| Title | Undoing Psychoanalysis |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | Towards a Clinical and Conceptual Metistopia |
| Contributor | Dany Nobus (author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0167.1.20 |
| Landing page | https://punctumbooks.com/titles/clinical-encounters-in-sexuality-psychoanalytic-practice-and-queer-theory/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Nobus, Dany |
| Publisher | punctum books |
| Published on | 2017-03-07 |
| Long abstract | It was not exactly Freud’s birthday, but on April 27, 1995, the em-inent French psychoanalyst André Green (1995) delivered the “Sigmund Freud Birthday Lecture” at the Anna Freud Centre in London under the title “Has Sexuality Anything To Do With Psychoanalysis?” In the opening sections of his paper, Green explained that his provocative question had been prompted by a twofold observation. On the one hand, he had noticed how since the mid-1980s sexuality had all but disappeared as a “ma-jor concept” and a “theoretical function of heuristic value” from the psychoanalytic literature, with the exception of “the ever problematic topic of feminine sexuality.” On the other hand, he had ascertained how practicing psychoanalysts, when pre-senting case material, were more inclined to focus on the ego, inter-subjectivity and destructiveness, for example, rather than the role played by sexuality in the mental economy of their pa-tients. In light of these considerations, and wishing the founder of psychoanalysis well for his birthday, Green went on to em-phasize the value and significance of a thorough re-appraisal of Freud’s key contributions to the psychoanalytic study of sexu-ality—libido, the Oedipus complex, genitality, the vicissitudes of the drives (Eros and Thanatos), narcissism—subsequently responding to his own call in the 1997 monograph The Chains of Eros (2000) by newly integrating these and other notions into a hierarchical “erotic chain,” starting from the drive and ending in language and sublimation. |
| Page range | pp. 343–356 |
| Print length | 14 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |