,
from the system of social bonds? And if not, would this change the con-
cept of sexual difference?
Also, is sexual difference a notion contingent to historical or social
changes? Or, at the other extreme, is it an immutable theoretical axiom?
Further, does this category fit entirely into the theory of representation?
Analysis of the concept of sexual difference has powerful implica-
tions for clinical practice. In our line of study, we highlight the involve-
ment of norms, discourses, and cultural ideas concerning sexual and
gender diversities, femininity and masculinity, maternity and paternity,
and the symbolic functions required for insertion in a universe of social
bonds. These categories are subject to powerful prejudices and ground-
ing proposed as immoveable.
This situation provides an opportunity to illuminate and review
processes of construction of sexed subjectivity, itineraries of desire,
and their always-conflictive relation to consensual ideals and legalities.
An especially relevant factor is the analyst’s position, theories—both
implicit and explicit, ideology, and beliefs. It is also important to find an
approach that may broaden the field of listening.
Approach
We commence with the hypothesis that the concept of sexual diffe-
rence in psychoanalysis comes upon a limit given that it is based on
strict binary logic (phallic–castrated, presence–absence, equated to
masculine–feminine). Our proposal is to think about this category by
applying other logics which allow us to decentre dichotomy and gen-
erate “lines of flight” (Deleuze & Parnet, 2007) in order to include this
dualistic, binary logic within greater complexities.
xxii INTRODUCTION
For this purpose, we approach our study with the epistemological

frame of the paradigm of complexity as developed by Morin (1990),
Prigogine (1988), and others, with the aim of finding complex and
recursive determinisms for equally complex phenomena. This meth-
odology comprises work at the intersections, on the frontiers, at the
limits, which enables us to develop and extend its comprehension pre-
sented as substantial categories when they are frozen at the centre of
theories. It also makes it possible to conceive of an open psychoanalysis
(Eco, 1989) with enough porosity and sufficient mobility at its bound-
aries to allow it to generate revisions, interchanges with other disci-
plines, and productive debates. In this line, our proposal is not only
to identify theoretical limitations, blind spots, and ideological objec-
tions, but to open up other forms and logics in order to think about
“difference”.
The paradigm of complexity enables us to develop the type of think-
ing that accepts heterogeneity that does not always reach dialectical
syntheses; is not limited to binary polarities; is based on disjunctive
conjunctions (Deleuze & Guattari, 2004), and propounds interplay
between “the instituted and the instituting” (Castoriadis, 1997). This
proposal opens possibilities to investigate meta-theories supporting the
notion of sexual difference, deconstruct the concept of otherness linked
to the feminine, and make use of increased visibility of sexual and gen-
der migrations to rethink the concept of sexual difference.
Thus, we propose a conceptual analysis supported epistemologically
by paradigms contained in contemporary debates, in order to articulate
psychoanalytical developments with contributions from philosophy,
anthropology, sociology, and gender theories. The aim is to identify the
roots of core psychoanalytical definitions with respect to sexual differ-
ence, their implicit logic, and theoretical and clinical derivations. This
frame incorporates the proposal that an interdisciplinary approach is
necessary.
This review gives us an opportunity to identify concepts being
debated at this time, which demand the construction of new theoretical,
logical, and interpretive alternatives. On the basis of this description
we expand the psychoanalytical and transdisciplinary axes sustaining
conceptual tension, and propose lines of adjustment in the interest of
establishing new consensus, opening, and debate. The goal is to pro-
mote dialogue between psychoanalysis and these particular realities,
basically in a theoretical-clinical perspective.
INTRODUCTION xxiii
Proposals
In the perspective we present, our proposal is:
• To analyse different theoretical positions—implicit and explicit—in

psychoanalysis related to sexual difference, the masculine–feminine
pair, and its derivations in regard to maternity-paternity and their
functions, as well as to the desire for a child in men and women,
sexual violence, and symbolic functions indispensable for subjective
construction.
• To debate the consequences of these stances on analysis of sexual and
gender diversities and masculine and feminine positions.
• To consider the important theoretical-clinical implications for sub-
jective construction in children raised by unconventional families or
couples, focusing on sexual object choice and gender identity.
• To evaluate the effects of notions such as “castration anxiety” and “penis
envy” and their consequences on positions and identifications of ana-
lysts, men, and women, when considering the places assigned to them
by theory and consensual discourses in relation to sexual difference.
• To explore the ways in which social norms of the epoch intersect
theories on difference, with individual phantasies of psychoanalysts,
their ideologies, and private theories, and the manner in which all
these factors self-perpetuate and empower each other.
• To ascertain which logics are involved in each interpretation or
silence of the psychoanalyst in relation to sexual difference and femi-
nine and masculine positions.
• To illuminate the theoretical and personal frame available to each
psychoanalyst for confronting these problems, evaluate to what
extent there is a “free choice of theories”, and limitations involved.
• To draw distinctions between sexual difference and other levels con-
cerning difference.
• To debate the proposal that “access” to sexual difference is an inevi-
table condition for insertion into a symbolic social fabric.
Lines of analysis
• The masculine and the feminine in Western cultural history.
• The concept of the sexed subject and its relation to the field of sex-
ual difference in the perspectives of modernity and what is called
xxiv INTRODUCTION
postmodernity or late modernity, as well as in some sexual and

gender variants in contemporary cultures.
• The masculine and the feminine in psychoanalysis, their theoreti-
cal explications and aporias: the Oedipus and castration complex
in boys and girls, penis envy, castration anxiety, relevant ideals, and
symbolic functions.
• Sexual and gender migrations. Their implicit challenge to the classi-
cal concept of sexual difference with its normative character within
consensual legalities.
• Processes of construction of sexed subjectivity in the light of uncon-
ventional parentalities.
• Relevant meta-theories and related debates in the light of new reali-
ties described above.
• The psychoanalyst’s implicit theories in relation to the axes of psy-
choanalytical theory and the demand for new constructions: their
clinical implications.
• Psychoanalytical thinking in tension when considering political-
legal-social re-definitions: homosexualities, unconventional paren-
talities, and new types of families.
Each chapter of this book refers to a specific topic and also raises prob-
lems in connection with other chapters, which are further elaborated in
reflections and proposals in the last chapter.
We have reviewed texts published by authors selected intentionally
in function of their relevance to the debates presented. Special impor-
tance is given to Freud’s works since they are the source of inevitable
controversies that developed afterwards in regard to sexual difference
in psychoanalysis. Freud’s contributions are diversified by some of his
contemporaries who initiated the early debates (Jones, Klein, Karen
Horney, Josine Müller, and others). We also include post-Freudian and
contemporary contributions that updated the debate concerning diffe-
rence in more sophisticated terms: Laplanche, Lacan, Green, Aulagnier,
Winnicott, McDougall, Chasseguet-Smirgel, Kristeva, Stoller, Tort,
Fraisse, and more recently: Abelin-Sas Rose, Alizade, Bokanowski,
Kulish & Holtzman, Raphael-Leff, Bleichmar, Tubert, and others. We
have also included interdisciplinary and epistemological contributions
(Deleuze, Trías, Morin, Prigogine, Héritier, Castoriadis, Butler, and oth-
ers) aimed at finding other models of thinking, other logics, as an alter-
native means to consider the issues raised.
INTRODUCTION xxv
This description shows that the selection of bibliographical material

does not follow a chronological, enumerative order, nor does it include
the enormous quantity of literature on sexual difference, the masculine–
feminine, and transsexualities, since our objective was to work on pub-
lications providing elements of interest for the debate proposed in this
study, from three vantage points:
1. Conceptions in debate on sexual difference and on masculine and

feminine polarity: anatomical difference, psychosexual difference,
gender difference, and symbolic difference, to which we add the
concept of difference in diverse philosophical, linguistic, and cul-
tural theories (cf., Chapter Sixteen).
2. Challenges to our topic presented by sexual and gender migrations.
3. Epistemological contributions that provide diverse logics and
models for thinking about the problems involved.
Summarising, we propose not only to focus on problems generated

by the category “sexual difference” but also to go one step further and
adopt a different way to think about it. For this purpose we postulate
a triadic or an even more complex model containing more variables
in order to categorise “difference”. This entails working on intersec-
tions and “lines of flight” (Deleuze & Parnet, 2007) decentring binary
polarities, supporting heterogeneities not susceptible of synthesis, and
advancing in the perspective of an expanded conception of difference(s).
Diverse planes and levels of signification, of which sexual difference is
one, are analysed. This also presumes conceiving of an “empty square”
with its enigmatic aspects, papered over with consensual conceptions
and discourses on difference. In this frame, we also consider that access
to difference or differences presupposes recognition of otherness, of the
Other and others, and that this is a condition for insertion into a sym-
bolic fabric of social bonds.
The most expansive lines developed in our proposal are:
• A triadic model for thinking about construction of sexed subjectivity

without dualistic simplifications.
• A conception of desire as “desiring production” and not simply as a
substitute for a fundamental lack. This expands the notion of “phal-
lic” desire for a child as well as the attribution of this fundamental
lack to women, which duplicates the “lack in being” of all subjects.
xxvi INTRODUCTION
• Deconstruction of the concept of “paternal” function, considering

that it is a symbolic function which we propose calling the “third-
party” function in order to avoid its strong patriarchal connotations
and also to amplify the field of maternal functions.
These proposals could make it possible to stretch our interpretive frame

in order to embrace singularities in clinical work and to avoid auto-
matic, fixed answers in response to the issues mentioned.
PART I
MASCULINE–FEMININE
CHAPTER ONE
A transdisciplinary view with

intradisciplinary effects
Discourses and narratives

Figures and counter-figures of the feminine and masculine extend
throughout the history of civilisation and culture and their diverse
subcultures. Difference between the sexes was and is conceptualised
in different ways in the course of history, in different societies, disci-
plines, and theories, although their points in common are also worthy
of note. Social, cultural, biomedical, and technological changes in recent
decades (the “new families”, assisted fertilisation, virtual sex, and sex
change surgeries) update questions posed since Antiquity that induce
us to rethink the notion of sexual difference. This is accelerated by the
vertiginous development of phenomena of globalisation, communica-
tion, and informatics.
In A History of Women in the West, Duby and Perrot (1994) bring up
a singular and suggestive point when they question whether there is
really a history of women and how they relate to thought concerning
sexual difference. In their opinion, there is development and mutation
in the evolution of thinking about the difference between the sexes
that has been affecting Western culture since the Greeks. This think-
ing oscillates between figures—Athenian, Baroque—of mixtures such
3
4 S E X U A L D I F F E R E N C E I N D E BAT E
as the androgyne, the hermaphrodite, the transvestite, part of one in the

other made possible, and classically reassuring figures with radical dif-
ferences: two species with their own characteristics, objects of intuitive
recognition more than scientific knowledge.
Confrontation with sexual difference has traditionally situated in
the feminine a condition of emptiness and silence that requires deci-
phering. This silence is connected to theories on the feminine based on
notions of castration and lack, which respond to a concept of negativity
that deeply marks these conceptions.
The feminine was always thought of in negative terms, either by
devaluation or by placing it in the range of the unrepresentable. In
other words, the feminine appears as something foreign and, as such,
is idealised or devalued, or alternatively considered outside language
and the symbolic order. This aspect heavily permeates fantasies about
women and locates them as the other of a masculine subject. It is one of
the strongest and most frequent versions of sexual difference. It pro-
duces inevitable intradisciplinary effects in the psychoanalytic field.
Making the feminine position the equivalent of otherness refers again
to the opposition between culture and nature, an opposition upholding
a notion that runs through all times: women are indissolubly linked to
the biological order and nature, and men to culture and reason. That is
to say that the rational corresponds to men and the emotional to women.
The idea of the woman as a weak, incomplete and inferior being or,
alternatively, as incarnating demonic sexual temptation, pervades cen-
turies of history. It may be found in religious, philosophical, and medi-
cal discourses, as well as in myths and customs, and psychoanalysis is
not immune to the power of these discourses.
We see some of these aspects in the misogyny of Biblical texts, in
which the woman appears either as a devalued being or as a sorcer-
ess and source of threatening sexuality. Eve, with her incitement to sin
through temptation/seduction, exemplifies these versions since her
position inviting to sin coincides with her devaluation, precisely due to
this very position.
In the Middle Ages, the figure of “the witch” amply demonstrates
malignant and ominous aspects linked to the feminine which, with
apparently more benevolent connotations, stands even today. This is
the counterfigure of the mother-woman, pure and idealised. In this line,
idealisation of the mother-woman tends to emphasise the mainly repro-
ductive, natural–biological “destiny” of women, which tends to ignore
A T R A N S D I S C I P L I N A RY V I E W W I T H I N T R A D I S C I P L I N A RY E F F E C T S 5
that maternity is a symbolic and symbolising function. This includes

disavowal of any female sexuality expressed beyond maternity, which
is interpreted as threatening and dangerous.
As we have pointed out (Glocer Fiorini, 2001a), we may legitimately
ask why it is that witches were persecuted women whereas wizards
were always respected and venerated wise men. We know that witches
were women who lived away from constituted families and were gen-
erally dedicated to the art of healing. For Sáez (1979), they were per-
secuted because they placed themselves outside cultural and social
expectations for women. Harris (1989) maintains that the reigning pow-
ers in the Middle Ages displaced the struggles of those who rebelled
against them onto the witches, in order to disorganise these movements
and to decentre the target from the nobility onto the witches. Harris
points out that, more than persecuting witches, they created them by
torture.
We also recall that only in the fifteenth century, at the Council of
Trent, did the Catholic Church decide that women had a soul.
We also find that the equivalence between the feminine and the
other, the latter generally with malignant and dangerous characteris-
tics, is found in other cultures. In some primitive peoples and religions,
menstruating women were excluded because of their impurity and pre-
sumed maleficent influences. Others held ceremonies in which wives
were burned alive with their dead husbands. The practice of sacrifice
linked to the notion of the sacred is observed to be intimately connected
with relations between men and women and their conceptualisations in
accepted discourses.
Israël (1979) recalls Hippocrates, who describes uterine migrations—
the uterus displaced onto the brain—in relation to hysterical symptoms.
These displacements evoke an American Indian myth of the Murias, the
legend of “vaginas with teeth” that emerge at harvest time and, when
captured by the men, are divested of their teeth, returned to their place,
and nailed in with the clitoral nail. This author considers this myth the
translation of a fantasy of fear of women, which in turn evokes the clito-
ral resection effected on pubertal Muslim girls, among other reasons as
a way to control their sexual enjoyment. As Israël points out, this prac-
tice responds to two factors: one is that female organs are interpreted as
devouring, and the other is that these male fantasies translate anxiety,
fear or resentment in regard to hysteria and women in general. These
two reasons are related. They are myths and theories with powerful
effects on conceptions of sexual difference. Klein (1945), with her

proposal of the fantasy of the “vagina with teeth”, updated this myth.
Nineteenth-century medicine based female inferiority on assumedly
scientific facts. Bouillaud (1836) maintained that the uterus was not an
essential organ in women because it did not exist in men.
This type of analogical thought, applied in different disciplines,
reveals the condition of otherness assigned to women by a male investi-
gating subject who analyses his object of study. In this line, we may also
view polygamy as another way to objectify women, thereby situating
them as an other to be possessed.
The field of philosophy, with few exceptions, has assigned women
a secondary and devalued place. As is generally known, Plato (1895)
doubted whether to include women in the category of rational ani-
mals or that of brutes, and Aristotelian conceptions maintained that
the male body was the form and woman’s was the formless. Erasmus
(1922), in his The Praise of Folly, considered women similar to stupid
and mad animals. Rousseau (1998) confined women to domestic tasks.
Schopenhauer’s statement (2007) on the intelligence of women as being
related to the length of their hair is famous. Spinoza (1981) wondered
whether women could sustain an ethical position. Aristophanes (2004),
in Lysistrata, illustrated ideas in vogue in antiquity regarding women as
being unpredictable, mad, inferior beings, although he also evidenced
their capacities to avoid wars promoted by men. That is to say that he
also described an active and questioning aspect, represented by Anti-
gone, who rebels against the ruling powers that prohibited her from
mourning her dead brother (Sophocles, 2004).
It is equally necessary to revise anthropological descriptions refer-
ring to women as possessions of the father and then of the husband
(Lévi-Strauss, 1969) when these reports are accepted as decontextual-
ised and ahistorical axioms. Other myths about the threatening and
dangerous woman, described by Freud in Medusa’s Head (1940c), as
well as narratives about the idealised mother-woman versus the prosti-
tute also support these positions. We also observe them in folk knowl-
edge and in stereotypes accepted even today such as the figure of the
Don Juan, involved in endless desire, or the mother-woman who gives
priority to love over desire.
In other scenarios, the industrial revolution in England produced an
enormous expansion of work for women that subsequently burgeoned
with the two great wars of the twentieth century, when the men went to
the front and women’s work became indispensable. In 1789, the French
Revolution propounded three great principles: equality, fraternity, and
liberty. However, the philosopher Celia Amorós (1985) maintained that
the French Revolution did not grant women the status as subjects that
could make these principles their own. In the same way, postmodern
proposals of dissolution of the subject touch on this empty place in
the female condition. That is to say that the subject was being decon-
structed when women had, for the most part, not yet reached the status
of subjects.
Other important changes also occurred in relation to this topic, such
as the emergence and spread of contraceptives in the mid-twentieth
century. Their use dissociated sexuality from reproduction. This modi-
fication was deepened by the introduction of new reproductive tech-
niques. Maternity is no longer the only destiny possible for women.
There is no doubt that we are referring to the Western world and to
certain social strata. Of course, in other cultures and subcultures, we
encounter different problems that approximate classical and traditional
ideas regarding the place of masculine–feminine dualistic positions.
In recent decades, discourses on sexual difference became more com-
plex with the increased visibility of diverse sexual and gender pres-
entations, interpellating the classical concept of sexual difference. This
fact challenges fixed and clear-cut notions regarding the feminine and
the masculine, men and women. In this context, Foucault (1980) won-
dered whether “there is a truth about sex”, in reference to the case of
Herculine Barbin, whose hermaphroditism led those around him/her
to impose a sexed position and a “true” identity that he/she was unable
to accept, with the result that he/she led a life darkened by melancholy
until it ended in suicide.
The reader may ask us our reasons for presenting this introductory
view when we could start out directly with psychoanalytic concepts.
We consider it indispensable to contextualise theories on “difference”,
since their relation to social discourse is at the nucleus of the matter.
Contradictory discourses with respect to sexual difference suffuse the
history of culture; for example, especially since the nineteenth century,
different variants of feminism coexist with frankly androcentric dis-
courses. Also within psychoanalysis and gender theory itself, we find
contradictory discourses.
All the contextual points we are reviewing are indispensable because
no discipline that works with these themes may declare itself immune
to accepted discourses, established norms, and meanings that extend

throughout the history of civilisation. These categories regarding differ-
ence, as Fox Keller (1994) points out, are included in language.
They are related to two points we discuss in the course of this study.
First, the aporia and blind spots to which binary thinking leads,
from which the masculine–feminine pair is not exempt. This occurs in
reference to sexual difference both in certain aspects of psychoanaly-
sis, which are our topic, and also in other disciplines. David-Ménard
(1997) underscored these aporia and impasses in the field of philoso-
phy. Here, we emphasise that dualisms, even though they are part of
language, lead to dead ends if they cannot be incorporated into larger
complexities.
Second, conceptions that consider everything referring to the femi-
nine position and to women as an enigma. Therefore, binary thinking and
the feminine as enigma are one of the axes of our discussion concerning
difference.
Freud did not escape the predominant ideas of his age when he
described feminine characteristics: little sense of justice, the predomi-
nance of envy in psychic life, a weakly formed superego, psychic
rigidity after age thirty, weaker social interests, lower capacity for sub-
limation. Although he also remarked that it is not always easy to distin-
guish what can be attributed to the influence of the sexual function and
what to social domestication (Freud, 1933a).
We also recall that this thinking exists in a context in which two con-
ceptions on sexual difference coexist today in the field of culture. On
the one hand, two strictly differentiated spaces are defined: masculine
and feminine, heavily accentuated in illustrated modernity, which sup-
port a radical difference. On the other hand, accompanying the turn
of the century, a multiplicity of sexual and gender variants appear
which interpellate those concepts of modernity on sexual difference.
These sexual migrations that accompany the phenomenon of postmo-
dernity (for some, late modernity, for others hyper-modernity) organ-
ise narratives that acquire special resonance in view of their increased
social acceptance in the context of globalisation and also in the light of
advances in biotechnology and the burgeoning development of com-
munications media.
This challenges the classical mode of relating feminine and mascu-
line categories with women and men, something Freud had already
anticipated in some aspects of his earliest works when he introduces the
notion of bisexuality and the concept of the complete Oedipus complex

(Freud, 1923b). This theory involves taking into consideration the com-
plexity of processes of construction of sexed subjectivity.
In this regard, we need to emphasise that this phenomenon is not
only a contemporary product, since at many other times the classical
binarism of the sexual difference has been challenged. There is a nearly
infinite list of processes of mixtures, transformations and identifications
between masculine and feminine (Zolla, 1981) that accompany the his-
tory of culture. We will mention the double beings described by Plato
as existing in the ancient world before the Greeks, of which there were
three types: man-woman (the classical androgynous), man-man and
woman-woman. These beings, separated as punishment by Zeus, were
consequently seeking their other half. The most highly valued double
beings were man-man, an attempt to include homosexuality, which
enjoyed great social and cultural importance in ancient Greece, espe-
cially between men. We also recall the Greek myths of Hermaphrodite,
Caenis and Caeneus, and Tyresias, as well as some versions in which
Narcissus is alternatively a man or a woman, among others (Méantis,
1964).
Among shamans, phenomena of trance and transformation into the
other sex were common. The lamas identified with their female gods in
hallucinations. Similar experiences are described in Tantrism, Taoism,
and Buddhism. In Hindu metaphysics, the polarity of being, repre-
sented by Shiva and Shakti, becomes pure unity on a higher plane and
melts in the androgynous Ardhanarisvara. It is also interesting to note
the frequent presence of mixed figures, such as female Christs or those
in an attitude of breastfeeding in iconographies of the Middle Ages.
Zolla (1981) also points out that in songs of mystical love through-
out the world, the poet loses consciousness and wails like a woman.
This tradition ranges from Siberian shamans to Chinese Taoist poets,
through Iran, Arabia, and Provence to Florentine poets of the Dolce
Stilnovo, who referred to themselves as “women”.
As we said, the two tendencies we mentioned coexist in the pre-
sent: the strict separation of sexes accentuated in Modernity and sexual
variants brought in by postmodernity. They are part of the consensus
of meanings of an age that support a set of practices and social rela-
tions. However, even though these sexual and gender variants tend
to erase the strict masculine–feminine polarity, they have not substan-
tially modified the permanence of the ancestral equivalence between
the feminine, otherness, and enigma, in spite of changes in the female

condition in important social strata in the West. Both factors cohabit in
contemporary societies.
In the field of literature, in essay, we also find rigorous analyses
regarding the position of women in Western societies. De Beauvoir’s
(1989) The Second Sex describes the woman’s position of otherness.
Virginia Woolf illuminates the frequent localisation of the woman as an
object of study in a masculine world. In A Room of One’s Own (1929) she
refers pointedly to cultural and social inequalities in regard to women,
and in Orlando (1928) to indefiniteness of identity and sex.
In sum, both the field of sexual diversities as well as ruling concep-
tions regarding women and the feminine challenge the concept of sex-
ual difference.
This overview allows us to contextualise and historicise our approach
from the perspective of psychoanalysis, taking into account its basic
axes: the concepts of the unconscious, infantile sexuality and transfer-
ence, while at the same time considering the various interpretations of
these categories offered by the different theories that constitute the psy-
choanalytic field.
CHAPTER TWO
The sexed subject and current realities—

their impact on conceptualisations of
sexual difference
M
ore than a hundred years ago, at the end of the nineteenth
century, a fundamental work began to take shape with Freud,
a work that has marked several generations of psychoana-
lysts in the Western world throughout the twentieth century.
At the outset of the twenty-first century, we find ourselves in a
different world, marked by a vertiginous devaluation of ideals that
individualised the first half of the twentieth century (including gen-
der ideals), powerful development of informatics and technology, and
renewed expressions of social, ethnic, and religious violence. These var-
iables interact and strongly challenge classical conceptions on sexual
difference.
In this context, we inevitably wonder about the ulterior effects of
these phenomena on the production of subjectivity, especially sexed
subjectivity.
Sennett (1998) discusses the psychological effects of globalisation as
cause and consequence of the decathectisation of social bonds and the
liberation of the drives to its satisfaction, without the value of commit-
ment for an ethic of otherness. He proposes that this decathectisation
of social bonds is associated with a devaluation of ideals that occurs
11
following the failure of each subject’s potential to organise fantasy and

capacity to metaphorise.
First we need to consider one question: should we consider that these
changes in today’s societies are epiphenomena and that the psychoan-
alytic edifice remains unmoved before them? In other words, should
the explanation and understanding of these phenomena be adapted
entirely to the previously constituted psychoanalytic corpus? Or might
we recognise a task of open thought that would enable us to rethink
certain issues in the Freudian mode: on a recursive path between prac-
tice and theory? This brings us to the topic of the foundations of psy-
choanalysis and the fragile boundary that separates fundamentals from
fundamentalisms.
We are treading the ground of the relation between facts and con-
cepts. Is there an immutable and eternal conceptual basis that is immune
to facts and does not need explanation or revision? Or alternatively, can
different facts produce different concepts?
The changes and challenges proposed by contemporary societies
are immense. We have emphasised that we are immersed in ongoing
and complex social movements where contradictory and heteroge-
neous phenomena cohabit: the growing expansion of economy and
informatics, on the one hand, coexists with multiculturalism, on the
other hand. Problems of development cohabit with those of poverty
and exclusion. These contradictions and divergences are not foreign to
a crisis of theories that would attempt to explain these heterogeneous
movements. One of the consequences is precisely the expansion of fun-
damentalisms that progressively invade the field of culture.
In this context, powerful questions arise regarding conceptualisa-
tions on sexual difference.
For this reason, we shall approach this issue by commencing with
certain generalisations that we do not attempt to universalise, consid-
ering that it varies from one subject to another. However, before turn-
ing to this, we are obliged to address the question of rethinking with
which concept of subject we are working. Sibilia (2008) proposed that
subjectivities are both embodied (incarnated in a body) and embedded
(steeped in an intersubjective culture).
Consequently, we confront a challenge that involves the interpella-
tion of a number of concepts dear to certain established notions in psy-
choanalytic developments. It also implies reflection not only on theory
but also on each analyst’s position in relation to these queries.
THE SEXED SUBJECT AND CURRENT REALITIES 13
Of these concepts we shall discuss two: the concept of reality or

realities in which the subject is immersed; and the concept of subject
with which we work, both in theory and in clinical practice, especially
in relation to processes of sexuation. We also focus on the relation
between these two concepts: subjects and their realities, since we may
separate them only for the purpose of discussion.
New realities
The discussion of realities enters a complex field in which we inevitably
refer to the relation between psychic reality, material reality, and histori-
cal reality. Each of these terms is polysemic, different theoretical frames
offering different interpretations of them. We evoke the problem of per-
ception and its errors, the concept of trauma and the deferred action,
(Nachträglichkeit) the matter of representation, of what is difficult to rep-
resent and what is unrepresentable, only a few of the topics whose rela-
tion to reality has been debated in various disciplines. Psychoanalysis
is directly involved in all these matters.
We may say that the twentieth century has presented challenges that
also confront us in this new century. Some will say that the problems
are always the same and that they may be reduced to well-known inter-
pretations. Others will say that the question of material reality is sec-
ondary or irrelevant.
We point out that Freud never avoided the subject of material real-
ity; it was a cause of concern for him, not in the sense of discarding
it, although he also refused to give it a nuclear position, but rather to
determine its place in the complex network of determinations involv-
ing the construction of subjectivity. We all know of his interest in this
question in the case history of the “Wolf Man” (Freud, 1918b), in which
he seeks to establish a nucleus of material reality in the problem. How-
ever, we insist that this nucleus is never alone but is always in relation
to other variables.
Therefore, we shall discuss some problems having a powerful impact
on subjectivities and try to show how they challenge the psychoanalytic
field.
In the first place we may recall, as we said, the phenomena of eth-
nic, religious, and gender violence, expressions of social exclusion, the
great wars and the Shoah, the genocides, local wars, and dictatorships
of the twentieth century. We remember the tortures, rapes, people who
were “disappeared”, and identity theft. These phenomena are related to

sexual difference, since women are very frequently the victims on two
accounts, given that expression of violence towards the other is always
added, a “plus” due to the fact of being women.
Second, new forms of subjectivity or the so-called sexual and gender
diversities are present and pose strong questions regarding conceptu-
alisation of sexual difference. In this context, we also observe changes
in family organisation that emerge as a challenge to the concept of the
nuclear family.
Also, the rise of techniques of assisted fertilisation displace bodies
and subjectivities and deepen the splitting between sexuality, repro-
duction, and parenthood, which already started to emerge years before
with the use of contraceptives. This factor also leads us to review in our
theory the relations between maternity and femininity, as well as the
categories of paternity and paternal function, intimately linked to the
notion of sexual difference.
With respect to proposals in regard to cloning, already established
in the collective imaginary, they show us that maternity and paternity
may not be mutually involved, even from the biological point of view,
with corresponding psychic consequences.
In this proliferation of new realities, sex change surgeries modify what
was until quite recently unthinkable, in relation to sexual identity and
provoke questions about the place of the body in these determinations.
In this panorama, we find other types of subjectivity such as the sub-
ject of virtual worlds, information networks or parallel worlds. Virtual
bodies and mirages regarding sexual identity are involved.
Gender problems in culture, society, and discourse also open a space
related to sexuality and sexual difference. This factor has consequences
for the elaboration of theories and generates recursive effects concern-
ing the construction of sexed subjectivity.
Subjectivities that challenge accepted norms involve the topic of oth-
erness, a fundamental subject for psychoanalysis. So-called sexual and
gender diversities as well as women and the feminine, are traditionally
included in the broad field of the other, as are Jews, gypsies, homosexuals,
and immigrants. These are personifications of an other that may acquire
sinister characteristics when they represent displacements and projec-
tion of the other that inhabits each subject. In the analytic field, this
complex problem faces the analyst with an ethic of responsibility that
also includes facing the other in the analyst’s own self.
On the itinerary we are taking, we reiterate the importance of

considering the following topics.
First, the effects of accelerated biotechnological advances on sub-
jectivities. Just as it is indispensable to think about the crisis of repre-
sentation that emerged with the Shoah and other phenomena of social
violence, just as the question of otherness arises powerfully following
these same phenomena of violence, so also the consequences of biotech-
nological progress and indiscriminate globalisation cannot yet be deter-
mined. Their effects on conceptualisations of sexual difference require
constant analysis.
We may take the example of cases of assisted fertilisation with
donated gametes or surrogate wombs. Although this requires a singu-
lar analysis of each case, since there are no universal effects, certain situ-
ations generate a challenge to laws that structure accepted social bonds
(prohibition of incest, laws of filiation, and generational boundaries).
These consequences leave open a broad-reaching debate encompassing
certain axes of psychoanalytic theory.
Second, we add the rise of other types of sexuality, such as vir-
tual sex, associated with the vertiginous development of the field of
informatics. It could be labelled sexuality “without material bodies”
which suggests thinking about other modes to represent sexuality and
bodies.
Third, the diverse modes of presentation of social and family bonds,
in the frame of the collapse of the nuclear family as the only norma-
tive type of family, as well as questioning of the accepted heterosexual
model, open hypotheses in relation to the “symbolic Father” and lead us
to rethink the concept of paternal symbolic function. Are we observing
a fall of the Father that would provoke the dissolution of the symbolic
order? Or is it a matter of reconsidering the symbolic third party function,
disconnecting it from strict equivalence with patriarchal conceptions
still accepted, and more fully illuminating its character as a symbolic
function? (cf., Chapter Fifteen).
Once again, we meet with the dilemma whether to face novel com-
plex problems that may produce different concepts or whether it is sim-
ply a question of including what is new in an invariable and eternal
backdrop, working with time-worn tools.
Certainly, the complex problems of our times may eventually have
effects of a traumatic order, which will vary with each subject and
whose consequences are unpredictable; however, they require that we
bear in mind that their interpretation is also subject to reigning systems

of perception and accepted epistemic order.
Of course, the question arises whether they represent the decadence
and fall of the symbolic order or alternatively whether they may be the
seed of new symbolic ordering.
We are witnessing a multiplicity of complex problems that lead to
different types of responses as diverse as the theoretical frames that
constitute the psychoanalytic field are. This lack of uniformity may
complicate our understanding of these phenomena and their eventual
psychic effects, but it has a desirable aspect, since it prevents hasty
homogenisation of interpretations regarding these queries and enables
us to reopen our debate time and again, thereby enriching it.
Construction of subjectivity and sexual difference

It is a matter of thinking about which concept of subject we are work-
ing with, and this is a powerful challenge for the psychoanalytic field.
It is also a reference to modes of thinking that underlie and support
theoretical developments and clinical practice. The aim is to think about
this topic in a problematic space such as the construction of sexed sub-
jectivity in the contemporary world. We need to consider that material
realities are thinkable in the psychoanalytic field only in function of the
subject: a subject permeated by the problems of our age.
We may recall, regarding this point, that although Freud was a son of
illuminism, his conceptions of the unconscious and the drives (strongly
influenced by German romanticism) decentre the unified subject of
modernity, opening the way for the splitting of the subject. We need
to add that what we call the postmodern, turn-of-the-century subject
undergoes a type of fragmentation that differs from the splitting of the
subject of the Freudian proposal. We also point out that, in one of the
aspects of Freud’s works, this splitting of the subject coexists with
the category of the unitary subject, especially following the classical
resolution of the positive Oedipus complex which materialises into an
idealised masculine or feminine position.
When we return to Freud (1923b), we find that when he dethrones
the ego as the absolute master of the subject and its realities, he is not
cancelling its functions as the seat of identifications but instead relativ-
ising its absolutism, thereby questioning the place of the transcenden-
tal, essential subject.
This interpellation is included in the profound Nietzschean

revolution in which the foundations fall, as does the unitary, transcen-
dental subject. It is the end of the subject of totality, as Levinas (1987)
proposed.
Therefore, in our opinion, Freud’s works include and represent the
move of the subject of modernity, a unitary subject, a subject of reason,
into the subject of the unconscious, the subject of ego splitting. How-
ever, we reiterate that the splitting of the subject is not the same as the
fragmented subject of postmodernity, the virtual subject of cyberculture
or the simple dissolution of the subject of social exclusion. Although
these forms coexist in different proportions in each subject, there is pre-
dominance in relation to the construction of subjectivity.
This is especially important in the analytic field, since the subject of
repression or the splitting of the subject are not the same as the frag-
mented subject. Fragmentation is equivalent to de-subjectivation.
Neither is it the same to think about the subject from the Freudian
perspective as to think of the subject as an effect of linguistic structures
or as a position in discourse, or even to think of the subject in terms of
other semiotic forms such as the iconic category, in the line of contribu-
tions by Peirce (1987).
Consequently, the notion of subject is not homogenous. As we said,
modernity designed a subject of reason, a reflexive, humanistic, and
basically unitary subject. A long road stretches between the subject of
illuminism, the master of meanings, to the subject of structuralism, an
effect of linguistic structures and a link in the chain of signifiers, extend-
ing to the conceptions of post-structuralism regarding the subject as a
position in discourse. The questioning of absolute certainties of reason
and this unified totality led, in its extreme form, to what contemporary
cultures have called the dissolution of the subject, a concept inherent to
what is known as postmodernity.
The concept of subject is not a strictly Freudian term; the psyche in
Freud’s works is based on the first and second topics. Freud used it
seldom and with a very precise meaning. However, subsequent authors
such as Lacan (1977) develop the notion of the barred subject and
include it in their psychoanalytic vocabulary to emphasise a constitut-
ing bar that implies a lack or an empty space in the subjective structure.
We have also underscored that today a new and partial form is emerg-
ing: the subject of cyberculture, information networks, virtual worlds,
and parallel worlds, inserted into relational contexts that induce us to
investigate weighty questions concerning the role of the real body in

human relations. The exclusion of bodies is an aspect with strong impli-
cations in processes of construction of sexed subjectivity. This context
raises important issues regarding the place of the real body in these pro-
cesses in which another factor involved is the dissolution of boundaries
between the private and the public spaces.
We need to recall that some facets of the contemporary world tend
to produce phenomena of fragmentation and emptiness with power-
ful consequences for subjectivity (Lewkowicz, 2004). The weakening
of social bonds, the exacerbation of narcissism, together with exis-
tential anomia, are characteristics of current cultural universes. We
observe a developing tendency to reduce psychic space, extinguish the
field of desire, and abolish the faculties of psychic representation. The
de-subjectivised subject—an oxymoron—of social exclusion is thereby
configured. In contemporary contexts we suffer violent forms of attack
on psychic representation which also involves the psychoanalyst’s
capacity to think and even their way of living.
As we see, heterogeneous universes constitute subjectivity.
It is in this frame that we are urged to think about how subjects
are conceptualised regarding sexual difference. We have highlighted
that the subject of Illuminism referred to a masculine subject and that
women were not included in the broad field of the unitary subject of
reason. Therefore, the question remains, and this question is also a chal-
lenge, whether a feminine subject may be constructed when late moder-
nity or hyper-modernity is deconstructing the (masculine) subject of
illuminism. This question leads to another: is the feminine a universal
category attributed to women?
Undoubtedly, this review reveals another challenge now presented:
many of the deconstructive proposals that were at the time subversive
in relation to the subject of reason necessarily change in regard to the
subject of fragmentation, consequently introducing a new debate on
thinking about the field of sexual difference.
Notwithstanding, deconstruction was a necessary step consider-
ing the self-sufficient subject of modernity; however, fragmentation
demands that we consider other alternatives as well: deconstruction
needs to be built into new constructions, in an endless process. These
problems also represent aporia inherent to the construction of sexed
subjectivity, since masculine and feminine positions are neither unitary
nor homogeneous.
It is true that this is not a matter of returning to the unitary and

totalising subject of modernity, but neither to the fragmented subject
of postmodernity or late modernity. It is in this frame that the need to
rethink the concept of sexual and gender difference emerges.
We consider that between the unitary subject of modernity and the
fragmented subject of postmodernity, we may open a different space,
a space at the “limit” that can be categorised only by other logics (Glocer
Fiorini, 2002b).
Reflecting this notion in philosophy, Trías (1991) proposes that the
“being” is constituted at the limit. This notion enables us to dismantle
the strict logic that binds the feminine to otherness and the enigma, and
the masculine to the subject and reason. It also contributes elements
for thinking about production of subjectivity in the area of sexual and
gender migrations.
In the psychoanalytic field the concept of coexistent psychic cur-
rents, used by Freud (1918b) for clinical presentations, shows us a way
to decentre strict oppositions and to categorise frontiers, intersections,
and boundaries. The concept of “psychic magma” (Castoriadis, 1984)
also expresses this position.
In this context it becomes indispensable to think about the relation
between construction of subjectivity and sexual and gender difference.
Is subjective constitution independent of the difference between the
sexes? This is a debate replete with resonance: is there an autonomous
subject of sexual difference or, on the contrary, would difference be an
integral part of these processes? This debate is linked to another: the
polysemy of the concept of difference, which we will discuss in the
course of this inquiry.
Even now, the act of birth is usually associated with an assignment
of sex marked by anatomic difference. There is recognition, through the
name, of the field into which the newborn must be placed: masculine
or feminine. This is a cultural mandate, a cultural legality, and only
the beginning of a long process of subjective production—following
this initial nomination—that is undergone by way of a complex inter-
play of identifications and desires. That is to say that this initial assign-
ment, in spite of exceptions to its implementation, intersects with a
heterogeneous fantasy world and multiple identifications and desires.
The context of otherness in which the child develops makes this initial
assignment either more complex or questioned. In other words, there is
no such thing as an isolated child subjected to drives; the newborn is an
other for the mother and the mother is an other for the child. The same
is true in relation to the father.
We have now returned to the question whether it is possible to sepa-
rate the notion of subject from the category of sexual difference, both
involving indefiniteness and ambiguities. There is also another matter
in the balance here: recognition of gender at birth does not automati-
cally imply recognition of sexual difference or the itineraries of object
choice for each subject. Just the opposite: they may take different direc-
tions. Sexual difference has also become a problematic notion whose
genealogy requires analysis.
Returning to the notion of unitary subject, we now find that it is cen-
tred on a subject of knowledge with precise boundaries, differentiated
from the object. This subject of Illuminism oscillates between neutral
and masculine. The feminine remains in the position of an object of
knowledge, otherness, and lack. In this frame, debates arise regarding
the construction of theories corresponding to the feminine and women.
Deconstruction (not fragmentation) of the masculine subject of moder-
nity provides us with a fresh viewpoint from which to think about the
emergence of a different place for the feminine and women. It is a nec-
essary deconstruction of the concept of sexual difference. This problem
is relevant not only to the area of social conquest but also to the elabora-
tion of theories in the broad field of the humanities (philosophy, anthro-
pology, psychology, psychoanalysis).
In this line, the problem of representation is questioned. This is
important since the feminine is categorised as the place of lack, empti-
ness and, on another level, the absence of a signifier. On the other hand,
representational threads lie at a huge crossroads between the thrust of
the drives and desire, object choice as well as cultural and linguistic
codes.
We know that representations do not embrace the totality of any of
these fields: there is always a misfit, insufficiency, and a barely repre-
sentable residue. The problem is that with this insufficiency, inherent to
all subjects, the feminine appears doubly categorised as lacking.
In other words, we need to consider different levels in relation to sex-
ual difference and to the notion of lack as if equivalent to the feminine.
In this line, we underscore that one matter is the impossibility to repre-
sent as part of the impossibility to access totality in the area of psychic
organisation; it is quite another to attribute lack of representation to the
feminine. In this case, this attribution is an imaginary re-duplication
of a foundational, existential lack inherent to processes of subjective

