Ilka Quindeau - Seduction and Desire-An Alterity - Theoretical Interpretation of Sexuality

Ilka Quindeau: Seduction and Desirean Alterity-Theoretical Interpretation of Sexuality; EPF-Bulletin 64; p.
129-139
Ilka Quindeau: Seduction and Desirean AlterityTheoretical Interpretation of Sexuality; EPF-Bulletin 64; p.129-139
At the beginning of the last century, Sigmund Freud made a breakthrough in sexual theory with his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (Freud, 1905). Yet subsequent developments in psychoanalytic theory have often regressed to a point before Freuds breakthrough. This return to a conventional concept of sexuality can certainly be seen in Freuds work itselffor instance in the last part of the Three Essaysbut it is nonetheless worthwhile to follow up on Freuds alternative paths. Jean Laplanche, for one, characterizes this early line of Freuds thinking as Copernican, a decentred perspective in which the subject is no longer the centre of consideration. Just as Copernicus pointed out that the sun does not orbit around the earth, Freud, in his sexual theory, demonstrated that man is not the self-confident, autonomous subject that German Idealism made him out to be. Laplanche emphasizes the significance of the Other instead of the autonomy of the subject. To me the primacy of the Other represents the greatest achievement in psychoanalysis, which Laplanche elaborates in his General Seduction Theory. And it is from this perspective that I would like to reformulate Freuds sexual theory in an attempt to think through The Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality afresh under the primacy of the Other. My aim here is to develop a consistent psychoanalytic theory of a genuinely human sexuality (Quindeau, 2008). What does genuinely human mean? By this I specify a sexuality that can neither be reduced to an endogenous biological programme nor to a biological function. Instead of inheritance or biological trait, I will posit the
1
Ilka Quindeau: Seduction and Desirean Alterity-Theoretical Interpretation of Sexuality; EPF-Bulletin 64; p.129-139
interpersonal relationship. The sexual characteristics develop within an interpersonal arena where phantasies and memories are the constituents. It is not an instinct but a desire originating in the relationship between child and adult that is at the bottom of sexuality. I will now try to explicate this thesis and present a few basic assumptions of my model. In this attempt I will concentrate on the question of the origin of sexuality and pursue the following questions: how the body becomes a source of pleasure, what role the unconscious plays in the adult and to what extent do sensual perceptions, memories and/or phantasies cause sexual excitement. In my view the sexualized body is not determined by the bodys genetic equipment. It is in the mother-child relation,1 that is, in the infants primary experience of satisfaction that the infantile body becomes a sexualized body because in the interaction it is getting equipped with the ability to experience pleasure. To put it bluntly, sexual pleasure and desire is not caused by a biological trait but by satisfaction; it is acquired and not inborn, even if it is also biological. Thus there really is no opposition of biology and psychology that at times has been cited as a criticism of Jean Laplanches General Seduction Theory. The real question is whether a certain behaviour is determined by biological traits, subjected to a genetic programme, or whether it is acquired in the life history of interpersonal relations. With this approach, Laplanches theory represents a consistent relational psychology that emphasizes the significance of the Other. The Primacy of the Other The primacy of the Other is the big innovation that Laplanche contributes to psychoanalytic discourse and that psychoanalysis has not really caught up with. His ideas have managed to overcome the subject-centred
2
approach in psychoanalysis that still lives on in current trends of neoKleinians (Britton and Meltzer), of object relations theory (Kernberg or Fonagy) or of intersubjective, relational psychoanalysis (Benjamin and Bassin). The primacy of the Other (or alterity) implies a direction of thought that prioritizes the Other and not the self. The General Seduction Theory takes as its origin a structured relationship that is not equivalent to the exchange between two subjects as is assumed in intersubjective psychoanalysis. Instead of a reciprocal interaction, it is a unilateral, asymmetrical relational structure that is at stake here, comparable to the linguistic form of an address. Every address is associated with a demand to which the addressee has to respond.2 The demand is made on various levels, but psychoanalytically it is the unconscious message that is of interest, a message that is conveyed with every address. Alterity based psychoanalysis describes the fundamental anthropological situation in which the subject is constituted in terms of an asymmetrical communication of address and response.3 This is a completely different position from the one advanced by present day developmental psychology. The child is not seen as the creator of his development (cf. Oerter & Montada, 1995) in the usual sense of the modern autonomous subject but as structurally subjected to the Other (as subject in the literal sense of sub-iectum ). Human development and the development of sexuality is therefore conceived of as not stemming from the ego but from the Other, the foreign, the intangible. This angle of visionthe primacy of the Otherfits with an essential psychoanalytic purpose that tries to find the motivation of behaviour and experience in the unconscious, that is to say, in what is not accessible to or tangible for the ego.
