Carlo Levi, Gli amanti

Foundations of Psychoanalysis

Where Do the Unconscious and Politics Meet?—Gisèle Chaboudez

Saturday, September 28, 2024
10:00 AM –12:30 PM (ET)

Lacan countered the long-disputed biologism of Freud’s “anatomy is destiny” with “the unconscious is politics.” Yet he never separated what the unconscious elaborates from real bodies, for instance, sexual organs in their copulation, with regard to their defective sexual jouissance. Noting that what is called the sexual relation, le rapport sexuel, precisely is not one, and that something else has been substituted, something he termed plus de jouir, we can surmise that it’s there that politics begins. 

Suggested readings: Freud: “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love” [a.k.a. “The Most Prevalent Form of Degradation in Erotic Life”] (1912). Lacan: Seminar XIV, 1966-67, The Logic of the Phantasm, class of May 19, 1967. Chaboudez, Gisèle: What Can We Know about Sex? A Lacanian Study of Sex and Gender (Routledge 2022). 

Location: In-person in NYC and online via Zoom. 

Fee: $40; for students with ID: $15.

—

Gisèle Chaboudez is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst practicing in Paris. Formed by Jacques Lacan, she has been a director of medico-psychological centers and taught at Université Paris VIII. She is editor-in-chief of the magazine Figures de la psychanalyse and a member of Espace Analytique, where she teaches. Her books include Rapport sexuel et rapport des sexes (Denoël 2004), Ce qui noue le corps au langage (Hermann 2019), L’équation des rêves (érès 2019), Féminité singulière (érès 2020), Féminismes et féminités, le tout et le pas tout (érès 2022), and What Can We Know about Sex? A Lacanian Study about Sex and Gender (Routledge 2022).