construction that originarily includes both sexes but is projected and
displaced onto the feminine.
Therefore, it is important to work on the distinctions between this
insufficiency, foundational for every subject, and problems of represen-
tation inherent to actual contexts associated with transience, emptiness,
speed, and fragmented realities. The matter becomes more complex
in relation to the notion of the fragmented subject. Other problems
emerge, since not only subjective boundaries are interpellated but also
those referring to sexual difference, with its diverse meanings and its
always-imprecise frontiers concerning masculine–feminine polarity.
In this context, it cannot be the same to direct our listening towards
the splitting of the subject, the Freudian subject of the unconscious, or
towards the subject of postmodern fragmentation, or the erased subject
of representational and social exclusion. The path of analysis, of decon-
struction, of disassembly of pre-existing syntheses in search of new and
singular syntheses—subject in turn to possible dismantling—is one of
the great contributions of the psychoanalytic field. However, the sub-
versive character of deconstruction will be lost in relation to the frag-
mented subject or to the dissolution of the subject. In these cases, the
options should be different. Deconstruction of something already frag-
mented is an iatrogenic road. We need new albeit always provisional
syntheses and links to enable us to enter the field of splitting. Here we
include the notion of sexual and gender difference, especially the mode
of categorising the feminine and the masculine. From fragmentation to
the possibility to establish new splitting: this is one of the great chal-
lenges in current clinical practice.
The idea is that we think in terms of a subject in construction-
deconstruction at different moments in the session, at different moments
in the analysis, and according to individual capacities to deconstruct
syntheses or to form conjunctions with previous deconstructions.
The multiplicity of factors involved induces us to try to decentre false
options: analysis or synthesis, via de porre or via de levare, interpretation
or construction, when we analyse the directions taken by processes of
construction of sexed subjectivity.
It is precisely the relation between the subject and the subject’s reali-
ties that sets in motion the internal-external relation that we see as a
Möbius strip type of relation, as the “fold” proposed by Deleuze (1993),
paraphrasing Leibnitz, where spaces mutually intersect and exchange.
In this sense, we can think that the production of subjectivity takes

place at the intersections between the powerful realities involved and
the heterogeneity of unconscious fantasy, between the internal and the
external, between the drives and otherness, between the atemporality
of the unconscious and the finite time of human existence, between
representation and its limits. To this we add that its interpretation will
depend on the consensual episteme at each historical moment.
In this review we cannot omit the loss of the notion of future in cur-
rent societies. This loss is in relation to urgent, rushed times that mark
technological development and globalisation at this moment. The lack
of future perspective is associated with the crisis of the notion of project
inherent to our age. This matter also involves the psychoanalytic field
and its potential for self-inquiry. Psychoanalysis “in process” is poten-
tially able to rethink many of these problems.
By focusing on the impact of contemporary problems in the psycho-
analytic field, it becomes necessary to reflect on the place of what is
new. The question is, as we said, whether these problems are included
in what we already know; that is to say, whether theory is constituted
in an all-explanatory Weltanschauung that would devour the new and
transform it into what is already known, or whether we need to illu-
minate this fragile relation between facts and concepts, between prac-
tice and theory, leaving a space for questions, opening, and detection of
impasses and scotoma. It is at this point that we encounter some of the
most powerful resistances of psychoanalysts. Deleuze points out (1995)
in his critique of platonism, that the event, as an emission of signs, over-
flows concepts. In this sense, thinking about problems of our age means
focusing not only on challenges imposed by the external world, many
of them with powerful effects on the imaginary, symbolic and the real
orders; it also means thinking about the tools with which we think and
process them. That is to say that the subject is always involved.
Focusing on how facts question theory is one of the great legacies of
Freudian thought, and this heritage assumes that we broaden the limits
of our listening beyond what certain pre-established schemes impose
on it.
It is a matter of expanding the enclosure of reality and the relation
with otherness. If theory fails to function as an open system, it becomes
a centre of power that closes off the work of thinking.
It is this opening that defines psychoanalysis in movement, thinkable
as an itinerary or cartography, capable of generating the possible space
of freedom and questioning necessary for any process of construction

of subjectivity.
The subject in process

In this context, it becomes indispensable to reflect on the effects of these
facts on clinical practice. We emphasise that the production of subjectiv-
ity is not a natural fact. These processes are complex psychic operations
that enable insertion into social and discursive orders that determine
them in turn. As we said, no work in the psychoanalytic field is pos-
sible if it fails to reconsider with which conception of the subject we are
working. This is especially vital in relation to sexual difference.
The field of experience is not homogeneous nor does it accept any
one type of interpretation.
We return to the term introduced by Kristeva (1998), the subject in
process, an attempt to underscore categories connected to movement
and change. We would add that the subject in process is neither the
unitary subject of illuminism nor the fragmented subject of postmoder-
nity, even though it may share and in fact does share, some of the char-
acteristics of both. This concept indicates movements of construction
and deconstruction that influence the production of subjectivity in both
sexes.
This idea enables us to think about these processes as work in move-
ment, however ideal. In effect, there is in this proposal a utopian aspect
that is a necessary horizon for thinking about sexed subjectivity. It
implies including a space for manoeuvring inherent to the psyche in
production. In this sense, process is the opposite of destiny.
The concept of a subject in process also implies that there is no single
act of constitution of sexed subjectivity but instead multiple foci and
areas of production of subjectivity. This assumes a conception of the
subject in which central axes coexist and branch out into rhizomatic,
multicentred processes, thinking in multiple spaces concerning subjec-
tivity (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) beyond the classical causality of arbo-
rescent forks in the road. Identification fixedness of genders is thereby
decentred without giving up differences but instead categorising them
in a broad sense, as we discuss below. In this regard, we emphasise once
again that the notion of difference is polysemic. We also highlight that
the concept of process is opposed to universal notions concerning the
subjects of sexual difference.
In sum, these precisions lead to the possibility of promoting

deconstructions in unitary structures but also lead to the generation of
binding in fragmented structures. This is a reference to masculine and
feminine positions. It also assumes, as we said, a differentiation between
splitting and fragmentation. Splitting is an allusion to the heterogene-
ity of the psyche. However, fragmentation involves de-subjectivation.
In clinical practice we may remark that whereas in view of a totalising
unit we propose recognition of splitting (a great Freudian discovery),
in view of fragmentation the options are different. The work of binding
alternates with decentring and dismantling. From fragmentation to the
installation of new splitting: this may be one of the trajectories in the
construction of subjectivity.
This task involves finding other ways to think about masculine–
feminine polarity through sets that transcend dualisms. It demands
working on construction-deconstruction in which the relation between
identifications, desires, and bodies marks differences in each subject
(named at origin as masculine or feminine by social legality), in which
the singularity of these differences may also be generalised, but not
universalised. These relations may generate different types of conflict
in clinical work depending on the discordance between these sets and
accepted legality.
We postulate that sexual difference is conceptualised between the
general, the particular, and the singular. This “in-between” modality
creates the complexity of this notion in the frame of the polysemy that
marks masculine and feminine categories.
The subject in intersections: the open psyche

The task is to mark out delimitations between, on the one hand, the
place of sexuality, the drives and the unconscious and, on the other
hand, historical-social contexts and their discourses, language, and the
symbolic Other. This involves thinking about the way these catego-
ries relate to the feminine-masculine duality and what exactly remains
non/symbolised.
Debate in the shape of dualistic options tends to resolve these mat-
ters in a Manichean way. We emphasise that the major challenge is to
illuminate problem areas, inquiries, and dualistic options with types
of thinking that transcend linear determinism. For this we need to
propose zones of intersection between concepts and also to conceive
of the simultaneity of different processes in the psychic field. In our

view, this aims to formulate the idea of a sexed subject constructed at
intersections.
The “subject at intersections” is also a subject in relation to otherness
(Todorov, 1995). This idea removes us from solipsistic conceptions. In
these movements, the others are included: the maternal other, the mir-
ror other, the fellow human being, the third party, the other of culture
and of social and linguistic discourse. Otherness is a form of external-
ism but is also a creation through operations generating subjectivity. It
indicates a constitutive “polyphony”, to borrow the words of Bakhtin
(1984). Sexual difference, in terms of masculine–feminine polarity,
acquires other meaning and decentring in the general context of the
diverse levels on which difference is played out and in the frame of
indispensable recognition of otherness.
Bakhtin’s concept (1981) of chronotopos provides elements to think
about these topics in a perspective of space–time coexistence that is
inevitable if we are to conceive of “subjectivity in movement”.
It means that we work in a possible space between pre-existing cat-
egories and the production of singular events, while also considering
that these problems challenge the role of social, discursive, virtual, and
other realities. Relations are generated between multiplying realities
and the plurality of unconscious fantasies, both in opposition and con-
sonance with their impact on the notion and experience of differences.
These developments are based on the idea of an open psyche that
takes into account the autopoietic and creative forces inherent to open
systems, with their capacity to generate differences. This approach
works against stereotypes concerning the masculine and the feminine.
In this way we may develop a space each subject may use for self-
inquiry. A questioning subject in the field of “the possible” may also
enable a broadening of potential choices on that narrow defile between
unities, splittings, and fragmentations. The subject is a “subject of plu-
rality”. This consideration expands the position of the subject that elab-
orates theory and also generates the possibility to think about sexual
difference in a different way.
As we reflect on the potential areas in which psychoanalysis could
generate difference and changes, we take up Kristeva’s suggestive con-
cept (1998) of psychoanalysis “in revolt”. It is also psychoanalysis in a
condition of permanent exile. Psychoanalysis as an open, conjectural,
subversive system is inseparable from clinical experience. It involves
recovering Freud’s works in terms of opening and multiplying power.

Recovery of this condition is another of the challenges we propose.
For this recovery we need to take up the complexity of the universes
at work, the power of the fantasmatic scripts—to rescue the effective-
ness of the imaginary order (Elliott, 2002)—and the force of new reali-
ties with their diverse levels: symbolic, real, and imaginary, and their
inevitable effects at their intersections.
Psychoanalysis was born and developed as praxis in direct relation
to clinical practice while also developing a highly complex theoretical
corpus. It now has enough density and substance to enable us to inquire
broadly into these and other matters. We also consider that our pro-
posal with respect to the challenges we face is not only to achieve an
accurate description of phenomena involved but also to investigate the
conceptual instruments we use to deal with them.
We are thinking about construction of subjectivity as psychic work
or “production”. We think about it in terms of processes and this means
working in a possible space between pre-existing categories and the
production of singular events: between the cultural and discursive
contexts, the parental-familial context, and their interaction with the
field of the drives. It means taking up the strength of realities involved
(which cannot be omitted) and the heterogeneity of the unconscious
fantasy, that is to say, working at the limits. It means being able to gen-
erate differences taking into account that there is not a single act of con-
struction of subjectivity but multiple acts and focuses concerning this
construction.
CHAPTER THREE
Freud’s epistemic context and discourse
Introduction
When we review the category of sexual difference in Freud’s works we
encounter far-reaching problems and questions concerning both theo-
retical perspective and clinical practice. They refer to his experience in
a specific context, and incite us to reflect on the relation between the
investigator and the products of his investigation, the creator and his
work, his experiences and theoretical elaborations. We describe this
relation as extremely complex; it involves, among other issues, theories
First, when we give thought to Freud’s Vienna, we contemplate
the dominant ideas, accepted discourse, and socio-cultural context in
which his works were gestated, aware that this background unavoid-
ably induces certain theoretical constructions and practices. However,
the relation between socio-cultural context (beliefs, ideologies, and cus-
toms) and a work such as Freud’s is neither direct nor schematic; we
detect no direct cause-effect relation between them.
Second, the conjunctural, socio-cultural, and ideological context is
only one aspect of possible influences. We cannot forget the epistemic
framework in which a work develops: a frame that induces certain ways
27
to think about problems insofar as it accepts some logics and excludes

others.
These two levels are part of the points of departure of our discus-
sion. That is to say, Freudian proposals respond to some extent to the
influence of cultural and epochal manifestations in force at that time,
whereas the epistemic foundation is a type of thinking grounded in the
codes of Modernity. These influences are interrelated.
However, we also observe a third point: Freud’s work hugely
exceeds these determinations. Those works that constitute fundamental
turning points in the history of thought produce something new that is
missing in everything that precedes them. The concept of the uncon-
scious and the obscure drive forces described by Freud surpass logics of
illustrated Reason. We observe that it was the German Romantics from
whom Freud drew inspiration that described this aspect of the human
condition.
Therefore, we may discuss several levels in relation to the sub-
ject we are investigating: first, ideological, descriptive, and epochal
aspects; second, epistemic and logical foundations; and third, hypoth-
eses in Freud’s works that are original discoveries surpassing these
determinations.
We intend to construct a critical dialogue with Freud’s ideas.
Turn-of-the-century Vienna
Our discussion of sexual difference in the context of the life and work
of Freud seeks references to both turn of the century Vienna as well as
his everyday experiences and clinical practice with women. But how
do we see Freud’s Vienna? Predominant patriarchal bourgeois ideas
are frequently mentioned. It is true that this was imperial Vienna,
strongly influenced by traditional ideas about family, women, and
the man’s role as putting things in order. In this context, the category
of woman was at the very least a target of mistrust and alarm. On
the other hand, early twentieth century Vienna was also the cradle of
movements that revolutionised culture, in painting (we recall Klimt
and the Secessionist movement as well as expressionism and other
tendencies) and the arts in general, literature, and criticism of social
customs (Musil, von Hofmannsthal, Karl Krauss); of course, Freud
himself was a revolutionary in his proposals on the unconscious and
sexuality.
FREUD’S EPISTEMIC CONTEXT AND DISCOURSE 29
We also need to recall that the classical place of women was being
questioned by other women with liberal ideas, including some femi-
nists Freud also knew quite well. We know that he openly argued with
feminists in his article, Femininity (1933a). The problem concerning
women’s place had been implanted. Stuart Mill had already written
on this subject, questioning the secondary place assigned to women
in society, something Martha Bernays had mentioned to Freud in their
correspondence during their engagement. However, Freud was fully
immersed in patriarchal ideas, as we observe in his reply. He main-
tained that women have an inevitable function: taking care of the home
and children, which means that they cannot and should not be profes-
sionals. He added in his letters that if there were any possibility of los-
ing the feminine ideal, he would prefer to be old-fashioned and treasure
his longing for Martha as she was then; moreover, he did not believe
she would want to be any different (Freud, 1963).
We hasten to emphasise that a portion of these ideas found their way
into his theoretical production, as we demonstrate below. However, we
must also point out that Freud’s experiences and contacts with women
were quite diverse. It is well known that the women with whom Freud
lived or was related did not respond to any homogeneous model. The
way he related to Martha, his wife and the pillar of the home, was not
the same as to Minna, his sister-in-law, with whom (as some biogra-
phers point out) he shared confidences, comments on his work, parlour
games, and trips (Appignanesi & Forrester, 1992), or to Lou Andreas-
Salomé. As for his female disciples and colleagues, they all practised
a profession. Among these, we may differentiate, as described by
Chasseguet-Smirgel (1970), some who agreed with his positions—
Hélène Deutsch, Marie Bonaparte, J. Lampl-De-Groot, and Ruth Mack
Brunswick—from others who differed in regard to his conceptions of
penis envy, women’s passivity, and female masochism, two of whom
were Karen Horney and Josine Muller. All this brief description shows
that Freud’s experiences, contacts, and relationships with women went
beyond the context of imperial Vienna and its bourgeois and patriarchal
customs.
In this regard distortions may result from the temptation to mechani-
cally place the author’s history and life experience into any given work.
We recall that Freud contributes what could be called a “women’s
story”, a type of listening that had not existed until then. The hys-
teric speaks through her symptoms, Freud tells us, and by this path he
advanced towards an understanding of the psyche in which repression

and the unconscious become essential elements. However, it is also true
that some of his patients rebelled against their “women’s destinies” in
the form of symptoms.
Our hypothesis is that different currents of thought coexisted in
Freud: classicism alongside seething modernity, illustrated reason
together with irrational forces of the id, and that these tendencies also
coexisted with his own diversity of experiences and were manifested
to some degree in his theories on sexual difference and masculinity
and femininity, with all their contradictions. For this reason, we find
no complete homogeneity in his proposals on sexual difference. It also
means that different theoretical lines may be delineated within this
non-homogeneity.
Epistemic and epochal suppositions

As we argued (Glocer Fiorini, 1998, 2007a, 2010a), we need to decon-
struct Freudian discourse on sexual difference and masculine–feminine
polarity in order to identify obstacles and blind spots in the theory and
their effects on clinical practice. In this line, it is vital to detect propo-
sitions directly or indirectly related to ideological, epochal discourses
concerning women; to evaluate the weight of the masculine viewpoint;
to consider which explanations respond to accepted epistemic logics
and which surpass these conditions to form theoretical developments
that transcend ideological or epistemic conditioning.
Each age, society, and moment is subject to a regime of enunciation
and visibility, as observed by Foucault (1988), and implicit limits indi-
cate what it is possible or not possible to enunciate.
Foucault proposed thinking about the nineteenth century in terms
of a model of confinement and the twentieth century with a model
of control. If we apply this strategy to conceptions about women,
we realise that Freud was immersed in the passage between these
two models. It was no longer simply the model of confinement but
of control that was the imperative for women. In this sense, Freud
also worked with a regime of possible enunciation, which in our view
was most clearly manifested in his proposals on sexual difference.
However, he also exceeded that regime of enunciation when he over-
came the notion of subject of consciousness, the transcendental sub-
ject, and introduced the concept of the unconscious, which inevitably
decentred any unitary conception on sexual difference and masculine

and feminine positions.
Therefore, taking up the axes proposed, we may analyse in Freudian
proposals two things. First, we have the prevailing ideas, reflected in
his assertions concerning women’s psychic rigidity, deficient super-
ego, little sense of justice, weaker social interests, and lower aptitude
for sublimation, as well as his statements regarding a limited capacity
to change, “as though, indeed, the difficult development to femininity
had exhausted the possibilities of the person concerned” (Freud, 1933a,
p. 135). Here, he argues that feminists do not accuse him of discrimina-
tion, and concludes that if intellectual or professional women exist, it is
because they have developed their masculine parts: a genuine tautol-
ogy according to Kofman (1980).
Freud himself admits (1930a, 1933a) the influence of socio-cultural
factors in the repression of sexuality when he considers that for the
girl’s psycho-libidinal development she needs to pass from active to
passive and also to change her erotogenic zone from the clitoris to the
vagina, as well as change her object from mother to father. However, he
also indicates that a drive factor governing this passage is an essential
factor for access to femininity. But he adds that there is no passive vicis-
situde, since the aim of the drives is always active by definition. In this
vein, he reaffirms the complexity and interpenetration of socio-cultural
as well as drive determinations: although he recognises the strength of
determinations originating in consensual culture, he also accentuates
the power of the drives and its corresponding fantasies.
Second, we have the accepted episteme. We emphasise that our dis-
cussion of women in Freud’s Vienna includes not only a description of
the women with whom he had some kind of relationship or the prej-
udices of his day but also basically the modes of thinking and logics
involved in conceptions on sexual difference.
We may recall the notions of the “dark continent” (Freud, 1926e),
enigma, the mysterious, and woman as taboo. We analyse these
ideas from the perspective of what Foucault (1973, 1988) referred
to as the episteme of modernity, based on the opposition between
self and the Other. The other is whatever is strange, the unknown,
or whatever attacks certainties of the ego: something that must be
ignored or eliminated, or alternatively assimilated into the ego as
a form of control. This self/Other duality excludes recognition of
the other as a subject radically heterogeneous in relation to the ego
(Levinas, 1987). In this logic, the masculine position is identified as

that of the subject of knowledge and desire; it is in function of this
position that other place is determined: the place of the feminine
enigma. It is enigma because it has no placement on the coordinates
of the subject of knowledge. It is a different reality that threatens the
masculine subject: otherness in the field of difference. Since this oth-
erness generates castration anxiety, feminine subjectivity and sexu-
ality are disavowed.
However, as we queried elsewhere (Glocer Fiorini, 2001a, 2007a): is
enigma the feminine or is it sexual difference? We now add another
question: is enigma the feminine or is it the maternal?
These questions do not rule out the notion of enigma in the field of
sexuality, but instead demand genealogical analysis. Our proposal is
to relocate enigma in a different place, to displace it from the feminine
onto other categories that are themselves enigmatic: sexual difference,
the mystery of our origins, and sexuality. In this regard, re-situating the
enigma does not mean that we eliminate it as such. Enigma circulates
rather than blocking: it sustains itself with no need of schematic equiva-
lence with the feminine or women.
We also perceive that the concept of otherness has yet another facet:
the place of the other may be subversive, may open queries to challenge
soothing positions in regard to knowledge based on cultural ideals of
sexual difference and femininity. The other is at the limit in relation to a
centre: the subject. The limit is also a position of questions and inquiry
regarding the centre.
In this perspective, it is interesting to retrieve questions on sexual
difference and return to the Freudian view on the difficulties to deline-
ate and give precise meaning to the categories of masculine and femi-
nine (Freud, 1933a).
Finally, we consider that Freudian discourse on sexual difference is
also a discourse on gender: on men and women, supported in part by
the episteme of modernity; a discourse in which women are the others,
given that it speaks from a masculine point of view.
At the same time, it contributes a conceptualisation centred basically
on sexuality and “difference”. It recovers, illuminates, and emphasises
the role of sexuality, the drives and desire, framing them in the meta-
phorical legislation of the Oedipus–castration complex (cf., Chapter
Four). However, this makes it a narrative that mirrors the organisation
of the nuclear family and accepted norms.
It is a theory on difference with a “phallogocentric” facet, in Derrida’s

words (1987), whose weak points and contradictions reside in its con-
ceptualisations on women and female sexuality. For some authors, it is
a precise description of accepted reality in these societies and women’s
place there (Mitchell & Rose, 1982).
In regard to this issue, we find a multiplicity of viewpoints in Freud’s
works, which explains the diversity of post-Freudian and contempo-
rary theories; just as rich in variety as Freud’s life and experience in his
Vienna with his women.
In this line, aside from the blind spots we consider below, Freud’s
writings also contribute fundamental concepts, among which we
highlight:
First, Freudian theories operate in the register of the human being
and culture, despite a few naturalistic assertions as well. This is what
the concept of active becoming, process, and subjective construction,
indicates for each man and woman.
Second, he finds no essential truth regarding femininity, as we see
expressed through his difficulties to deal with paradoxes that frustrate
all attempts to sustain any universal notion concerning women (Glocer
Fiorini, 2006b). No doubt this position has strong implications for con-
ceptualisations of the masculine position and sexual difference, as well
as for approaches to the many itineraries of sexuality.
Therefore, the following questions emerge:
• Is sexual difference an ahistorical “reality”?

• What is the role of otherness that is assigned to women in the field of
difference?
CHAPTER FOUR
The Oedipus–castration complex and

sexual difference
F
reudian discourse regarding the Oedipus complex proposes to
explain processes by which a boy or girl is inserted into a symbolic
context of social bonds (Freud, 1923b, 1924d). It uses the Oedipus
myth to explain this insertion into culture by envisioning an exogamic
resolution that encompasses heterosexual object choice, prohibition of
incest and formation of the superego. Below we present post-Freudian
theories and discuss their contributions as well as what we consider
their blind spots in relation to our subject.
Another point in question is the perspective with which we under-
stand the Oedipus complex. Is it myth, narrative, model, complex, or
structure? Also, may it be historicised? The debate between history and
structure is implicit.
As we highlighted, Freud contributed enormous discoveries to the
knowledge of processes of construction of subjectivity. In this regard,
the accepted axes of psychoanalysis are: the discovery of the uncon-
scious, perverse-polymorphous infantile sexuality—the drives not yet
unified towards one aim—the concept of drive as different from instinct
since the object is contingent in relation to the drives, and recognition
of transference as the basis of analytic work. This is true even though
each theory interprets these concepts in different ways. For example,
35
we know that it is not the same to refer to the Freudian, the Kleinian, or
the Lacanian unconscious. However, they stand as fundamental axes of
psychoanalysis.
At the same time, other concepts such as those related to sexual dif-
ference, the place of women and the feminine in theory, and sexual and
gender diversities, reveal certain limitations to explanations of sexed
subjectivity by means of the oedipal narrative. We need to focus on
these concepts to rectify, expand or dispute them and, more essentially,
to avoid lapsing into dogmatic and unquestioned repetitions. In our
opinion, no single theory offers all the answers. Each theory aims its
focus on another’s blind spots.
We start with a strong hypothesis offered by Freud: the Oedipus–
castration complex. The two go together; we cannot think about one
without the other in Freudian theory. We discuss his contributions, apo-
ria, and contradictions in relation to the concept of sexual difference.
The Oedipus complex takes a Greek myth that Freud uses as a meta-
phor to explain construction of subjectivity in boys and girls. In the boy
it aims at incestuous wishes towards the mother and parricidal wishes
against the father. Identification processes, wishes, and repression or
dissolution lead to an exogamic resolution, which means insertion into
cultural legality. According to the expected resolution the boy chooses
as his sexual and love object a woman other than his mother and also
identifies with his father. To this end, Freud describes the superego’s
imperative (1923b, p. 34): “You ought to be like this (like your father) …
You may not be like this (like your father).” For girls, Freud envisions a
more complex route.
In boys
Confrontation with sexual difference in the phallic phase, when the boy
perceives and interprets sexual difference as castration in the girl, leads
to castration anxiety.
The castration complex is intimately linked to attraction to the
mother and rivalry with the father. Incestuous wishes make the threat
of castration as punishment more credible. The oedipal journey leads
the boy to replace his mother with another woman and to identify with
his father, thereby establishing exogamy and formation of the superego.
A cut-off terminates the childhood Oedipus complex. This cut-off is
marked by castration anxiety.
T H E O E D I P U S – CA S T R AT I O N C O M P L E X A N D S E X U A L D I F F E R E N C E 37
In girls
Freud describes an extended pre-oedipal phase in the girl and theorises
that she faces two additional tasks on her libidinal journey: a change of
object and of erotogenic zone.
Entry into the phallic phase manifests the girl’s primary masculinity.
When she is confronted with sexual difference and experiences depre-
ciation, she feels hostile towards her mother and also close to her father.
Then, in a process guided by penis envy and governed by the sym-
bolic penis = child equation, she wishes to get a child from her father and
later from another man. Therefore, the Oedipus complex is late and sec-
ondary, not subject to a cut off due to castration anxiety as it is in boys.
Since this development is not ruled by castration anxiety, which in
boys ends a cycle that in girls only starts up with the castration complex,
Freud concludes that it leads to the constitution of a weak superego.
The complex does not end clearly as in boys but instead proceeds
with continuities and slips.
For girls, Freud considers that all this process implies a passage from
active to passive. On this point, he explains that it is produced by virtue
of the drives and also by cultural demands.
In this description we see that the castration complex puts an end to
the Oedipus complex in the boy but only prepares the Oedipus com-
plex in the girl. In the girl’s case, castration is accepted as a premise. It
is what Freud (1924d, p. 178) defines as acceptance of “castration as an
accomplished fact”.
We undoubtedly need to think about this explanation in the light
of references to infantile sexual theories developed by Freud (1908c,
1925j). The phallic phase is associated with the theory that accepts the
belief that only one genital organ, the penis, exists in both sexes. This
belief defines positions for both girls and boys. When Freud develops
it, he takes the boy as the model. In the boy’s phallic phase, the sight of
female genitals joins the threat of castration. In other words, the threat
of castration acquires value when the perception of female genitals is
interpreted as a lack.
This theory is linked to the boy’s incestuous wishes towards his
mother and connected in turn to infantile masturbation, which lead him
to expect imminent punishment. This intersection guides the boy to an
interpretation: the castration theory; in the girl, he deduces, this organ
has been amputated. Therefore, difference is interpreted as castration in
the frame of punishment for his incestuous wishes. However, we know

that the girl is missing nothing anatomically, that she is as she is. Only
from one point of view, the boy’s, may it be interpreted that something
is missing because it is not the same thing he possesses. The issue is
that this infantile sexual theory, created by Freud (1909b) based on his
interpretation of the boy’s experiences (the Little Hans case), is there-
after established as an adult theory, whereupon he drops the interpre-
tive and imaginary character of infantile sexual theories. If we fail to
take into account this imaginary character, it proceeds to function as if
it were an empirically proven truth.
The interesting point is that, in this frame, the girl seems to share
this theory. She feels castrated. And here, we need to review the phal-
lic value of the penis in different cultures. Its phallic value is linked to
power. We must consider the way this value is inscribed in the psyche
of men and women. It is neither the penis nor the phallus, whether
symbol or signifier, but instead phallic value.
We describe below the manner in which other authors, from differ-
ent perspectives, go beyond these developments. However, it is gener-
ally accepted that the penis, an anatomical organ, is not the phallus.
The phallus has different meanings: it has possessed symbolic value as
power and potency since the ancient Greeks. For Lacan it is a signifier:
a signifier of desire which he calls the master signifier. This author
erects the phallus into an essential signifier, an organiser of the psyche
and of construction of subjectivity. The definition of sexual difference
for Lacan (1958a) hinges upon the phallic function.
It is indispensable for us to differentiate the Freudian phallic phase
with its imaginary character inherent to infantile fantasies from the con-
cept of phallus as the universal master signifier around which sexua-
tion is defined.
Freudian contributions to the subject of sexual difference

When he introduces the Oedipus complex, Freud is disengaging from
natural and biological determinations, thereby rendering the notion of
sexual difference more complex. In this respect, he is closer to ulterior
statements by De Beauvoir (1989): “Woman is not born, but becomes
woman.”
He also differentiates the girl’s psychosexual development from the
boy’s. He abandons his initial explanation to the effect that the Electra
complex is analogous to the boy’s complex. He discovers a prolonged

pre-oedipal phase in the girl that accounts for certain types of marital
relations in which problems with the mother associated with this phase
are displaced onto the couple.
We may also consider, as some authors pointed out, that when he
describes the girl’s phallic phase and penis envy, Freud is describing
the state of affairs in a specific socio-cultural context (Mitchell & Rose,
1982). We may trace his source principally to the hysteric patients he
treated.
Problems in Freudian proposals

Freud simultaneously proposes two mutually contradictory hypotheses:
first, that access to sexual difference is acquired; second, that anatomy
is destiny (Freud, 1925j). It is interesting to see how he supports these
contradictory terms without giving up either of them. Freud resorted
to the concept of the complemental series in order to avoid discarding
any variables, thereby departing from linear causality. We may now use
theories of hyper-complexity to think about this issue. For instance, we
find a necessary instrument in contributions by Morin (1986, 1990) who
allows for the coexistence in tension of heterogeneous variables not nec-
essarily resolved into any surmounting dialectic synthesis.
Another problem point is the proposition that the girl needs to
change zone from clitoris to vagina; now, we may think about this point
in a different way, in terms of coexistence. Freud’s view is an indica-
tion that he was deeply concerned about the survival of the species and
therefore more about reproduction than female sexual pleasure.
We need to point out that Freud takes the male vantage point with
respect to castration but fails to explain sufficiently why the girl accepts
this infantile sexual theory and whether this position may be general-
ised. We must also consider the problem of a supposedly weak superego
in the woman, a hypothesis not borne out by clinical observation. Also,
some contemporary authors (Butler, 1990; Irigaray, 1985) question the
normative heterosexual resolution proposed by the Oedipus complex.
Points for reflection

The Oedipus–castration complex provides one way to think about
access to exogamy and insertion in a context of social bonds through
prohibition of incest. Castration anxiety is a phenomenon clinically

observed in males. The concept of castration in the girl poses a greater
dilemma unless it is considered in the symbolic register as incomplete-
ness; in this case, it is common to both sexes. This interpretation avoids
resonances that would be involved in an imaginary castration situated
specifically in women, which only reproduces the concept of female
incompleteness, culturally accepted.
As we said, some authors dispute heterosexual dissolution of the
Oedipus, since they consider it a normative resolution. Freud himself
observed that in civilisations that fully accept homosexuality, as was the
case in ancient Greece, it is not considered a perversion.
Also, we find two lines of thinking in Freud’s works: one is the
Oedipus–castration complex and its expectable heterosexual resolu-
tion in consonance with accepted legalities. The other can be seen in
Three Essays on Sexual Theory (Freud, 1905d) in which he places the
accent on the drive’s strength and difficulties for its harmonious and
balanced unification into the heterosexual resolution normalised by
culture.
We may also ask: is the oedipal narrative a convincing explanation
of the girl’s psychosexual development or does it explain a given situ-
ation from the point of view of the boy and his infantile sexual theo-
ries as described by Freud? We emphasise that castration anxiety in the
male situates an assumed castration in the opposite sex. This theory
is accepted by the girl and in turn proposed as a universal notion in
Freudian theory.
In our opinion, we need to think about the Oedipus complex as a
myth or narrative proposed by Freud to explain the passage into sym-
bolic legality, based on the classical nuclear family, in the framework of
ideals concerning accepted masculine and feminine positions. There-
fore, it is susceptible to historisation.
This analysis enables us to explain the interplay of wishes and iden-
tifications in the boy: love and desire for the mother, rivalry with the
father; vice versa and by other means in girls. The complete Oedipus
includes the classical positive and negative Oedipus, and we may say
that it responds more precisely to the complexities and ambiguities of
processes of construction of subjectivity.
As we see below, contemporary authors are exploring its appli-
cation to other family models and to parentality in homosexual and
unconventional couples in general, as well as to the girl’s psychosexual
development. Deleuze and Guattari (2004) propose that we contemplate

a transfamilial complex based on the concept of vacuoles in the family
which is not limited to the three terms of the nuclear family. This
idea expands the concept and meanings of the Oedipus complex and
provides elements to think about innumerable variants of the paths
of desire and identifications, both imaginary and symbolic, in each
subject.
Returning now to the Freudian model, we see that for the boy the
resolution of the Oedipus seems to be clearer and simpler than for the
girl. Castration anxiety preserves him narcissistically, leading him to
renounce his mother and aim his desire towards a different woman:
an exogamic outcome results. He identifies with his father and, if this
resolution is successful, the dilemma is solved, with the result that he
reaches a normatively accepted resolution.
However, the Freudian hypothesis foresees additional difficulties for
girls in the form of change of object and zone; the girl must seek an
object whose sex is different from her mother’s. This leads her through a
long psycho-libidinal journey, captained by penis envy, which emerges
when she views anatomical difference and interprets it as the accom-
plished fact of her own castration.
Freud sees three possible resolutions of the Oedipus for girls while
reminding us that this formation is secondary to their lengthy pre-
oedipal period: inhibition or frigidity—sexual desires are repressed
after disappointment at not possessing a penis; the masculinity com-
plex which, considering the failed resolution of penis envy, may lead
to homosexuality; and maternity as the princeps resolution of the girl’s
libidinal development.
On these three paths we find at least two issues to rethink: first, that
Freud considers maternity the fundamental aim of the girl’s libidinal
development. Second, that this conception leaves no place for female
sexuality autonomous with respect to maternity.
In this frame, we see that the girl’s Oedipus complex as presented
by Freud contemplates no other aim beyond the symbolic equation that
leads from penis envy to desire for a child, first from the father and then
from another man. As we said, any development of female sexuality
not aimed at desire for a child is explicitly excluded.
This leads to another problem: this child is interpreted as a substitute
for an essential lack. Since this desire is mediated by penis envy, no
other way is open to signify desire for a child except as a substitute for
the wished for or envied penis (for Freud) or phallus (for Lacan). The
penis = child equation is therefore indispensable, excluding any other
viable explanation for maternity.
Hence, the child is a substitute of the penis or alternatively, a phallus-
child. It is true that this substitution may occur, especially in hysterics,
but it cannot be generalised since in this case it would be impossible to
think that the mother might consider her child an other. That is to say, if
the child were a substitute for a lack, which on being interpreted refers
to penis envy, it would be very difficult to come to consider the child
an other. The father’s intervention, as a function, may lead to a cut off,
but not necessarily to the mother’s acceptance of the child’s otherness
(cf., Chapter Fifteen).
Worse still, this conception may induce analysts to over-interpret
phallic envy in women and to equate hysteria with femininity.
Concerning the concept of castration