3
Jean Laplanche describes the anthropological situation as a primal seduction that takes place at the moment of birth, when the infant is confronted with the world of the adults and especially with the unconscioussexualdesire of the adults: But this adult world is not an objective world that the infant would have to discover and experience just as it will learn how to walk and to handle things. This world is marked by messages (verbal or merely semiological, that is, pre-or paralinguistic messages) that make a demand on the infant before it can understand them while it must attribute a sense and respond to them (Laplanche, 1988). With respect to the genesis of the unconscious and its sexual core, it is the confrontation with the unconscious desire of the adults that is of central importance. In this context Laplanche talks of enigmatic messages. They are enigmatic for the infant because, for one, the infant does not yet have the necessary somatic, cognitive, and affective behavioural and experiential opportunities to process these messages; for another, they are also not accessible for the adults, because they are enigmatic by dint of their unconscious content. This last point needs emphasizing. In the relationship to the child, it is unconscious phantasies that are addressed, which function like enigmatic messages. It is not at all a matter of concrete sexual acts. The confrontation with the unconscious desire of the adult is being inscribed in the developing psychic structure of the infant. In order to illustrate its traumatic character, Laplanche calls this process intromission. What is inscribed are foreign bodies from which the core of the childs unconscious is formed. But in my argument I do not wish to follow Laplanche in his emphasis on the traumatic moment in this constitutional process; instead, I would
4
like to accentuate the resulting productive psychic processes. I conceive of the relation between infant and adult as a place where the psychic structure, the unconscious, and infantile sexuality is generated in a nonendogenous and in a not necessarily traumatic manner. In my approach it is not the trauma of the subject but the desire of the Other that is of central constitutive importance. The desire of the adult is directed towards the infant in the form of a demand. The infant responds to this demand with the generation of his own infantile-sexual desire. In fact, the constitutive process of sexuality and, beyond that, of the entire psychic structure could be articulated as a derivation of the famous Cartesian phrase cogito ergo sum as desideratus/a ergo sumbecause I am desired, I am. This formulation would account for the fundamental heteronomy of human existence. The passive form of desideratus refers to the preexistential structures to which the individual is subjected and also refers to the subjects dependence on the Other in its development. Hence, sexual desire is neither an endogenous process, something that is already laid down genetically in humans, nor is the individual the creator of his own desire. In contrast, I take all desire to be a response to being desired. By understanding the genesis of desire in terms of the primacy of the Other, you are not just making a statement about a situation in early infancy but about any desireeven in adulthoodthat is responding to these internalised scenes of being desired by mother, father or any other primary care giving person in early childhood. The formation of the sexualized body as inscription In returning to the process of intromission, the desire of the adults is being inscribed in the infantile body as the core of the unconscious. This
5
inscription is not merely metaphorical. What comes into existence is not just the unconscious but the body which is also being equipped with sexual excitability. This thesis dislodges the current theory of sexuality in which sexuality is attributed to the inborn physical excitability. The traditional view is that sexual excitability is contingent on genetically laid down physical traits of people, and psychical activities like phantasies are merely a later addition. In my opinion, the rather specific figuration of human sexualityin contrast to other organismsis underdetermined with this emphasis on the hereditary. From the perspective of the primacy of the Other, I would like to offer another view. Given the universal situation of seduction, in the encounter of the infant with the adults, sexual excitability is being inscribed in the infantile body. The formation of such a sexualized body can be illustrated in the formation of the erogenous zones. With the thesis that comprehends desire as inscription, I want to connect with Freuds early conceptualizations when he was engaged in thinking about memory and the genesis of psychic structure. In a letter to Wilhelm Fliess from 1896, he sketched completely new ideas about how memory works, namely that memory does not simply represent perceptions but lays them down in sign systems. In this way, psychic structure is constituted and permanently changed as well: You know that I am working under the assumption that our psychic mechanism has come about through layers of sedimentation, and from time to time the existing material of memory traces undergoes a restructuring according to new relationships, a transcription. The essential new thing in my theory is thus my thesis that memory is not just one thing but exists in multiple versions as it is laid down in various signs (Freud, 1986, p. 217). Although Freud, at
6
