The Feminine Yes: Return Me to Excess

ABSTRACT This essay argues that the feminine principles of imagination, desire, and excess are necessary for the vitality of clinical work and society. Although longing is precisely the source of any new subjectivity, longing for what exceeds the requisite has in large part been considered taboo. Here, the Feminine Yes is synonymous with excess, and the primary purpose of this essay is to highlight the virtues of excess that have otherwise been overly restricted as if detrimental to life. Specifically, excess offers needed space to return to repressed content, to the not-yet, and to a primordial fount of possibility. Matriarchal structure is explored as a contemporary new foundation for psychoanalysis to this end. It is within matriarchal space that we find multiplicity without competitive hierarchies, value on affect over linearity, and, most importantly, Woman as an uncompromised model of desire in her own right, so frequently lacking in psychoanalysis.