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Freud’s early radical thinking on sexuality gave rise to the hope that psychoanalysis would be a source of new and progressive ideas on the nature of sexual difference and on the nature of erotic life generally. Yet, Freud’s later thinking in this area turned out to be disappointingly conservative, and, historically, the sexual theories put forward by psychoanalysts have been widely criticised as normative and patriarchal, demeaning towards women, and derogatory towards non-heterosexuals and transgender people. But there are signs at last that this situation has begun to change – due both to new work in philosophy and to a new kind of thinking on sexuality and gender that has emerged in psychoanalysis in the last ten years.
Day one –
1st Session: We will review Freud’s most important writings on sexuality and gender and engage with the criticism his ideas provoked, both from within psychoanalysis and beyond. We will contrast Freud’s early radical thinking with his later more conservative and normalising pronouncements, and engage with the very different psychoanalytic thinking of Karen Horney, Melanie Klein, Nancy Chodorow and Jessica Benjamin.
2nd Session: We will study Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical analysis of the relationship between the sexes in ‘The Second Sex’, noting her evaluation of Freud and psychoanalysis. We will then examine Lacan’s linguistic re-interpretation of Freud’s view of the difference between the sexes and bring the Lacanian view of sexual difference into relationship with that of Beauvoir and Sartre.
Day two-
3rd Session: In this session we will explore the brilliant post-Lacanian theorising Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray. In Kristeva’s thought, the relationship between the sexes is bought into alignment with the distinction between the ‘semiotic’ and the ‘symbolic’, undercutting the rigid definition of the sexes in Lacan’s thought. While Irigaray rejects Freud and Lacan completely, proposing a radical philosophy of sexual difference based on reconceptualising the foundations of Western thought.
4th Session: Finally, we will explore the revolutionary new thinking about sexuality that emerged from the work of Michel Foucault, and see how Judith Butler deepened it, applying it to the understanding of gender. We will then bring these new philosophical ideas into relation with the new thinking on sexuality and gender that has begun to emerge within psychoanalysis over the last ten years.
