<ARTICLES>Sexuation and Sexuality in Psychoanalysis : Rereading Freud Against Lacanians

Abstract

This article represents an attempt to intervene in the current debate between psychoanalysis and feminism and to provide a new perspective in this research field. There has been a complex and contentious history between feminism and psychoanalysis, which has given rise to a heated theoretical debate on Lacanian psychoanalysis, following the groundbreaking work of Mitchell (1973). However, in the debate between Lacanian theorists/feminists and anti-Lacanian feminists, both sides have missed a crucial point. In the act of reducing Freud's theory on sexuality to Lacan's theory of sexual difference, both sides fail to grasp the distinctive way in which Freud defines the concept of "sexuality, " the term on which the whole contreversy depends. The debate between feminism and Lacanian psychoanalysis does not include an assessment of the extent to which Lacanian formulation of the primacy of "sexed" subject (or "sexual difference") does justice to Freud's original insights. Drawing on the suggestion of Jean Laplanche, one of the most prominent French psychoanalyst, this paper examines the specific manner in which Freud distinguishes the terms Geschlecht- and Sexual-, and shows that the proper object of psychoanalytic inquiry belongs to the realm of Sexualität (sexuality), which is fundamentally independent from Geschlechtlichkeit (sexuation).