Confronting the foreign. Surrealism and psychoanalysis in dialogue

ABSTRACT Influenced by psychoanalytic theory of drive and the desire, the surrealist movement aimed at breaking down the rational I of the individual, to liberate desire and sexuality and create a free human being by transgressing moral and social conventions. I explore the idea that sexual desire may be experienced as something foreign in us – as a drive for excess and boundlessness. Reflecting on the revolutionary project of surrealism from a psychoanalytic perspective, I specifically discuss female sexual desire as articulated by surrealist artists. I argue that art may confront us with what is foreign, thereby ‘calling’ upon us to integrate what was hitherto unrecognized.