In Freud’s works, the castration complex is absolutely linked to the
Oedipus complex; in the boy because castration anxiety with its threat
to narcissism (loss of the penis) provokes resolution-dissolution of the
complex. In the girl because she accepts castration as a truth: the prem-
ise of castration as an accomplished fact described by Freud as initiat-
ing the process.
It is especially necessary to analyse exactly what we are referring to
when we discuss castration. Lacan (1966, 1998) conceived of three regis-
ters (real, symbolic, and imaginary), an important advance in the effort
to identify different meanings of the concept of castration. When we
refer to symbolic castration, but neither the real nor the imaginary dif-
ferentiated by this author, we must clarify that it refers to incomplete-
ness and to limits; in this case it is applicable to both sexes. Therefore,
reference to the woman as a castrated being loses its meaning given that
symbolic castration affects men as well as women. Symbolic castration
in Lacan also refers to the cut-off that disjoins the mother–child dyad,
thereby enabling access to exogamy.
In this perspective, we need to differentiate the concept of castration
in Lacan from castration in Freud’s thinking. In Lacan the clear refer-
ence to the Freudian castration complex, more closely associated with
the penis, is lost; in other words, Lacan removes the reference to “has or
has not” in which the girl is an incomplete being according to infantile
sexual theories, and proposes to consider sexual difference in relation to

the phallus as the fundamental signifier of desire.
At the same time, Lacan (1993) shows another aspect of his works in
which he points out that the woman is lacking a fundamental signifier,
that emptiness defines her, which places women outside the signifying
universe. This hypothesis contradicts his proposal of symbolic castra-
tion in which incompleteness is common to men and women. Lacan
attempts to solve this contradiction with the “mathemes of sexuation”.
In them, it is the phallic function that defines father–mother and man-
woman positions. In this proposition, any subject, man or woman, may
occupy one of these positions. Later, when he adds his notion of unlim-
ited feminine jouissance, Lacan suggests another variable to conceptu-
alise difference.
These considerations make it necessary to emphasise that the con-
cept of sexual difference is interpreted in different ways. For some it
may be based on anatomy or biology, in other words: pre-determined;
for others, it is considered an access to a symbolic register of difference.
In this case, we could say that passage through the Oedipus–castration
complex is a Freudian form of symbolic access to difference.
However, we again highlight that sexual difference is not only ana-
tomical sexual difference and not only its symbolic aspect. The nor-
mative character of the oedipal resolution also responds to a specific
cultural context and discourse.
In this line of thinking, we propose to consider that the concept of
difference is polysemic. Difference as distinction (Heidegger, 2002) is
not the same as difference in language, or difference as signifying slips
of signifiers, or sexual and gender difference—anatomical, cultural, and
discursive—or difference in Deleuze’s definition (1994): a difference in
flows. All these notions are related and this variety greatly expands
the concept of difference. Below, we return to the topic of difference
because, as we said, it puts into play feminine and masculine positions
and also engages sexual diversities.
In relation to the problems we have just presented, polemics sprang
up early, even among some of the female psychoanalysts who were
Freud’s disciples. Karen Horney (1967) considered it necessary to
address socio-cultural aspects in order to analyse female sexuality.
Josine Muller (1932) and other female authors questioned the concept
of penis envy. It has also been suggested that penis envy is envy of an
idealised penis (Marika Torok, 1964).
Melanie Klein (1945), in turn, broadened the notion of Oedipus

complex, describing an early Oedipus with triangulation from the out-
set, albeit in a fantasy register. She also observed an early superego,
a phenomenon with which argued against Freudian theory on the for-
mation of the superego. This early superego is precisely a hypercritical,
demanding, and destructive superego. On this point she dissents with
Freud’s ideas concerning a fragile superego in the woman as a result of
the Freudian view of the oedipal itinerary.
In the circle of English psychoanalysis, Jones (1948) also disputed
the concept of primary masculinity in the girl proposed by Freud and
found instead a primary, pre-oedipal femininity. This author observed
the existence of primary vaginal sensations in the girl. He therefore pro-
posed that there is primary femininity and that penis envy is secondary.
Consequently, the girl is not a little boy because of primary masculinity
from the outset, but instead, penis envy and the girl’s masculinity are
secondary.
Returning now to culture-oriented hypotheses, we see that
although they address an important aspect of the issue, they still
fail to establish the type of connections between them and the inter-
nal world. Also, Jones’s reference to anatomy and physiology is not
easy to prove. In general, none of these positions includes cross-
referencing with cultural variables, social discourses, significant
others and the drives.
We may propose, however, that it is possible to work on a broad field
of intersections that eludes both extreme biologism as well as strict cul-
turalism in isolation from the drives. Between the drive and the field of
desire, on the one hand, and accepted discourses on the other hand, we
find interface areas. These areas cannot be considered in any dichoto-
mous way in terms of either one variable or the other.
This perspective stimulates us to think about complex relations
between the sexed body, desire, object choice, and identifications that
support gender identity. It is vital to understand how and by what
means discourses, culture and its norms, and otherness impact on each
subject’s psyche.
For this understanding, we also introduce important contributions
by Aulagnier (1992) and Laplanche. The concept of identification pro-
ject by Castoriadis-Aulagnier (2001) enables us to calibrate delicate
and subtle mechanisms knitted between the child and its mother in
her character as a spokesperson of identification enunciates; these
enunciates install the mother’s desires and expectations regarding her

child’s gender and sexed position.
Laplanche (1987) detects an enigmatic signifier that the child does
not understand but which provides meanings to be deciphered; it
comes from the external world and varies depending on the individu-
al’s fantasies but nonetheless retains its character as enigma. We wish
to highlight some concepts in Laplanche’s works. First, the concept of
the enigmatic signifier, a reference to something in the order of culture
and otherness, which the child cannot categorise but which neverthe-
less acts in the psyche and the drives. It is not included explicitly in
accepted discourses but rather consists of silences: enigmatic meanings
concerning sexuality transmitted primarily by the mother. Second, the
child’s sexual theories but also emphasising the investigation of adult
sexual theories. It is in this context that meta-theories subjacent to the
theories we are debating must also be analysed (cf., Chapter Five).
And third, another point developed by Laplanche establishes a distinc-
tion between the concepts of sexual difference and gender difference,
thereby enabling us to understand more precisely the processes of con-
struction of subjectivity.
These contributions are part of a different epistemological context
that applies other modes of thinking, for example the paradigm of com-
plexity, to reflect on these relations between gender and sexuality.
We also need to point out a difference between theories on women
and sexual difference in the Anglo Saxon world compared to the Latin
world. This diversity requires that we more deeply analyse these theo-
ries and their relation to the woman’s position in these two cultures.
Winnicott (1966) adopts a different viewpoint. He disconnects the
feminine from the woman, something that Freud had achieved through
the theory of bisexuality and the complete Oedipus complex. We recall
that Freud never abandons the theory of bisexuality, especially its
fantasy aspect. Interplay of identifications alludes to masculine and
feminine positions in every subject, one example being the complete
Oedipus complex.
Winnicott describes a primary femininity pertaining to “being”
that could be interpreted in relation to the maternal condition; and a
masculinity linked to the drive and having. In this view the former
is linked to existing and the latter to having. The Winnicottian posi-
tion is important for analysis of these elements in each singular subject,
although it is debatable whether we may assign these categories (being
and having) to any fixed relation with the feminine and the masculine,
respectively.
Regarding the Oedipus in Lacan (1958a), this author describes three
moments. He proposes that in these three moments the boy or girl is
positioned at birth as the mother’s phallus; only the father’s interven-
tion is able to cut through this dyad. The infant is desire of the mother’s
desire. In the Lacanian Oedipus, the father must go from being first
the one who prohibit and subsequently be permissive whereas the
mother must aim her desire at another person who is not the child.
Lacan’s contribution is that both boy and girl may be the phallus for the
mother. He decentres the problem of the penis and anatomy and pro-
poses to discriminate the penis from the phallus. Symbolic castration
is the operation by which the cut off is produced in this mother–child
union in which the child is the mother’s phallus and object of desire, by
virtue of the intervention of a third party: the symbolic Father. Lacan
thereby contributes the concept of paternal function as an indispensa-
ble operation to separate the child from its mother and break up this
completeness.
We should debate whether this third party function should be
termed “paternal” function (even when postulated in symbolic terms)
or whether it is a function that in androcentric societies is intimately
welded onto the father but which in different conditions could also be
exercised by others including mothers or substitutes. This distinction is
necessary, even though the father incarnates the figure that has tradi-
tionally exercised this function, for better or for worse, in the classical
family (cf., Chapter Fifteen).
Benjamin (1995) considers that the mother possesses sufficient sym-
bolic reserves to enable her to exercise this function.
We notice that the complexity of the Oedipus, in terms of desires and
identifications, loves, hates, and rivalries, is impoverished by hyper-
cathexis of the prohibiting facet of the paternal function. In this frame,
we consider it necessary to unfasten the apparently unassailable chains
linking the Oedipus complex, paternal function, symbolic castration,
and sexual difference.
We add that the concept of phallus in Lacan (1958b) alludes neither
to the penis nor to the symbolic phallus, but rather to the phallus as
a signifier. In Lacan, the signifier does not refer to a signified as De
Saussure thought (1983), instead considering that significations arise
out of the interplay of signifying slides. In any case, an unanswered
question remains as to why a signifier of desire should be termed

“phallus”, since it is very difficult to wrest it from its significance.
Undoubtedly, the only explanation is its relation to anatomy and its
meanings in terms of phallic value.
Continuing with Lacan (1998), we also need to add that in the math-
emes of sexuation he developed, the feminine position always corre-
sponds to the place of the Other: the other sex, even though the concept
of the barred Other is itself more encompassing. What we find striking
is that, although it may be occupied by a man or a woman, this position
is termed “feminine”.
We recall that Freud himself maintained that feminine and masculine
were meanings with uncertain contents, that they should be replaced
by active and passive, and that even this modification was doubtful. He
pointed out that masculine = active and feminine = passive equations
did not correspond empirically, even in the animal kingdom.
The asseverations mentioned are associated with persistent localisa-
tion of the feminine and the woman in the place of otherness and lack,
which renders it indispensable for us to reconsider this equivalence.
Our review introduces us to the contributions but also contradictions
and aporia of the Oedipus–castration complex whenever we attempt to
think about contemporary problems concerning sexual difference and
“sexual and gender diversities”.
Our proposal aims towards the conception of an expanded Oedipus
complex able to exceed the intra-familial triad (Deleuze & Guattari,
2004) and also to include subtle performative mechanisms that produce
inscription of “difference”; thereby to shine brighter light on the com-
plete Oedipus complex as a contribution that may encompass other and
more complex variants of its resolution. In this line of thinking, we dis-
sent with the castration complex and penis envy in the girl as being
the only theory to explain the construction of subjectivity in women.
We detect a problematic position in relation to the phallic function as
the organiser of difference supported by the primacy of the phallus. Is
this because the Oedipus complex incarnates a narrative of fantasies of
desire in androcentric societies? In this regard, our discussion proposes
that it is possible to take another perspective on the different itinerar-
ies of desire and changing gender identifications and dis-identifications
observed in clinical work at this time. Seen from this angle, there is no
need to place the enigma of difference in the woman, since the enigma is
difference itself, on all the levels of its expression.
CHAPTER FIVE
Freudian logic—meta-theories on
sexual difference
M
eta-theories on sexual difference organise implicit and explicit,
private and consensual theories, as well as beliefs and intui-
tions possibly burdened with a heavy ideological component.
In this framework, we start with the hypothesis that theories on sexual
difference present epistemological obstacles revealing uncertainties of
masculine–feminine dualism in relation to our understanding of the
construction of sexed subjectivity. This problem is reflected in clinical
practice as well as in everyday experiences of men and women, since it
influences the categorisation of different itineraries of desire and chang-
ing identities that we encounter more visibly in our age.
One of the toughest obstacles is equation of the feminine with other-
ness. Several sources are at the root of this equivalence in the psycho-
analytic field and more specifically in Freud’s works (Glocer Fiorini,
2001a, 2010a). First, the feminine considered an object of desire and
knowledge, involving the subject–object relation. This relates to equa-
tion of the feminine with the enigmatic and lack. Second, the feminine
equated with the maternal and then considered only in a dimension of
otherness.
Since these sources are interrelated, our approach focuses principally
on Freud’s positions regarding women and their subjacent logic. This
49
logic is intertwined with meta-theories that organise modes of thinking

and theories on difference. They certainly exert heavy effects, whether
they result from acceptance or confrontation, on subsequent psycho-
analytic developments.
To analyse these points, we first take up the subject–object issue and
then discuss the woman-mother equation.
Subject–object polarity
In Freud’s works, subject–object polarity is implicated in concepts
concerning sexual difference. Freud (1905d, 1923e) establishes a sharp
division between the masculine, subject, active, and possession of the
penis on the one hand, and the feminine equated with the object, pas-
sive, non-possession of the penis, on the other hand. He considers that
only at puberty does the vagina come into consideration as a lodging
for the penis, thereby establishing a passive position for the woman.
This description contains a definition of the feminine in terms of cat-
egories associated with the negative. Freud maintains in Totem and Taboo
(1912–1913) that women are possessions of the Father of the horde and,
in these conditions, objects of exchange. This position as object is also
explicated in The Taboo of Virginity (1918a, p. 198) when he writes: “Per-
haps this dread is based on the fact that woman is … mysterious, strange
and therefore apparently hostile. The man is afraid of being weakened
by the woman, infected with her femininity and of then showing him-
self incapable … in all this there is nothing obsolete, nothing which is
not still alive among ourselves.” Freud points out that one of the causes
of taboo is that for men, women are strange, hostile, foreign, and, as
such, possess a menacing power.
We point out that the object in these developments is the woman,
and therefore she is the other in the sense that she attacks certainties of
the ego. This brief review of Freudian statements shows us an inevita-
ble perspective: the viewpoint of the subject of knowledge, masculine,
confronting an object yet to be known, which is then superimposed
onto the position of the masculine, desiring subject faced with the femi-
nine object of desire.
Freud (1933a, p. 113), in Femininity, recognises this position when he
tells his audience about the feminine enigma: “Throughout history peo-
ple have knocked their heads against the riddle of the nature of femi-
ninity … to those of you who are women this will not apply—you are
F R E U D I A N L O G I C — M E TA - T H E O R I E S O N S E X U A L D I F F E R E N C E 51
yourselves the problem.” This is a clear reference to Freud’s position as

subject of knowledge, masculine, defining his object, and also explain-
ing that this subject approaches his object from a given point of view.
He adds (1933a, p. 132): “If you reject this idea as fantastic and regard
my belief in the influence of lack of a penis on the configuration of femi-
ninity as an idée fixe, I am of course defenceless.” It is not premature
to connect this idea with another Freudian statement in the same text:
“A woman of the same age [around 30], however, often frightens us
by her psychical rigidity and unchangeability” (ibid., p. 134). Neither
could we omit the well-known letter from Freud (1963) to Martha
Bernays, his fiancée, in which he discourages her from reading Stuart
Mill who argued in favour of women’s liberation, and reminds her that
women must dedicate themselves to the home and children.
On the road we are constructing, we need to point out that the posi-
tion as object of knowledge and desire assigned to women is intimately
attached to the place of the enigma, the dark continent and therefore
of otherness. In other words, object, enigma, and otherness are firmly
linked to the feminine and women in these thought sequences. Here,
a powerful connection is drawn from Freud’s experience with hysteri-
cal patients. The hysteric’s seductive games, kindling desire and then
refusing, remained associated with the concept of enigma and “dark
continent”. In this context, the feminine remains equated with hysteria.
These equations tend to hystericise the field of the feminine (Foucault,
1988) and to universalise it as such, since links between these two cat-
egories are frequently mentioned, but not their differences. This hys-
terisation of the feminine is at the base of the concept of penis envy
and theories that interpret the feminine position from an androcentric
viewpoint and generalise it to all women. This involves the risk, among
others, of over-interpreting phallic rivalry in women.
When we examine the subject–object issue in the case history of Little
Hans, we see that Freud (1909b) establishes the issue of the difference
between the sexes, grounded on infantile sexual theories as described
by two adults: Little Hans’s father and Freud. The child is a little
researcher whose discoveries are theorised and signified by adults. In
this investigation the theme of castration appears: the investigating
subject discovers sexual difference and attributes a lack to the girl. In
this way, thought sequences are formed in which polarities between
presence and absence, phallic and castrated, masculine and feminine,
are equated.
However, it is still necessary also to emphasise that this “lack” is

part of a previous frame of reference in which sexual difference is inter-
preted in terms of lack.
These theories establish in the girl the castrated other, subject to
penis envy, eventually representing what is feared and disavowed for
himself by Little Hans: castration. However, they also establish her as
an object of desire for a desiring subject. This creates an interesting par-
adox, since what is most desired is the same object that also provokes
“horror”.
From this point on, we bear in mind that in psychoanalysis the
subject–object relation is delineated in the field of sexuality. However,
as we said, it also occurs inevitably and concomitantly in the field of
knowledge. We underscore that, according to Laplanche (1988), adult
sexual theories may repeat infantile theories. The consequences are
undoubtedly important if the analyst is unable to differentiate these
levels and their metaphoric aspects; for this reason we need a decon-
structive analysis of psychoanalytic theories on sexual difference and
their relation to infantile sexual theories.
At the same time, we note that Freud’s works are also open and
multicentred. Thus, we see that the hypothesis of psychic bisexuality,
which Freud never abandons, as well as subject–object permutations,
plural identifications, and intersecting desires of the complete Oedipus
complex make this issue more complex. Thus, the feminine is displaced
both from its forced equation with the object and also from its inevitable
localisation in women.
Furthermore, Freud himself (1905d, 1933a) always maintained that
masculine and feminine were categories with uncertain contents and
even recommended that they not be compared to active-passive. He
stated (Freud, 1925j, p. 258) that “all human individuals, as a result of
their bisexual disposition and of cross-inheritance, combine in them-
selves both masculine and feminine characteristics, so that pure mas-
culinity and femininity remain theoretical constructions of uncertain
content”. This means that other variables are added to the theory,
although Freud never renounces the initial subject–object polarity
equated to masculine–feminine polarity on the levels of both know-
ledge and desire.
We emphasise that these polarities respond to binary, dichoto-
mous logic. In this line of thought, Héritier (2007), speaking from the
field of anthropology, highlights that these and other equivalences to
masculine and feminine (hot–cold, strong–weak, high–low, dry–moist)

include relations of hierarchy and power. We therefore point out that
binary logic is also inevitably a logic of power, since one pole is always
given hierarchy over the other. These slips ground discourses, know-
ledge, and power, structured in terms of the masculine–feminine rela-
tion. This refers to both sexual and gender differences. In our opinion,
these discourses also influence the psychoanalytic field, the formation
of its theories, and psychoanalysts themselves.
We may recall Freud’s statement (1910h, p. 167) in A Special Type
of Choice of Object Made by Men: “In normal love the woman’s value
is measured by her sexual integrity, and is reduced by any approach
to the characteristic of being like a prostitute.” This is a specific state-
ment about women and their sexual integrity, in which knowledge,
value judgement, and power are situated at the masculine pole of
the masculine–feminine polarity. These discourses may undoubtedly
be shared by women as well.
Now concerning the viewpoint regarding the girl, Freud puts for-
ward, we consider, two instances: first, he introduces the pre-oedipal
phase, thereby placing more emphasis on the difference between girls
and boys; second, he proposes another important fact which is that
the feminine position is acquired, though never completely, through
oedipal resolution. In this view, it is not given by nature, which under-
mines the nature–culture debate. However, on the other hand, and with
respect to sexual difference, the girl adopts the point of view taken
by Little Hans: that she is lacking, and therefore “falls victim to penis
envy”. That is to say that the girl is different but her viewpoint is the
same as the boy’s. In Freudian narrative, the girl again places and holds
the enigma in herself. But why does the girl maintain this theory in
Freudian theory? Because what can be seen (the penis) is a symbol of
power and knowledge? Is this a way to support masculine narcissism,
confronted with castration anxiety?
As Kristeva (1986) points out in relation to castration theories,
even though the girl may submit, she does not truly recognise her-
self. This author considers these theories fixations to an “appearance”
(“semblant”) to which masculine fantasies are attached.
In this frame we also recall that David-Ménard (1997) emphasises
that there is no neuter subject in the field of knowledge. She highlights
inevitable fantasies in the subject elaborating theory (which for the
issue of sexual difference responds to an androcentric order, in spite
of exceptions). She also points out that in boys, castration anxiety is a

mark that defines conceptualisations and theories on sexual difference.
The concept of phallogocentrism in Derrida (1998) also refers to this
problem when he states that the phallus appears as a transcendental
element that re-introduces the metaphysics of presence. This occurs,
contradictorily, even though the phallus is considered a signifier of lack
(Lacan, 1958b).
In this review we find that the subject of knowledge and desire can-
not be dissociated, which confirms the theory that there is no neuter
knowledge. This perspective includes interdisciplinary conceptualisa-
tions on sexual difference.
This series of concatenations structures a misunderstanding: the
enigma of sexual difference comes to be localised in the girl. In this dis-
placement the girl is also positioned as lacking and as the incarnation of
otherness; that is to say, as the other different to the self, the self being
assigned to the masculine. Although this localisation is imaginary, it
has a huge impact on the symbolic order.
In our opinion, it is necessary to re-situate enigma, which does not
mean cancelling the notion of difference but rather sustaining it as such
without displacing the enigma of difference onto one of its polarities:
the feminine. Enigma is difference itself, not the feminine. Neither is it
a matter of ignoring the enigmatic condition in human existence, but
simply of not diverting enigma onto the feminine (Glocer Fiorini, 2001a,
2007a).
Quite the contrary, thought sequences that situate enigma in the
feminine tend to universalise this category, a tendency inherent to strict
dichotomies. A brief example: a male patient, phobic and with great
inhibitions in his relations with women, says in a session, referring to a
failed relationship: “well, as you know, with women you never know,
you can never know how a woman may react, women are unpredict-
able”. This is an attempt by the patient to detach himself from his sub-
jective involvement in the conflict, expressed in a statement that tends
to circulate quite frequently. For this he appeals to a “truth” he con-
siders universal and consensual. If it emerges in session, two things
may occur. One, the analyst may agree with this statement, in conso-
nance with available theory on fantasy, sharing it consciously or uncon-
sciously. In consequence, the analyst will not interpret it or else the
interpretation will be incomplete. Two, the analyst may wonder, and
not take it as an indisputable premise. In this case, the analyst may
ask questions, investigate, and even differentiate/articulate the phobic

position and castration anxiety from beliefs and myths inherent to col-
lective thought. There is also an interesting aspect for female analysts
if they identify with this position: “I, a woman, also know that with
women you never know.” This identification with accepted knowledge
and power is also a paradox to bear in mind.
In this statement, there may be several aspects to analyse: first, anxi-
ety concerning sexual difference; second, anxiety concerning mater-
nal power displaced onto the woman; third, psychic internalisation of
norms, ideologies, and prejudices concerning relations between men
and women. In this way, collective discourses and beliefs may coin-
cide with individual castration fantasies; and fourth, epistemic sources
equating the feminine with the enigmatic, unknown other, that is con-
sequently threatening for the subject of knowledge and desire whose
castration fantasies are projected onto and located in the feminine other.
The woman = mother equation

This is another source supporting equation of the feminine with other-
ness. We recall that the maternal other is always the seat of both fascina-
tion and rejection. In The Theme of the Three Caskets, Freud (1913f) states
that in a man, the mother is always present: first in his origin; then in
the woman he loves, chosen in the mother’s image; and finally, in his
return to mother earth. That is to say, the mother is omnipresent in all
the stages of a man’s life (Green, 2002, 2005). In this context, nostalgia
for primal jouissance sustains the emergence of the figure of the mater-
nal other as the double: what is most familiar, the Heimlich, is at the
same time the Unheimlich, what is strange, the uncanny (Freud, 1919h).
In other words, what was radically familiar appears as the foreign,
and we highlight that this leads to its establishment as the enigma par
excellence. At this point we encounter a slip that sustains another basic
misunderstanding: the woman = mother equation. The enigma of the
maternal other is displaced onto women and the feminine in general.
Consequently, we need to re-position the enigma. This is particularly
significant in clinical work.
In this context, one theoretical limitation is that the paths of girls’ psy-
chosexual development are restricted to inhibition, masculinity com-
plex, and maternity as described in Freud’s work (1931b). Through the
symbolic equation penis = child, the third path is for Freud the maximum
aim of femininity. As we said, non-hysterical and non-maternal female

sexuality is thereby disavowed. It is precisely these three paths that dis-
card the possibility of desiring female sexuality beyond maternity. It is
true that this does not deny that the feminine position may also include
and hold a position as an object of desire.1
What symbolic operations may break with this strict equivalence
between the feminine and the maternal? A third function is involved
(not only in the sense of exogamic symbolic separation of the child
from the mother), which should specifically disengage the feminine
from the maternal other as well. Here, an operation of deconstruction is
necessary to re-launch indispensable symbolic identifications. In other
words, we need to emphasise that these two related categories (woman
and mother) also require disassembly.
A thin, porous line separates the feminine as a principle from the
feminine equated with the maternal, the feminine equated with women,
the feminine on the level of identifications and desires, and the femi-
nine as qualities in women and men. This makes it necessary for us to
work constantly on deconstruction and construction.
The feminine and femininity are complex and polysemic concepts,
their roads heterogeneous, and they may or may not fit any one woman
in particular.
In our review we question equation of the subject–object relation with
masculine–feminine polarity; localisation of the enigma of difference in
the feminine: sexual difference incarnate; and castration attributed to
women as representing the other by displacing the male’s castration
anxiety onto the other sex.
We also need to bear in mind that in this differing view on sexual
difference, this difference is inevitably historicised and interpreted. Dif-
ference is never neutral, nor may it be analysed from any “objective”
position outside its discourse and epochal context.
Note
1. Elsewhere (Glocer Fiorini, 2001a, 2001b, 2007a) we proposed the idea
of thinking about desire for a child beyond symbolic substitution of a
primal lack. To do this, we took Deleuze’s concept (1995) of desiring
production, a concept that surpasses the tendency to consider desire as
originating only from lack (cf., Chapter Twelve).
CHAPTER SIX
Post-Freudian and contemporary

controversies
F
reudian proposals on sexual difference and masculine–feminine
polarity have permeated psychoanalytic production up to and
including the present by either agreeing or disagreeing with
them. It would be impossible to review the enormous quantity of con-
tributions by post-Freudian and contemporary analysts, although we
do mention some that are significant for our discussion. In this effort,
we need to consider that on this subject as on others, there is no single
psychoanalysis. Different theoretical tendencies propose diverse posi-
tions with respect to theorisations on “difference”.
The concept of primary masculinity in girls was one of the most dis-
puted and was expressed in the widely known Freud-Jones debate. As
we said, Jones proposed a primary femininity based on primal know-
ledge of the vagina. Although this contribution tended to relocate the
feminine in a position different to the Freudian position, it limited the
discussion to a final cause referring to purely anatomical-biological
aspects. Klein (1930, 1945) gave primary value to the contents of the
female body and its fantasy organisation. The debate broadened subse-
quently with proposals that emphasised the role of culture in the struc-
turing of femininity, Horney’s (1967) among others. They also debated
whether penis envy was primary or secondary, and on this point, some
57
analysts close to Freud used his ideas to argue this issue. We also recall
that Freud answered female analysts who disputed his positions by
saying that in them, the masculine element predominated. In this way,
he evaded the problem with a tautological assertion that enabled him to
maintain the subject = masculine and object = feminine equation.
These debates centred on determining the entity that should be given
women and how to think about the feminine in general. The waters
divided. In the Anglo Saxon world, the hypothesis of primary feminin-
ity was accepted in a mostly generalised way. Thus, they attempted to
give the feminine an entity of its own, although always in relation to a
hub that was the masculine model.
However, in French psychoanalysis and through its theoretical influ-
ence in other regions, the Freudian proposal was emphasised and devel-
oped with greater sophistication by the Lacanian tendency. In this case,
they tried to accentuate the concept of sexual difference grounded on a
lack localised in the feminine gender. Although for Lacan the feminine
position may be occupied by men as well as women, it is obvious that
the “feminine” label manifests its connotation alluding to its relation to
women. For Lacan, the feminine other is the Other par excellence in the
frame of sexual difference. In this way, the problem persists and, worse
yet, this proposition coexists with another by this author who maintains
“there is no signifier for women” (Lacan, 1993).
As we said, Winnicott’s contributions (1966) decentre the problem.
For this author, femininity in terms of primary identifications is a
category linked to “being”. In this regard, it concerns both sexes and
derives from the inaugural relation with the mother. This dissociates
femininity, in Winnicottian terms, from any direct relation with women.
In other words, it may be part of processes of construction of subjectiv-
ity in both boys and girls. Furthermore, this author considers that the
feminine element should be recovered in male patients in the analytic
process. However, this welding between femininity and maternity also
tends to block thinking about other sources to conceptualise the femi-
nine beyond the maternal.
A review of the broad spectrum of publications on sexual difference
and masculine–feminine polarity in psychoanalysis, as well as contri-
butions by anthropology, linguistics, and historiography, except specific
references to the points in debate, is beyond the reach of this project.
However, we may state that in many of them the feminine is equated
with the other: either by framing it in the category of absence or lack
P O S T- F R E U D I A N A N D C O N T E M P O R A RY C O N T R OV E R S I E S 59
with reference to a fundamental signifier (the phallus) or by postulating

it as a devalued other; in both cases, by stating that it is structured in
conformity with a masculine subject of knowledge and desire.
At the same time, these positions coexist with other currents of
thought in which dissidence with respect to this issue takes two roads.
One contributes new appreciation to otherness by accentuating femi-
nine characteristics usually depreciated. The other road questions the
place of otherness for women and the feminine and investigates the
causes and difficulties that block women from access to the position
as subject in theory, including the inevitable consequences for clinical
work and for the life experience of each woman. This path interrelates
experiences and theories impossible to dissociate.
Gender theories add other elements. Although they have not been
accepted unanimously in the psychoanalytic field, authors such as
Stoller (1968)—with studies on transsexualism—have chosen different
aspects of these issues. Sex–gender polarity (Rubin, 1975) is based on
the disassembly of sexed anatomy from cultural determinations sup-
porting gender identity. In this way, gender became a cultural construc-
tion. However, there is no single theory on gender, and the role of sexed
anatomy remains a point of dispute. Furthermore, for authors such as
Butler (1993) and Laqueur (1990), the body is not pure anatomy, not
“natural” or previous to determinations of cultural norms, but rather
part of them. In this line, Butler argues in favour of the performative
character of gender.
In the sociological aspect, Bourdieu (2001) contributes interesting
elements to analyse the role of the body in relation to gender differ-
ence. In his ethnographic studies on the tribes of Kabyle, he describes
body postures of women as indicators of submission and points out
that assimilation of domination is inscribed in bodies (postures, disci-
plines, submission, and emotions). He says: “A relation of domination
is legitimised by inscribing it in a biological nature that is itself a natu-
ralised social construction.” (p. 37) He gives this naturalisation process
the term “historical work of de-historisation”. In this way, we see that
the character of otherness for women, in this case in the order of a sub-
missive other, may be inscribed in bodies and thereby naturalised.
How is this inscription produced in the construction of subjec-
tivity? In this regard, we need to emphasise that the mother/child
relation inevitably involves preverbal transmission, contacts, and
vibrations, which condition and mark bodies and assign meanings to
sexual difference. At the same time, we cannot ignore what the body, its
biology and drives, proposes from the very moment of birth in relation
to gender difference.
Difference marks the body and the body marks the difference, in
constant recursiveness. This assertion implies inclusion of the role of
accepted discourse. In this way, body–difference–discourse structure
each other in the manner of complemental series.
Psychoanalytic studies in recent years contribute elements to the
debate on sexual difference and on meanings of masculine–feminine
dualism. A significant study questions the Oedipus myth as the expla-
nation of psychosexual dynamics in girls, proposing the alternative
myth of Persephone (Kulish & Holtzman, 2010).
The concept of generative identity by Raphael-Leff (2010) presents
an explanatory model based on post-oedipal psychic structure of the
self as a potential (pro)creator. Her proposal tends to find other paths
for sublimation processes in women.
Abelin Sas-Rose (2010) maintains that feminine masochism is neither
innate nor a vicissitude of the drives inherent to women but rather a
solution for infantile object relations reproduced in adulthood.
In these debates, the role and place of the masculine was almost
always unquestioned. In recent decades this place was studied explic-
itly in analyses of masculinity and its problems, many hidden behind
cultural norms of masculinity involving denial of their conflicts and
ill-being (Bleichmar, 2006).
Throughout, Freud’s proposals on bisexuality and those of Winnicott
on primary femininity in both men and women were never abandoned.
In this line, Bokanowski (2010) reiterates the need to work on the femi-
nine dimension and bisexuality in men as well as to listen in transfer-
ence to the bisexuality of both members of the analytic couple as a way
to avoid bedrock.
With respect to theories on sexual difference, a strong tendency per-
sists in placing enigma in the feminine, ignoring the performative role
of accepted cultures. In this way, the feminine is cathected with catego-
ries of lack and otherness, disregarding that this notion is generated in
the (masculine) subject of knowledge.
These controversies are inscribed in a wider debate on proposals
of gender theories. Gender theories were developed in the context of
the Anglo Saxon culture whereas in French culture theories on sexual
difference predominated. Braidotti (2004) points out limits to gender
P O S T- F R E U D I A N A N D C O N T E M P O R A RY C O N T R OV E R S I E S 61
theories, in the light of post-gender and post-human conceptions. The

reference to post-gender positions refers to decentring away from classi-
cal masculine and feminine genders, as occurs in “queer” theories. The
term post-human, on the other hand, emphasises the hyper-presence of
artificially reconstructed bodies following the impact, announced sev-
eral decades ago, of technological developments and cyber-culture on
the construction of subjectivity. The proposal of Haraway (1984) that
“we are all cyborgs” alludes to the constitution of a hybrid between the
human and the machine.
However, equating problems of the masculine and the feminine, as
occurs in some theoretical derivations, may lead us to ignore specific
issues in the field of the feminine. Other theories accentuate qualities
and characteristics of the sexual plane that are specifically feminine
(Irigaray, 1985).
We are observing unfinished debates that should not be closed
prematurely.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Otherness in the field of sexual difference
A
s we said, the classical concept of sexual difference is questioned
from different angles. On the one hand, from new theoretical
and experiential positions in relation to women and the femi-
nine which undoubtedly exert a strong effect on the field of the mas-
culine. On the other hand, from ever more visible sexual and gender
diversities manifest in contemporary cultures.
In this framework, we consider some implications of the concept of
otherness in relation to this questioning.
To begin, we need to point out that the feminine and women are dif-
ferent categories although they also maintain necessary relations. We
also need to work on these inevitably ambiguous relations. The same
holds for the masculine and men.
Again, we need to distinguish between the feminine, female sexu-
ality, femininity, and women, as well as between the masculine, male
sexuality, masculinity, and men. This task makes analysis of the field of
sexual and gender difference more complex.
First, the feminine and the masculine are dualistic categories in a
binary polarity, principles strongly inserted into culture, as are yin and
yang or sun and moon. Second, sexuality both feminine and mascu-
line is implicated in the field of desire and the drive. Femininity and
63
masculinity refer to codes, qualities, and norms expressed in identities

and identifications labelled feminine or masculine. To examine these
categories we need to take into account not only inevitable relations of
concordance but also antagonisms that form the complexity of defining
and categorising identities and the construction of subjectivity.
We also need to bear in mind that fixation of the feminine and
woman to the condition of otherness in relation to a masculine sub-
ject has strong implications in the psychoanalytic field. This influence
impinges not only on the theoretical and epistemic levels but also on
clinical practice, and may become part of the psychoanalyst’s theoreti-
cal position, whether explicit or implicit.
In the same way, sexual and gender migrations are also placed in the
category of otherness.
Structuring of the subject in the context of social life has been dis-
cussed from many different angles. This issue was broached by diverse
disciplines: philosophy, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and psy-
choanalysis. In this context, Todorov points out (1995) that it is neces-
sary to speak not only as we commonly do, in terms of man’s place in
society, but also the other way around: the place of society in man.
Precisely, one of the great debates in the psychoanalytic field focused
on the following option: whether human beings are constituted funda-
mentally on the basis of their drive life in function of their internal world
or whether processes of construction of subjectivity inevitably include
the participation of an other that is vital for their psychic structuring.
This issue has been taken up from different vantage points. In Freud’s
works we find diverse concepts related to the category of otherness: the
fellow human being, as well as the cultural domain and others. We also
recall object relations theory (Klein, 1945).
In this frame, we necessarily point out that the object is always an
other vis-à-vis the ego and the subject. However, there are always dif-
ferences between the concept of object and that of otherness in psy-
choanalysis. The object has an indispensable relation to the ego and the
subject: it is bonded to them and would be unthinkable without a rela-
tion to them. In contrast, the other, in its most radical version, is totally
foreign to the ego and the subject: its strangeness is foundational of
subjectivity (Levinas, 1987).
The transitional space (Winnicott, 1959) is an original proposal in
which the object acquires a special category: it is and also is not an other,
but rather an intermediate object that in itself is an other object. The
OT H E R N E S S I N T H E F I E L D O F S E X U A L D I F F E R E N C E 65
concept of analytic field (Baranger & Baranger, 2008) also contributes

the notion of an other that is neither the analyst nor the analysand but
the basic shared unconscious fantasy. Again, the notion of an intermedi-
ate space, an other. The objectifying function (Green, 2005) alludes to an
other-object delineated on the basis of the drives; by categorising it as
the product of a function, it is possible to conceive it in movement and
in ongoing construction. For Laplanche (2015), a maternal other deline-
ates the trajectories of the drives, a hypothesis that follows an impor-
tant Freudian line of thought in connection with development of the
concept of the pre-oedipal and the eroticising function of the maternal
other. Other authors have accentuated the role of the other in the link
fabric (Berenstein, 2004; Puget, 1995).
The concepts of intersubjectivity and transsubjectivity (Ogden,
1994; Renik, 1996) emerge from the proposal of viewing the analytic
relation as constituted by a dyad, eventually involving an analytic
third party (Ogden, 1994), in opposition to classical conceptions in
which the analyst was a neutral and impartial observer reflecting only
the patient’s transference. This contribution implies that the analyst is
no longer a mirror-other of the patient’s transference nor an impartial
and neutral observer but rather a participant-other with its own trans-
ference, countertransference, and resistance. However, these propos-
als have encountered debate regarding analyst-patient symmetry, on
occasions in reference to work with countertransference “confessions”
by the analyst to the patient. We also point out that the concept of
intersubjectivity existed previously and was conceived from a differ-
ent perspective that disagrees with establishing symmetry in the ana-
lytic relation.
We may also mention the proposal of categories of imaginary other
and symbolic Other (Lacan, 1958a, 1977), in the context of the three reg-
isters with which this author analyses psychic phenomena. The sym-
bolic Other refers to the universe of culture, to the “symbolic Father”,
prohibition and the law; the imaginary other alludes to the mirror stage
(Lacan, 1966), and is categorised in the Lacanian proposal in relation to
the mother or any other mirror relation. Later, Lacan adds the register
of the real as what remains outside the symbolic.
As we said, the issue of otherness is found in the works of Laplanche
(1988). The generalised seduction theory is upheld when the intrusion of
the adult’s unconscious into the child’s psyche in the original situation
is taken into account. We recall the concept of the enigmatic signifier
emitted by the other and, in this frame, the concept of the primacy of
the other.
In her thinking, Kristeva points out (1991) that the stranger inhabits
us: it is the hidden face of our identity. It emerges when one’s own dif-
ference becomes conscious and culminates when we all recognise our-
selves as strangers.
Among different proposals on otherness, meanings diverge, some-
times significantly, but they all manifest the need to include the concept
of otherness both for study of construction of sexed subjectivity and
critical analysis of the concept of sexual difference as well as for clinical
practice.
In other words, we find at this time a broad spectrum of psychoana-
lytic publications that, from different perspectives, maintain that par-
ticipation of an other is indispensable for the advent of a subject and for
clinical practice. The role of the other and others should be approached
as a necessary condition for surpassing boundaries of narcissism and
for recognising something exterior to the subject in its determining
function for construction of subjectivity. In this line of thinking, it has
an eminently structural role.
However, many of these proposals discuss the intersubjective and
otherness in a neutral sense without considering their relation to sexual
difference; that is to say, they refer to a neutral or asexual, imaginary
and/or symbolic other. Notwithstanding, whenever sexual difference
is discussed in the psychoanalytic field, the concept of otherness inevi-
tably emerges and with notable frequency has been considered equiva-
lent to the feminine and woman.
We add that placement in the field of otherness includes all subjec-
tivities that diverge from heterosexual resolution. In this sense, the con-
cept of otherness acquires other meanings that we also need to analyse.
Continuing in this line, it becomes necessary to distinguish the
polysemy of the concept of otherness and its complexity: from the
symbolic register to the imaginary and from the imaginary to clinical
practice; from the other as a subject to the objectified other, depreci-
ated or excluded. In this frame, we underscore that understanding
of a radical exteriority of the other opens the possibility to think both
of the other in oneself and also the other as a subject. These elements
are indispensable for rethinking the category of sexual difference
and masculine–feminine polarity. Recognition of otherness hugely tran-
scends its mistaken equation with the feminine.
PART II
ITINERANT SEXUALITIES
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sexual and gender migrations
T
oday’s cultures are questioned by what we could refer to as
“changing presentations of sexuality and genders”. Manifested
as a dilemma in regard to the classical notion of sexual differ-
ence, we consider these presentations a challenge calling for examina-
tion by psychoanalysis.
We find ourselves before an opportunity to penetrate ambiguous
areas of sexuality, as Freud did (1905d) in Three Essays on the Theory of
Sexuality when he recognised and established the role of infantile sexual-
ity and separated homosexuality from the domain of the “degeneracies”.
In everyday life, in mass media, in social networks, we find sexual
and gender mixtures and fusions, multiple journeys through desire,
changing sexual identities, and androgynous presentations, which
permeate discourses and practices of contemporary cultures and sub-
cultures, principally in Western societies.
Some of these phenomena are related to what we could term
“nomadic sexualities” in which the exercise of sexuality takes place
outside accepted heterosexual norms. The notion of migrant sexualities
expresses metaphorically these displacements or nomadism; fluxes and
movements of the itineraries of desire beyond prescribed heterosexual
norms.
69
Others relate to issues of gender, not only transsexualism as the

classical presentation, but also what is now termed transgender, that
is to say, non-acceptance of normatively accepted gender assignments
and codes. It expresses unconscious and conscious wishes to surpass
classical determinations of masculine and feminine genders.
We differentiate these two groups for the purpose of analysis but
emphasise that the fields of sexuality and gender are always related by
either concordance or discordance.
Although they are usually termed sexual diversities or queer presen-
tations, or else transsexualities in the broad sense (Baudrillard, 1993), we
emphasise that important differences separate them since they respond
to different psychic mechanisms. It is a question of drawing the neces-
sary distinctions between, for example, homosexualities, transvestisms,
and transsexualism, as well as those found inside each of these catego-
ries (Safouan, 1980; Ambrosio, 2009; Argentieri, 2009; Glocer Fiorini &
Vainer, 2003b). We are viewing such a broad spectrum of diverse pres-
entations that it is impossible to refer to a homosexuality, a transvestism
or a transsexualism. Also, some involve choice of sexual object and oth-
ers, gender identity and its identification bases (“I am a man”, “I am a
woman”, or “I am not obliged to choose”) (Glocer Fiorini, 2010b).
We give these experiences the term “presentations” since their
aspect as visual scenifications centred on the image they form is often
accentuated.
This field includes different types of sexual and gender diversities.
These diverse presentations may be permanent or occasional transves-
tism, transsexualism, many kinds of homosexuality, active bisexuality,
cross-dressing, everything termed queer sexuality in general. We take
into account: first, that whereas many of these presentations are strongly
impregnated with feminine identifications, others strongly cathect clas-
sical representations of masculinity. Second, these are ways to exercise
sexuality different from those of the ideal figure of the heterosexual cou-
ple, and that some combinatories are decentred from the two genders
classically considered. We also need to bear in mind that we observe
some of these presentations in the varied field of heterosexualities.
These presentations are usually labelled new sexualities. However,
we know that since ancient times other types of exercise of sexuality
have existed. We need only recall that the Greeks valued homosexual
relations much more highly than heterosexual relations, whose aim
was basically procreation. McDougall (1991) refers to “neosexualities”
S E X U A L A N D G E N D E R M I G R AT I O N S 71
as inventions or new versions of human sexuality, not however in the

sense that they are anything new but instead highlighting the inven-
tive and even theatrical aspects that differentiate them from classical
heterosexuality.
We may wonder whether they constitute, as some authors think,
an attack on an eternal symbolic order or on a specific symbolic order,
or whether they are movements of culture in a broad sense tending to
question certain established norms.
This is an open debate referring to experiences in the process of being
analysed. They may also be approached by different disciplines that do
not necessarily coincide entirely with each other. There are social and
cultural aspects as well as psychic mechanisms and clinical aspects to
be clarified and debated, without forgetting that these are at the same
time singular phenomena particular to each subject. Our idea is to leave
these debates open and to resist giving final answers to the issue but
instead to sustain questions presented or to open new questions.
Although these presentations are not new, we must consider that they
are becoming more visible in novel contexts such as biotechnologies
for sex change and assisted fertilisation, as well as the different ways of
family organisation observed in contemporary cultures. They show us
the many itineraries of desire and the multiplicity of identifications—
both of these in reference to sexed positions—and question axioms
considered eternal and unmoveable in a manner that encourages dis-
cussion of theories and metatheories, prejudices and ideologies in the
psychoanalytic field.
In these discussions, an initial question emerges: what is put
into play by these presentations? First, they lead us to rethink the
concept of sexual difference as a condition of access to a symbolic
universe, as well as the associated notion of castration on all its lev-
els. Second, they demand explanations regarding the meanings of
binary masculine–feminine polarity and its uncertainties. Third, by
decentring the two classical genders of masculine and feminine, they
question the ideal figure of the heterosexual couple and the classical
nuclear family.
Problems proposed
These presentations induce us to rethink the Oedipus complex and its
classical resolution.
They question the phallic category in connection with theories that

posit its ahistorical, structural, universal validity. This is a reference to
all its definitions including the phallus as the master signifier, signifier
of desire (Lacan, 1958b).
They open questions regarding “the law” or “laws of the Father”
as the condition for resolution of the Oedipus–castration complex. Its
patriarchal roots blur its third party, symbolic function and identify it with
the father of the nuclear family, given that it responds to an androcen-
tric order.
Finally, they lead us to reconsider the classical notion of the desire for
a child based on an initial, foundational lack in the woman.
The complex network of connections between these issues implies
that when we analyse one of them, the rest come into play as well. It is
a multiplier of questions that mobilises anxieties and forces us to relin-
quish a comfortable position with respect to knowledge.
Of all the points mentioned, we focus in this chapter on the uncer-
tainty of meanings attributed to masculine–feminine dualism organ-
ised as a binary polarity and its consequences in relation to the notion
Masculine–feminine binary polarity

