Un autre regard sur l’énigme du sexe : l’excès et l’affect à la lumière de la complémentarité des sexes

Context

This article traces the history of my efforts to understand how binary gender signifiers organise the otherness of sexuality; to analyse the tension of bearing the tension of sexuality with regard to the regulation of affect and the theory of recognition.

Objectives

The core of this work has been an effort to establish a place in intersubjective and relational thought for sexuality.

Method

To do this, I locate the origins of our stance toward sexual arousal in experiences of the early mother-child dyad and following the traces of this model into gender complementarity.

Results

The clinical sequelae of early dysregulation should be noted: the effects of unacknowledged distress, abandonment and overstimulation on adult sexuality. We have explored how the inability to tolerate sexual arousal and the affect of arousal, the “overflow”, reflects the failures of the mother-baby relationship. The marks of these failures are apparent when they emerge in the clinical staging of transference-countertransference.

Interpretations

The constant tension between intrapsychic fantasy and intersubjective procedural work in the transferential matrix should be emphasised. The interweaving of these two layers is visible in the fantasies that – at once – mask and reveal the intersubjective failures of regulation and recognition. These fantasies are shaped by the gender metaphors used to deal with the enigmatic message.