the time of creating this model of transcription, had ambitious plans to describe a new psychology with the psychological features of perception and the three registrations (p. 218), he never took it any further. I, however, see a continuation of Freuds ideaabout multiple encodingsin the concept of interaction styles in Alfred Lorenzers theory of socialization, even if Lorenzer did not explicitly refer to it. Lorenzer distinguishes between various levels of interaction that are formed in the course of ontogenesis from empirical interactions and which, in my view, can be conceived of as transcriptions: concrete, sensual-symbolic and (verbal-) symbolic forms of interactions (Lorenzer, 1977). These forms are the registration of a multitude of concrete, biographical interactions between the child and his care-givers; they build a structure that underpins subsequent behaviour and experiences like a sort of web of expectations and orientations. With respect to the issue under discussion, of interest are the ontogenetically very early structures or forms of interactions that are laid down on a sensori-motor and organismic level that is pre-verbal. An example would be the way in which a child is being taken into his mothers arms. The manner in which this happens clears a coenaesthetic memory trace in the form of a gesture that shapes the active behaviour of the child as well as his passive expectation. Numerous clinical observations have supported this in the sense that most mothers dont question how they should carry their child. It is likely that memory traces of the mothers own childhood, how she was carried in infancy, are expressed here. Rene Spitzs (1959) famous case history Monica furnishes impressive evidence for these coenaesthetic memories.4 Numerous repetitions of experiential interactions are laid down in an interaction structure, a specific form of interaction. Their pre-verbal,
7
sensor-motor, and organismic registration is an inscription in the body that takes place without reflective consciousness. Going beyond Lorenzer, I would like to articulate my thesis that registrations or transcriptions of sensor-motor interactions, as a whole, dont just structure a kind of body memory but provide the structure for the body itself and its perceptual abilities. Equally, the sexualized body is formed through memories during the development of erogenous zones. By this Freud means a skin or mucous area which, when stimulated in a certain way, produce a sensation of pleasure of a specific kind (Freud, 1905, p. 84). Importantly, this sensation of pleasure is not primarily attached to the body part; therefore, it is not determined by the genetic equipment of the body, which might be triggered in some way, but is primarily generated through the effect of another person. An example is the situation of breast-feeding. By sucking mothers breast, the lips and mouth of the child turn into an erogenous zone. The experience of satisfaction forms the infantile sexual body; it equips the body with a specific excitability or arousal. In the beginning the satisfaction of the erogenous zones was attached to the satisfaction of hunger (p. 82). This attachment (Anlehnung) is an essential feature of infantile sexuality and predetermines certain body parts as erogenous zones. But, sexual activity detaches from these parts and hence just as in thumb sucking, any other body part can be equipped with the excitability of the genitals and become an erogenous zone (p. 84). Thus, erogenous zones are formed by sexual activity, by the experience of desire and satisfaction, which originates in the behaviour of care by adults. This is not just true for breast-feeding but for all physical
8
touching between adult and child, be it changing diapers or bathing or playing with and hugging the baby. During the first few months of a childs life, the interactions are predominantly physical in nature. From these interactions a body memory is formed that invests specific body parts with pleasure. Supporting this view is the observation that there are certain body parts that are erogenous in all people, but, beyond those, there are highly individualized erogenous zones, body parts that are pleasurable in some people but not in others. And precisely this idiosyncratic phenomenon can hardly be explained by biological equipment as, for example, by the argument that in some people there are accumulations of nerve endings in some of their body parts. A much more plausible explanation are the differentially experienced interactions. Every infant has his own experiences in the physical contact with his parents and therefore forms his special erogenous zones. Thus, the erogenous zones are memory traces of early experiences of satisfaction inscribed in the body. Given this view, sexual excitability or arousal is not caused by special physiological conditions of certain body parts but by unconscious memories that are activated by stimulating erogenous zones without needing to be aware of such a stimulation. I take the view that the real criteria of human sexuality are rooted in a sexual arousal that is fundamentally independent of sensuous perception as well as in the fact that arousal can also be caused by phantasies and memories. This configuration turns sexual arousal into a highly complex and multi-layered psychic event, which cannot be brought about in a mechanical or technical manner of stimulation. Sexual arousal is engendered by the interplay of phantasy and memory, which can be intensified by tactile and kinaesthetic, as well as visual and auditory
9