Analysis of masculine–feminine polarity alludes not only to theoreti-
cal debate but also its strong consequences in clinical work, standing
at the crossroads between the interdisciplinary and intradisciplinary
domains.
First, we highlight the coexistence of contradictory and heterogeneous
discourses in current cultures regarding masculine–feminine polarity.
We mentioned that modernity accentuated a strict and clear-cut division
between the masculine and the feminine, whereas what is termed post-
modernity or late modernity, expressed in some contemporary cultures
and sub-cultures, presents a plurality and multiplicity of subjectivities
and exercise of sexuality. These two contradictory discourses cohabit in
today’s cultures. That is to say, masculine–feminine binarism coexists in
tension with transsexualities and transgenders in general.
Our proposal is to emphasise that this coexistence and its antago-
nisms are also observed in the psyche of each subject. That is to say, there
are no fixed trajectories or significations in the processes of construction
of sexed subjectivity. In brief, we find diverse aspects that evidence the
plurality of masculine and feminine concepts.
We identify different planes on which to analyse processes of

construction of subjectivity: masculine–feminine polarity is a cultural
principle to which significations are assigned, such as yin and yang.
This determination is also based on nature, although we also bear in
mind that nothing purely natural exists in anything connected to the
human order and that nature is always interpreted in the sphere of
culture.
Up to this point we are dealing with clear dualisms. However, in
these processes of construction of subjectivity we also find multiplicities
and ambiguities following a deceptively simple beginning. Assignment
of gender at birth refers to a clear dualism which is an unavoidable
requirement of cultural legalities even today: it is either a boy or a girl,
except certain cases (intersexes) now included in some legislations, and
growing complexities that depend on the parents’ wishes.
However, other determinations involved often contradict this initial
polarity.
First, identifications are plural, some related to gender identity; mas-
culine and feminine are no longer as clearly defined. Here we include
the concept of “identification project” of Castoriadis-Aulagnier (2001)
to underscore the indispensable role of the parents’ desires, wishes and
expectations concerning the desired gender identity, which sometimes
does not agree with anatomy.
Second, bisexual fantasies inherent to every subject also render
initial gender assignment more complex.
Third, gender roles are not fixed since codes and stereotypes change
with the times in regard to masculinity and femininity, intercrossing
with each subject’s many desires and fantasies.
Fourth, variations in object choice: homo or heterosexual and their
various ways to coexist in some cases. Assuming a masculine or femi-
nine identity does not directly determine a concordant object choice. In
relation to object choice, we recall that Freud maintained that hetero-
sexuality itself is not an obvious position about which nature may have
the last word.
Dualisms and multiplicities: two logics coexisting not only

in culture but also in each subject
In Freud’s article The Psychogenesis of a Case of Female Homosexuality
(1920a), he diverges from dualistic proposals and instead emphasises
that somatic sexual features may not coincide with psychical sexual
features (masculinity and femininity) or with type of object choice,

homo or heterosexual. He maintained that an anatomically masculine
and highly virile man may nonetheless choose a homosexual object, and
mentioned other variants. That is to say, we may deduce that there is
no harmonious unity in construction of subjectivity, discordance being
inherent to these processes. This is what makes them complex.
In this line, Freud argued strongly against thinking about feminin-
ity and masculinity as rigid or mutually exclusive compartments given
the uncertainty of these categories. He extended this position to active-
passive polarity in the face of attempts to consider it equivalent to
masculine–feminine polarity.
Now then, how do we proceed with our inquiry given that identi-
fications and object choice may not coincide harmoniously with each
other and even may not coincide with the sexed body?
In our opinion, explanations grounded on binary logic are insuffi-
cient and themselves include contradictions: the field of desire, due to
its multiplicity, cannot be limited to dualistic logic; identifications are
always plural and contradictory; gender identities may not coincide
with the anatomical body, as in transsexualism; gender roles are ener-
getically questioned, especially in the Western world; and object choice
is not a natural fact.
On all these points, masculine–feminine polarity is far from harmo-
nious. It is a dilemma that questions strict binary thought, since this
leads to irreparable aporia unless they are included in more encompass-
ing, complex systems.
Contemporary polemics
These problems generate a variety of debates regarding sexual and gen-
der difference in psychoanalytic and interdisciplinary fields:
• Objections to the establishment of a heterosexual norm excluding

other subjectivities and forms of sexuality (Butler, 1990).
• Debates concerning the role of bodies, their desiring potential
(Deleuze, 1995), and the marks of discourse they carry.
• Discussion of the performative role in relation to gender (Butler,
1993).
• Questions regarding the power of biotechnology to radically change
sexed bodies, as in the case of transsexualism (Argentieri, 2009).
• Controversies focused on assisted fertilisation and adoption by

non-conventional couples in the perspective of heterosexuality. It is
imperative to analyse the issue of identifications in adopted or bio-
logical children brought up in these family structures, as well as to
rethink the meanings of maternal and paternal functions.
• Especially, the concept of desire for a child comes into play in relation
to these controversies (Glocer Fiorini, 2001a, 2001b, 2007a).
In this context, it becomes necessary to consider whether we are in the

midst of a sociocultural crisis in which desire begins to dissolve and
with it, a certain symbolic order is falling, or whether we are addressing
a search for different ways to exercise sexuality.
The complex problem undoubtedly involved opens two possible
options: one is to think about something strange and different in func-
tion of a theory presented as correct, and the other is to analyse whether
it is possible to rethink certain aspects of this theory. Our hypothesis
develops in line with the latter option.
In view of these issues, with their ambiguous spaces of desire and
sexual identity, we situate our proposal in a critical position open to
debate. In this direction, we take some available paths of discussion.
Gender difference—sexual difference

First, we take up Laplanche’s proposal (1988), with some modifica-
tions, which differentiates gender difference from sexual difference.
Laplanche observes diversity of anatomical attributes and relative gen-
der difference: two genders organised according to the logic of oppo-
sites when they are marked by two attributes established culturally as
“insignias”. He (Laplanche) also observed absolute difference: when
only one attribute is present, one insignia that, according to the logic of
contradiction, functions in the presence–absence register. In the latter
case the contradiction in question is phallic–castrated polarity that in
turn refers to other polarities such as presence–absence and masculine–
feminine, in a series of slips that we consider need to be deconstructed.
Equalising categories such as phallic–presence–masculine or castrated–
absence–feminine lead to important deviations in understanding the
construction of subjectivity and its effects on clinical work.
Returning to Laplanche, the two logics he proposes, of opposites and
of contradiction, enable us to distinguish between gender and sexual
difference. They also prepare us to think about gender assigned at birth,

masculine or feminine, as well as gender roles prescribed by culture
through the maternal and paternal unconscious and preconscious and
other cultural expressions. This prescription is previous to children’s
access to sexual difference and their interpretations from the perspec-
tive of infantile sexual theories.
This means that knowledge of gender difference precedes access to sexual
difference. In these terms, gender is also part of processes of construction
of subjectivity and part of the psychoanalytic field in the form of identi-
fication ideals on the ideal ego–ego ideal axis, an axis that is imaginary
and yet possesses great symbolic effectiveness.
Between gender difference and sexual difference relations are com-
plex and often contradictory in a context of multiple temporalities. The
question regarding eventual vicissitudes of these logics in the sphere
of construction of subjectivity is open, as is also the delimitation of the
question regarding adult sexual theories and their influence on the con-
struction of theories in general.
We definitely reconfirm our position that the concept of differ-
ence is polysemic. Beginning with sexual difference as understood by
psychoanalysis (for example, the phallic–castrated polarity of Freudian
infantile sexual theories, which respond to a logic whose genealogy
we need to analyse and is not pure anatomical difference but rather an
interpretation of it), we may include other planes: gender difference,
difference in language as a signifying slip, difference in accepted dis-
courses, Heideggerian difference as distinction, “différance” (Derrida,
1987), difference as dynamic repetition (Deleuze, 1994), the “différend”
(Lyotard, 1988), difference as recognition of otherness, among other var-
iants. As seen by other theoretical frames, other differences are added:
ethnic, racial, religious, and cultural. This list expands the way to think
about access to difference in each subject (cf., Chapter Sixteen).
Binary thinking and complexity

In view of the new forms of subjectivities as well as ambiguities and
uncertainties marking subjective production, we consider it necessary
to overcome binary logic and masculine–feminine polarity (Lévesque,
2002) which Freud (1933a), in one line of his work also argued against
maintaining. In this regard, we consider the usefulness of working with
the paradigm of complexity that we have applied previously (Glocer
Fiorini, 1994, 1998). We used it to work on binary logic and the feminine
and now, in this work on sexual difference, on binary thinking and sex-
ual diversities.
Our proposal, as we said, is to think about these problems with other
epistemological grounding, other logics with greater precision. This
path does not eliminate dualisms, already included in language, but
rather includes them within hyper-complex organisations.
In the line we are developing, which we expand in the final chap-
ter, we do not work with a sum of variables; neither do we attempt to
resolve them dialectically or to unify them. It is a matter of working
with heterogeneous elements that do not always come to a harmonious
synthesis; searching for concordances and possible articulations, but
also opening the way to maintain heterogeneous variables in tension
without expecting eventual resolution.
Therefore, if we think about the production of subjectivity in terms of
possibly heterogeneous, intersecting sets, we need to consider at least
one tripartite conception (Glocer Fiorini, 2001a):
• The anatomical heterogeneity of sexed bodies, which is always signi-

fied (there is no pure nature in anything human; in the human level,
nature is no longer natural).
• The plurality of identifications (in relation to the identification pro-
ject and the parents’ desire, including gender identity and its possi-
ble ambiguities).
• Sexuality and unconscious desire, which always act in excess and go
beyond what is already constituted. For this reason, object choice is
always contingent, but never arbitrary.
At the intersection of these sets we observe phenomena of produc-

tion of subjectivity in which heterogeneous logics coexist, in tension.
This produces uncertainties and indeterminations in sexuality and the
masculine–feminine polarity and also in the complex relation between
biological sex, gender, identifications, and psychosexuality.
None of the variables mentioned is beyond cultural norms assign-
ing significations to each of these planes and may consequently be his-
toricised. This occurs in a context of intricate individual, familial, and
cultural determinations.
Access to a symbolic universe in a context of social bonds depends
on multiple operations of symbolic thirdness that include the other
and others and transcends narcissistic enclosure. The degree of conflict

in each subject depends on this inclusion. These movements are sup-
ported by different planes of difference, singular to each individual.
Therefore, between the Oedipus and what is beyond the Oedipus,
between sexuality, sex, and gender, between the multiplicity of iden-
tifications, between instituted norms and what exceeds them, at these
intersections, subjectivity is constituted in collision, in a context of inces-
santly ongoing processes contrary to any substantial position regarding
the subject.
In this frame, we may say that changing presentations of sexuality
are not necessarily an attack on any given symbolic ordering. In the
view of Balandier (1988), order and disorder alternate and coexist in
culture. They may therefore also represent moments of disorder leading
to new symbolic orders.
CHAPTER NINE
Homosexualities
H
omosexualities, presentations forcefully installed in accepted
discourses, are a source of controversy in a variety of disci-
plines. In contemporary societies they question the category
of sexual difference as an inevitable condition of symbolic insertion in
a context of social bonds. Interrelations between cultural norms, pro-
hibitions, and discourses cannot be ignored, no matter how they are
interpreted. To these factors we add the increasingly frequent constitu-
tion of families with parents of the same sex and the possibility not only
to adopt but also to engender children by means of assisted fertilisa-
tion. This reality also obliges us to include issues such as parentality in
homosexual couples, our ways of thinking about paternal and mater-
nal functions, our understanding of the problem of identifications and
object choice in children raised in these families, and other topics.
This scenario leads to a number of changes in discourse regarding
homosexuality, at least in the Western world or more accurately, in
certain sectors of the Western world. However, we also point out that
these changes coexist with other discourses supporting a strict posi-
tion of homosexuality as a perversion. This diversity creates an area
of complex debate in which we find on the one hand cultural limits,
79
norms, and barriers, and on the other hand, psychoanalytic categories

regarding the concept of homosexuality and perversion, also now being
debated in the psychoanalytic field. These controversies emerge at times
of social and cultural changes, some inherent to a certain epoch, others
with long-term perspectives and open-ended implications.
This state of the subject brings up an initial question: what effects
do the discourses in force produce on our theory and clinical practice,
including the psychoanalyst and the person who consults? However,
this inquiry also refers us to another question: must psychoanalysis
accept without criticism changes produced in discourses and social
order and adapt to them? These two questions present in the psycho-
analytic field motivate confrontation. We also know that socio-political
and religious motivations may exert pressure in one direction or another
on theories in the balance regarding homosexuality and perversion. As
we said, we consider this problem part of an even broader debate as
to whether psychoanalysis should be considered a closed or an open
system. Further, if considered an open system that admits inclusion of
other logics and models of thought as in our proposal, it then becomes
necessary to determine with which paradigm it is possible to work on
areas of intersection between different variables.
In our opinion, changes in accepted discourses concerning increased
acceptance of homosexuality as well as homosexual couples and fami-
lies may function as necessary interpellation for us to rethink certain
psychoanalytic categories.
Consequently, we focus on our chosen theme in a direction that
enables us to open productive debate and requires confrontation. This
means that we are more interested in outlining emergent problems and
questions than in formulating answers to close the issues involved.
The listening of analysts is not divorced from their explicit and
implicit theories, ideologies, pre-concepts, and prejudices. In the case
of homosexuality this impregnation is obvious. Which theories do they
“want” or are they “able” to access? Is there one single homosexuality
or are there several? May we speak in terms of one psychical mecha-
nism or of different determinations that may lead to the choice of an
object of the same sex? Is homosexuality equivalent to perversion? And
further, what do we mean by perversion?
Also, how do we explain desire for a child in homosexual couples?
And how do sexed identifications play out in the children raised in
these families? (Glocer Fiorini, 2001b, 2007b).
HOMOSEXUALITIES 81
One or various homosexualities?

Our position in relation to this subject undoubtedly perceives
fundamental implications in clinical practice. A review of Freud’s works
reveals no singular theory on homosexuality.
In Three Essays on Sexual Theory, Freud (1905d) separated what he
referred to as the inversion of sexual object choice in homosexuality
from the change of the drive aim observed in other clinical presentations,
categorised as perversions (sadomasochism, exhibitionism-voyeurism,
fetishism, and others).
In Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood (1910c), Freud pre-
sented an explanatory theory on male homosexuality centred on exces-
sive attachment to the mother leading to identification with her and
choice of an object of the same sex, just as his mother chose him. He
accentuated that absence or weakness of the father is an essential part of
this whole. In this article he further explained that the boy’s confronta-
tion with his mother’s “castration” might lead him to persistent homo-
sexuality and eventual impossibility to choose a heterosexual object.
This explanation differs from another in which he maintains that
homosexuality is the result of arrested development between narcis-
sism and object love, and that it is a narcissistic object choice. In this
case he places the accent on the developmental factor. Although this
could be considered a strong point, it is just as true that heterosexuality
may also present strikingly narcissistic object choices often impossible
to mobilise.
Freud (1922b) proposes yet another mechanism in Some Neurotic
Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia and Homosexuality. Here he prefers
an option that is reactive transformation of fraternal rivalry and hate
into love, dominated by homosexual object choice when it is neither
sublimated nor converted into tender love. He mentions that this
explanation is true for certain types of homosexuality that are neither
lasting nor absolute. He also uses this approach to explain group
phenomena (1921c).
He adds that the mechanism of “stepping aside” may occur between
siblings or between father and son, in which case heterosexuality is con-
ceded to the rival.
Some of these propositions are not mutually exclusive whereas
others seem to be genuinely different explanations of homosexuality,
thereby enabling us to consider a number of mechanisms involved.
We may also recall that Freud (1911c) himself opens the inquiry even
further when he describes the homosexual position in a psychotic clini-
cal picture such as Schreber’s.
In regard to female homosexuality, in The Psychogenesis of a Case of
Female Homosexuality (1920a) Freud points out that the young woman
had reached the positive Oedipus complex and that in view of her
deception after her father made her mother pregnant, just when the
young woman wished to get a child from him, in line with the Freudian
female Oedipus, she regresses to “former” positions and throws herself
into homosexuality as revenge on her father. In this case, heterosexual-
ity has been repressed.
We underscore that several Anglo Saxon authors emphasise pre-
oedipal fixations, underscoring aggressive and anal-sadistic compo-
nents in certain types of homosexuality (Kernberg, 1995).
On the other hand, Lacan (1958a) explains male and female homo-
sexuality in terms of the subject’s position in relation to the phallus as
signifier of desire, depending on the manner of resolutions of the three
stages of the Lacanian Oedipus.
Both positions are sustained by other psychoanalysts in various
regions.
It is not our intention to exhaust the literature on this subject but
instead to highlight that there is no unitary, harmonious explanation
of the mechanism of same-sex object choice by any subject, man, or
woman.
However, we do know that permanent as well as occasional homo-
sexualities exist—in adolescence and other circumstances. Some coexist
with heterosexual object choices. We also know that this type of object
choice may not necessarily fit into any precise clinical condition or
may be present equally in the neuroses, perversions, non-neurotic
pathologies, and psychoses. This lack of unification is also observed in
heterosexuality.
To this we add Freud’s reflections on sublimated homosexuality,
different from repressed homosexuality, described in Leonardo Da Vinci
and a Memory of his Childhood (1910c).
These reflections, I believe, point to the need to preserve this variety
of determinations—some of them coexisting—with the aim of avoiding
any monolithic explanation of homosexuality and its obvious conse-
quences in clinical practice. That is to say, the theory available to each
HOMOSEXUALITIES 83
psychoanalyst may either promote or obstruct listening in each case in

particular.
In this regard, we may remark that not only is there no all-inclusive
explanation but also that when we say “homosexuality” we may be say-
ing very little. In the same way, the term “heterosexuality” means very
little unless we refer to desires, fantasies, and identifications involved,
which may not have anything to do with heterosexuality and may even
be just the opposite.
Freud (1920a) determined that the young homosexual woman was
not neurotic and that he did not consider the problem she presented
pathological. In this line, he underscored that her homosexuality was
ego-syntonic with the young woman’s desires, and that consequently
he could only discard the possibility of proposing any “cure” for
her inversion, which her father had requested. All these issues of a
theoretical-clinical order, pondered by Freud over a century ago, are
sometimes omitted in favour of a perhaps more soothing unification
of “knowledge” that bypasses the complexities of object choice and its
underlying fantasies in both homosexuality and heterosexuality.
Problems
In consideration of these tendencies to think of homosexuality as a
unified entity by ignoring differences in its variants, we consider it
necessary to identify these variants and also to propose debates that
necessarily arise from this subject (Green, 2002).
But first we look at some problems emerging from proposals to con-
sider homosexuality a unified entity. Some analysts would like to unify
homosexualities by limiting them to a type of behaviour assumed and
exercised as such; in this case, we would be excluding repressed homo-
sexuality, sublimated homosexuality, and also homosexual inclinations
in heterosexual individuals. For others, this unification results from a
mechanism of disavowal of confrontation with sexual difference as pro-
posed for perversions. However, this would ignore that we also find
homosexualities in the neuroses (for example in hysteria or in obses-
sional neurosis) and in the psychoses. Therefore, they also involve other
mechanisms. We know further that this disavowal of difference may
occur in heterosexual subjects with a strong narcissistic trend. To this
we add that in some occasional homosexualities, not only is the place
of disavowal unclear, but they also do not match any given clinical
condition.
Hence, if the mechanism of disavowal of sexual difference is
reserved for perversions, we find that not all homosexuality responds
to the spectrum of perversions and also that some heterosexualities do
fit this category.
This analysis brings us back to our initial question: is homosexuality
equivalent to perversion? First we need to differentiate perversion from
perversity. Perversity refers to aggressive, malignant, destructive acts
whose objective is annihilation of the other. It is the pure type of evil of
unbound death drive.
Second, what we have described for homosexualities could be
applied to perversions in general. It is a concept intimately linked to
norms expressed in standing discourses and is consequently hotly
debated due to its connotations. We may place all notions of perversion
at the intersection between drives and desires in one direction and in the
other, limits, prohibitions, and barriers proposed by accepted discourse
and cultural laws. These limits may vary. Also, perversion is not univo-
cal. It is not the same to refer to fetishism that clearly involves castration
anxiety and disavowal of sexual difference as to refer to paedophilia,
which also includes the difference between generations or, to some
forms of sadomasochism that result in the annihilation of the other.
Therefore, as we said, is it enough to state that homosexuality is
merely behaviour, or alternatively, do we need to analyse psychical
mechanisms involved? In the first case, inclusion only of homosexual
practices would be extremely descriptive and inadequate for analysis
of the issue from a psychoanalytic point of view. In the second case, is
disavowal of sexual difference a plausible explanation for all variants
of homosexuality? We should take into account that this disavowal may
also exist in several forms of heterosexuality.
Now then, if we refer to one of the types of homosexuality, which is
homosexuality as perversion, we should refer to the union of a mecha-
nism (disavowal of sexual difference) and behaviour (obligatory and
compulsive, the only form of sexual pleasure). If these two conditions
are not found together, we enter more complex areas that suggest a cer-
tain ambiguity. Moreover, we need to mention that many authors speak
of perversion only if the partner’s integrity is also involved.
Further, how do we make the central position of the Oedipus and
castration complexes in Freud and in most French authors compatible
HOMOSEXUALITIES 85
with developments of several Anglo Saxon psychoanalysts regarding

predominance of the pre-oedipal, aggression and anal-sadistic
characteristics in perversion and in certain forms of homosexuality?
We also wish to mention developments on the theory of psychical
bisexuality, which seemed to have fallen by the wayside (Green, 1982;
Bokanowski, 2010).
The points above indicate that homosexuality and perversion cannot
automatically be considered equivalent. There is no single homosexu-
ality and not all homosexualities are perversions. This affects clinical
practice and also the psychoanalyst’s position, either regarding even-
tual expectations of “undoing” this object choice or interpretations of
desire for a child in homosexual couples. No less important is the issue
of vicissitudes of identifications and object choice in children raised by
these couples, whether adopted or gestated by assisted fertilisation.
Finally, given the plurality of homosexual presentations, it would be
difficult to attribute them to any single mechanism. We even need to
determine, case by case, which mechanism or coexisting mechanisms
may be at work. Advancing a bit further, we also consider it insuffi-
cient to maintain that homosexualities may be categorised as perverse,
psychotic, or neurotic. In our view, we must necessarily singularise and
think about the way variables are at play.
Freud observed in 1910c (p. 100): “What is for practical reasons
called homosexuality may arise from a whole variety of psychosexual
inhibitory processes; the particular process we have singled out is
perhaps only one among many, and is perhaps related to only one type
of ‘homosexuality’.” With this passage we highlight his perspective of
taking into account different types of determinations of homosexuality,
which we may extend to all variations of sexual object choice.
We consider that this means deconstruction of the automatic equiva-
lence between homosexuality and pathology.
To summarise: our proposal is based on the importance of working
towards distinctions between diverse forms of homosexuality, empha-
sising that each kind responds to specific psychical mechanisms, and
underscoring that they result from processes of historisation singular to
each subject, thereby decentring indiscriminate equivalencies between
homosexuality and perversion, and bearing in mind that: 1) perver-
sions exist in both heterosexuality and homosexuality; 2) heterosexual-
ity is also subject to analysis of its determinations; and 3) destruction or
annihilation of the other is the main characteristic of perversion.
CHAPTER TEN
Unconventional parentalities and

subjective production
T
his chapter is dedicated to thinking about the possible impact
of sexual and gender diversities on modes of family organisa-
tion, and basically on the construction of subjectivity in children
raised by unconventional couples in terms of sexuality and gender.
We endeavour to avoid automatic responses congruent with prefixed
schemas and instead place them in a line of thinking with opening to
necessary debate.
This thinking takes place in a context that manifests growing accept-
ance and visibility of these presentations in current cultures and socie-
ties, mainly in the West. That is to say that although they have always
existed, they have now acquired greater dimension and significance.
At this time, not only homosexual couples are visible but also couples
formed by transsexuals or transvestites with heterosexual persons, as
well as other presentations of sexual and gender diversities in differ-
ent combinations. These diversities, as we said, are grouped as “queer”
sexualities, and also include people who refuse to be defined as belong-
ing to any of the two genders, masculine or feminine (transgenders).
In this frame, we observe a desire to form a family in many of these
couples. According to Roudinesco (2002), the desire of these couples to
form a family is in reality supported by the concept of family as a pillar
87
of society and culture. In her opinion they are not a threat to accepted
norms of organised society, and her position is addressed to those who
do consider it a threat. Paradoxically, this view accentuates the ideal of
the nuclear (heterosexual) family found in most cultures.
On the other hand, we also need to recognise that not all people who
do not subscribe to the heterosexual norm wish to constitute families
with children. In fact, many of them are opposed to this attempt to inte-
grate with modes and norms of Western family organisation, a posi-
tion also questioned by some sectors of heterosexuals, mainly young
people. The concept of heterosexuality undoubtedly alludes to a sexual
choice directed to persons of the opposite sex. However, subjacent pre-
conscious and unconscious phantasies, as well as the thread of desire,
may contradict this definition. That is to say that we are looking at a
heterogeneous field.
At this point we return to some questions that run through our itin-
erary: What is the concept of family handled by different theoretical
frames, considering the non-homogeneity between different cultures
and historical times? How are sexual and gender diversities interpreted
and understood in the psychoanalytic field? And fundamentally, how
do we think of the Oedipus–castration complex and sexual difference
in the light of sexual and gender diversities? In other words, what do
these presentations challenge with respect to theory and clinical work?
We renew these questions in order to rethink the way processes of
construction of sexed subjectivity are categorised in children of these
types of couple. The context of our reflections is a question: should
children raised by homosexual couples or by other kinds of family con-
stituted by unconventional couples (sexual and gender diversities) be
considered by definition abject from the system, bereft of possibilities
of symbolic insertion in a universe of social bonds? How do we think
about identifications and the path of desire if the parents are placed on
the plane of perversion or of disavowal of difference? Also, how do we
account theoretically for the fact that studies and follow-ups of children
of homosexual couples have found no significant difference compared
to children of heterosexual couples regarding either their sexuality
and object choice or other points, emotional and sublimation effects,
referring to their relational life? To think about this issue it is essential
for us to move away from Manichean moralism as well as complacent
positions that exclude critical judgement.
U N C O N V E N T I O N A L PA R E N TA L I T I E S 89
As we said, some of the categories questioned by these presentations

are:
• The concept of the heterosexual nuclear family.

• The Oedipus complex as the central myth to explain processes of
construction of sexed subjectivity and its heterosexual outcome. This
point includes the challenge to classical forms of object choice in
conformance with the norm.
• Recognition and access to sexual difference as a guarantee of access
to a symbolic universe.
• The proposal that paternal law is the metaphor and function of this
access; in this proposal there is only one law, and it cannot be dissoci-
ated from the symbolic Father.
• The notion of desire for a child as described in Freud’s works (1917c,
1933a) and obstacles to its application beyond classical maternity. By
this we are referring to the insufficiency of this concept for thinking
about desire for a child in couples responding to different sexual and
gender diversities. It is insufficient if the only referent is the symbolic
equation penis-child, intimately linked to the concept of lack in the
woman (Freud, 1917c; Glocer Fiorini, 2001b) (cf., Chapter Twelve).
We consider that the way these terms are conceptualised may lead to
different and even totally opposite conclusions. These conclusions may
affect the course of a psychoanalytic treatment and, in more general
terms, people’s lives. Of course all these conceptualisations are not
independent of discourses on difference that culture offers in different
periods of time which then materialise in diverse disciplines.
Gender theories have also analysed these issues from other angles,
contributing a necessary vision of some aspects of this topic. This means
that there is an area of intersection between psychoanalysis and gender
theories that we need to explore.
Oedipus complex, nuclear family, and sexual difference

From a legal, religious, and social point of view, the family is considered
the basic cell of social organisation, and is sometimes highly idealised.
However, we know that forms of family organisation have varied in
the Western world. The heterosexual family in ancient Greece for
reproductive purposes coexisted with strong and privileged affinities

for homosexual choice. At another time, the expanded medieval family
was quite different from the bourgeois nuclear family that followed.
We also know that today’s families present characteristics that we need
to analyse, from single parent families to assembled families and those
constituted by masculine or feminine homosexuals or with transvestite
or transsexual persons. In this context we may say in general terms that
psychoanalytic theory (or more precisely, theories) operates around the
concept of the nuclear family, certainly linked to the Oedipus myth as
the narrative that proposes to explain each subject’s access to a given
symbolic legality. The classical Oedipus complex is a replica of the
nuclear family: mother–father–child, and its functions respond to this
structure beyond the person exercising them.
In this frame, an important advance in the psychoanalytic field was
to consider the issue of maternal and paternal functions (Lacan, 1958a,
1998), in the sense that these functions may be exercised by others who
are not the real mother or father. This substitution may occur due to
absence, whether because of death, separation, or weakness for exer-
cising these functions. At this time, and now referring to sexual and
gender diversities, some authors also consider that these functions
may be exercised beyond genders, masculine and feminine, and ana-
tomical sexual difference. It is important to analyse this indispensable
point of debate in relation to effects on the construction of subjectivity
in children brought up in these types of family. All the above leads us
to rethink the maternal and paternal function as well as the notion of
desire for a child.
One concept to be considered is that an explicit aim of the family
was always reproduction, and the place of the woman in the family was
situated in relation to this aim as a fundamental objective that, together
with other aspects, grounds the idealisation of the woman as mother.
It is true that this reference to reproduction is in the frame of a
relationship between a man and a woman. However, as we know, by
virtue of new reproductive technologies, reproduction is no longer
conceived as necessarily resulting from sexual union between a man
and a woman. And it is precisely this change that opens the problem
we are discussing.
Women in charge of upbringing and men as providers in charge of
symbolic functions are conditions forming part of the discursive field
with its androcentric organisation. At present, these conditions are
maintained partially by much imaginary permeation, although they

often do not coincide with reality. We recall that in the frame of the
model of nuclear family (mother, father, child) the child enters a dual
relation with the mother, which only the father can sever by his meta-
phorised symbolic intervention. This solution enables access to sexual
difference and insertion into a symbolic context of social bonds. At this
time, we have much to think about concerning the person that exercises
this function and in what way in the type of families constituted around
sexual diversity.
At this point various problems emerge, since interpretations of sexual
diversities differ in function of the diverse psychoanalytic theories: if
these sexual diversities are considered perversions or psychosis, this
“third-party symbolic function” could obviously not be exercised. Also,
does the exercise of this function require persons whose gender and
body (masculine) coincide with being a father? Further, should we con-
tinue to speak in terms of a “paternal” function to refer to a symbolic
function?
It is clear that we need to define what we mean by the concept of
symbolic function and to emphasise that, in our opinion, the third-party
symbolic function surpasses the paternal function (cf., Chapter Fifteen).
This aims at underscoring that the latter responds to a single law of
insertion in a symbolic universe, but that it is in turn subject to other
cultural laws that are neither eternal nor immutable.
In this frame, we may do well to think again about the way the
coexistence of homosexuality and heterosexuality in ancient Greece is
interpreted according to the accepted norms of that moment in history.
For this reason, we need to reflect on the terms that link “the paternal”
so strongly to the symbolic function, sexual difference, phallic function,
and heterosexuality, and to analyse them with their genealogies.
Returning to the construction of subjectivity in children of uncon-
ventional couples, we find a key point to highlight, which is the impor-
tance of recognition of otherness. This symbolic function par excellence
implies surmounting narcissism, an indispensable step to defining the
symbolic function.
This consideration undoubtedly opens the question of the place of
recognition of sexual difference and in what sense we speak of differ-
ence. For this topic, we need to reiterate that the concept of difference
encompasses different levels of meaning: anatomical difference—
always signified by consensual discourses—gender, psychosexual,
imaginary and symbolic difference, difference as recognition of the

other, and other variables originating in linguistics and philosophy
(Glocer Fiorini, 2001a, 2007a) (cf., Chapter Sixteen).
In this context, it is also indispensable to underscore that strict sexual
difference is becoming diluted in today’s cultures. Now if the problem
is ensuring a heterosexual resolution for those that consider it equiva-
lent to normalcy, this resolution may occur anyway, and also does in
fact occur. This is so because categories of difference are inscribed in the
psyche beyond the nature of the sexual object choice, and originate in
the accepted discourses and legalities of each culture and subculture.
All this occurs in a context in which symbolic difference, with its inter-
weave of significations, includes but also exceeds anatomical sexual
and gender differences. In this line, we emphasise the need to refrain
from naturalising difference by centring only on anatomical difference.1
Since all these issues strongly influence clinical work, it is undoubt-
edly necessary to think about the way they affect psychoanalysts’
theories, both implicit and explicit, as well as their ideology and the
accepted discourses of their context.
Sexual and gender crossings: processes of construction of

subjectivity and symbolic functions
Now when we focus on the subject of sexual diversities, we need to say
that these presentations may respond, as we said, to different psychic
determinations and clinical configurations. It is certainly necessary to
investigate them in the singularity of each person and each analysis,
since it is not possible to generalise. However, at the same time, it is
also necessary to distinguish between them. This involves the relation
between the universal and the particular.
They are usually categorised according to different clinical struc-
tures. However, the disadvantage of a rapid clinical localisation is that
it may form an obstacle to analysis of the significations of different
itineraries of desire and plural identifications, and also may prevent
setting in motion the notion of sexual difference and its implications.
As we said, it is not the same to say, “I am …” as to say “I desire …”.
The former refers to the plane of gender identifications and the latter
to the plane of desire. This is an important distinction despite possible
superimpositions.
Regarding homosexuality, we reiterate that it may respond to

diverse determinations, and consequently, any unexamined equation
with perversions should be revised. If these two are equated, it may
lead to universalise the concept of homosexuality without considering
singularities and psychic mechanisms operating in each subject. On the
contrary, it is necessary to underscore the diversity of processes of con-
struction of subjectivity in children raised by homosexual couples. We
do know that families composed of homosexual couples do not raise
homosexual children by definition. The construction of subjectivity is
far more complex.
Finally, recognition of otherness is important in the raising of chil-
dren in these families. A frequent discussion centres on the problem of
their insertion in the social context, in school, with classmates and other
parents. This is a point of interest and concern. Are insoluble problems
created in relation to the upbringing and insertion of children in a con-
text of social bonds? What is the issue around having “two mothers” or
“two fathers”? This is certainly a highly important problem to handle,
especially if it involves discrimination. This issue could be worked
through more or less successfully by a process of individual, familial,
group, institutional and social working through. This endeavour should
include all the different levels on which it is manifested: in experience,
in theories and in accepted cultural consensus. The main issue is the
manner in which gender identifications are produced in these children,
signalling imaginary pertinence to the field of the masculine or the
feminine (or any other definition or non-definition in this regard) and
the way itineraries of desire are traced, as well as how they are included
in a symbolic resolution.
Gender ideals prescribed by culture are undoubtedly at stake. They
support identifications with a symbolic mark, at the same time delin-
eating the way in which the desiring field develops. Therefore, focusing
on identifications and object choice in these children, we consider that
these mechanisms derive not only from the father and mother of the
classical nuclear family, which in many cases fails to guarantee them.
Neither do they come only from the maternal and paternal functions
incarnated by these concrete figures (mother and father) or their substi-
tutes, but also from symbolic operatories of thirdness emanating from
the others, on different levels, through difference or differences implicit
in a culture, in consensual discourses (Glocer Fiorini, 2007b).
Gender difference and sexual difference, as well as other aspects of

