| Title | Something Amiss |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Jacqueline Rose (author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0167.1.24 |
| 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 | Rose, Jacqueline |
| Publisher | punctum books |
| Published on | 2017-03-07 |
| Long abstract | RoseThere is something amiss. On that much queer theory and psy-choanalysis agree. For both of these ways of engaging with the world, the dominant, normative, regulations of sexual life are a lie. Freud (1908) spoke of the “injustice” of expecting one form of sexual behavior from us all. “It is one of the obvious social injustices [eine der offenkundigen sozialen Ungerechtigkeiten],” he wrote in his essay “‘Civilised’ Sexual Morality and Mod-ern Nervous Illness,” “that the standard of civilisation should demand from everyone the same conduct of sexual life” (192). Except, he added, the injustice is normally wiped out by diso-bedience—Nichtbefolgen—or non-observance of the norm. The psychoanalytic subject is restless. She puts up a fight in her dreams. Nor is her rebellion restricted to the night time alone. She has thoughts she does not share. Sometimes she herself does not know what these are. Even in the putative calm of the day, when everything is meant to be safe, she can be surprised by herself. Such moments may allow a moment of escape from the norms that bind her—the norms of civilization which, as we see from his essay’s title, Freud was careful to put in scare quotes. But these moments, inklings of another unconscious life, might also trail behind them ways of being which she would prefer not to know or to forget. Whatever her sexual orientation, this is likely to be the case. There is no clear or easy resting place in the mind. Fluidity, plasticity—the catch-words of recent theory — do not halt on request. The way-stations may be enticing or bleak. You cannot turn the unconscious into a manifesto (which is why Freud disagreed with the surrealists). For psychoanalysis, it is axiomatic that we never fully know who we are. |
| Page range | pp. 391–395 |
| Print length | 5 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |