Theme for 2020:
The choice of sex and the unconscious

“It is from the Imaginary in so far as the Imaginary is the false second, with respect to the Real, in so far as the male in the speaking being is not the female, and that he has no other angle from which to posit himself. Only these are not angles with which we can be satisfied. It has got to the point that one can say that the unconscious is defined by this and by nothing else but this: that it knows more than this truth and that the man is not the woman.”

(Seminar XXI, Les non-dupes errent, 15th January 1974)



The choice of sex and the unconscious will be our theme for two years and this seems justified given the far-reaching relevance of such a theme in today’s world of endless choices and the associated challenges to the subject’s gender identification and sexual orientation. Lacan corrects Freud by telling us that there is no destiny, only a choice of how the subject finds an orientation in relation to the signifier of desire, the phallus. By definition sexuation implies this choice, but this choice is not an easy one. Freud knew that there was a beyond of anatomical conformity and that the drive, always masculine, was implicated. However, the concept of jouissance, the real of the unconscious, means that the choice is made in relation to how the subject enjoys. It has never been clearer than today that sexuation, (and the word implies choosing a sex), is always difficult for the subject and imaginary identifications are not enough. What is the sexed subject today if his or her sexuation is not determined by the identification of gender or the anatomical sex? And what of the psychotic subject? How does the psychotic find a solution to the problem of choice of sex if jouissance cannot be orientated by the phallus? What can he or she do when confronted by the need to make a choice? What is the future of the sexed subject, neurotic or psychotic?