difference in a symbolic sense, may be inscribed in the parents’ psyche,
even beyond their own sexual orientation. It is precisely the concept
of the identification project (Castoriadis-Aulagnier, 2001) that includes
these differences for each child. If this does not occur in this way, in
both heterosexual and homosexual couples, the problems for the chil-
dren may conflict with their sexuality or gender identity, especially if
they clash with familial and social expectations. In other words, the
difference(s) are inscribed in the psyche beyond the parents’ sexual
choices or orientation. It is a transindividual operatory. We may say
that even transgenders recognise genders and differences through their
ideal of going beyond them.
In our opinion, it is necessary to think about difference, or rather,
differences, in a trans-oedipal way. Reduction of the complexity of this
problem to father and mother, even in a symbolic sense, in an essen-
tial triangle corresponding to a micro-familial structure, impoverishes
our thinking about these configurations. Deleuze & Guattari (2004)
described extra-familial structures or vacuoles, with the objective of
opening this monad. If we apply this concept of an expanded, transcul-
tural and transgenerational Oedipus, we may say that identifications
and, to a certain extent, itineraries of desire, are rooted in consensual
discourses and norms, as well as in those of former generations. They
go beyond the persons forming the nuclear family, classical, or not.
The classical oedipal structure may undoubtedly work in favour of
the identification and desiring process in a given culture, but this does
not necessarily mean that a heterosexual couple will bring up a hetero-
sexual child or that a homosexual couple will raise a homosexual child.
In the manner of superego formations, we need to include the role of
the educators, teachers, and other social actors that express and repre-
sent consensual discourses (Freud, 1923b).
In other words, concepts on sexual difference as well as gender
norms and ideals, masculine or feminine, are quite strong and perme-
ate culture. They indicate a path for the subject considered “normal”
in terms of identifications and sexual orientation. However, it does not
always occur in that way, and this leads us to reflect on the conditions in
which a subject is inserted into a symbolic fabric of social bonds.
As we know, heterosexual couples may raise homosexual chil-
dren, and studies on children of homosexual couples also show that
object choice and identifications did not take this road as a fate. This
research shows no significant differences (Patterson, 1992) concerning

construction of subjectivity, object choice, or “difference”.
In consonance with problems discussed in previous chapters, we
propose thinking about other ways to categorise construction of sexed
subjectivity. These ways accept dualisms but are able to surmount them,
recognising the complexity of these processes and the multiplicity of
psychic tendencies involved.
As we discuss more deeply in Chapter Sixteen: Conclusions and
openings, we consider that processes of construction of sexed subjec-
tivity are produced and emerge at the intersections of heterogeneous
orders. Tensions produced between these orders (sexed bodies, plural
identifications including gender identifications, and object choice) pre-
vent them from attaining constitutive harmony, and should be analysed
case by case. They may be thought of as sets marked inevitably by
epochal discourses, and are effects of multiple “operations of third-
ness”. In each of these sets difference is presented as a response to the
coordinates of this particular set. The logic of complexity enables us to
analyse difference on each of these planes, but also at their intersections.
It opens the possibility to surmount binary logic alluding to masculine–
feminine dualism and its equation to the phallic–castrated pair. This
does not mean ignoring binarisms in construction of subjectivity, since
they are included in language and in all of culture, but instead enables
us to include them within a hyper-complex logic (Morin, 1986, 1990).
We find an expanding field for reflection that we must necessarily
explore and, in this sense, we reiterate that psychoanalysis must be
understood as an open system that, on the one hand, supports its indis-
pensable contributions—the concept of unconscious, infantile sexuality,
transference—but on the other hand, allows us to open other conceptu-
alisations concerning the significations of sexual and gender diversities
and their effects on the construction of sexed subjectivity.
This innovation means that we also rethink the concepts of symbolic
difference, paternal function, and the desire for a child (Glocer Fiorini,
2001a). If we consider, as some authors propose, that families organ-
ised on the basis of sexual diversities might constitute an attack on the
symbolic order (and not on a specific given symbolic order), this could
mean a closure of the possibility to reflect on these issues, since these
movements in current societies may also be openings to other modali-
ties of social experience and novel forms of expression of the itinerary
of desire, beyond those already extant. In this sense, we consider that
the function to support is always that of symbolic difference on all

its planes, basically on the plane referring to recognition of otherness
(Fraisse, 1996). This is one of the most significant versions of difference
that we need to recognise in a context of social bonds, since it implies
transcending the narcissistic field. In this line, it is important to under-
score that this recognition transcends equating the other to the feminine.
In brief, our proposal is to open a necessary debate for the psy-
choanalytic field. It aims at thinking about the impact of sexual and
gender diversities on modes of family organisation and, fundamentally,
on processes of construction of subjectivity of children raised in these
families.
As we said, a number of points for debate are opened regarding
categories questioned by these presentations: the Oedipus complex and
the nuclear family, the concept of sexual difference, desire for a child,
and notions of symbolic function and thirdness.
We emphasise the strong implications for clinical work in relation
to the psychoanalyst’s position in this respect. It accentuates the recog-
nition of otherness and of symbolic differences, which greatly exceed
sexual difference, since they are functions to be protected to the utmost
in the area of insertion into a universe of social bonds.
In sum, our objective aims to consider a polyvalent concept of difference
(psychosexual, anatomical, gender, linguistic, and others) whose vari-
ables may not be concordant and whose significations depend on the
context of discourse and consensual law. This law may be questioned
individually or by different subcultures. For this reason we consider it
indispensable to include necessary recognition of otherness as the basis
of access to a symbolic universe of social bonds. In other words, recog-
nition of otherness is a privileged expression of difference.
Note
1. Laplanche (1988) considered it important to distinguish between
diversity of (anatomical) attributes, gender difference, and sexual
difference, providing an interesting contribution to the study of these
topics.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Bodies, fictions, and desires in

contemporary maternities and paternities
A
nalysis of maternities and paternities in the twenty-first century
requires us to reflect on meanings of generating life in uncon-
ventional ways. This endeavour involves the issue of origins.
It also implies a review of conceptions of sexual difference associated
with notions of maternity and paternity.
For psychoanalysis, these biotechnological challenges come in from
its boundaries. We are observing novel facts that are nonetheless estab-
lished practices. We know that these advances permeate discourses and
social custom, which obliges us to reflect on the scale and limits of these
technologies, and their effects on analysts and patients. This confronta-
tion tests our psychoanalytical and psychotherapeutic tool.
This revolution in the reproductive area is both a biotechnological
and symbolic event. It is true that we face a risk of “naturalising” these
proposals although we are, on the other hand, confronted with opera-
tory procedures that call for reflection in view of the problems they
create for both the psychoanalytic perspective as well as for other dis-
ciplines. We believe that any hasty “naturalisation” of these techniques
may conceal or split off important aspects concerning their possible
effects on the psyche.
97
However, we may foresee that in a not distant future these techniques

will in effect be naturalised. In fact, we already observe that for many
young people and even children, these types of reproduction are part
of the world around them through written publications, comics, stories,
novels, and televised and digital communication. Perhaps the rules
of the social contract will also change, at which time problems will be
redefined.
Our proposal is to identify problems created now by new interrela-
tions between technology, bodies, and subjectivity. This leads us to:
• Analyse the impact of new reproductive technologies on represen-

tations of bodies, especially in regard to the ways they may affect
traditional conceptions of the female body, sexuality and maternity.
• Investigate the roles of men and women in procreation consider-
ing the emergence of other types of reproduction besides sexed
reproduction.
• Evaluate their effects on the accepted notion of sexual difference,
since these techniques are also applied to couples that are unconven-
tional in terms of sexuality and gender.
• Review the notion of desire for a child in psychoanalysis as centred
basically on “phallic” resolution of the Oedipus complex in girls
(cf., Chapter Twelve).
Although the effects depend on the singularity of each case—there

being no general effects given that they cannot be universalised—
we also need to take into account that these effects are related to the
techniques used. Striking differences separate the simplest techniques
involving both members of a heterosexual couple who have a problem
of infertility and use their own gametes from those that require donation
of gametes to heterosexual or homosexual couples or other types of
unconventional couples, and also from the most complex techniques
involving several bodies (donation of gametes, surrogate womb, the
upbringing mother).
Although we do not specifically discuss ethical dilemmas, they are
implicit in these developments. For example: in cases of the cryopreser-
vation of embryos, their status between the unborn and the undead;
identical twins whose births differ by years; younger siblings born
before the elder; use of the semen of a dead father; gestation in the
uterus of the mother’s sister or mother; surrogate wombs in general;
BODIES, FICTIONS, AND DESIRES 99
the birth of a child without identifiable biological parents, among other

techniques. Problems are also generated by potential genetic selection
by sex or race or to eliminate illnesses.
These issues challenge our notions of life and death, as well as gener-
ational or temporal limits, filiations, kinship laws, and the law of prohi-
bition of incest. Filial relations are social and cultural categories whose
legal and biological aspects coincide in the nuclear family. This scope
is broadened by notions of genetic, biological and upbringing filiation,
which encompass variants and combinations not included in the strict
definition of filiation.
In question (Glocer Fiorini, 2002a) are conceptions of:
• The origin of life.

• The social contract.
• Categories of filiation.
• The concept of reproduction.
• The role of sexuality.
• Modes of transmission of biological and cultural inheritance.
• Kinship ties.
• The concept of family.
• Relations between genders.
• Ideals regarding maternity and paternity.
• The status of women (as beings able to make decisions about their
bodies).
• The status of embryos.
We also know that these techniques tend to express dissociation between

reproduction and copulation and between reproduction and sexuality.
The fantasy of parthenogenesis may also effectively become a reality.
We need to situate our context. These developments cannot be disso-
ciated from a transformation in relations between the sexes and impor-
tant changes in the constitution of the nuclear family that challenge the
heterosexual model. They may include multiple kinships, since they are
not rigidly attached to gender roles and identities, as in homosexual
couples and single parent families. Being a mother or father does not
coincide with a given gender based on a concordant anatomy. Other
significant changes are deferred maternities that are no longer limited
by the biological clock. In this sense, the decrepitude of bodies is
challenged.
We are facing complex problems with no pre-established solutions

whose answers can only be partial and provisional.
When we give thought to the points above, we notice inquiries
concerning difficulties of psychic inscription in some of these proposals.
This means that we need to look into eventual problems with possible non-
psychical representation that may function as a traumatic nucleus associ-
ated with something unspeakable. This problem is further complicated by
contradictory and not yet organised social narratives on these issues.
The question is: do psychic effects of new reproductive techniques
change anything in relation to conventional gestation? Is there anything
new or is it simply a matter of putting the facts into already established
categories?
From a certain point of view, we could say that we are observing an
update and re-creation of foresighted mythical scenes. In Greek mythol-
ogy, Prometheus made a figure out of mud and Zeus gave it life; the
human arises from humus = earth.
However, what happens when myths are realised in fact? What
happens when they diverge from status of the accepted social contract?
Are we observing a new social contract? In view of these questions, we
consider that, although filial relations are constructed and depend not
merely on biological criteria, it is important that we not avoid the com-
plexity of these proposals.
We obviously observe problems found in all projects of parental-
ity (neurotic conflicts, unresolved mourning, dissociations, ideals and
social mandates, possible meanings of the project of a child for the pro-
spective parents) to which are joined specific issues that we discuss.
In these cases, we are also obligated to think of the way the notion of
sexual difference is conceptualised now that we are seeing increasingly
frequent cases of maternities and paternities produced outside the
union between a man and a woman, which some still consider the con-
dition to access a symbolic universe of social ties.
Technological bodies
Of the many problems that come to the fore, we focus on one aspect: the
role of bodies regarding assisted fertilisation and their eventual effects
on representations and construction of subjectivity. We refer especially
to the use of heterologous gametes and/or surrogate wombs, since the
use of the parents’ own gametes presents fewer problems.
We highlight an initial issue, which is the number of bodies that

may intervene in these techniques, their material combinations, and
the anonymous character of these contributions. This factor varies with
legislation in force in each country.
In regard to a bodily involvement that could be termed “hyper-real”
by virtue of the multiplicity of combinations of bodies, the issue turns
upon representations, meanings, and affects that may be generated by
the inclusion of strange bodies or parts of bodies foreign to the inside of
the subject’s own body, or alternatively, parts of the subject’s own body
in another’s, during the process of generating life. What consequences
of these intrusions or this engineering of bodies may result in fantasy
life when techniques of gamete donation or surrogate womb are used?
We may recall that in the course of history, maternity always involved,
ideally, one woman’s body. This unity is questioned by some variations
of new reproductive techniques. We underscore the contrast between the
ideal and idealised body of maternity, a complete and unitary body, and
the network of bodies potentially involved in technological gestation of
a child (Glocer Fiorini, 2006a).
We are considering complex cases, paradigmatic of new materni-
ties. Paradoxically, these technologies are far from natural, even though
bodies and biology simultaneously become hyper-present.
These artificially constructed bodies challenge “natural” laws and
may even provoke a certain existential uncanniness. They generate
problems that neither medicine nor biology is able to solve. For exam-
ple, who is the “real” mother: the gamete donor, the person that carries
it during gestation or the mother that brings up the child? This question,
with modifications, also applies to the father. DNA tests do not solve
these problems. They are ethical, legal, and psychological dilemmas
that run through and go beyond the participants in these technological
adventures. We must also note that legal, biological, and psychological
truths may not coincide.
We also recall that many countries where these techniques are
applied have no legislation concerning donor anonymity.
New frontiers appear between what belongs to the subject and

what belongs to the other, between the internal and the external
The characteristics of these procedures which exacerbate splitting
between donor, gestating, and upbringing mothers may be at the root
of persecutory anxieties and uncanny feelings. This depends on the

singularity of each situation.
In our clinical experience with patients who received gamete dona-
tion, we have often observed fantasies of a dangerous, anonymous,
threatening other. Hesitation to include an unknown and therefore
menacing donor is often associated with anxieties and fears regarding
this origin: contagious diseases, HIV, genetic illnesses. Both men and
women may feel jealousy difficult to work through in reference to a
third party, a male or female donor. Many of these conflictive manifes-
tations may be similar to those that may emerge in cases of adoption.
However, in cases of adoption, the difference between biological and
adoptive parents is that body limits are preserved in adoption. The bio-
logical parents, even when anonymous, were never part of the bodies
of the parents of upbringing. Adoption involves no penetration, com-
bination or union of fragments of bodies or gametes in any bodily or
material intervention.
Analytic work with parents in relation to their child, constructed by
a technological intervention of this sort, may enable us to generate a
symbolic space in which to generate or recover a desire in the context
of fantasies related to donation of anonymous and possibly dangerous
material.
We may say that every pregnancy actualises anxieties localised in
the incipient representations of the child. However, in biotechnological
maternities they acquire specificities inherent to manipulation of sev-
eral bodies in their materialness. The notion of a child constructed with
biotechnological aid generally has beneficial effects that satisfy desires
and wishes of the progenitors, impossible to realise before our times.
However, in some cases, nameless anxiety, which may be uncanny, may
emerge (Duvignaud, 1987).
These effects are rooted variously. First, it is not inconsequential
that some of these techniques may transgress rules of kinship, of gene-
rational difference, or limits between life and death. Second, ancestral
anxieties and fears may emerge towards engenderment of a child by
artificial means with sources involving unknown parts of other bodies.
This may generate “disquieting uncanniness” towards what is enig-
matic, a strange other; if this occurs, it may lead in some cases to severe
psychical splitting.
The intervention of other bodies, hyper-real, interacting with the
subject’s own body produces fading of conventional and traditional
body limits. For this reason, we need to explore specific types of

conflict, fantasies, and psychical splitting related to the fragmentations
and combinations of bodies characteristic of these technologies whose
intensity increases in correspondence with the complexity of the tech-
niques applied.
Bodies, fictions, and cybernetics

An important point is that psychical effects of these technologies may
express the contrast between idealised conceptions of maternity and
certain myths associated with fantasies of neo-genesis that impregnate
social imaginary and relate to those described in science fiction.
On this subject, Elliott (2002) points out that it is indispensable to
pass through the imaginary register in order to access new conditions
of symbolisation. As Castoriadis (1997) defined it, it is “what is already
instituted and what institutes”.
Advancing on these lines, our proposal is to think about today’s
maternities by means of premonitory and anticipatory categories of
science fiction and present and future notions of cybernetics, in the
intersection with psychoanalysis.
For this purpose, we inquire into techno-constructed, artificial bodies
proposed by both perspectives. They may be considered contemporary
narratives on bodies: bodies simultaneously material and virtual.
Since ancient times, science fiction has invented menacing beings,
sometimes even terrifying and strange, which frequently came from a
different world. These fictions and tales about bodies allude to other
possible representations of mothers, fathers, and children. In the film
Alien, an evil mother in the form of a monstrous insect reproduces by
laying eggs in people’s stomachs. She also carries out her function as a
maternal computer. In Matrix, everyone is trapped and programmed in
a universal uterus.
These fictions, which surpass traditional reproduction, propose:
• Alternative conceptions of procreation, gestation, and birth by

unconventional means.
• The intervention of a strange third party, which may be an insect, an
alien being, a machine or a virtual combination of these—this other
is threatening, reflecting ancestral fears and anxieties.
• Other conceptions of classical sexual difference.
• A revision of relations between love, sexuality, procreation, and the

place of genders in them.
• Maximal strengthening of omnipotent self-engendering fantasies.
However, how may we put these fictions into words when they effec-
tively become real? Especially when heterologous gametes are used,
which then interact with the subject’s own body and may on occasions
illuminate certain aspects, sometimes split off, of these proposals that
may be experienced as menacing.
In this sense, we review virtual realities as attempts to represent
these proposals. In the virtual imaginary, the child of new reproduc-
tive techniques—particularly when this child is a product of complete
donations of ovum and sperm—could be thought of metaphorically
as a cyborg in the style of cybernetic beings, a being at the crossroads
between machine, bodies, and fiction. The image of the constructed
child is also linked to another: a mother fabricated from combinations
of different bodies. These imaginary figures created slip from “collage
mothers” to cyborg children and may be found, for example, in contem-
porary children’s comics. As Haraway (1984) states, at the end of the
twentieth century, we are all chimeras, hybrids theorised and manufac-
tured, consisting of machine and organism: in brief, we are cyborgs. She
adds that the cyborg is our ontology.
The signifier “mother” is both stated and deconstructed in a para-
doxical manner.
These metaphorical figures may express an impact on construction
of subjectivity. At the same time, these metaphors may provide instru-
ments for understanding manifestations of anxiety that may emerge in
some patients associated with these techniques. Again, it depends on
the singularity of each case.
These hyper-real bodies, whose materiality intervenes in new repro-
ductive techniques, contrast with the virtual, immaterial bodies pre-
sented as metaphors of these techniques. In these contrasts, we detect
potential splitting of sexuality.
Like their children, the mothers appear as products of a construction
that is also deconstruction. Real bodies are deconstructed and fictional
bodies are constructed. They are parts of bodies that must paradoxically
generate a fictional unit with symbolising effects: a mother (or father)
unit and a child unit. These imaginary bodies are strongly rooted in
powerful realities sometimes difficult to symbolise.
Nasio (1996) points out that totality is a fiction but is necessary for
constitution of the imaginary register and for efficacy of the symbolic order.
In these biotechnological cases, a model is generated of a feminine-
maternal body, multiplied and fragmented. Bodies and parts of bodies
are re-combined in order to make the desire for a child possible. This
model is one among always-possible maternities, even at the risk in
some cases of ignoring, splitting, or disavowing limits and impossibili-
ties. Tort (1992) considers that we are witnessing proposals that attempt
to take absolute control of reproduction and of life and death, thereby
challenging biological finitude.
These models circulate in the collective imaginary order of today’s
cultures and bind to fantasies and beliefs inhabiting each subject; that is
to say, they realise both individual and collective fantasies.
Their relation to infantile sexual theories is complex. Although pre-
extant collective fantasies are present, they seem to have no natural inser-
tion into construction of subjectivity when they become effective; this has
consequences in clinical work since they require specific working through.
The points above underscore the complex and contradictory aspects
of these technologies, in the interest of thinking about possible symboli-
sations, always singular, in analytic work.
We undoubtedly need to emphasise that these proposals open new
roads, previously impossible to imagine, regarding possibilities to have
children in cases of infertility or other situations we have described. We
consequently need to generate other theoretical–clinical perspectives
for their treatment.
With these contributions we propose an approach to thinking about
the potential existence of new forms of psychical representation and to
inquiry into the type of subjectivities generated in the frame of certain
variants of new reproductive techniques.
We also emphasise models and meanings constructed by each culture
whose individual processing forms the singularity of each individual.
At this intersection between the universal and the singular, collective
narratives are developed and individual narratives configured.
The bodies of maternities at this time

These technologies bind with models of what we refer to as postmoder-
nity or late modernity, since they are supported by fragmentations and
dissociations that challenge the concept of the unitary subject.
Drive bodies are regulated by consensual discourses, framed by

norms expressed through identification processes and itineraries of
desire. These conditions oblige us to recognise the performative char-
acter of discourse, that is to say, the power of discourse to produce
effects through reiteration, even though this power is never absolute
or totalising.
We may recall that the subject of modernity is a unitary subject,
a subject of reason; and that in this frame, the body was always avoided
as a negated, dark, shameful place. Since Descartes, cogitation no longer
needed the body: bodies were excluded from constructions of moder-
nity. This philosophy follows the Platonic scheme in that the body is the
opposite of true reality: the world of ideas. The modern subject ignored
the body. The crisis of modern cultures brought with it the question-
ing of modernity’s concept of subject, which coincided with the revival
of bodies in contemporary cultures through the ideas of Nietzsche,
Deleuze, Foucault, and others.
Schopenhauer borrowed from Asia the concept of meditation as
bodywork, not initially driven by the mind. With Nietzsche and later
thinkers the body, pleasures, and the senses acquired value again, but
not in the sense of an inversion of the Platonic scheme regarding hierar-
chies between mind and body. Subsequently, with the deconstruction of
the modern subject, bodies come to the surface: they are cathected and
simultaneously deconstructed.
In this context the multiple bodies of biotechnology emerge. With
new reproductive techniques the body reappears with force, but in a
different sense: it is not the body of pleasures but rather the body eman-
cipated from nature, which may be “intervened” and may even come to
be a part of power relations. This is also a deconstruction. Another ques-
tion arises: how may we think about this deconstruction in interaction
with affirmative thinking? That is to say, what fictions, what narratives
do biotechnological bodies support and use in the attempt to respond
to ancestral anxieties? Here, our concept of fiction is not the opposite of
reality or even anything equivalent to a given reality, but is instead an
organiser of interpretations, thoughts, or feelings permeated by others;
in other terms, a production.
These fictions need to be freed from fixed meanings. As Ricoeur
(1991) observes, mankind grasps its “selfness” through narrative, estab-
lishing a narrative order neither fixed nor immobile and historicising
ceaselessly as far as possible. In cases involving new reproductive
technologies and facing the experience of anxiety, the practice of

advancing through narrative carries great weight.
We may recall that each subject is inhabited by narratives. We refer
to the need to go through and beyond narratives, not in the sense of
adhering to them in a constructivist manner but rather in the perspec-
tive of their genealogical analysis and historisation. Going through
narratives means recognising splitting and delving into their sources;
also facing unsymbolised aspects that may form a traumatic nucleus.
This work may also allow development of new theories if we consider
that parentality in human beings is constructed symbolically. It is a mat-
ter of recognising individual fictions and narratives in fantasies that
come up in the analytic process.
However, we point out that this hyper-presence of bodies mani-
pulated technologically is not totally inscribed by narratives, although
they must inevitably be run through. In other words, the process of
symbolisation may be accompanied by difficulties regarding represen-
tation. It is a hyper-presence that oscillates towards an unsymbolised
absence.
We also need to consider social determinations: the consumer society
and hyper-tech mass media infiltrate the production of subjectivity. The
law of supply and demand in relation to these techniques may accen-
tuate the woman’s reproductive role, producing an “incubator effect”
with the risk of promoting indiscriminate offers without considering
each woman’s psychical availability. Novelty may paradoxically induce
idealisation of the mother-woman. That is to say, this idealisation may
cover up naturalistic reproductive ideologies. In this sense, a gender
issue is involved in manipulation of the female body through inducing
the subject to rigidly obey the “natural” order (Glocer Fiorini, 2002a).
The paradox is that, on the one hand, these techniques encroach on
the natural order, since they express mankind’s domination of nature,
which questions the conception of biological and instinctual mater-
nity and simultaneously emphasises its cultural dimension. However,
on the other hand, they introduce the risk of promoting the woman’s
reproductive role and idealising the notion of maternal instinct. This
situation also calls for evaluation of a most timely topic: surrogate
wombs by means of womb rental.
In our opinion, the fact that human maternity possesses a symbolic
character and exceeds nature does not mean that it is not supported by
nature. This complex relation also has internal contradictions.
All these considerations demand that we inquire into the role and
meaning of bodies and also the sense in which we use this concept.
We know that the concept of body in psychoanalysis is polysemous.
The body is both partial and unified-fictional; partial from the vantage
point of partial drives and unified from the perspective of ego constitu-
tion beginning with the body ego (Freud, 1923b). It is both image and
signifier (Lacan, 1966); it generates significations and is also signified.
It is both surface and inscriptions, both material and imaginary. It is
symbolic and yet is difficult to symbolise.
It is the hard core of material reality but also the body of socio-
historical discourses. At this point it is important to recall the impor-
tance of narratives concerning bodies and desires. It is also the body of
need and demand. It is a boundary concept and as such is complex and
conflictive (Glocer Fiorini, 2003a).
We wish to emphasise that by means of alternative options of procre-
ation, bodies pass from presumptive “naturalness” in reproduction into
other planes. Strange bodies, body parts, intrusive and all-powerful
fragments begin to circulate (Bukatman, 1994). These are bodies inhab-
ited by technology. This condition generates new significations and
alternative narratives that subsequently turn back onto the bodies and
their psychical representations.
In this sense, it is best to highlight a certain “partialness” or partial
body involved in the use of these technologies which is unlike the drive
body, which is always partial by definition.
We also know that the role of the body is different in men and
women; that the female body is heavily involved in procreation, which
differentiates it from the male body. New reproductive technologies
may exacerbate this aspect. Women’s menarche, pregnancies, and
menopause also strongly mark a temporal-bodily dimension impossi-
ble to disavow.
Thus, through these technologies the material quality of bodies com-
bined in different ways makes itself present, generating a mother-effect
or child-effect. It is also plausible to wonder what type of inscriptions,
marks or memories might come to lodge in the materiality of these
“combined” bodies by virtue of body engineering.
The body is also an other for each of us. This character is manifested
in different situations, such as pregnancy when it acquires a life of
its own with associated anxieties and fantasies. As we have stressed,
its quality of otherness intensifies when other bodies, cells, or genes
intervene, in which case the difficulties of symbolisation may increase

accordingly.
We recall that Freud (1923b) considered the ego primarily a body
ego. It is instituted as such through the mother’s gaze towards her
child, for whom the mother is a primitive other. However, what is
the effect of this gaze when the maternal other feels permeated by a
strange, unknown, ambiguous other which may be generating doubts
and anxieties concerning this child that carries material from that
strange other?
We underscore that although gestating a child with the metabolic
exchanges produced and intervention of desire facilitates the creation
of a link, gamete donation requires going through the intrusion of anxi-
ety in relation to the other that is being duplicated out of something
foreign and strange.
For the father it may be even more difficult to establish a link since
the father did not gestate this being and was therefore deprived of the
bodily experience of lodging something strange, even though he may
experience psychological consequences of the process.
At this point we need to inquire in what way a frame for identifica-
tion (Freud, 1921c) and desire is constructed in the child considering the
eventual plurality of contributions implicit in the mother’s gaze; and
further, what marks remain inscribed in these bodies.
Specificities in construction of identity, in modalities of structuring
the primal scene (since the primal scene becomes public), in variants
of fantasies of engenderment and in the family romance are part of the
production of subjectivity in these cases. The identification field takes
on crucial importance for the child. In the same way, it becomes indis-
pensable to depict the parents’ fantasies of the third party, their perse-
cutory anxieties, and diverse types of somatisations.
The subject of new reproductive technologies

Therefore, we may formulate the following question: is it possible to
accept what is strange when it is doubly strange? In other words, when
the inevitably unknown in one’s own child is joined by the unknown of
this contribution of gametes from a possibly un-symbolised third party.
As we said, this involves going through individual narratives and
deconstructing them; it means advancing from the initial heterogeneity
of gametes to symbolic difference.
This also requires that the parents recognise their child’s otherness,
recognise the child as an other and as a subject. This recognition simul-
taneously includes a double gamble. On the one hand, it presupposes
acceptance of the category of difference, beyond narcissistic ambitions
of idealised reproduction of the same (Freud, 1914c). On the other hand,
it demands the ability to go through the qualities inherent to the other
as a foreigner, strange, and at times even uncanny. In this process, an
aspect of these hyper-realities may include something unsymbolised
that may emerge as a traumatic nucleus. In this respect it is a metaphor
of what is difficult to symbolise.
However, we need to emphasise that Eros may also pervade techno-
logical procreation and libidinise it. We must remember that each child
needs to be constructed symbolically, which alludes to the “benevolent”
aspects of assisted fertilisation. All desire takes on a generative aspect.
In this frame, psychoanalysis may make it possible to generate and
develop desire for a child by taking up the challenge proposed by these
technologies.
The issue is how to construct a symbolic difference, a child as an
other (Glocer Fiorini, 2001a), without disavowing the unknown that
springs from a material strangeness in the case of gamete donation. It is
a complex road to acceptance of incompleteness.
Elsewhere (Glocer Fiorini, 2006a) we proposed the concept of
multicentred maternities as a notion responding to current discourses
and narratives about neo-genesis and technological procreation. This
concept cannot be dissociated from another: multicentred paternities.
Narratives are being generated which involve representations of sexual
difference, femininity and masculinity, maternity and paternity, repro-
duction and sexuality. They are areas of intersection between fictional
fantasies of literature, cinema, cybernetics on the one hand, and indi-
vidual fantasies of procreation on the other hand. This gives us access
to possibilities of new representations and their limits.
This is a field of imprecise limits between new narratives propos-
ing novel forms of symbolic organisation on the one hand and, on the
other hand, hyper-sophisticated technological proposals that may tend
to erase subjectivity if they are not worked through.
In this frame we reiterate that the psychoanalyst’s ideology (the status
of embryos, the status of nature), theories, religious beliefs, and ethical
position weigh heavily. These problems may obstruct the psychoana-
lytic process if they are not dealt with in analysis and self-analysis.
The field of clinical practice must traverse these specific fictions,

these other narratives concerning procreation and relations between
the sexes in search of their symbolisation. In the frame of scientific-
technological realities, roads to symbolisation become more complex.
Technological developments are not opposed to the human order; all
to the contrary, they are human productions. For this reason, the issue is
how to go about including them in ethics and in symbolic organisation
without forgetting that these technologies have already become part of
the social order and may inevitably be naturalised in the future.
PART III
SEXUAL DIFFERENCE—TOWARDS
A POSSIBLE DECONSTRUCTION
CHAPTER TWELVE
Desire for a child: ideals, discourses,

and mandates*
I
n this chapter we analyse the notion of desire at the roots of the
concept of maternity in psychoanalysis. It is a notion based on the
category of lack, in the sense used by the thinking of phallic logic.
Our hypothesis is based on the postulation of a different conception
of desire exceeding phallic logic, which nonetheless adopts a paradoxical
coexistence with that logic.
This also entails reflection on the relation between desire for a child
and paternity, as well as its meaning in relation to unconventional
parentality. It also leads us to rethink the conception of desire in the
psychoanalytic field in general, especially as it relates to construction
of subjectivity.
One starting point that moves us to these reflections is the field of
infertilities since they focus on impossibility and throw particularly
intense light on significations centred on the desire for a child. In this
context, new biotechnological realities generate problems that chal-
lenge psychoanalytic praxis and lead us to rethink this notion.
* This chapter is an expanded and updated version of Chapter Eight in Deconstructing the
Feminine. Sexuality, Gender and Theories of Complexity (2007a).
115
Making an appointment for assisted fertilisation or adoption is only

the beginning of a search whose outcome we cannot know beforehand.
The initial interview may produce different itineraries in the analytic
process. Discussion of options of fertilisation that may be proposed is
itself out of place from the psychoanalytic perspective if we omit analy-
sis of individual fantasies and desire on the one hand and theoretical
premises supporting the concept of desire for a child on the other hand.
To this we add other variables such as unworked through mourn-
ing, other desires and demands, unconscious rejection, characteristics
of the couple or absence of a partner, modalities of oedipal resolution
in a symbolic sense in the context of an expanded Oedipus (cf., Chapter
Four), and still others.
The theoretical position taken determines the characteristics of
listening in clinical practice. We know that analysts “listen” as far as
their theoretical instruments allow.
Our approach to these problems also assumes that we define the
concepts of maternity, femininity and female sexuality (Glocer Fiorini,
1994, 2001a, 2007a). We encounter a generalised tendency to superimpose
these concepts and to consider them equivalent. We again recall that for
Freud, the princeps aim of femininity was always maternity.
We emphasise that maternity is an inherently human event and is
therefore a notion displaced from what is natural. Passage into culture
constitutes the human subject and in this sense desire for a child is, by
definition, no longer simply instinctual. Although we do not deny the
support of nature, maternity does transcend it amply since it is inscribed
in the register of culture in a symbolic universe. This displacement sur-
passes false binary dilemmas such as opposition between nature and
culture. The concept of “the fold”, on the border between nature and
culture, provides a novel way to think about these relations (Deleuze,
1993). As Kristeva (1987) points out, there is a heterogeneity that cannot
be subsumed by the signifier and explodes violently with pregnancy
on the threshold between culture and nature, thereby converting the
woman into a “being of the fold”.
On another front, since the development of today’s biotechnologies,
procreation no longer depends only on the sexual union of a couple.
Thus, by virtue of this disarticulation, the merely reproductive char-
acter of maternity may be accentuated, its desiring condition fading.
Although it is true that these innovations reach only a small portion of
the population, we observe a growing dissociation between a loving or
DESIRE FOR A CHILD 117
sexual union and procreation, which had already begun to spread by

mid-twentieth century with the use of contraceptives.
Changes in kinship systems and modes of filiation permeate singu-
lar problems presented in our consulting room and seem to indicate
modifications in construction of subjectivity. For Tort (1992), these
transformations affect the very structures of the symbolic systems gov-
erning identification of subjects in all known societies (names, filiation,
maternity and paternity, sexed identity).
As psychoanalysts, we work in spaces and times of transition. It is a
matter of situating ourselves in a frontier with undefined boundaries,
which develops between possible and novel forms of symbolic organi-
sation on the one hand and, on the other hand, proposals tending to
nullify the value of desire concerning subjective production.
In this context, it becomes indispensable to rethink the category
of desire for a child, even though it might seem that everything has
already been said on this subject. In our opinion, it is not enough to
formulate the notion of desiring maternity; although it is a necessary
concept, we need to debate which notion of desire we are using and on
which theoretical and ethical premises we are basing it.
Desire for a child in the psychoanalytic field

The concept of desire for a child is not univocal, although historically it
was impossible to dissociate it from the “feminine destiny” par excel-
lence. Maternal iconographies and significations were always soothing
images in relation to the “feminine enigma”, which facilitated displace-
ment of primitive anxieties referring to sexual difference and castration
anxiety (Glocer Fiorini, 2000, 2001a).
In diverse cultures, the child lent representation to women and
cathected with representable value and positivity what, on the other
side of the coin, was femininity without representation, situated out-
side the signifying universe.
In Freud’s works (Freud, 1925j, 1931b, 1933a), desire for a child in
girls emerges by way of a long series of substitutions commanded by
penis envy. In his paper On Transformations of Instinct as Exemplified in
Anal Erotism (1917c), Freud discusses his concept of the symbolic equa-
tion in which desire for a child appears, in the frame of infantile sexual
theories, as a category supported by equivalences and substitutions of
a greater desire stemming from penis envy. Thus, the child emerges as a
symbolic substitute for the penis by means of the equation: penis = child.
He shows diverse paths by which these permutations develop in the
frame of anal and phallic erotism: from faeces to the child, from the
gift to the child or from the penis to the child. In these constellations,
either the child appears as a substitute for the penis or the male may
appear as an appendix of the penis. Fantasies are configured around
infantile wishes preserved by the adult and stored by the atemporal
unconscious. Infantile sexual theories described by Freud express these
fantasies. However, as we said, the question arises whether adult sexual
theories are actually “cloned” replicas of infantile sexual theories.
This conceptualisation of maternity responding to phallic logic
involves thinking about the child as a symbolic substitute based on a
fundamental lack. The mother acquires phallic value—the child—which
completes her until she falls from this position as lacking. This is related
to infantile sexual theories organised in terms of phallic–castrated and
presence–absence polarities as indicators of sexual difference. Since
these polarities are often considered equivalent to masculine–feminine
polarity, they lead to heavy theoretical and clinical consequences. In
this context the figure of the phallic mother is configured in a phallic-
desiring universe, that is to say, based on phallic rules of desire. In the
frame of this logic, the construction of feminine subjectivity is achieved
fundamentally through maternity.
In these developments, we need to include another path, already
described by Freud (1931b): playing with dolls. This is an active, pre-
oedipal position based on imaginary identifications with the mother,
which contributes a motor for desire for a child. In the psychoanalytic
field this position tends to be ignored, even though it contributes fresh
variables for understanding the sources of desire for a child.
Some authors centre their developments on the object relation and
the effects of aggressive drives. For Klein (1930) symbolism constitutes
the foundation not only of all fantasies and sublimations, which is also
a reference to the concept of the symbolic equation, but is also the foun-
dation on which the subject’s relation to the external world and real-
ity in general is built. In regard to penis envy, this author considers it
secondary to primary knowledge of the vagina.
The debate had begun: for Horney (1967) and Mack Brunswick (1940)
desire for a child was primary and innate, not secondary to penis envy.
Subsequently, other analysts debated primary penis envy. Torok (1964)
underscored that penis envy was envy of the idealised penis, in an
attempt to disarticulate the originary source of this concept. However,

the controversy with Freud remained within the register of dichotomies
and within the premises and terms inherent to phallic, binary logic. On
these terms, penis envy was the axis around which the debate centred
on whether it was primary or secondary.
When Lacan (1958b) postulated the phallus as signifier of desire, he
proposed to decentre it from its anatomical referent and consequently
anatomy was no longer inevitable destiny. The phallus is not the penis.
However, it is not easy to understand the mother’s phallic lack if the
reference is to lack in linguistic terms: in this case, and as an effect of
language structure, it should be common to both sexes.
Afterwards, this author creates a new decentring through the
“mathemes of sexuation” when he introduces the register of a feminine
or supplementary jouissance beyond the signifying chain. What exceeds
the signifying universe, what cannot be spoken, is situated according to
Lacan (1998) in feminine jouissance. In this way and by closing a circuit,
a new version of the feminine enigma takes shape.
In his works, Green (2002) emphasises the need to recover the
desiring condition of the maternal experience including its amorous
quality and erotic connotations.
Aulagnier (1992) alerts us to the risks both of renouncing desire, which
is equivalent to psychical death, and also of being unable to accept the
limits of its realisation, which may end in equally catastrophic results.
This undoubtedly introduces a necessary distinction between the death
of desire and non-desire for a child, considering that another category
increasingly visible at this time is non-desire for a child, which we must
take into account.
Current developments, mainly in French psychoanalysis, consider
it important to emphasise the plane of desire in order to think about
desire for a child. However, the problem we are discussing is precisely
that this plane is built upon a conception of desire based on original
lack.
Beyond the symbolic equation

