| Long abstract |
“We speak therein of fucking, and we say that it’s not working out” (Lacan 1998[1972–73], 32). Without splitting hairs, Lacan bluntly summed up what people talk about when they are on the analytic couch. If all what we talk about on the couch is sex, nothing much has been discovered in psychoanalysis since Freud and Lacan. Freud’s major revelation that the unconscious is at root sexual is confirmed in our current practice. It is not just that, as Lacan has noted, one hears that something is wrong with sex. Consider the case of one of my analysands, Melissa, a twenty-four-year-old female, who felt that her analysis was pro-gressing because she was “feeling pretty stable and calmer.” She added however that “at the end of the day” she always felt anx-ious. “Perhaps it’s this recurrent thinking, this unrelenting ques-tioning,” she added. Her problems, she knew, were about rela-tionships. The trouble was not just her mother, looming large and overwhelming, or her father, weak and slightly perverse, but her current boyfriend, who overwhelmed her with his affection. “I want to figure out what Mike means to me. Sometimes I ex-perience a sense of happiness because I love him; it can be really wonderful. Sex can be good but as soon as he expresses how much he loves me, I have only regret.” Fundamentally, his love and support did not bring her satisfaction but rather a sense of loss and emptiness. “His intense admiration for me is over-whelming. As if I were cut off from him or myself. Something keeps me from connecting with him.” Melissa had a suspicion about what the problem was: “It is the issue of seeing other peo-ple, but it does not seem worthwhile.”
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