We intend to focus on this problem by examining whether the concep-
tion of desire as a substitute is the only possible explanation of desire
for a child and, expanding further, of a notion of desire in construction
of subjectivity in general.
In Freudian logic, the girl has been injured, not having been provided
with the correct genital (Freud, 1925j). From this point, Freud indicates
three possible roads for the girl’s psychosexual development, guided
by penis envy and driven by hostility towards her mother: inhibition
and/or frigidity, the masculinity complex, and maternity. The third is
the expected “normative” solution: access to femininity through desire
for a child. In this context, the notion of penis envy appears to be an
indispensable category for this series of chains and symbolic substitu-
tions that propose to explain her change of object from the mother to
the father and then from him to another man in this configuration of the
oedipal scheme and desire for a child.
Based on these considerations, several problems emerge.
First, although the substitutive hypothesis is based on symbolic
work, it accentuates a compensatory aspect of maternity based on
originary (“phallic”) lack, situated imaginarily in girls. This notion is
superimposed upon the concept of lack as a category common to both
sexes in the sense of constitutional incompleteness.1 The former may
be a clinical fact, whereas the latter is a more encompassing, theoretical
and clinical proposal decentring lack from women.
Second, no space remains for consideration, on a theoretical and
experiential level, of a road for feminine sexuality beyond maternity
that is not framed in frigidity, hysteria, or homosexuality. Female sexu-
ality has no representational–symbolic support beyond the three paths
indicated by Freud.
Third, this line of substitution proposed for girls, guided by penis
envy, does not explain paternity from the viewpoint of desire for a child
in men, in the frame of oedipal triangulation. It is only explained by
anal-sadistic equations (faeces-money-child) associated with infantile
sexual investigation or as a narcissistic reproduction inherent to social
discourse, to perpetuate the family name and possessions.
Fourth, given that substitution equations presuppose a heavy com-
pensatory aspect, they accentuate the child’s quality as a phallus-child;
in this way, maternity may be recast into a space of repetitive insist-
ence concentrating wishes of narcissistic completeness. The figure of
the omnipotent phallic mother is thereby hyper-cathected, which is an
inevitable step (considering that the mother is the initial care-giver) but
which does not sufficiently envisage the complexity of the maternal
position. Also, this line of thought does not help us to elucidate the
reasons for which the mother would include a third party in this perfect
circle except by an operation of force. Of course, the first response is

that it depends on paternal intervention as well as her own resolu-
tion of the Oedipus/castration complex and insertion in a symbolic
universe enabling her to include a third category. However, this path
provides only one element of the scheme. The question refers to specific
factors inherent to maternal subjectivity that permits this configuration
of thirdness (cf., Chapter Fifteen). Another question is what might ena-
ble the disarticulation of phallus-penis equivalence, a difficult task in
this theoretical frame?
In sum, does the concept of phallic maternity fully explain desire for
a child? These queries require a review of this notion of desire.
The question is where to look for alternatives to this substitutive,
equational conception of desire for a child.
Considering these queries, we find it especially interesting to intro-
duce developments of Deleuze (1995) that postulate the notion of desire
as production, which contributes a possible opening in response to
eventual impasses produced in clinical work and theory. For Deleuze,
desire is not defined by any essential lack. He points out “lack refers
to a positivity of desire rather than desire referring to a negativity of
lack” (p. 101). He bases his argument on the works of Nietzsche, which
describe the self-affirmative character of forces that Deleuze considers
desiring forces.
This notion of desire as production, which comes to us from the field
of philosophy, postulates an explanation of the production of difference
and novelty.
We also highlight the need to establish distinctions between the
concept of lack (in relation to a certain conception of desire), the notion
of absence (which assumes a major psychical operation in order to
be constituted as such on the presence–absence axis without need of
necessarily establishing initial causality), and the notion of incom-
pleteness (a limit reached in construction of subjectivity beyond the
narcissistic field).
Understanding of desire for a child as a desiring production entails a
different conception of desire, decentred from the philosophy of lack,
which is a philosophy of the negative. The proposal to conceive of
desire as production opens new possibilities to conceptualise the child
as something more than a substitute of fundamental lack.
It also enables us to think of other roads and other, non-maternal
desires for feminine subjectivity (Glocer Fiorini, 2001b). It allows us
to configure a theoretical road to understand female sexuality beyond

maternity and hysterical configurations. Laplanche (1988) in his devel-
opments mentions that this is a field for inquiry in our theory.
Thinking of maternity as a consequence of equational, substitutive
equivalences meets with its limitations in repetitive insistence, without
production of difference. It makes it impossible to register the child’s
radical otherness and hinders or impedes processes of symbolic sepa-
ration. In contrast, the concept of desiring production that surpasses
blind repetition and equational substitution is the only road given that
it involves the generation of difference.2 In this line, when desire for a
child is separated from the substitutive conception and goes beyond the
field of repetition without difference, when it is separated from what is
equal and from compensatory equivalences, it may then be conceptual-
ised as desiring production.
The concept of poiesis as creation in relation to notions of desiring
production, and its generation of difference, forms the basis of these
developments.
We emphasise that the idea of desiring production does not exclude
the equational, substitutive conception inherent to the hysterical condi-
tion, since this proposal, within the limits described, provides a frame
for symbolic work, and is also a clinical fact. The goal is to expand
the field and make it more complex by working on convergences and
divergences between these two categories (Glocer Fiorini, 2001a, 2001b,
2007a). Although these notions are not homogeneous they do coexist.
Each partially explains an aspect of psychical and material reality.
We may also say that desire for a child does not exist as a universal
category but rather as a desiring plurality. This perspective includes the
possibility of contradictory desires. Desire for a child may also meet
with a limitation such as pregnancy anxiety, in the frame of resistance.
Also, we more frequently see women with no desire for a child. In these
cases, we need to be careful not to consider it pathological. It should be
analysed case by case.
In line with these developments, the concept of the third-party func-
tion as a possibility to access a symbolic universe acquires another
dimension. It implies greater complexity, which may be supported
by the paternal function attributed to the classical nuclear family as
a metaphor of a symbolic function, but at the same time admitting
elements of discrimination, limits, and symbolic separation inherent to
the intermediate space generated in the mother–child dyad.
All this expansion enables us to inquire more deeply into elements

in the mother that also promote separation from her child in a symbolic
sense and not only fusional attachment. The poietic, non-substitutive
conception of the child allows us to think more accurately in terms of a
figure different to the powerful imaginary figure of the ensnaring and
devouring mother or of the mother lacking in any elements within her-
self that could promote symbolic separation from her child, in the frame
of narcissistic enclosure.
The phenomenon of the double is part of the mother–child relation; in
fusional configurations, uncanny characteristics (Freud, 1919h) acquire
powerful presence and permanence.
In this context, we consider it necessary to differentiate the dyad
from fusional configurations. The dyad allows for virtual inclusion of a
third element, that is to say that being two does not imply that there is
no third party function. On the other hand, so-called fusional configu-
rations, by definition, exclude possible triangulation in a symbolising
sense. Continuing these lines of reasoning, we could think of the tran-
sitional space (Winnicott, 1959) in terms of a dyad potentially able to
generate a third party function rather than a fusional function.
A poietic notion of desire for a child transcends the field of imaginary
demand and the substitutive symbolic equation to become a project and
creation in a temporal dimension. Phallic maternity is one of the roads
that desire for a child may take, but it falls short of describing the entire
desiring field of the maternal-feminine. We find that other possibilities
of understanding open up when we think about maternity as desiring
production which in turn enters complex relations with substitutive
conceptions of phallic maternity.
We also highlight that these considerations on the notion of desire
exceed the frame of maternity; they may of course be extended to the
psychoanalytical field in general.
Desire for a child and otherness

As we mentioned, these developments lead us to ask whether desire
for a child may be categorised beyond the limits of the symbolic equa-
tion, that is to say, the system of equivalences delineated in the infantile
sexual theories described by Freud.
We consider that the conception of unconscious desire for a child in
the sense of production coexists, on the basis of relations of conjunction
and disjunction, with the substitutive, equational conception of

maternity. Also, each of these categories meets its limit in the other.
This proposal presupposes the difference between the child as a
consequence of demand or the child as phallic value based on the sym-
bolic equation, and the child as desiring production in a Deleuzian sense.
The perspective of this third category creates a space for consideration
of the child as a heterogeneous other (Glocer Fiorini, 2001a, 2001b).
The concept of object choice in relation to oedipal resolution does
not encompass the whole field of relations with the other. The “other”
entails a radical heterogeneity in relation to the self, which attacks the
ego’s absolute certainties (Levinas, 1987). This is not the deceitful mirror
other but rather the recognition of this heterogeneity as an inevitable
condition of a symbolic separation. Recognition of the child’s radical
otherness generates the prospect of something novel, the recognition of
something different, the creation of an experience beyond the bounda-
ries of narcissism, at the same time expanding the field of object relations.
This requires us to recognise that the mother has symbolic reserves
of her own. In a Freudian frame, it also depends on her successful reso-
lution of her own Oedipus complex, her identifications and desires, her
capacity for mourning and what the child means to her. Regarding this
point, we need to stress that we consider the Oedipus in its capacity to
explain processes of construction of subjectivity within the context of
consensual legalities, even though we also reviewed its blind spots and
aporias (cf., Chapter Four).
Consequently, different planes crisscross each other: the child as an
object of need, demand, desire, love, and also the child as a narcissistic
ideal versus recognition of the child’s otherness.
These developments necessarily assume our recognition, together with
the desiring field, of other registers such as the capacity to give care, attach-
ment (Bowlby, 1969), sensuality in contact (Alizade, 1999), and empathy,
which generate conditions for the constitution of an imaginary field which
in turn enables narcissistic structuring of the ego and facilitates the devel-
opment of maternal seduction and of aim-inhibited tender feelings.
We describe a complex organisation whose plurality of variables
and levels require us to think about it in terms of permeable limits and
boundaries (Morin, 1990), that is to say, of intersecting categories.
To summarise, conceptions of desire in a poietic sense allow us to
conceptualise desire for a child in a multicentric frame, which implies
the following.
First, the possibility of adding a plus to the system of substitutions of the

symbolic penis-child equation based on originary lack which in Freudian
theory commands the girl’s oedipal resolution to take a “normative”
road through maternity. It comprises not only the conceptualisation of desir-
ing maternity but also recognition of a productive character in desire for
a child, which exceeds symbolic substitutions inherent to phallic logic. It
thereby provides fresh variables that decentre the hyper-cathexis of phallic
maternity, and specifies more precisely the establishment of a third-party
potential whose source is in the mother.
Second, this addition brings us out of the symbolic equation that
may derive in repetition without difference, and leads us to think on
desiring work in production. This passage develops the possibility to
generate difference. These two lines of thinking are not mutually exclu-
sive but instead work in relations of opposition and liaison, thereby
expanding the limits of the symbolic equation.
Third, this thinking contributes elements to enable recognition of the
radical heterogeneity in the child’s otherness and also creation of condi-
tions for a symbolic mother-child separation.
Fourth, these factors come together when we consider desire for a
child as a desiring production since it exceeds the inertia of repetition
without difference.
Fifth, this conception broadens the three roads described by Freud
to explain the girl’s psychosexual development and introduces a space
for thinking about female sexuality beyond maternity, the masculinity
complex, hysteria, or frigidity.
Sixth, it may also indicate an itinerary for reflection on paternity and
desire for a child in men.
Seventh, the conception of desire as a desiring production also con-
tributes categories for thinking about desire for a child in unconven-
tional couples in the field of sexual diversities.
In our discussion, we have made a necessary review of the concept of

desire for a child, beginning with theoretical and clinical problems that
come to mind when we think about:
• Maternity in terms of substitution and compensation.

• Desire for a child in men and in people not conforming to canons of
heterosexuality.
• Recent developments of techniques of assisted fertilisation.
We also stress the need to disarticulate the conception of unconscious

desire for a child from any naturalistic or merely reproductive notions
of maternity. This means recovering the erotic character of the mater-
nal experience and the mother’s own potential to exercise a symbolic,
third-party function.
On the road we have proposed, we identify details concerning the
notion of desire that are subjacent to diverse theoretical developments.
We propound an expansion of the boundaries of the penis-child
symbolic equation that in Freudian theory describes operations of sub-
stitutions, based on an originary lack, which direct the resolution of the
Oedipus complex in girls.
We propose decentring this conception of desire framed in the phi-
losophy of the negative and considering a poietic conception organised
as desiring production, following the contributions of Deleuze. This
expansion involves acceptance of a paradoxical coexistence of both con-
ceptions and interplay between lack and desiring production.
We underscore that these developments support recognition of the
child’s radical otherness beyond narcissistic enclosure expanding the
field of object relations. They imply that we move out of repetitive
insistence without difference into consideration of desire for a child as
project and creation in a temporal dimension. They also open up a theo-
retical space for review of the notion of paternity. This opening in turn
impacts on conceptualisations of sexual difference.
Notes
1. A basic misunderstanding underlies considerations of presence–absence
polarity as being comparable to the phallic–castrated and masculine–
feminine polarities inherent to infantile sexual theories. These equiva-
lences should be decentred in order to eventually articulate them in a
complex relation (Glocer Fiorini, 1994).
2. The concept of the symbolic equation is double-faced: on the one hand,
it contributes elements to understand symbolic ordering of the drive
field based on the investigation and construction of infantile sexual
theories; on the other hand, we consider it insufficient to understand
desire for a child simply within the limits of phallic logic.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Power relations and sexual difference
Sexual and gender violence

We are too familiar with phenomena of sexual violence manifested in
intersubjective relations that also permeate social bonds. They may
emerge in parent–child relationships, in heterosexual or homosexual
couples, and in other types of relations.
We need to remember that sexual violence may be visible or
invisible. It is expressed through implicit or concealed power over
subjectivities and bodies that sustain relations of domination and
may eventually materialise in phenomena of violence towards them.
This power objectifies them and converts women, children or oth-
ers occupying this place into recipients of diverse effects of sexual
violence.
Our intention is to address power relations that support acts of
sexual violence, focusing especially on their relation to masculine–
feminine polarity. For this purpose, we investigate their sources and
inquire deeply into the modes and categories of thought subjacent to
these phenomena. These categories that impregnate our psyche, theo-
ries, and discourses call for deconstruction.
127
Sources of relations of sexual violence

We discuss two sources at the roots of power relations that support acts
of sexual violence: the sexual-drive field and the field of ideals as found
in discourse and socio-cultural relations. These two sources may coin-
cide or clash, potentiate each other or relate to each other in tension.
The first source is Freudian discourse, which defines infantile sexual-
ity and places the field of sexuality at the core of psychoanalytical theory.
Masculine–feminine polarity is intimately connected to these develop-
ments. However, in this frame, the notion of femininity is marked by
blind spots that also affect our understanding of masculinity. These
difficulties are not independent of the association between sex and sin.
The interrelation between sexuality, enigmas, and secrets supports and
multiplies their entanglement with power vectors.
In Freud’s works, the notion of power is not fully explicated and
developed except in relation to certain aspects of libidinal and thanatic
vicissitudes. In his first drive theory, Freud (1915c) delineated the con-
cept of the drive for mastery, which unites with sexuality only second-
arily. He relates it to setting the muscular apparatus into motion and to
an active position. This notion was later included in the vicissitudes of
sadomasochism in the form of mastery by violence. That is to say that
Freud postulated for sadism an origin independent of Eros with subse-
quent binding to the latter. Afterwards, towards the end of his works,
he included the drive for mastery in the broad field of the death drive
(Freud, 1920g). Here too its binding to Eros is secondary. As an expres-
sion of the death drive, sadism enters the service of the sexual drive
beginning with its relation with the object.
As we have said, the field of sexuality is not independent of power
relations. Sexuality becomes an instrument of power in that power uses
sexuality to reach its aims. At the same time, sexuality is expressed in
power relations and also uses them for its own aims.
We also find that relations between sexuality and power may develop
strongly in masculine–feminine gender binarism. In this line, we must
consider that, although masculinity and femininity may coexist in the
same subject, this coexistence is not free of the problem of binary polari-
ties. Clinical work with sadomasochistic relations shows that subjective
positions are independent of whether the subject is a man or a woman,
and that subject–object categories are also interchangeable. However,
we also need to emphasise that even though these positions may be
P O W E R R E L AT I O N S A N D S E X U A L D I F F E R E N C E 129
inverted, the theory still contains the fact that masochism is defined
as feminine, whether or not it is incarnated by a woman. This means
that in dualistic masculine–feminine polarity, power relations tend to
be fixed and substantial, and are exercised predominantly by the mas-
culine pole, a situation that has significant impact on processes of con-
struction of subjectivity.
The second source is ideals in force in culture, which express knowl-
edge and discourses regarding relations between men and women, par-
ents and children, boys and girls.
Into this context we reintroduce the variable of masculine–feminine
dualism that emerges as a channel, always incomplete and conflictive,
for certain paths of desire. Masculine–feminine polarity represents
power relations but also generates them through culture.
Freud (1905d) considers the categories of masculine and feminine
relatively late acquisitions in the subject’s psychosexual development.
However, we stress that every newborn child is named and situated
from the beginning in one of these two fields: masculine or feminine,
which does not always coincide with the child’s anatomical sex. In this
sense, masculine–feminine polarity has an imaginary presence whose
symbolic value is effective from the outset. This corresponds to gender
difference previous to access to sexual difference (Laplanche, 1988).
Masculine–feminine polarity is expressed in parental ideals and
discourses and is manifested in ideal nuclei of the psyche (ideal ego–
ego ideal). Through naming, language, and even modalities of body
contact, rhythms and sensations, a propitious space is created for con-
struction of the ego, which is first a body ego. The mother–child rela-
tion is impregnated with pre-extant conceptions, myths, conventions,
and stereotypes concerning masculine and feminine which overlap the
desiring field and mark the production of subjectivity. They become
fixed through consequential power relations and eventually express
these relations. Unconscious transmission of identification ideals con-
cerning gender, masculine and feminine, implicates a potent force
of work that is the power of identification mandates in the earliest
relations.
In brief, overlapping between the drives and intra- and intersubjec-
tive ideals rejects all one-sided solutions to the analysis of these issues.
This position has consequences in clinical work. For example, in
cases of sexual and gender violence, how do we evaluate the drive fac-
tor involved in active–passive, subject–object, sadism–masochism lines
of analysis? Also, how can we manage to incorporate the analysis of

stereotypes and discourses on gender ideals that so powerfully impreg-
nate subjectivities? We are obligated to investigate both sources, both
the masochistic component and the transsubjective problem presented
by asymmetrical power relations between the genders, which lead to
acceptance and naturalisation of this type of violence. It could be argued
that transsubjective problems are not part of psychoanalysis; however,
it is undeniably an inevitable part of the narcissistic system of ideals
that is configured on the ideal ego–ego ideal axis. Consideration of only
the masochistic component may be just as unilateral as the opposite,
which would be to weigh only the cultural ideals involved. We detect
interplay between these two factors in their complex coexistence, given
that gender violence and discrimination exploit masochistic tendencies,
economic necessities, affective dependence, and other variables.
Bodies and power

The meanings given the body by religions (the woman’s body as the
body of reproduction), by medicine (as we have said, Bouillaud in 1836
judged the uterus an unnecessary organ since it did not exist in men),
and by culture demonstrate that the meanings of women’s and men’s
bodies has always responded to ideals and expectations of consensual
discourses on femininity and masculinity. Ideals of a rational, logical,
and ethical masculinity beyond bodies and those of a femininity based
on bodies, affects, and irrational thinking run through centuries of dis-
cursive organisations and social practices. The mind-body division is
considered equivalent to masculine–feminine division, a fundamental
misunderstanding as we already argued. This implies the establish-
ment of a hierarchical dichotomy, which is manifest in Freud’s works,
for example in relation to the masculine versus the feminine superego.
This misunderstanding also leads us to speak in terms of the body of
submission and the body of power, which respond to different subjec-
tivities. They may coexist or be interchanged (submission and power)
and complement each other imaginarily with strong symbolic effects.
As we said, Héritier (2007) directed attention to dualisms in language:
cold-heat, dry-moist, and high-low have meanings that culture always
equated to the masculine–feminine pair, but hierarchically. These
hierarchies impose disciplining of the body as Foucault (1988, 2000)
described it in referring to modern forms of the army, school, prisons,
and hospitals, which we may extend to genders, a topic this author did
not analyse. The utility of the body increases and docile bodies are pro-
duced. This is applicable to relations between the sexes. It even deter-
mines, for example, women’s postures, gestures responding to power
and domination (Bourdieu, 2001). These phenomena of domination,
evident in gender violence, include paedophilia, among other situa-
tions in which bodies are hyper-present.
Power, sexual difference, and dualisms

As we advance through the problems we have discussed, we find
recurrent equations: masculine–possession of the penis–active-
subject–violence–domination versus feminine–non-possession of the
penis–passive-object–submission, relations that tend to be fixed and
immovable. Enunciates circulating on these vectors presume knowl-
edge and power regarding sexuality, masculine/feminine polarity, and
bodies and their meanings, which later emerge as unquestionable axi-
oms of theory.
In this situation, the risk is that we may consider this knowledge and
relations as universals rather than on their contingency. It is precisely
these polarities that sustain power relations. These binarisms (active–
passive, phallic–castrated, masculine–feminine) sustain relations of
power–domination and reciprocally, relations of power–domination
sustain binary thinking (Glocer Fiorini, 2000).
Further, the binary division that attributes fixed qualities to men and
women collides with another important proposal of contemporary psy-
choanalysis, which is to focus on the singular, on the open. The imagi-
nary, which tends to freeze relations and create fixed equations, needs
deconstruction of its historical, discursive, genealogical, and ideal
determinations in order to avoid essentialism and to move towards
more focus on the singularity of each subject. This does not call for any
neglect of pre-eminences in men and women, but certainly means evad-
ing the pitfalls of universalising them or considering them ahistorical.
Continuing in this line, we recall some reflections from Foucault
(2000) regarding power. This author linked sexuality to power. He pro-
posed that power is not anything negative but rather a productive force
that induces pleasure, knowledge, and discourse. In an interesting con-
tribution for psychoanalysis, he distinguishes between power and dom-
ination. He considers power a relational category, a force inherent to all
relations between subjects. He is referring not only to a super-structure

nor only a matter of an institutional order. These power relations are
mobile and flexible and may move back and forth between the subjects
involved; we could say, from subject to subject. In contrast, relations of
domination are fixed, rigid, and permit no mobility at all. Therefore,
they may also develop into relations of violence. We know that rela-
tions of domination between men and women with pre-eminence of
masculine power have marked theories, conceptions, social practices,
and characteristics of everyday life throughout the course of history.
According to the totemic myth, power is played out between men:
fathers and sons. Of course there are also private powers, which do
not always coincide with public powers. The victim also exerts counter-
powers. From a position of passivity and submission it is also possible
to exercise power and violence. This is part of the master-slave relation.
Comments
Organisation of power relations between genders is sustained by rigid
binary subject–object opposition. Binarism presents several problems
for reflection: on the one hand, the complementation of its terms, pre-
sented as a privileged and unquestionable “truth”; on the other hand,
the risk of falling into essentialism and fixed equations. In the course
of history the subject of knowledge was always masculine whereas the
feminine other was always the “dark continent”, the unknown. The sub-
ject of desire is classically masculine and the desired object, feminine.
In the line we are pursuing, the position as the object of knowledge and
desire encourages dependence and submission. In this way power can
become frozen into domination and unleash greater violence. For this
reason we need to break up strict dualisms and focus on new construc-
tions, including them in hyper-complex organisations. It is not simply
a matter of inverting the terms but of deconstructing fixed attributions.
As we said, in the mother–child relation, power vectors also develop,
carrying the transmission of identification enunciates concerning mas-
culine and feminine positions and contributes to eternalise and essen-
tialise them. Further, we may say that love is the privileged vehicle
of this transmission, which also includes paternal love. These ideal
proposals act on subjectivities and bodies and keep effects of power
in circulation. In this sense we may say that love is two-faced: it may
dis-articulate power relations but may also be the vehicle that imposes
them, depending on whether or not the other is recognised as a subject.

Passionate love relations tend to fail to recognise otherness and instead
to incorporate the other as part of the self.
Another factor that converges on the organisation of relations of
domination between men and women and permeates theories con-
cerning them is the attribution of an ensnaring, enveloping force to
the mother’s relation with her child from which only paternal inter-
vention is able to extricate this child. Individual and collective repre-
sentations maintain that masculinity, especially the paternal function,
corresponds to separation whereas femininity corresponds to continu-
ity of the originary link with the mother. Here we observe two types
of power/domination: maternal and paternal (nature versus culture).
This dichotomy tends to disparage feminine identifications and, as
Benjamin (1988, 1995) considers, it disavows the mother’s subjectivity,
as we also brought to notice. Men’s effort to dislodge anything feminine
from their subjectivity may lead them to impoverish their erotic life and
reinforce tendencies to domination and violence.
Again we recall that Bourdieu (2001) calls attention to a logic and a
symbolical dimension in masculine domination. As we said, in his stud-
ies of the inhabitants of Kabyle, a Mediterranean tribe, all the women
had a bent-over, submissive posture expressing their dependence on
men. Bourdieu emphasises that this submission was historically natu-
ralised and thereby converted a historical phenomenon of domination
into something natural. Through these ethnographic studies he stresses
that schemes of dominant perception and knowledge are not ideologi-
cal but rather stable systems inscribed in things, in bodies, and in the
psyche. Uninterrupted work of historical reproduction leads people to
classify all things and practices within masculine–feminine opposition.
In this frame, he states, the difference between masculine and feminine
is arbitrary and contingent. He also notes that these schemes are uti-
lised as instruments of knowledge rather than as objects of knowledge.
Assimilation of domination is inscribed in bodies (postures, disci-
plines, submission, and emotions). Domination is legitimised through
this inscription in biological nature, thereby naturalising it. However,
this biological nature is itself a naturalised social construction. To this
endeavour Bourdieu gives the term “historical work of de-historisation”.
Finally, we wish to stress that psychoanalysis possesses instruments
to deconstruct and analyse problems presented in its own field. Rec-
ognition of inter and transsubjective power relations, of ideals and
discourses that sustain and multiply them, as well as their imbrications

with drive sources, produces psychical effects which may contribute
elements for us to understand manifestations of sexual violence in the
diverse fields in which it is expressed.
Sexual and gender difference is a privileged road for exercise of rela-
tions of domination and violence. This means that through these differ-
ences, which social discourses induce and promote, values, hierarchies,
and ideals are expressed. We need to focus our attention here and dis-
mantle them in a psychoanalytical perspective.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sexual difference and binary logic
T
his chapter is framed in a context in which we observe two
important theoretical and experiential problems that we have
discussed: gender violence and what is termed sexual diversi-
ties. These problems, analysed by different disciplines, are manifest in
contemporary social practices and pertain to both the psychoanalytic
field and gender theory.
Both topics put the concept of sexual and gender difference in ten-
sion and bring us to analyse theoretical interpretations of masculine/
feminine polarity as well as the logics applied to their examination.
These are inevitable reference points for inquiry into the concept of
difference. We are confronting a challenge for the psychoanalytic field,
since their theoretical interpretation influences clinical practice and the
therapeutic process. Conversely, clinical practice immerses psychoana-
lysts in these problem areas that deserve openings on theoretical and
epistemological planes. As we said elsewhere, gender violence entails
notions such as the relation between sexuality and gender, the concept
of sexual difference, meanings assigned to masculine/feminine catego-
ries and gender identity, as well as analysis of the power and domina-
tion networks involved, among other issues. Sexual diversities also aim
to interrogate the same categories (Glocer Fiorini, 2010b, 2010c).
135
One of the current debates in the psychoanalytic field refers to

possible relations, convergent or divergent, between psychosexuality
and gender. Analysis of these categories has strong repercussions on the
notions of difference we are investigating. Also, as we have said, gen-
der theories are questioned by what is termed post-gender, which dis-
putes binary difference between genders; it also adds other differences
(ethnic, religious, racial, cultural) to classical gender difference.
The nucleus of psychoanalytic understanding concerning the con-
struction of subjectivity runs through psychosexuality, an axis estab-
lished by Freud (1905d) in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. From
here, we face two options: is sexuality simply an endogenous product
supported by a drive field that is also endogenous? Or is it a multi-
determined “production” in whose itineraries and inter-crossings the
external world and otherness have an essential role? In the second case,
what place do gender determinations occupy considering that they
are supported by cultural schemes, consensual discourses, norms, and
ideals?
For some authors the concept of gender as a cultural construction
is unrelated to psychoanalysis and de-naturalises the nucleus formed
around psychosexuality. For others, its introduction into the psycho-
analytic field is inevitable. At the same time, we need to single out dif-
ferences between those who state that gender marks the trajectories of
sexuality and those who hold the opposite position.
The issue resides in whether there may be relations between these
two categories and, if so, which areas would be included and which
excluded. This presupposes a survey of the epistemological instruments
with which we think about their possible concordance and discordance.
The challenges involved call for analysis of complex relations between
the production of signification and different forms of construction of
sexed subjectivity that may be historicised (Fraisse, 1996). This presents
a dilemma with effects on theory, clinical practice, and certainly on the
analyst’s position.
It is in this frame that we embark on the investigation of categories
of sexual and gender difference, their potential relations and opposi-
tions. It is therefore a matter of comparing them and investigating the
relevance of the concept of gender to the psychoanalytic field, possible
areas of contact, its contributions and conflictive points.
Our hypothesis is that although sexuality/desire/drive is central in
the psychoanalytic field for understanding processes of construction
S E X U A L D I F F E R E N C E A N D B I N A RY L O G I C 137
of subjectivity, we consider that there is no pure sexuality. Sexuality

is always in relation: in relation to an other, to others, to the symbolic
universe, to the fabric of culture and its discourses, and to the complex
network of social bonds. This position does not cancel the psychosexual
axis but just the opposite: it enriches and expands its meanings and also
places it in relation to other, nonsexual axes.
Beyond dualistic choices, there is another alternative: to find hyper-
complex ways to think about these relations and their tensions. This
means work on interphases, intersections, and points of contact
between these categories. As we have said in the course of our discus-
sion, this requires the use of other epistemologies beyond mono-causal
determinism.
It is a matter of investigating the logics with which to think about
these relations or oppositions. Are we contemplating two incompatible
logics, one referring to psychosexuality and the other to gender? Is it
possible to find points of concordance that may be incorporated into
psychoanalytical theory and also identify zones of incompatibility in
tension? These questions guide our work.
In this line, it is essential to inquire deeply into Freudian theory
and productions of post-Freudian and contemporary authors, as well
as the diverse gender theories developed since the last century. We
also emphasise that neither of the two fields, neither psychoanalysis
nor gender theory, may claim total homogeneity. Each is inhabited by
diverse theoretical tendencies.
Some of the topics we have discussed in the course of our study are
included in this chapter, since they are necessary for development of
our proposal.
Background
When we propose outlining the fundamental distinctions between
these two theoretical fields, we see that the core concepts of psycho-
analysis are infantile sexuality and the Oedipus/castration complex,
which ground the concept of sexual difference. We have analysed its
contributions and aporias (cf., Chapter Four) and we return to them in
the context of the topic we are investigating.
The oedipal narrative proposes an ideal solution for access to the
feminine or masculine position in girls and boys. Sexual difference for
Freud is based on infantile sexual theories and predominance of the
phallic phase; it is expressed in the opposition between phallic and

castrated. Only at puberty is masculine/feminine difference accessed.
In spite of this point, the post-Freudian psychoanalytical field is deeply
impregnated with infantile phallic sexual theories. The phallus, as
either signifier or signified, was raised by some authors to the status of
a fundamental determinant of difference. In this frame, we differentiate
the permeation of the phallus in certain theoretical tendencies from the
Freudian phallic phase.
In Freud (1925j, 1931b), the phallic phase determines that girls must
take a complicated path in their psychosexual development if they are to
reach a more or less satisfactory resolution of their Oedipus/castration
complex. This path is based on the presupposition that girls are, at the
beginning, little boys. This primary masculinity of girls was debated by
Jones (1948) in the Freud-Jones debate mentioned above and by other
psychoanalysts of their time.
Although it would be impossible to review the numerous authors who
have worked on this subject, we may recall that Winnicott (1966) decen-
tres the issue when he postulates a primary femininity in both sexes,
manifested at birth, supported by the relation with the mother, which
pertains to “being”. Masculinity for this author is linked to the drive: to
“having”. This decentring, however, is undoubtedly unable to overcome
the fixed meanings attributed by the author to masculine and feminine.
In his theory, Lacan approaches the issue of sexual difference from
the viewpoint of the subject’s position in relation to the phallic signifier
of lack. He also introduces the concept of a feminine jouissance that is
“supplementary” and tends towards the infinite, distinguishing it from
phallic jouissance. This author maintains that the sexes are not comple-
mentary. Consequently, this is another variant for analysis of the differ-
ence between the sexes (Lacan, 1998) with a notable tendency to place
the feminine outside the symbolic order.
Each theoretical frame offers clarifications but also presents unsal-
vageable aporias.
In general terms, psychoanalysis contributes elements necessary
to understanding of the role of sexuality in processes of construction
of subjectivity and sexual difference. These elements are contained in
the area of normative ideals to be reached in consensual culture, ideals
which respond to determinations that may be historicised.
As for gender theories, although they may be considered legacies
of early feminism, they subsequently began to include problems of
masculinity as well. It is true that the concept of gender in the broad

sense refers to the two classical genders, masculine and feminine. For
some, they are different by nature; that is to say, they consider this dif-
ference as determined biologically. For others, and this is where gender
theories come into play, gender is a cultural construction.
In mid-twentieth century, the proposal to separate the concept of sex
from the concept of gender arrives from two different directions. From
anthropology, dissociation of sex from gender is proposed by Rubin
(1975); from medicine, by Money and the Hampson brothers (1957)
and Money and Ambinder (1978). In the latter field, it was applied to
cases of hermaphroditism and pseudo-hermaphroditism, in order to
define a gender for the newborn in these undefined situations. This
idea, which was later deeply discussed, was based on establishment
of the dissociation between anatomical sex in contrast to gender as a
cultural construction. In North American psychoanalysis, these ideas
were taken up by several authors, particularly Stoller (1968) in his stud-
ies on transsexualism.
For Laplanche, the sex/gender division goes through other para-
meters; he points out that it is indefensible to place one of the terms in
the area of anatomy and the other in psychology. He states that it is pref-
erable to give the term sex to the set of physical or psychical determina-
tions, behaviour, fantasies, and so on, directly linked to sexual function
and pleasure. And gender to the physical or psychical determinations,
behaviour, fantasies, and the like, linked to the distinction between
masculine and feminine. He adds that gender difference ranges from
secondary somatic differences to grammatical gender, running through
habitus, social role, dress, and so on (Laplanche, 1988).
Gender theories contribute important elements to understand con-
ventions and norms regarding the masculine and the feminine, power
relations and violence between genders, as well as certain aspects of
what is termed sexual diversities, among other studies concerning this
subject.
In this context, diverse problems emerge from our analysis of psy-
choanalytical proposals as well as of gender theories. Both fields bring
up issues that merit close examination.
First, we need to analyse whether there is any guiding concept that
determines interpretations of “difference”. This requires illumination of
the diverse planes on which we may think about this category. As we
said, this concept is sexuality for psychoanalysis, whereas for gender
theories it is the discourses in force in each culture with their norms.

This disparity signals divergences in relation to the clinical focus of
certain problems such as gender violence. We are undoubtedly tensing
artificially the distinctions between these two fields since psychoanaly-
sis, within its prevalent theoretical frames, now includes otherness, the
cultural and discursive universe, and their marks.
However, as we mentioned, the debate is updated by gender violence:
how do power relations between the genders act? What predominance
do interpretations of sexual violence attribute to the masochism termed
feminine in women, and what role is given to consensual discourses
regarding sexual difference, their conventions and stereotypes? The
degree of polarisation of these extreme positions undoubtedly depends
on the theoretical tendencies in use. We reiterate that this is both an
intra- and an extra-disciplinary debate. In our approach, we consider
that there are border areas, frontier zones, and interfaces between these
two positions which direct us away from the excluding polarities.
Second, another issue is at stake: sexual difference thought of in terms
of masculine and feminine as a strict dichotomy may lead us to create
universal axioms concerning these categories, thereby disavowing the
singularity of desire and identifications, and ignoring the enormous
complexity of processes of construction of sexed subjectivity. Collective
fantasies regarding the feminine and the masculine act recursively on
these universal categories (David-Ménard, 1997), and have an impact
on the construction of theories on sexual difference. The same occurs
when we think in terms of binary opposition between phallic and cas-
trated and equate it to the masculine–feminine pair.
Third, how is the role of bodies in the field of sexual difference inter-
preted? In relation to this question, there is a division between those
who maintain that anatomical difference is the determining factor
(“anatomy is destiny”) and those who maintain that difference is pre-
dominantly cultural, whereas the anatomical is a variable that may or
may not coincide with gender as a cultural construction. On this point,
Faure-Oppenheimer (1980) points out that the drives cathect gender
and gender also creates conditions for the emergence of the drives. This
proposal generates a relation “in movement” between the anatomical/
drive/erogenous body and gender, stressing that both are indispensable
in their intercrossings and implicate each other mutually.
We also recall that some theoretical proposals consider the body a
pre-subjective category that is later marked by the gender assigned
to it. However, Butler (1990) and Laqueur (1990) argue that the body
is already generic and not a neutral category signified afterwards by
gender discourse.
In this context, Austin’s concept of performativity (Loxley, 2007)
contributes interesting elements to think about identity in relation to
sexed bodies. When words are considered actions in themselves, they
acquire performative power. It is not that the act of discourse and the
linguistic order provoke actions but that words, iteratively, are actions
in themselves. Butler (1990) applied this hypothesis to identification
categories linked to sex, gender, and sexuality. This author maintains
that we “act” our identities. This proposal has connections as well
as differences in relation to another by Riviere in Womanliness as a
Masquerade (1929). Although Riviere applies it to certain cases of women
in whom phallic rivalry is predominant and needs to be concealed
(in certain social contexts of course), the concept of the mask could
be applied to identification processes. This contribution could also be
expanded to include masculinity and even “ambiguous identities”.
Debate remains open regarding the limits of performativity and its
potential “hard core” which could function as a limitation. In this sense,
we may say that sexed bodies are constructions at the frontiers whose
assembly is complex, including the biological order, the drives, erog-
enous, desiring, imaginary, and symbolic body among other planes,
whose imbrications with culture are foundational.
It is true that these issues include debates on nature/culture, internal
world/external world, and drives/otherness.
Fourth, already discussed, we reiterate the relation between binary
schemes and power structures (Foucault, 2000). Power relations are
substantially supported by binary schemes. The anthropologist Héritier
(2007) had already stated as much for masculine/feminine polarity. In
this line, we need to emphasise that the very structures of dichotomous
polarities contain power relations. At the same time, we see that power
relations organise and promote binary structures.
Sexual and gender difference

Elsewhere (Glocer Fiorini, 1994, 2001a), we discussed the need to define
precisely concepts of sexual and gender difference.
Sexual difference in the psychoanalytical field has precise meanings,
but also ambiguous points that call for debate. Freud (1923b, 1924d)
describes a long process in the psycho-libidinal development of boys

and girls whose resolution leads them to access a masculine or feminine
position, governed by the Oedipus/castration complex. In this line,
Freud never entirely renounces the idea that the possession of the penis
and the active is equal to the masculine as well as the vagina as recep-
tor of the penis and the passive is equal to the feminine (Freud, 1923e).
However, we highlighted in Freud’s works the presence of growing
complexity in relation to this subject since both the concept of bisexual-
ity and the complete Oedipus complex represent a decentring from the
position that considers the positive Oedipus the ideal solution.
Further, in Femininity (1933a), he warns quite clearly against consid-
ering the passive equal to the feminine and the active to the masculine
since there may be numberless transpositions between these categories.
This internal debate in the heart of Freud’s works is certainly worth
salvaging.
In other words, there is a strong line in Freud’s texts that equals the
phallic/castrated, active/passive, and presence/absence dichotomies
to the masculine/feminine pair. The concept of sexual difference in the
psychoanalytical field is based on these dichotomies. However, in an
example of the pluralism of his works, Freud himself (1933a) points out
that masculine/feminine difference belongs to the social, cultural, and
biological orders rather than the psychological order. The predominant
element in the latter order is active/passive polarity whose equation
with the masculine and the feminine is ultimately insufficient in his
opinion. He thereby questions the fixed meanings concerning mascu-
line and feminine categories (Glocer Fiorini, 2010c).
No doubt remains that all this evidence calls the concept of castra-
tion into play as well as another equation that, as we said, we need to
deconstruct: the equation between phallic/castrated (inherent to infan-
tile sexual theories), presence/absence, and masculine/feminine polar-
ities. Equating castration with the category of absence is a construction
responding to very precise logics and narratives and does not constitute
an a priori truth. Castration is a theory on absence or lack, as Freud
describes it in The Infantile Genital Organisation (1923e) and in the case
history of Little Hans (1909b). Moreover, this absence is only absence
for a (masculine) subject whose drive to know is trying to incorporate
and signify what is different in his own terms and from his position as
an investigating subject. In other words, absence is constituted as such
only on the basis of a presence as defined by the investigating subject.
Also, it is not the same to refer to phallic/castrated difference as part

of infantile sexual theories, which may be shared by the fantasies and
sexual theories of adults and even by certain cultural ideals in vogue,
as to refer to masculine/feminine difference and their complexity in
tension. As we said, it becomes necessary to investigate not only their
distinctions but also their intercrossings and genealogy, which we dis-
cuss below.
Opposition between phallic and castrated is an attempt by the infan-
tile subject to find an explanation for the difference between the sexes.
Both sexuality and gender are involved. It is supported by the precon-
scious system, since as a binary opposition it cannot exist in the uncon-
scious where the principle of non-contradiction reigns and both terms
therefore coexist (Laplanche, 1988). This displaces the problem onto the
preconscious and, more precisely, onto cultural discourses and ideals
regarding sexual difference which act on this system.
With regard to the masculine/feminine distinction, it refers to a
different order of differences that includes both sexuality and gender
determinations as well. This is a construction with binary attributions
supported by real, fantasy, and discourse/cultural elements. It is also
supported by systems of values and ideals, contextual and possible to
historicise, which thereby encompass diverse planes of determinations.
In reference to the phallus as the determinant axis of sexual differ-
ence, as postulated by some currents of thought, this category merits
some clarification. Its connotations undoubtedly refer to an androcen-
tric order. On this point we emphasise the need to draw a distinction
between phallus and penis: in this way sexual difference is explained
as being irreducible to biology in the pure sense. Lacan (1958b) consid-
ers it the signifier of desire and of lack. The subject’s position in regard
to the phallic function is the key element for access to sexual differ-
ence. However, Derrida (1987) maintains that, although the phallus is
described as an anti-transcendental category, it is actually prioritised as
a transcendental element. He inquires how there could be “a privileged
signifier” considering that each signifier is defined only by its differ-
ences with respect to other signifiers. In his opinion, this emphasis on
the phallic signifier re-introduces the metaphysics of presence.
Based on these considerations, we may approach the issue of dif-
ference or differences by distinguishing psychosexual difference on
the psychoanalytical plane from difference on other planes, and also
emphasise that it is permeated with fantasies, interpretations, and
significations that “construct” explanatory theories on difference in

children and adults. Their resolution presupposes access to a masculine
or feminine position implicated in a binary configuration with a norma-
tive character in the frame of standing legislation. Although these posi-
tions may be occupied by both men and women, some authors such as
Butler (1990) consider that this does not resolve the aporias of binarism,
since everything is played out within the masculine/feminine dichot-
omy and its combinations, even in the singular fantasies of each subject.
There are certainly unfinished debates that promote constant criti-
cal work and prevent us from holding any unmodifiable position in
regard to these issues. Among these, as we said, interrogations of the
notion of sexual difference that emerge both from challenges proposed
by sexual and gender diversities and also from the field of the femi-
nine and women. Therefore, we need to illuminate ever more precisely
the meta-theories they imply concerning sexual and gender difference
(Glocer Fiorini, 2010a).
The construction of sexed subjectivity and difference

Our proposal is to find other paths for thinking about sexual difference
beyond the risks presented by extreme culturalism or pure biological
explanations. Culture is not all-explanatory, and biology in the field of
sexual difference is never neutral but is always interpreted in terms of
values and idealisations.
When we return to the oedipal narrative, we recall that Freud con-
siders that boys very early in life develop an object cathexis towards
their mothers whereas the father is taken in by identification. “For a
time these two relationships proceed side by side, until the boy’s sexual
wishes in regard to his mother become more intense and his father is
perceived as an obstacle to them; from this the Oedipus complex origi-
nates” (Freud, 1923b, pp. 31–32).
However, an issue arises here, since he is referring to a boy, not a
girl, and is referring to a difference. Therefore, who is this child who is
taking a position in regard to the Oedipus “prior to” access to sexual
difference, when the problems of secondary identifications, prohibition
of incest, and access to a sexed position inherent to the resolution of the
Oedipus complex, have not yet been resolved?
In relation to this inquiry which becomes manifest in the Freudian
itinerary, we need to bring to notice that this positioning is in relation
not to the sexual plane but instead to gender, by which the girl or boy
was already assigned at birth to one of two fields, masculine or femi-
nine, in obedience to a cultural imperative. Further, this assignment
is not unrelated to parental desire, which makes the issue more com-
plex. Assignment of gender may undoubtedly be conflictive or may
lead to error and generate subsequent problems. Thus, on the basis of
this imaginary positioning in the field of the masculine or the femi-
nine that antecedes him or her, each child confronts differently—more
or less troubled—the exigencies of going through the oedipal narrative,
metaphorically speaking. For this reason, psychosexuality is always “in
relation”.
Therefore, as we stressed, there is masculine/feminine gender differ-
ence “previous to” access to sexual difference (Laplanche, 1988). This
distinction is supported by the identification register based on primary
identifications of a narcissistic, ideal order.
This “previous to” is undoubtedly not undifferentiated; there is no
“neutral” child at birth but instead someone who carries parental con-
ventions, stereotypes, desires and ideals that intersect with the child’s
own drive-desiring apparatus including bisexual fantasies and multi-
ple identifications. This complex coexistence of variables demands an
assemblage of planes and levels encompassing different categories that
intervene in the processes of construction of sexed subjectivity (Green,
1982). We emphasise that pre-oedipal masculine/feminine polarity dif-
fers from post-oedipal masculine/feminine polarity, which assumes
that the subject has gone through many operations of subjective sym-
bolisation. Both types internally support ambiguities and contradic-
tions that we may consider constitutive of processes of construction of
subjectivity. At the same time, they may not coincide with sexual and
love object choice.
In this context, we return to the subject of gender identity. This is
a hotly debated concept in psychoanalysis since identity is a concept
alluding on the one hand to what is identical to itself and on the other
hand to an imaginary “unitary” identity of the ego. It is in this sense
of a fixed identity that the concept of identity cannot be applied to a
subject.
However, it is difficult to think about any human subject lacking
an anchor point to some element of identity, however partial it may
be, to mark some symbolic continuity in phenomena of construction
of subjectivity. We consider that this “identity” in the psychoanalytical
perspective is mobile, in process, or becoming. It is supported by

continuities and discontinuities.
Thus, we may think about the pair: identity/difference in relation
to production of subjectivity, starting out with the consideration that
only “difference” is able to create the condition for the constitution of
identity into a becoming that is open to this difference and that, at the
same time, only a “porous” identity allows opening to difference and
otherness.
In this complex fabric, we find that psychosexual difference and gen-
der difference are different but are related by concordance and opposi-
tion. Both operate previously in the discourses of the others, respond
to symbolic resolutions of the parents’ subjectivity, and are re-signified
in the course of construction of the child’s subjectivity, which may con-
verge or conflict with the child’s own desiring field. Hence, both are
constructions.
We also bring to attention that dichotomous polarities do not encom-
pass the complexity of processes of construction of sexed subjectivity
since positions may be mixed or multiple. In this spectrum we situate
what is termed “sexual diversities” which challenge classical dualisms
and induce us to rethink them.
In our opinion, every human subject is included in a network of social
discourses and mandates concerning masculine and feminine genders
that prescribe and, sometimes, even force an insertion into binary logic
that may intervene more or less in object choice. However, there is no
absolute submission to these mandates. Psychosexuality questions and
interrogates assigned gender and its predetermined roles. Drive and the
desire itinerary, as well as bisexual and multi-sexual fantasies exceed
and challenge these mandates. Long-term cultural movements also do.
Sexual difference responds to a dualism strongly rooted in language,
in culture, and in our psyche. Its discourse value impregnates our theo-
ries and our clinical work, which we inevitably go through while at the
same time accepting that they do not correspond merely to natural facts;
at that point, we salvage its complexity and the many planes involved,
as well as its metaphorical aspects (Benjamin, 1995) and aporias. These
are ideal, historically determined figures, conflictive and foundational,
responding to power relations and requiring deconstruction through
analysis of the legalities involved.
In this line, we consider that processes of symbolic identification and
de-identification, construction and deconstruction are always ongoing,
which means that we enter and leave gender mandates and also enter
and leave drive anarchy and the multiplicity of identifications and
desires that permeate us. This entering and leaving is not freely con-
scious but is anchored in the interplay between psychic agencies, the
unconscious and the preconscious. The stability of sexed positions
is never total. This description ties in with our proposal (cf., Chapter
Two) of a subject in process, in movement, in constant construction
and deconstruction, with a plural, multiplying psyche, constituted at
the intersection of heterogeneous logics. It is a question of remaining
anchored neither to the unitary subject of modernity nor to the decon-
structed subject of postmodernity.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Deconstructing the paternal function—

paternal function or third-party function?*
R
ecent decades have seen much discussion regarding the
anthropological, social, cultural and psychological meaning of
the nuclear family and its functions. Some of the themes explored
clearly concern the psychoanalytic field, especially if we consider that
the Oedipus complex replicates the organisation of the nuclear family.
More specifically, in reference to the functions of its members, mother
and father; both practical, everyday functions as well as those exercised
on a symbolic level. These two levels are different, but there is a correla-
tion between them.
Although these debates date quite far back, they have been inten-
sified by diverse and very significant factors that we observe in con-
temporary societies, mainly occidental, but presently expanding to
other cultures. Some changes in family organisation (homoparental
families, assembled and single parent families) are widely known, to
which we may add frequent phenomena of “castling” in everyday func-
tions of mothers and fathers, since work and taking care of children
* This chapter also appears as “The decline of the father: paternal function or third-party
function?” in Changing Sexualities and Parental Functions in the Twenty-First Century edited by
Candida Se Holovko and Frances Thomson-Salo (2017). London: Karnac.
149
are not tasks assignable to fathers and mothers, respectively. Also

quite significant are changes in the place occupied by women, mainly
in occidental societies, from women’s access to the workforce, marked
by the First World War, to the use of contraceptives.
We might add the advances in techniques of assisted fertilisation
that allow not only heterosexual couples but also homosexual and
non-conventional couples as well as single persons to have biological
children.
Changes in legislation in many countries also induce us to reflect on
the influence of this topic on our practice.
Filial and kinship orders are involved, as well as the different mean-
ings of the mechanisms of inheritance. We are also led to rethink the
centrality of the phallic domain and of sexual difference as a key, in
some theoretical views, to access to a symbolic universe. In this line we
include the need to rethink the Oedipus complex in an expanded and
transfamilial way (Glocer Fiorini, 2001a, 2010a, 2010b).
Although the relation between these changes and psychoanalysis is
not direct, since psychoanalysis has its own central lines inherent to the
discipline, neither is it pertinent to consider them separate fields with-
out mutual influence. We believe that a complex relation exists between
the psychoanalytic field and other disciplines on which we need to
work. Consequently, we emphasise the necessity of an interdisciplinary
approach.
In this frame, many questions arise, which are the starting point of
our proposal.
In view of new modalities of family organisation, new and not so
new sexual and gender diversities, changes in the place of women and
therefore also of men in occidental societies, (fragmentary changes it is
true, but changes advancing as a tendency), considering all this, how do
we reflect on the issue of the so-called decline of the father in contem-
porary societies?
Is this a decline or is it that new ways to exercise a symbolic function
are germinating? In other words: are paternal function and symbolic
function parts of an inseparable equation?
Can this symbolic function be exercised by others and, if so, may
we legitimately call it a “paternal” function, even in the symbolic sense
attributed to it?
Are there echoes of patriarchal societies in the conceptualisation of
this function? This implies the need to consider whether psychoanalysis
D E C O N S T R U C T I N G T H E PAT E R N A L F U N C T I O N 151
is outside the episteme of our time or whether, to the contrary, it is

marked by it, as occurs in the case of other disciplines.
Is the paternal function structural in character, its variations being
manifestations of our era? Or alternatively, it is the symbolic function
itself that is structural in character.
These questions may be added to other questions that also affect
daily work in our offices. Concerning symbolic functions: Is it the same
to have “two mothers” or “two fathers”? Is a single parent family the
same as a nuclear family? How does the parents’ gender influence func-
tions called paternal and maternal? And, what is the involvement of the
sexed body in these cases?
In the perspective that the construction of sexed subjectivity in a
symbolic sense is involved, our proposal (Glocer Fiorini, 2013, 2015)
is to call the “paternal” function the third-party function in order to
avoid any simplistic equation with a real and imaginary figure of the
father or substitutes. We also note that the terms paternal function,
paternal metaphor or name (names) of the Father (Lacan, 1998, 2005)
have ideological echoes and implications that heavily affect the clini-
cal process.
This does not mean that we ignore the effects of the lack of father in
clinical work, but it does mean clarifying the interpretive and ideologi-
cal quantum by which a symbolic operatory becomes a universal and
structural paradigm.
In papers on this subject, paternal function is not discriminated
from symbolic function because they are intimately welded together
and made equal. There is a misunderstanding that we need to con-
front: there is a tendency to equalise the decline of the father in current
societies with the decline of a symbolic function attributed exclusively
to the father in patriarchal societies. Our position is that “paternal”
function is one of the forms, but not the only one, taken by the sym-
bolic function or functions indispensable for the construction of
subjectivity.
Therefore, the central hypothesis and objective of this paper is to
establish the difference between paternal function and third-party
function. Although they both refer to a symbolic operatory, the former
is indissolubly linked to the “name of the father” and more concretely
to the father or father substitute. However, a problem still persists:
why cling to the term “paternal” to describe an eminently symbolic
function?
A change of paradigm
We base our proposal on work to deconstruct the so-called paternal
function. We have joined this objective to the aim of studying its gene-
alogy, in the direction of analysing determinations that have converged
on that function.
As I pointed out, interest in this topic was generated by changes
observed in current societies, in certain cultures and sub-cultures, con-
cerning the emergence of new family configurations and the large visibil-
ity of so-called sexual and gender diversities in contemporary societies.
The way those functions are exercised is a crucial issue, since it involves
thinking about whether some subjects may or may not be excluded from
the symbolic universe, depending on the way we think about these
functions. This is a challenge for our clinical work. We also need to review
the paternal function in the nuclear family of contemporary societies.
In this context, it is indispensable to consider whether we are look-
ing at a change of paradigm. We do not take this term in the strict sense
proposed by Kuhn (1962), which later generated different debates. We
do however focus on one aspect of his proposal that we consider funda-
mental. In view of historical changes in human relations, some of which
we have already mentioned, we find changes in models of thinking and
in the types of logic that support them: from monocausal deterministic
logic to multideterminations; from multideterminations to logics of het-
erogeneities and of intersections (of the “in between”). In our opinion,
this points to a change of paradigm for understanding the places and
functions of fathers and mothers without forcing theory. It also involves
decentring binary thought that localises certain functions in fathers and
mothers, and advancing towards thinking within the paradigm of com-
plexity (Morin, 1990; Glocer Fiorini, 1994, 1998, 2001a).
Concerning the concept of structure, we do not refer to structuralism
in the sense of proposing eternal and a-historical structures to explain the
pregnancy of the paternal function. All to the contrary, we support the pro-
posal of Sartre (1991), who considers structure as mediation. Sartre consid-
ers structures as false syntheses and structural proposals as a moment in
an anthropology that should be simultaneously historical and structural.
The decline of the paternal function

As we have said, an idea is circulating forcefully: the decline of the pater-
nal function. Clinical and social problems are attributed to this: diverse
pathologies, all types of violence, wars. This figure that has been in
crisis since the beginnings of modernity is now yielding, mainly in occi-
dental societies, to other organisations of the practice of parentality.
The first question is: was it lost or did it perhaps never exist with the
effectiveness that is assumed or in the way it is imagined? If it did exist,
as we view it in the history of humanity from Antiquity to the present,
we may say that this pregnancy of the father has not been able to avoid
socio-political crises, events of extreme violence, incest, abuse of power
or challenges to norms dictated by societies concerning sexual differ-
ence. In this perspective, we may speak of nostalgia for something we
never had.
This demands genealogical analysis of the origin of the notion of
paternal function and this is the aim of this chapter. We shall approach
this analysis from two points of access—first, from discourses and sig-
nificant systems provided by the history of culture; and second, from
the psychoanalytic viewpoint—and then I shall analyse possible rela-
tions between these two aspects.
First, the Bible teaches us that Eve came from Adam’s rib in the
official version. We also recall that Aristotle considered that men were
“the form” and women “the formless”; also that only as late as the
Council of Trent did the Church recognise that women had a soul. Or
that Spinoza wondered whether ethics could be attributed to women.
We find innumerable examples in the history of culture in relation
to a dichotomous and hierarchical division of the sexes, which leads
us to consider how the figure of the capitalised Father came to be
constructed, different from fathers in everyday experience. All con-
sidered, could the paternal function, even conceived in a symbolic
register, rid itself of connotations derived from a patriarchal society
whose characteristics have been thoroughly studied by different dis-
ciplines? Could it also divest itself of religious connotations linked to
God the Father?
The psychoanalytic viewpoint

For these reasons and now turning to the psychoanalytic viewpoint,
we need to analyse the elements on which this concept is based in
clinical work and psychoanalytic theory, its premises and blind spots.
Freud devotes several works to the subject of the father: Totem and
Taboo (1913b), The Future of an Illusion (1927c) and Moses and Monotheism
(1939a), among others.
It had laid open to view the father who had all along been hidden
behind every divine figure as its nucleus. Fundamentally, this was
a return to the historical beginnings of the idea of God. Now that
God was a single person, man’s relation to him could recover the
intimacy and intensity of the child’s relation to his father. (Freud,
1927c, p. 19)
He clearly points out its connection with religious sentiment and the
need of most men and women to find support in these beliefs in their
original helplessness and defencelessness. The protective god that may
sometimes be vengeful and authoritarian is God the Father. In this
sense, the paternal function is constituted as such in solidarity with
patriarchal societies and religious sentiment. Also in this regard, it is a
construction.
Totem and Taboo (Freud, 1913b) is one of Freud’s articles that proposes
a mythical explanation, never proved by anthropologists or ethnolo-
gists, concerning the pregnancy of the father in androcentric societies.
Belinsky (1997) considers that the original father of the horde is created
simultaneously with the enunciation of the myth. He points out that the
Father was murdered because he had to be immortal rather than vice
versa. He adds that Freud founds a myth situated in the perspective of
patriarchal logic.
In that context, this myth of the origins is an explanation of the patri-
archal origin of society and culture rather than an explanation of their
origin in itself.
We need to remember that Freud never spoke of paternal function,
although he did investigate the individual, cultural and collective
genealogy of the search for a father based on religious sentiment and
founding father myths, also discussing the effects of the lack of a father,
a category different from that of the capitalised Father. When he anal-
yses Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, Freud (1910c)
alludes to the lack of father in the origin of homosexuality, a lack of
father that is different from terms such as the law of the Father (Lacan,
2005) with their patriarchal connotations.
As we said, Mitchell and Rose (1982) consider that Freud described
the patriarchal system accurately and fairly.
We would add that the paternal function is the heir of the paterfamiliae
of Roman law, based on the hierarchical division of the sexes involved
in relations of power and domination.
At this point we meet with another problem: the importance

assigned in the psychoanalytic field to changes, already mentioned,
occurring rapidly, mainly in occidental societies, in relation to the place
of women, other family models different from the nuclear family, the
rapid growth and spread of biotechnologies and their impact on con-
temporary maternities and paternities, as well as sexual and gender
presentations that challenge the notion of sexual difference. In the lat-
ter case, would children of non-conventional couples or single parent
families be excluded from the symbolic interweave?
Here we have two options: either we consider these changes fashions
of our era that do not alter the essence of psychoanalysis or we explore
whether psychoanalysis should rethink some categories that are being
challenged.
No doubt the concept of paternal function responds to many deter-
minations from the psychoanalytic viewpoint. We could say that it
originates in the need to explain the child’s symbolic separation from
the mother in the mother–father–child triangle. The concept of the sym-
bolic Father exercising this function arises from it. However, there is
another issue that is obscured which is that the mother is placed in a
lateralised position, situated structurally in a place belonging only to
the drives: the child’s entrapment with no chance to generate a separa-
tion. Not only is this not observed universally in clinical practice, but
it also disavows the possibility that a mother may possess sufficient
symbolic reserves to allow her to desire and promote this separation as
well (Benjamin, 1995).
These symbolic reserves do not refer, in our opinion, to the moth-
er’s ability to include the “paternal” function in her psyche but rather
to her ability to exercise a symbolic function per se and to support
as her own the necessary symbolic third-party operatories to estab-
lish distinctions, differences and separations in a symbolic sense.
This indicates the complexity of the maternal position, which may be
partly ensnared in drives but partly contains the potential to develop
symbolic functions of separation from her child. For this reason, we
proposed (Glocer Fiorini, 2001a, 2001b) the concept of multicentric
maternities.
In regard to each individual boy or girl, we know that the real father
may or may not fulfil these functions; in the same way that the mother
may be adhered as a unitary fusion to her child or may desire to estab-
lish creative separations.
In our current legalities, it may be more comfortable to think of the

classic nuclear family with traditional interpretations: the devouring–
drive mother and the separating, symbolic father. However, I believe
that if we detach symbolic functions from terms that we can no longer
apply legitimately, we may then be free to think about fathers, mothers,
and their functions in a different way.
For all these reasons, we consider that the term third-party function
describes more precisely these symbolic operatories.
The nature–culture debate

Returning to the specifically psychoanalytic sphere, the father, if
thought of as exercising the paternal function (because he obviously
may not fulfil it), accomplishes the objective of separating the child
from the mother, of cutting off this relationship centred on thinking of
the child as the mother’s phallus, a relation that only the paternal meta-
phor could cut off. This permits the child’s insertion into an exogamic
symbolic universe. This is a concatenation of notions that apparently
cannot be unlinked.
We also know that since it is a function, it may be exercised by others
who are not the father, because of either his absence or his deficiency.
Therefore, it is a function that we call “paternal” but may be exercised
by others. It may even be exercised by the mother. Consequently, as
we pointed out, we might wonder why it is called “paternal” if it is a
symbolic function.
The answer to this question requires further explanation since it pre-
sents a problem that we need to open. It is emphasised that the mother
may exercise it if she has internalised the father’s figure as a symbolic
function. This obviously situates the mother in the place of nature:
a mother who retains her child and from whom only the intervention
of culture, the symbolic Father, is able to rescue this child, locked in
a sort of deadly embrace. In other words, the condition that proposes
that the introduction of the Father into the mother’s mind implies that
she accepts separation from the child is a patriarchal interpretation that
again pushes the mother back into the place of pure nature.
There is, however, another option: that the mother may exercise this
symbolic function promoting the separation of the child, as a desire of
her own. In other words, we need to recognise the mother as a subject.
Functions do not belong exclusively to any gender, although there is
predominance owing to different circumstances. This involves much

more than the fact that the mother has internalised the “paternal” func-
tion. It involves recognising a symbolic function in the mother in her
own right. This function does not belong to her, or to the father, even
though she may be capable of exercising it. This assumes that although
the child may be a “phallus-child” at some moments, she/he may also
be a child in the sense of an other, at other moments. If the latter fails,
there will certainly be problems, just as there would be if the paternal
function failed because the father or substitute failed to recognise the
child as an other. For all these reasons, when we speak of the symbolic
Father, we are also speaking of the mother and re-defining her func-
tions. This undoubtedly implies thinking in terms of a different type of
relations regarding parentality.
Also, the notion of phallus-child responds to an essential lack in the
mother that can only be compensated precisely by a phallus-child. This
merits discussion. The attribution of a lack concerning women, which is
no more than an interpretation, is equivalent to infantile sexual theories
that are an interpretation of sexual difference. “Has or has not” is in any
case a clinical fact that may appear in the course of an analysis. From
this conception derives the concept of the phallic mother, ensnaring and
devouring, that cannot give up the phallus-child. These infantile sexual
theories may be preserved in the adult and also in the form of theoreti-
cal explanation in psychoanalysis. In relation to this issue, we took the
concept of Deleuze (Deleuze & Parnet, 2007) concerning desire. This
author considers that desire arises not from any essential lack but, con-
versely, lack is configured in relation to a desiring field (cf., Chapter
Twelve).
We may say that dichotomous divisions as nature–culture linked
to mother–father, respectively, accentuate stereotypes of patriarchal
societies: the phallic mother that clings to her child without letting the
child go and the symbolic father that cuts them apart. When the nature–
culture opposition is made an equivalent of mothers and fathers it is an
obstacle to thinking about the construction of subjectivity. Tubert (1997)
points out a radical asymmetry in occidental thought between maternal
and paternal principles: the former is naturalised whereas the latter is
elevated to the category of a spiritual principle, as we observe in diverse
domains such as philosophy, monotheistic theology and linguistics.
This dichotomy responds to binary thought that involves power rela-
tions (Glocer Fiorini, 1994, 2001a). We have also shown (Glocer Fiorini,
2010c) that these binary polarities support the dichotomy between

subject of desire versus object of desire and subject of knowledge ver-
sus object of knowledge, both made equivalent to masculine–feminine
polarity. These are equivalences that we need to deconstruct.
It would be impossible to analyse this issue without referring to hier-
archical and power relations between the sexes that impregnate the his-
tory of civilisation and construct signifiers and culture (Bourdieu, 2003).
The figure of the patriarchal father, in charge of educating women and
children and determining their fate, is constructed on the asymmetry of
these relations.
Tort (2005) pointed out that psychoanalysis identifies the psychic
device of “law” that ensures the institution of the subject, with the
paternal function. He notes that “the Father” is the name of a historical
solution that is being displaced. He proposes that when, to the con-
trary, we perceive that the paternal solution is not the only relation
that subjects may have with law but is a totally particular moment, we
may be able to engender an entirely different conception of subjectivity.
He adds that it is indispensable for us to distinguish a psychoanalytic
approach that opens theoretical and clinical perspectives from anything
constituting subtle forms of normalisation.
Advancing a bit further, is it necessary to rescue the child from a
deadly embrace? Or could it be, as Héritier (2007) suggests, that what is
at stake is patriarchal appropriation of the child?
Therefore, if there are sufficient symbolic, sublimational and creative
resources in the mother, she may exercise this function, provided that
she is positioned beyond an exclusively narcissistic field. This is too
well known, but is always attributed to the introduction of the law in
the mother by the symbolic Father. For this reason, preservation of the
term “paternal” function is a way to universalise something that is
actually a symbolic operatory indivisible from a certain type of society
and ideology.
If this is true, and as we pointed out this is our proposal, the pater-
nal function should actually be called third-party symbolic function,
independent of the person who exercises it and beyond impoverishing
dichotomies. The concept of a third, symbolic function places it in a
true category as a function that is autonomous in relation to the person
exercising it. Otherwise, the risk is that we may essentialise something
that is a historical construction. As Castoriadis (1997) proposed, there
is interplay between “the instituted and the instituting” in social and
cultural organisation. This refers to movement and changes that are

essential for thinking about the “paternal function” in psychoanalysis.
For this reason, I believe that instead of speaking of new modalities
of “paternal” function, which eternalises something that is contingent,
we need to speak in terms of new modalities in the exercise of a sym-
bolic function.
This does not imply the exclusion of fathers or functions they may
fulfil. The search for a father marks many subjectivities. All to the con-
trary: it involves an expansion of the role of fathers in both their sym-
bolic and care-giving functions. This prevents relations between the
sexes from reifying into relations of power/domination and into fixed
attributions of symbolic functions.
Since the way the paternal function is conceptualised has effects
on analytic process, we have proposed deconstructing the concept of
paternal function and dismantling its equation with symbolic function
and law(s) that regulate a subject’s insertion in a context of social ties.
For this reason we propose calling this function the third-party, sym-
bolic function. It may assume different historical forms, one of which is
the paternal function. Therefore, it needs a process of deconstruction
in order to redefine terms and functions, not only to include in it new
forms of parentality but also to help us to review clinical impasses that
may occur in classical forms of the nuclear family if we fail to make this
necessary revision of certain psychoanalytic concepts in favour of new
constructions.
Finally, we require other points of departure in order to analyse sub-
jective production and to enable us to focus on a context in which “the
law” should not be read as an abstraction but rather in the frame of a
necessarily historical view.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Conclusions and openings
Sexual difference and the logic of complexity

The objective we proposed in this book was to examine blind spots and
aporias in relation to the notion of sexual difference in the psychoan-
alytical field. We started with theoretical and clinical challenges pre-
sented by both sexual diversities and changes observed in experiences
of men and women in the contemporary world.
We focused this study on an analysis at the limits, an intra- and inter-
disciplinary approach that involves establishing inevitable relations
between the concept of sexual difference in different theories within the
psychoanalytical field and in other disciplines, in the frame of consen-
sual social and cultural discourses.
To reach these aims, our approach proposed a genealogical analysis
and deconstruction of the category “sexual difference” in psychoanaly-
sis, clarification of logics supporting it, and debates around it. This pre-
supposes that deconstruction is necessary when problems arise which
cannot be solved within the coordinates of a given theoretical frame,
and also that this may ultimately lead to new constructions through a
constantly ongoing process.
161
In our discussion we analysed challenges to the concept of sexual

difference originating in the field of sexual and gender diversities, in the
increasingly widespread, new and not so new family configurations,
and in changes of the feminine position observed in recent decades; all
these presentations moved us to review this concept in psychoanalysis.
We also highlighted the implications of the way in which sexual differ-
ence is thought about, as well as conceptualisations pertaining to the
masculine and the feminine for actual men and women. This includes
thinking about unconventional couples—unconventional in terms
of sexuality and gender—and the construction of subjectivity of their
potential children. In the latter case, the position adopted may or may
not involve situating these children “outside the symbolic order”.
This approach presupposes that in our clinical work we encounter
the problem of sexual difference exactly as it presents in contemporary
societies. As we emphasised, certain concepts concerning difference
need to be revised. For this purpose, our itinerary has aimed to illu-
minate contradictions and paradoxes associated with the category of
“sexual difference”, a notion dear to the psychoanalytical field. We have
started out with obstacles and impasses regarding sexual difference as
one of the roads chosen.
We have reviewed problems arising from the Freudian proposal
regarding sexual difference, analysing the oedipal route in girls and
boys. For boys, oedipal resolution is produced through castration anxi-
ety on confronting sexual difference and, if resolved, leads to an exog-
amic solution. For girls, Freud (1925j) described three possible roads,
guided by penis envy: hysteria or frigidity, the masculinity complex,
and maternity as the princeps aim. Only the third indicated success-
ful resolution of the Oedipus complex. This prescription thereby dis-
avowed any feminine non-maternal or non-hysterical sexuality. These
solutions, which exclude successful sublimation for women since, if it
occurs, Freud considers it an expression of masculinity, thereby reiterat-
ing the classical masculine–feminine, man-woman dichotomy that situ-
ates the feminine and the maternal in the place of nature and emotions.
Although Freud’s works contain other aspects, as we have shown,
Freud never totally renounces the equation of the masculine with the
subject and the feminine with the object of desire and knowledge, as
well as with otherness. This logic is dualistic and is also logic of power.
Therefore, when otherness is situated in women or, alternatively, in sex-
ual and gender diversities, the issue becomes more complex.
CONCLUSIONS AND OPENINGS 163
However, Freud’s texts are multi-centred. Careful reading reveals

other types of thinking that exceed dualistic, binary thinking. We recall
the complemental series in which subjective construction is analysed
through three factors (constitutional variables, childhood experiences,
and the precipitating cause). We also underline his reflections and con-
clusions in a case of female homosexuality (Freud, 1920a). He points out
that it is not the mission of psychoanalysis to “cure” homosexuality but
in any case to analyse its determinations. He concludes this article with
a proposal about the construction of sexed subjectivity on the basis of
interplay between three orders of variables, which we discuss below.
This postulation advances beyond binary thinking and proposes triadic
thinking.
In brief, we find in Freud’s texts two lines of thought that may be
extracted from his works in order to think about processes of construc-
tion of sexed subjectivity.
First, oedipal resolution that situates the subject in a masculine or
feminine position through a heterosexual solution, thereby accentuat-
ing binary, dichotomous polarity.
Second, a triadic proposal that, as mentioned, he describes in The
Psychogenesis of a Case of Female Homosexuality (1920a) in which sub-
jective construction is produced on the basis of three factors: somatic
sexual characteristics, psychic sexual characteristics (masculine or femi-
nine attitude) and type of object choice (homosexual or heterosexual),
in different combinations. That is to say that these variables may have
different types of interrelations and not necessarily coincide with each
other.
In our opinion, this second line of thinking is worth developing and
expanding since it surpasses dualistic thinking in regard to ambiguities
and uncertainties of the itineraries of sexuality.
These two lines of thought (binary and triadic) undoubtedly coexist in
Freud’s works, and we return to the second line and discuss it more
deeply now in our conclusions.
Other authors, for example Winnicott (1966) and Lacan (1998),
advance beyond the dichotomies described and, from different perspec-
tives, detach the feminine from women and the masculine from men.
However, particularly in the latter author, the proposal contin-
ues to be dualistic, the feminine and women standing before a back-
drop linked to the concept of castration (even if we differentiate the
imaginary order from the symbolic orders) as well as to lack, absence
of signifier, feminine jouissance outside the symbolic order, and other

associated conceptualisations.
The central hypothesis of our book is that binary thought functions
as a limitation in view of challenges we face for thinking about sexual
difference in the broad field of differences. This central hypothesis is
connected to other secondary hypotheses that we have developed grad-
ually in the course of this study. Among these: that the phallic order
does not cover the complexity of the notion of sexual difference and
that we need to disassemble certain equations between masculine–
feminine, phallic–castrated, presence–absence, nature–culture, rational–
emotional pairs.
First proposition
Our first proposition is to think of the category “sexual difference” with
other logics beyond binary logic. To do this, we rethink the construction
of sexed subjectivity in a triadic mode, with the support of the para-
digm of complexity (Glocer Fiorini, 1994, 2001a, 2007a).
The concept of sexual difference has an imaginary aspect expressed
in infantile (and adult) sexual theories but it also refers to symbolising
functions.
As we said, phallic–castrated opposition is an imaginary construction
described by Freud’s proposals on infantile sexual theories originating
from confrontation with sexual difference. The concept of phallic phase
expresses presence–absence polarity as Freud describes it (1909b) from
the boy’s viewpoint under the influence of castration anxiety. However,
when this opposition is given signification and equated to masculine–
feminine polarity, as occurs in infantile sexual theories, a slip is pro-
duced whose determinations and consequences we have examined.
Regarding this aspect, we also differentiate between the Freudian
phallic phase and what is termed the “phallic order” that responds to a
signifying universe in which the phallus is the master signifier (Lacan,
1958b) (cf., Chapter Fourteen).
Second proposition
We highlight that in our analysis, and this is part of our proposition,
sexual difference is not covered by the phallic order. Precisely, our per-
spective leads inevitably to thinking about sexual difference beyond
classical binarisms. This does not mean elimination of binary polarities

but does mean looking for intersections and interfaces to enable us to
categorise sexual difference with elements pertaining to the paradigm
of complexity.
Binarisms
Knowledge and substantial, essential notions regarding sexual differ-
ence are configured. Problems constituted on the plane of thought need
to be disassembled: analogies, fixed dichotomies, equations, and closed
systems or structures.
For this reason we postulated the application of other logics to think
about these issues, to enable us to move forward in relation to their
contradictions and problems.
Binary thought is involved: subject–object, subject–other, phallic–
castrated. As we pointed out, one of the fundamental problems is the
equation of these polarities with the masculine–feminine pair. From this
point we propose decentring closed binarisms in order to disassemble
these automatic equations with the masculine and the feminine.
Analysis of their genealogies involves being able to surpass the logic
of excluding dichotomies and searching for “lines of flight” (Deleuze,
1995) among them, in a becoming that could generate a novel type of
differences and enable us to go beyond substantial positions concerning
the masculine and the feminine.
This approach removes any fixed positions for both the masculine
and the feminine and allows us to categorise phenomena of construc-
tion of subjectivity in both sexes in a different way, which could include
diverse itineraries of desire.
It is a matter of considering subjectivities in movement, in an ongo-
ing process of becoming. These movements also question a certain com-
fortable kind of knowledge that adheres to fixed and familiar positions.
This deconstruction of binary dichotomies does not eliminate them since
they are part of language, but does create conditions for us to move
beyond classical equations: subject = masculine, object = feminine,
woman = mother. Also, the incorporation of a new way to think about
the concept of sexual difference enables us to disassemble the automatic
equivalence drawn between homosexuality and perversion. It may also
generate a novel alternative to understand the construction of sexed
subjectivity in children of couples that are unconventional from the
viewpoint of sexuality or gender without reducing them to a plane of

abjection, outside the symbolic order.
In brief, returning to our hypothesis regarding blind spots we have
brought to notice in relation to the concept of sexual difference in psy-
choanalysis, we postulate that these blind spots are supported by binary
thought operations. For this reason we reiterate the need to call upon
other logics and models of thought upheld as we said by the paradigm
of complexity (Morin, 1990; Prigogine, 1988) and thinking at intersec-
tions (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Trías, 1991) which enable us to explain
more approximately some dead ends pertinent to the notion of sexual
difference in our times. This requires surpassing dualisms without can-
celling them but instead including them in larger complexities.
In this context, our proposal was to take into account different mean-
ings of the category “difference” which refer to differences between
subjects and also difference on the intra-psychic plane. It was also to
analyse the way they are interpreted, with what criteria, and their uni-
versality or contingency.
Based on this proposal, we advanced even further: is sexual differ-
ence a notion dependent on historical or social changes? Or, at the other
extreme, is it a reference to the Lacanian real, whatever cannot be sym-
bolised, and in this sense, a concept that alludes to something beyond
the symbolic order or, as some authors consider, to a limit of the sym-
bolic order? (Žižek, 2000; Laclau, 2000).
The issue of sexual difference acquires greater density when we con-
sider that this category escapes any possibility of absolute symbolisa-
tion, although its imaginary aspect makes a bridge with symbolic effects.
Therefore, if we accept that sexual difference cannot be completely sym-
bolised, it is precisely this point that implies involvement of the effects
of historisation, basically in the narratives with diverse meanings attrib-
uted to it. This entails consideration of the extent to which it responds
to the notion of the real and how much to the concept of historisation.
In our opinion, although the category of difference as what cannot be
symbolised, as the enigmatic, is erroneously attributed to the feminine,
we also maintain that consensual discourses in each historical period
mark different meanings and limits, never fixed, between aspects of dif-
ference that may be symbolised and others that may not be symbolised.
In this frame, we understand that the concepts that structure theories
are not independent of what is speakable and thinkable in each period
of time (Angenot, 2010).
Third proposition
In this frame, our perspective is to think about difference as a cate-
gory subject to formalisations that we consider should be historicised.
We recognise that cultural movements respond to slowness inherent
to inertial cycles which provoke the imaginary effect of something
eternal and immutable. This differs from epochal effects whose move-
ments are more clearly registered and made visible in each historical
moment.
There is no doubt that this involves the structure versus history
debate. In this case we think about the concept of structure in an
expanded and diachronic form (Sartre, 1991) constituted by norms,
exclusions, and repudiations (Butler, 1993), thereby distancing our-
selves from its conceptualisation as unchangeable and eternal. Event
and chance are indispensable parts of this proposal, which opposes all
substantial positions regarding difference.
We also need to situate conceptions on sexual difference between the
universal and the particular, and between the universal and the con-
tingent. Our perspective surpasses the attempt to situate the univer-
sal in relation to the masculine and the contingent with respect to the
feminine, respectively, even if this attempt considers them “principles”
independent of actual men and women.
Differences
Our proposal is framed in the conviction that sexual difference is a
border concept that should not be considered in a segmented way by
each separate theoretical field since this compartmentalisation would
exclude relevant determinations of the other fields.
First, if we consider sexual difference in a Freudian sense, we arrive
at the infantile sexual theories supported by the phallic–castrated axis.
However, if we stop at this point, we exclude on the one hand a genea-
logical approach to analyse the categories of the visible and the invisible,
including the powers linked to the establishment of these categories. On
the other hand, we exclude the gender difference between masculine
and feminine and their fantasies. They are recognised and nominated
at birth, are imaginary in character, although their strong symbolising
effects interplay with the field of sexuality where they determine differ-
ent types of construction of subjectivity and diverse conflicts.
Second, if we consider only gender difference, we are in the field

of ideals regarding the masculine and the feminine but lateralise the
potentiality of the field of desire and its relations to the assigned gen-
der, and also exclude possibly conflictive relations with the bodies that
support it. And third, if we limit ourselves to anatomical difference,
we exclude its psychical consequences and, basically, judgements that
determine criteria supporting it which may also be historicised.
At the same time, recognition of difference(s) is a fundamental part
of access to a symbolic universe. However, as we said, difference exceeds
the notion of sexual difference since it also presents on other planes.
At birth, we are assigned to the field of the masculine or the feminine
except in special cases. This is an imperative of consensual legalities,
an assignment supported by sexed anatomy and its cultural interpreta-
tion. Insertion into a context of social bonds, as well as variations of the
drive-sexual impulse, result in affirmation, loss, or questioning of this
initial identification (being identified) or position. In other words, this
initial identity may be lost or reaffirmed or become more complex in a
multi-determined trajectory of fantasy, identification, and desire which
may or may not involve access to difference on all levels.
In this context, sexual difference transcends both anatomical differ-
ence and phallic–castrated dualism and integrates as part of a complex
system of relations and differences. This incorporation requires that
we distinguish between sexual difference pertaining to infantile sexual
theories and symbolic differences that may be generated at the intersec-
tion of these sets.
Also, knowledge of gender identity may exist simultaneously with
incognisance of sexual difference. In this frame, we have emphasised
the dependence of these categories on consensual social discourses.
From this point on, our perspective leads us to distinguish between
sexual difference in the field of sexuality and gender difference in the
domain of identification ideals. In both cases, we find contradictions
and blind spots.
Returning to our proposal on triadic thinking, we postulate interplay
between sexual difference and gender difference that is produced in
the frame of anatomical heterogeneity. That is to say that bodies (recog-
nised and assigned at birth to the field of the feminine or the masculine
by a cultural imperative), gender ideals (transmitted by the uncon-
scious of the parents and others in the culture), and desiring fantasies
in the field of sexual difference (for example, infantile and adult sexual
theories) interrelate. Their articulation and/or collision, simultaneous

or not, generates sexed subjectivity (Glocer Fiorini, 1994, 2001a, 2010b).
It becomes necessary to consider, in relation to the anatomical hetero-
geneity of sexed bodies, that nature is always interpreted and is there-
fore no longer natural. In regard to the distinction between genders
we need to point out that genders are interrelated with pluralities of
identifications in connection with the parents’ desire and identification
project for their child. Concerning psychosexual difference we need to
emphasise that it aims at the field of desire. Desire decentres and by
definition exceeds all excluding binary dichotomies.
We think that sexed subjectivity is constructed at the intersection of
the categories mentioned above. These categories are heterogeneous and
yet cannot be dissociated from meanings assigned by ruling discourses.
There is no concordant harmony among them and consequently, the
construction of sexed subjectivity is constituted in tension. Articulation
or collision between these fields produces phenomena of construction
of subjectivity. The way in which they relate generates degrees of sym-
bolisation and varied conflicts in relation to gender identity and to car-
tographies of desire. These conflicts are undoubtedly related to possible
concordances or discordances with respect to cultural legalities.
Our proposal is therefore to think about the construction of subjec-
tivity in terms of intersections of these sets, whether in concordance
or collision. In this ternary scheme, psychosexuality decentres dualism
between anatomical sex and cultural gender.
In this sense, taking on sexed subjectivity depends on the handling
of processes of symbolisation on the basis of continuities and disconti-
nuities between ternary categories. This triadic conception dismantles
the subject = masculine and object = feminine = other polarity. It also
assumes recognition that in each subject there is an other, as well as
that the other is also a subject. It presupposes establishment of passages
in an open system: from the object of desire to the different other or
the radically other, but also from the other to the position of subject. In
these movements in which subject/other and other/subject are inter-
changeable, the feminine may no longer be indissolubly equated with
otherness, and meta-theories that support theories on sexual difference
could ultimately be modified. This advance also has consequences on
conceptualisations concerning homosexuality as well as sexual and
gender diversities when they are equated to otherness or to what is
outside the symbolic order.
In the context of this book, we have developed an expanded concept

of difference that encompasses psychosexual difference (on the plane of
desire and object choice), difference or diversity of gender ideals, and
anatomical difference (whose status is always an interpretation). Below,
we draw links with other categories concerning difference.
Field of intersections
Processes of construction of subjectivity are linked to the production
and recognition of these planes of differences and their intersections
whenever they have symbolic effects (see Figure 1).
These are three types of difference. These three sets are not auton-
omous in relation to linguistic, discursive, social, and ideal codes
that determine the configuration of a sexed position and gender
identity with their possible discordances. They are resolved at those
intersections between imaginary and symbolic planes including
Anatomical Gender
difference difference
(always signified) (identifications)
Psychosexual
difference
(field of desire)
Figure 1. Triadic thinking on difference.

psychic areas difficult to represent or aspects that cannot be symbolised.

For Deleuze (1994), the concept of difference questions the limits of
representation.
We place psychosexual difference in relation to anatomical sexual
difference and gender difference since we consider that in this (non-)
relation, possible clinical problems are generated as well as conflicts
concerning the construction of sexed subjectivity (heterosexuality and
homosexuality, transsexualism, transvestism, and other presentations).
We reiterate our emphasis on the need to distinguish between gen-
der difference and sexual difference. They correspond to heterogeneous
realities and fantasies that may or may not concord.
We also emphasise that it is unconducive to work with strict con-
cepts regarding the masculine and the feminine since these are not con-
cepts that the psychoanalytic field is able to encompass. We know that
they are always changing, from the individual point of view as well as
in different cultures and subcultures.
Fourth proposition
In the perspective we propose, and in keeping with our trajectory in
the course of this investigation, our fourth proposal is to work on the
notion of difference including not only all aspects pertinent to psycho-
analysis, but also on its transdisciplinary and transcultural relations.
In this context, when we consider the diverse planes on which differ-
ence is expressed, we find that each plane is a set and that the relation
between these sets, their oppositions and superimpositions, expresses
different problem areas in the constitution of the subject. It is about a
broadly encompassing conceptualisation—in tension—and not neces-
sarily possible to articulate, which the above graph helps us to handle.
The relation between these sets is singular in each subject, although
some elements may be generalised. Sexual difference is immersed in
these relations whose ambiguities, articulations, and collisions impact
on subjectivity and at the same time decentre an unmodifiable fixed-
ness regarding the masculine and the feminine.
This means that no symbolic difference could be a transcendental
or substantial category. This statement is based on our proposal that
the category of difference is a complex notion, played out on differ-
ent planes and in different categories, which presents ambiguity and
indefinition that also require examination.
On this point another inquiry emerges from the fields of philosophy

and linguistics but also penetrates the psychoanalytic field: What is the
relation between “difference” in the linguistic field, meaning the slip-
ping of signifiers that generates differences, and sexual difference?
This inclusion adds one more set for thinking about the intercross-
ings of these variables in relation to the construction of subjectivity.
There are other questions, too. Is it the horizon of a foundational lack
that generates difference? Or is it, as Deleuze points out (1994), just the
opposite? Is it necessary to make difference a positive category? Is dif-
ference constructed on a background of absence or of presence, or do
they coexist?
Fifth proposition
Our fifth proposition is that the “lack” common to all subjects is only
established on a background of presence. In this sense, the interplay
between presence and absence means that they cannot be dissociated,
and therefore, this interplay does not respond to any ultimate cause
situated in lack.
Now returning to our proposals in regard to the notion of subject,
we recall our aim of taking on alternative conceptions of the subject
(unitary, split, and fragmented).
We suggested that for the fragmented subject, work of construction
is necessary, but for the unitary subject deconstruction is required. We
may apply this proposal to the field of differences.
In the sets we proposed to categorise difference, it is possible to work
with processes of construction and deconstruction, synthesis and analysis.
Deconstruction may de-centre a subject of knowledge traditionally
equated to the masculine position, thereby generating new syntheses,
which are always transitory since they eventually come to an end point in
ulterior deconstructions. This procedure also enables us to disarticulate
the equation: lack = object of desire = enigma as referred to the feminine.
Our proposal is to reach areas of passage. For this, we need first to
pass through:
• Deconstruction, in order to access complex constructions.

• Binarisms, in order to arrive at logics of intersection.
• Equations, in order to effect a necessary de-centring.
• Complex configurations, in order to situate singular subjectivities.
Difference is a crossroads concept

Difference also pertains to the concept of temporality. For Green (1975,
2000), time regulated by interchange between the child and the mother
when they are separated belongs to neither of them, but is the time of
fantasy difference, transitional time.
However, difference is also a philosophical concept. For Heidegger
it is distinction, divergence, the contrary of “being”, as a totalising cate-
gory. From here, lines emerge which accentuate difference on the plane
of the signifying slip (Lacan, 1958b). In the thinking of Derrida (1987),
the concept of différance is a polysemic term based on a play of words
between differentiate and differ, allusive to the primary condition of
the functioning of language and thought. Significance is attributed to
interplay between the differentiating-differing of signifiers. Lyotard
(1988) proposed the concept of “differend” as a dispute between at
least two parties that use radically heterogeneous plays of language in
such a way that no consensus may be reached regarding principles or
rules that could establish a way to settle the dispute. Deleuze (1994)
considers difference as dynamic repetition, differentiating it from static
repetition. He follows lines of thinking that proceed from Kierkegaard
and fundamentally from Nietzsche. The concept of the Dionysian in
contrast to the Apollonian is inscribed in this frame: chaos and intoxica-
tion versus organised forms. It also alludes to repetition in the eternal
return, difference being marked at the heart of repetition. Independent
of whether difference is included in repetition or whether two types of
repetition, static and dynamic, are considered, there is no diachrony,
no before and after, but rather coexistence of these categories. Further,
no concept of pure repetition is able to explain difference. However,
each thinker accentuates more either the category of repetition or the
category of difference. In our opinion, it is “difference”, at the intersec-
tion of its numerous planes and meanings that marks out the road in
processes of construction of subjectivity.
Sixth proposition
Our sixth proposition is therefore that the concept of difference exceeds
the concept of sexual difference. Its polysemy: difference on the linguistic
plane, Heideggerian difference as distinction, Derridian différance, the
“differend” (Lyotard), difference within repetition in a Deleuzian view
Gender
difference
Linguistic
Symbolic difference
difference
Difference in
Imaginary discourse
difference
DIFFERENCES
Difference
Psychosexual as distinction
difference
“Différance”
Anatomic
(Derrida)
difference
Difference “Differend”
as radical (Lyotard)
Difference
otherness in repetition
Figure 2. Difference: a polysemic concept.
as flows of becoming as well as difference as radical otherness, form

multiple planes on which it may be analysed and enter into relations
that may be concordant or contradictory in relation to gender and psy-
chosexual, imaginary, and symbolic differences. Consideration of these
variables allows us to think more precisely on processes of construction
of sexed subjectivity. All these variables configure a field in which there
is always one “empty square” (see Figure 2).
On our route, we consider that it is not a matter of cancelling the
notion of sexual difference but of supporting it as such, in tension and
complexity on its many planes, with its limitations and contradictions,
its aspects not susceptible of symbolisation, without steering it off
course or situating it in one of its terms: the feminine as enigma. This
does not mean that we ignore the enigmatic character of existence but
only that we refrain from deviating enigma onto the feminine. Enigma
is much more, and aims at other orders. Placing it in the feminine is
based on the need to elude uncertainties and anxieties related to differ-
ence itself.
Also, homosexuality and sexual and gender diversities guide us in

the direction of rethinking the radical notion of sexual difference based
on fixed masculine–feminine dichotomies as a condition of insertion in
a symbolic universe of social bonds.
Construction of sexed subjectivity: reflections

On the itinerary we have taken, we started out with the assessment
that one of the major challenges for psychoanalysis in the first decades
of the twenty-first century is to delve into epistemologies and logics
involved in the field of sexuality and gender. To meet it, we proposed to
focus on problems referring to sexual and gender difference based on
psychoanalytical and transdisciplinary categories.
We have postulated that impasses inherent to binary logic require
intercrossing with contemporary epistemologies and logics in order
to decentre fixed options leading to essentialist conceptions of sexual
difference. At these intersections it becomes possible to illuminate the
same categories, thereby generating new effects of signification.
Thus, we consider it possible to think about processes of construc-
tion of subjectivity and sexuation in a multicentred way. The broad and
multiple field of identifications—including gender identifications—and
the domain of desire as well as the heterogeneity of bodies along with
their significations, interplay in varied and numerous permutations. In
these processes of intersections and oppositions, insertion in a symbolic
universe is involved in growing complexities. If we add to this other
conceptions of difference that also pertain to the realm of construction
of subjectivity, we may expand this field of study even further.
These reflections include considering psychoanalysis an open sys-
tem in constant interchange with the external world:
• Specifically with others.

• With cultural discourses and norms.
• With other disciplines.
It involves working, as we mentioned, with tripartite schemes or others

that include more variables, with intersecting sets and, at these intersec-
tions, finding among the dualisms “lines of flight” to enable us to work
with “the new”, with what emerges at the limit, at the frontiers, in the
interfaces. All this involves being able to think in terms of heterogeneous
orders that do not lead to dialectic synthesis. It presupposes working with

dualisms and complexities at the same time. In other words, complex
thinking exceeds dualisms, but also includes them.
Thinking on the basis of triadic or quaternary schemes does not imply
a summing of categories or any arrival at a surmounting synthesis but,
as we said, the establishment of a number of sets that intersect without
necessarily reaching any harmonious unity. At the intersections, which
may include concordances but also discordances, phenomena of con-
struction of sexed subjectivity are produced which presuppose access
to symbolic resolutions, more or less problematic, depending on the
degree of conflict and psychical pain of each subject in his or her famil-
ial, social, and epochal context.
There is coexistence of heterogeneous logics in relation to the
complex relation between biological sex, gender, identifications, and
desire. This relation is foundational of subjectivity and is permeated
by oedipal movements, considering the Oedipus complex in a broad
form: transfamilial, reformulating its aporias and including its potential
symbolic effects, as we explained in the respective chapter. These vari-
ables, then, may be thought about in their intercrossings, in the border
areas produced between them. We recall the proposal of Trías (1991)
that “being” is constituted at the limes (limit).
Therefore, the sexed subject is constituted in tension and in colli-
sion between heterogeneous orders. This proposal points, in Bakhtin’s
words (1984), to a constitutive polyphony concerning the production of
sexed subjectivity.
This line of work leads us to think about these processes beyond false
options between nature and culture, drive and object, internal versus
external world. We particularly emphasise the enormous difficulty for
reaching harmonious syntheses in this relation impossible to unify:
between sexed bodies, multiple identifications, and the field of desire
and object choice. This means including masculine–feminine binary
polarity, with all the uncertainties it generates, in systems of larger mul-
tiplicities and complexities. It presupposes putting into play more than
two variables in order to understand them.
Therefore, returning to the production of subjectivity which, as we
described it, is marked by uncertainties and ambiguities, we see that the
extremely frequent lack of concordance between sexed bodies, bisexual
fantasies, multiple identifications, and contingency of object choice
led us to think that, as Pontalis pointed out (1982, p. 26) concerning
assignment of a sexual identity, “a lifetime is not too long to respond in

person to answers that were presented as givens”.
Logics and differences

In the course of our inquiry, we have worked with contradictory ele-
ments without eliminating any of their terms. We have reviewed the
many levels on which difference is played out, of which sexual differ-
ence is one, and we have focused specifically on sexual and gender dif-
ference in the psychoanalytical field.
We must unavoidably go through the category of “sexual difference”
in culture, discourses, and clinical work, while accepting that it does
not correspond to any natural fact or immutable essence, salvaging its
complexity, multivocal character, and metaphoric aspects.
Briefly, the objective proposed implied describing alternative ways
to think about difference: to tackle this category with a different logic
capable of sustaining heterogeneities and discordances without imme-
diate resolution. We have not suggested eliminating binary logic, an
impossible task since it permeates both culture and language and is
part of our psyche, but rather to accept the interplay between binary
logic and a logic of limits and heterogeneity (multivalent and para-
consistent). In Deleuze this entails work with disjunctive conjunctions
(Deleuze & Parnet, 2007; Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). It requires going
through and beyond dualisms, reaching transitory syntheses as well as
disjunctions that sustain the heterogeneity of processes of construction
of subjectivity.
Also, the paradigm of complexity enables us to think with and also beyond
binary logic. This position is far removed from any relativism or eclecti-
cism, and aims to outline a psychoanalytic problem—the category of
“difference”—that demands to be rethought.
The triadic scheme is not static but is constantly becoming, as also is
the production of subjectivity. Subjectivity and difference go together.
In this becoming, different discursive and cultural lines intervene, dif-
ferent orders of symbolic thirdness. This implies, in our opinion, that
there is no one symbolic order, atemporal and unchangeable, but rather
different symbolic orders whose movements exceed us in our limited
temporality (Glocer Fiorini, 2001a, 2007b).
These movements allow us to think about a novel becoming, com-
plex and different, for masculine and feminine positions, as well as
for sexual diversities, with different degrees of conflict in relation to

consensual norms.
In this frame, sexual and gender difference should be thought of in a
context of multiplicities (logical, symbolical, and experiential) through
interminable work of deconstruction and construction. It means con-
ceiving of a subject in movement, in production, with an open, plural
psyche, in the manner of the “psychic magma” proposed by Castoriadis
(1984).
This implies that theories and practices are also in transition.
A profound approach to the subject of sexual difference is related,
as we said, to contemporary debates on sexual and gender pluralities,
as well as on the feminine and the masculine. In this context where
sexual difference fades, we emphasise that it is necessary to introduce
another inevitable element: the concept of otherness. For Fraisse (1996),
otherness is an irreducible category that sustains itself beyond sexual
difference. It involves recognition of subjective positions far removed
from sexual binarism.
The problem of sexual difference aims to show how each subject
appropriates pre- and transsubjective determinations preceding him
or her, and the way difference(s) is/are inscribed symbolically in all
its/their aspects into an organising signification. This complex opera-
tion, always incomplete and problematic, requires inclusion of all the
planes we have considered in regard to the category of “difference”,
and which lead us to the necessity to accept the heterogeneous and the
oppositional, and to grasp all the determinations involved, avoiding
any soothing position with respect to established knowledge.
We are observing dilemmas and aporias that motivate the need to
deconstruct and analyse genealogically the category of “difference”
which may potentially lead us to new, non-axiomatic constructions
with effects on clinical practice. This implies going beyond narratives,
and metaphors while also considering the “empty squares” outside the
symbolic field.
Illumination of the multiplicity of notions concerning difference ena-
bles us to think about each subject’s access to difference in a complex
way. It is not only a matter of access to sexual difference (heterosexual)
but to other symbolic levels of difference, as well as recognition of their
aspects not susceptible of symbolisation. This allows us to rethink clini-
cal work in situations not responding to traditional, classical canons. In
this case, we encounter different levels of multiplicities, and we should

work on them in terms of concordances and discordances.
The question is whether the subject has psychically inscribed “difference”
on all the planes on which it is resolved, that is to say, in an expanded
sense. This goes even further than the manner in which object choice is
resolved, pointing to recognition of otherness.
In the context in which we work, diversity alludes to the plural itin-
eraries of desire and changing gender identities increasingly visible in
contemporary societies. On the other hand, difference refers to sym-
bolic operations that function on different planes that interact with each
other in both complementary and oppositional ways.
It is not a matter of inverting terms and passing from dualisms to
diversities or from difference to diversity. We think not in terms of
passages between these two categories but rather of a paradoxical
coexistence (Glocer Fiorini, 2001a, 2015). These categories involve
and challenge each other mutually. For this reason, we discuss
processes of construction of subjectivity on the basis of recursive
movements between different coexisting orders of diversities and
differences.
This means that we open up an expanded understanding and pro-
pose alternative hypotheses, other logics, and forms of thinking in order
to work with heterogeneous categories that cannot be synthesised and
which explain these challenges from clinical work to theory and from
theory to clinical practice.
In these processes of construction of subjectivity, social discourses
and counter-discourses and the cultural universe mark symbolical-
discourse ordering which has effects on all the orders mentioned: on
bodies, identifications, fantasies, and object choice. As we discussed,
they are effects that may be historicised and involve different mecha-
nisms of third-party orders and differences. Insertion of a subject into
a symbolic universe depends on the psychic mechanisms involved and
also on whatever the familial and social context accepts in relation to
third-party orders and differences. In this fabric, diverse types of con-
struction of sexed subjectivity are produced with consequently differ-
ent conflicts.
Finally, we consider that crises of symbolic referents are not always
attacks on the symbolic order but may ultimately be a starting point for
new forms of symbolic ordering.
Therefore, between the Oedipus and what lies beyond the Oedipus,
between sexuality, sex, and gender, between the multiplicity of iden-
tifications, between norms and what exceeds them, and between
what is instituted and what is instituting, at these intersections sexed
subjectivity is constituted in collision, in a context of constantly
becoming processes, contrary to any substantial position regarding the
subject.
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INDEX
Abelin-Sas Rose, G., xxiv, 60 assisted fertilisation, 14, 71, 75, 79,
absence, 58, 142 see also 85, 98, 100, 110, 116, 125, 150
presence–absence attachment, 124
absolutism, 16 and homosexuality, 81
adoption, 116 fusional, 123
adult sexual theories, 118 Aulagnier, P., xxiv, 44, 119
Alizade, A., xxiv, 124 Austin’s concept of performativity, 141
ambiguous identities, 141
Ambinder, R., 139 Bakhtin, M., 25, 176
Ambrosio, G., 70 Balandier, G., 78
Amorós, C., 7 Baranger, M., 65
Andreas-Salomé, Lou, 29 Baranger, W., 65
androgyny, 4, 9 Baudrillard, J., 70
Angenot, M., 166 Belinsky, J., 154
anxiety, 5, 55 Benjamin, J., 46, 133, 146, 155
castration, 32, 36–37, 40–42, 53–56 Berenstein, I., 65
nameless, 102 Bernays, Martha, 29, 51
Appignanesi, L., 29 binarism, 9, 165
Ardhanarisvara, 9 binary logic, xxi, 75, 95, 131
Argentieri, S., 70, 74 binary schemes, 141
Aristophanes, 6 Bleichmar, S., xxiv, 60
191
192 INDEX
bodies, 130–131 dark continent, 31, 51, 132

Bokanowski, Th., xxiv, 60, 85 David-Ménard, M., 8, 53, 140
Bonaparte, Marie, 29 De Beauvoir, S., 10
Bouillaud, J., 6, 130 De Saussure, F., 46
Bourdieu, P., 59, 131, 133, 158 decathectisation, 11–12
Bowlby, J., 124 deconstruction, 159, 172
Braidotti, R., 60 Deleuze, G., xxi–xxii, xxiv–xxv, 21, 23,
Bukatman, S., 108 41, 47, 56, 74, 76, 94, 106, 116,
Butler, J., xxiv, 39, 59, 74, 141, 144, 167 121, 157, 165–166, 171, 173, 177
Derrida, J., 33, 54, 76, 143, 173–174
castling, 149 desire, 124–126
Castoriadis, C., xxii, 19, 44, 73, 94, 103, Deutsch, Hélène, 29
158, 178 difference(s)
Castoriadis-Aulagnier, P., 44, 73, 94 as a crossroads concept, 173
castration as a polysemic concept, 174
concerns on concept of, 42–47 between the sexes, 3–4, 9
symbolic, 46 category of, 166
castration anxiety, 32, 36–37, 40–42, logics and, 177–180
53–55, 117 theories on, 7–8
castration complex in boys, 36 disparity signals, 140
castration complex in girls, 37–38 dissociated sexuality, 7
Chasseguet-Smirgel, J., xxiv, 29 diverse effects of sexual violence, 127
chronotopos, 25 domination, 59, 127, 131–133
classicism, 30 assimilation of, 133
conceptualisations of sexual difference Don Juan, 6
construction of subjectivity, 16–23 dualism, 8, 73–74
new realities, 13–16 Duby, G., 3
overview, 11–13 Duvignaud, F., 102
subject in intersections, 24–26
subject in process, 23–24 Eco, U., xxii
confrontation, with sexual ego, 16–17, 31–32, 50, 64, 108–109,
difference, 4 124, 129, 145
conscious(ness), xix, 30, 66, 70, 147 ideal ego–ego ideal, 76, 129–130
see also unconscious super-, 8, 31, 35–37, 39, 44, 94, 130
pre-, 76, 88, 143, 147 Elliott, A., 26, 103
construction of sexed subjectivity, 171 empty square, 174, 178
reflections, 175–176 enigma of sexual difference, 54–55, 60,
construction of subjectivity, 124, 145, 65 see also feminine: enigma
170, 176 epochal effects, 167
Council of Trent, 5, 153 exogamic symbolic universe, 156
culture, 144, 153 explanatory theories, 144
INDEX 193
fantasy gender, 136

translation of, 5–6 assignment of, 145
unconscious, 26, 65 difference, 134
Faure-Oppenheimer, A., 140 ideals, 93
female homosexuality see identification fixedness of, 23
homosexuality: female problems, 14
female sexuality, 33, 39, 41, 43, 56, theories, 139
120, 122, 125 variant, 8–9
and maternity, 5, 56, 116 violence, 135
feminine, 4, 56 generative identity, 60
age and characteristics of, 8 girl’s psychosexual development, 31,
classical mode of, 8–9 40–41, 125
destiny, 117 Glocer Fiorini, L., xvi, 5, 19, 30, 32,
enigma, 8, 117, 119, 172, 174 49, 54, 56, 70, 75, 77, 80, 89,
jouissance, 138 92–93, 95, 99, 101, 107–108,
Middle Ages and, 4–5, 9 110, 116, 121–122, 124, 126,
polygamy, 6 131, 135, 141–142, 144,
representation, 20 150–152, 157, 164, 169,
femininity, 29, 31, 50, 56, 142 177, 179
challenge soothing positions Green, A., xxiv, 55, 65, 83, 85, 119,
and, 32 145, 173
essential truth regarding, 33 Guattari, F., xxii, 23, 41, 47, 76, 94
female sexuality, 116
maternity relation with, 14, 58 Hampson, J. G., 139
primary, 44–45, 58 Hampson, J. L., 139
First World War, 150 Haraway, D., 61, 104
fixedness of genders, identification, 23 Harris, M., 5
Forrester, J., 29 Heidegger, M., 43, 173
Foucault, M., 7, 30–31, 51, 130–131, 141 Heimlich, 55
Fox Keller, E., 8 Héritier, F., xxiv, 52, 130, 141, 158
Fraisse, G., xxiv, 96, 136, 178 hermaphroditism, 4, 7, 9, 139
French psychoanalysis, 58, 119 heterosexual couples, 70, 94–95, 98
Freud, S., 6, 8–9, 13, 16, 19, 29, 31–32, History of Women in the West, A, 3
35, 37–40, 50–52, 55, 69, 76, Holtzman, D., xxiv, 60
81–83, 85, 89, 94, 108–110, homosexual couples, 79–80, 85, 87–88,
117–118, 120, 123, 128–129, 93–94, 98–99
136, 138, 141–142, 144, 154, homosexuality, 79–85
162–164 female, 82–83, 163
discourse, 128 one or various, 81–83
theory, 125–126 overview, 79–80
fundamentalism, 12 problems in, 83–85
194 INDEX
Horney, K., xxiv, 29, 43, 57, 118 Laqueur, Th., 59, 141
humanity, 153 late modernity see postmodernity
hyper-cathexis of phallic maternity, Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his
120, 125 Childhood, 81–82
hyper-complexity theories, 39 Lévesque, C., 76
hyper-modernity see postmodernity Levinas, E., 17, 32, 64, 124
hyper-real bodily involvement, Lévi-Strauss, C., 6
101–102, 104, 107 Lewkowicz, I., 18
lines of flight, xxi, xxv, 165, 175
idée fixe, 51 logic of contradictions see binary
identification project, 44, 73, 77, 94, 169 logic
identity, 145–146 Loxley, J., 141
generative, 60 Lyotard, J.-F., 76, 173
sexual, 14, 177 Lysistrata, 6
illuminism, 18, 20
unitary subject of, 23 Mack Brunswick, R., 29, 118
Infantile Genital Organisation, The, 142 masculine domination, 133
infantile sexual theories, 117–118, masculine–feminine
137, 157 dichotomies, 175
interpretations of sexual violence, 140 dualism, 60
Irigaray, L., 39, 61 gender binarism, 128
Israël, L., 5 polarity, 9, 21, 24–25, 53, 72–73,
128–129
Jones, E., xiv, 44, 138 masculinity, 30, 60, 64
jouissance, 43, 55, 119, 138, 164 in girls, 37, 57
primary, 44, 57
Kabyle tribe, 133 pure, 52
Kernberg, O., 82 secondary, 44
kinship systems, 117 masochism, 129, 140
Klein, M., xxiv, 6, 36, 44, 57, 64, 118 female, 29, 60
Kofman, S., 31 sado-, 84, 128–129
Kristeva, J., xxiv, 23, 25, 53, 66, 116 material reality, 13
Kuhn, Th., 152 maternal iconographies, 117
Kulish, N., xxiv, 60 mathemes of sexuation, 43, 47, 119
maternities/paternities,
Lacan, J., xxiv, 17, 38, 42–43, 46–47, 54, contemporary, 97
58, 65, 72, 82, 90, 108, 119, 138, bodies of, 105–109
143, 151, 154, 163–164, 173 fictions, and cybernetics in,
Laclau, E., 166 103–105
Laplanche, J., xxiv, 44–45, 52, 65, 75, multicentred, 110
122, 129, 139, 143, 145 new frontiers, 101–103
Lampl-De-Groot, J., 29 overview, 97–100
INDEX 195
subject of new reproductive notion of penis envy, 120

technologies, 109–111 nuclear family, 89–92
technological bodies, 100–101
maternity, 7, 41–42, 55, 101, 103, 107, oedipal
116–118 journey, 36, 44, 162
biological and instinctual, 107 movements, 176
female sexuality and, 5, 56 narrative, 36, 40, 137, 144–145
phallic, 121 post-, 60, 145
relation with femininity, 14, 58 pre-, 37, 39, 41, 44, 53, 65, 82, 85,
McDougall, J., xxiv, 70 118, 145
Méantis, G., 9 resolution, 43, 53, 116, 124–125,
Medusa’s Head, 6 162–163
meta-theories on sexual difference scheme, 120
overview, 49–50 structure, 94
subject–object polarity, 50–55 trans-, 94
woman = mother equation, 55–56 triangulation, 120
Mill, Stuart, 29 Oedipus–castration complex,
misogyny of Biblical texts, 4 32, 35–47
Mitchell, J., 33, 39, 154 concerns on concept of, 42–47
modernity Freudian contributions to subject
and sexual difference, 8 of sexual difference, 38–39
self-sufficient subject of, 18 in boys, 36
sexes accentuated in, 9 in girls, 37–38
unitary subject of, 19, 106 overview, 35–36
Money, J., 139 points for reflection, 39–42
Morin, E., xxii, xxiv, 39, 95, 124, problems in Freudian proposals, 39
152, 166 Oedipus complex, 9, 16, 36, 89–92,
Muller, J., xxiv, 29, 43 124, 149
multiculturalism, 12 Ogden, T., 65
multiplicities, 73–74 On Transformations of Instinct as
multicentred Exemplified in Anal Erotism,
maternities, 110 117
paternities, 110 open psyche, 24–26
Orlando, 10
Nachträglichkeit, 13 otherness in sexual difference, 63–66
nameless anxiety, 102 intersubjectivity and
Nasio, J. D., 105 transsubjectivity, 65
naturalisation, 59, 97, 130 sexual and gender migrations, 64
nature–culture debate, 156–159
neosexualities, 70–71 parentalities and subjective
nomadic sexualities, 69 production, 87–96
notion of desire, 115 nuclear family, 89–92
196 INDEX
Oedipus complex, 89–92 psychoanalysis, 22–23, 133, 162

overview, 87–89 complex theoretical corpus and, 26
sexual and gender crossings, Kristeva’s suggestive concept,
92–96 25–26
sexual difference, 89–92 psychoanalytic
paradigm, a change of, 152 perspective, 116
Parnet, C., xxi, xxv, 157, 177 sphere, 156
paternal function, 151 viewpoint, 153–156
decline of, 152 Psychogenesis of a Case of Female
in psychoanalysis, 159 Homosexuality, The, 73,
Patterson, Ch., 95 82, 163
Peirce, Ch. S., 17 psychosexual development, 38,
penis envy, 57–58, 119 40–41, 55, 120, 125,
Perrot, M., 3 129, 138
phallic–castrated axis, 76, psychosexual difference, 92, 96, 143,
167–168 146, 169–171, 174
phallic maternity, 121, 123, 125 psychosexual dynamics, 60
phallic order, 164 psychosexuality, 77, 136–137,
phallogocentrism, 54 145–146, 169
phallus, 38, 42–43, 46–47, 54, 59, Puget, J., xi, 65
72, 82, 119–121, 138, 143,
156, 164 Raphael-Leff, J., xxiv, 60
phallus-child, 157 Renik, O., 65
Plato, 6 representation, 20–21
poiesis, 122 Ricoeur, P., 106
polygamy, 6 Riviere, J., 141
polyphony, 25, 176 Room of One’s Own, A, 10
polysemy, 24 Rose, J., 33, 39, 154
Pontalis, J. -B., 176 Roudinesco, E., 87
porous identity, 146 Rousseau, J. -J., 6
postmodernity, 8–9, 17–19, 23, 72, Rubin, G., 59, 139
105, 147
power, 130–131 Sáez, C., 5
sexual difference, and dualisms, Safouan, M., 70
131–132 Sartre, J.-P., 152, 167
structures, 141 Sas-Rose, Abelin, 60
Praise of Folly, The, 6 Schopenhauer, A., 6, 106
presence–absence, 75, 118, 121, 164 Second Sex, The, 10
Prigogine, I., xxi, xxiv, 166 semblant, 53
psychic agencies, 147 Sennett, R., 11
psychic device of “law”, 158 sexed subjectivity
psychic magma, 19, 178 construction of, 16–23
INDEX 197
effects of accelerated repression of, 31

biotechnological advances, 15 types of, 15
fragmentation and emptiness, 18 sexual variant, 8–9
new forms of, 14 sexual violence, 127–128
sex–gender polarity, 59 sources of relations, 128–130
sexual and gender Sibilia, P., 12
crossings, 92–96 social violence, 15
diversities, 152 Some Neurotic Mechanisms in
violence, 127 Jealousy, Paranoia and
sexual and gender migrations, 64, Homosexuality, 81
69–78 Sophocles, 6
binary thinking and complexity, space–time coexistence, 25
76–78 Special Type of Choice of Object Made
contemporary polemics, 74–75 by Men, A, 53
dualisms and multiplicities, 73–74 Spinoza, B., 6, 153
gender difference vs. sexual Stoller, R., xxiv, 59, 139
difference, 75–76 strict dualisms, 132
masculine–feminine binary subject in intersections, 24–26
polarity, 72–73 subject in process, 23–24
overview, 69–71 subjectivity, 177
problems proposed for, 71–72 subject–object polarity, 50–55
sexual difference, 4, 134, 141, 144, substitutive, equational conception
162, 164, 166–168, 171, 177 of maternity, 124
classical binarism of, 9 superego see ego
confrontation with, 4 symbolic
construction of subjectivity and, castration, 46
16–23 equation, 119–121
discourses on, 7–8 separation processes of, 122
epistemic and epochal third party function, 15
suppositions, 30–33 symbolic Father, 15, 46, 65, 89,
epistemic framework, 27–33 155–158
Freudian contributions to subject
of, 38–39 Taboo of Virginity, The, 50
post-Freudian and contemporary technological bodies, 100–101
controversies, 57–61 the fold, concept of, 116
turn of century Vienna, 28–30 the witch, 4
sexual diversities, 10, 14, 43, 70, 77, Theme of the Three Caskets, The, 55
91–92, 95, 135, 146 theoretical consequences, 118
sexual identity, 14 theoretical interpretations of
sexuality, 128 masculine/feminine
dissociated, 7 polarity, 135
female, 5 third-party function, 151
198 INDEX
third-party symbolic function, 91, 158 fantasy, 22, 25–26, 54, 65

Three Essays on Sexual Theory, 40, 81, phantasies, 88
136 Unheimlich, 55
Todorov, T., 25, 64 unitary subject, 16–20, 23, 106
Tort, M., xxiv, 105, 117 of illuminism, 23
Totem and Taboo, 50 uterine migrations, 5–6
transference, 10, 35, 60, 65, 95
counter-, 65 Vienna see turn-of-the-century Vienna
transdisciplinary and transcultural virtual sex, 15
relations, 171
transitional space, 64, 123 Weltanschauung, 22
transsexualism, 59 Winnicott, D. W., 45, 58, 64, 123,
triadic thinking on difference, 170 138, 163
Trías, E., 19, 166 witch see the witch
truth, 38, 54, 132 Womanliness as a Masquerade, 141
Tubert, S., 157 Woolf, V., 10
turn-of-the-century Vienna, 28–30
Žižek, S., 166
unconscious, xix, 10, 16–17, 21–22, Zolla, E., 9
24, 28, 30, 35–36, 65, 70,
76–77, 95, 116, 118, 123, 126,
129, 143, 147, 168 see also
conscious(ness)

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SEXUAL DIFFERENCE IN DEBATE

Leticia Glocer Fiorini

Copyright © 2017 by Leticia Glocer Fiorini

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

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Printed in Great Britain

ABOUT THE AUTHOR xiii

PART II: ITINERANT SEXUALITIES

PART III: SEXUAL DIFFERENCE—TOWARDS A POSSIBLE

Leticia Glocer Fiorini, MD, is past President (2012–2016) of the

Now well into the twenty-first century, we observe relevant changes

We also need a particular epistemological and interdisciplinary

This deconstruction of the masculine/feminine polarity also leads us

In this context, other forms of subjectivity, for example, “sexual

For this purpose, we approach our study with the epistemological

• To analyse different theoretical positions—implicit and explicit—in

postmodernity or late modernity, as well as in some sexual and

This description shows that the selection of bibliographical material

1. Conceptions in debate on sexual difference and on masculine and

Summarising, we propose not only to focus on problems generated

• A triadic model for thinking about construction of sexed subjectivity

• Deconstruction of the concept of “paternal” function, considering

These proposals could make it possible to stretch our interpretive frame

A transdisciplinary view with

Discourses and narratives

as the androgyne, the hermaphrodite, the transvestite, part of one in the

that maternity is a symbolic and symbolising function. This includes

effects on conceptions of sexual difference. Klein (1945), with her

to accepted discourses, established norms, and meanings that extend

notion of bisexuality and the concept of the complete Oedipus complex

the feminine, otherness, and enigma, in spite of changes in the female

The sexed subject and current realities—

following the failure of each subject’s potential to organise fantasy and

Of these concepts we shall discuss two: the concept of reality or

were “disappeared”, and identity theft. These phenomena are related to

On the itinerary we are taking, we reiterate the importance of

bear in mind that their interpretation is also subject to reigning systems

Construction of subjectivity and sexual difference

This interpellation is included in the profound Nietzschean

investigate weighty questions concerning the role of the real body in

It is true that this is not a matter of returning to the unitary and

of a foundational, existential lack inherent to processes of subjective

In this sense, we can think that the production of subjectivity takes

of freedom and questioning necessary for any process of construction

The subject in process

In sum, these precisions lead to the possibility of promoting

The subject in intersections: the open psyche

of the simultaneity of different processes in the psychic field. In our

recovering Freud’s works in terms of opening and multiplying power.

Freud’s epistemic context and discourse

to think about problems insofar as it accepts some logics and excludes

advanced towards an understanding of the psyche in which repression

Epistemic and epochal suppositions

decentred any unitary conception on sexual difference and masculine

(Levinas, 1987). In this logic, the masculine position is identified as

It is a theory on difference with a “phallogocentric” facet, in Derrida’s

• Is sexual difference an ahistorical “reality”?

The Oedipus–castration complex and

the frame of punishment for his incestuous wishes. However, we know

Freudian contributions to the subject of sexual difference

complex is analogous to the boy’s complex. He discovers a prolonged