perceptions. Sexual Phantasies In his early writings, the letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Freud establishes a close connection between phantasy and memory (Freud, 1986). Both memory and phantasy are based on perceptions, such as auditory impressions, that are retroactively utilized and shaped. Hence, phantasies are a way of processing memory traces. Freud, however, discards this biographical origin of phantasy in favour of universal, phylogenetic phantasy formations in his later writings. Nonetheless, the biographical origin of phantasy presents an interesting theory with respect to sexual desire. Whereas Freud considers the primal scenesexual intercourse of parents as the origin of ones existenceas a crucial part in the aetiology of hysterical pathologies, I would regard the primal scene against the background of the general seduction scene between adult and child as a form of processing this seduction. The primal scene is then a universally expressed scenario of sexual phantasy formation, a kind of prototype from which very different variations can result in the course of life. In contrast to the conceptualizations that comprehend the primal scene as a universal structure or phylogenetic inheritance, I would see this phantasy as rooted in concrete perceptions that are, nonetheless, organized in a socially pre-existent schemethe triad of father, mother, and child. Perceptions from various origins are attached to this primal scene. Here the concrete perception of parental intercourse is neither necessary nor particularly advantageous in constructing this scene. In comparison, the concrete experiences with the parents and other caregivers are of great importance. This is especially true for the intromission of the parents sexual desire in the universal seduction scene. These
10
unconscious dimensions of the parent-child interaction are processed in and by the primal scene. This scene has the function of organizing and structuring the enigmatic messages; it gathers these messages like a prism and provides them retroactively with a form. The constructs of a primal scene do change in the course of infantile development and also in adulthood. In the ideal case, they are subject like memoriesto an ongoing process of retroactive transcription. They are both adapted to the current cognitive and affective developmental situation and altered according to the needs and, in particular, to the unconscious conflicts in the present situation. We must not suppose that the products of this imaginative activity () are rigid or unalterable. On the contrary, they fit themselves in to the subjects shifting impressions of life, change with every change in his situation, and receive from every fresh active impression what might be called a date mark. The relation of a phantasy to time is in general very important. We may say that it hovers, as it were, between three timesthe three moments of time, which our ideation involves. Psychic work is linked to some current impression, some provoking occasion in the present, which has been able to arouse one of the subjects major wishes. From here it harks back to a memory of an earlier experience, usually an infantile one, in which this wish was fulfilled; and now it creates a situation relating to the future, which represents a fulfillment of the wish. What it thus creates is a day dream or phantasy that carries with it traces of its origin from the occasion which provoked it and from the memory. Thus, past, present, and future are strung together, as it were, on the thread of the wish that runs through
11
them. (Freud, 1908, pp. 217f). Even though Freuds reflections are made in the context of phantasies pertaining to artistic activity, I would like to transfer them to the realm of sexual phantasies. By sexual phantasies I comprehend not only phantasies with explicit sexual content but rather their function. Hence, sexual phantasies do cause sexual arousal, but they, as well as the resulting arousal, need not be made conscious. What is really interesting is the tension between a continual re-arrangement or new creation of phantasies, on the one hand, and the unalterability of unconscious infantile wishes, on the other hand, in the course of life. I presumeand cannot elaborate on this herethat the various modalities of satisfaction stemming from different phases in the psychosexual development are indeed registered in the sexual phantasies (see especially Quindeau, 2008). In the course of child development, a different, phase-specific modalityorality, anality, and the phallic mode dominates phantasy life as well. With reference to the concept of transcription, I would comprehend these modalities, which Freud also calls partial drives, as a retroactive transcription of infantile experiences of satisfaction. In this way, the partial drives acquire a new meaning, retroactively. Indeed, it is the concept of retroaction (Nachtrglichkeit) that I take to be key in Freuds theory of sexuality. It is therefore all the more surprising that nowhere in his Three Essays does he mention this concept, whereas he attributes great significance to it in his early writings. In line with this concept, experiences, impressions, and memory traces are re-worked at a later point in time because of new experiences or newly achieved stages of development. The early experiences acquire both new meaning and
12
new psychic efficacy in this re-working. Important in this process is the dissolution of linear time references; early experiences are just as meaningful as later ones and vice versa. If you consider sexuality, as I suggest, as something that is not a natural component of the body that merely evolves in the process of maturing, but as corporal inscriptions of pleasurable experiences, then such a concept of time as constellation makes sense in the understanding of human sexuality. In every sexual activity, numerous experiences, gained at different times, come together and are re-worked in a new transcription. In psychoanalytic discourse, the concept of retroaction is, however, used in very different and sometimes contradictory ways. The differences in interpretation may be illustrated by an anecdote that Freud related in The Interpretation of Dreams: At a womans breast love and hunger meet up. A young man, who is telling this anecdote, became a great admirer of female beauty, and he mentioned once, when we were talking about his beautiful wet nurse, who had breast-fed him, that he regrets not having made more of that great opportunity (Freud, 1900, p. 211). Three usages of retroaction can be identified here, first the two problematic ones. One is derived from James Stracheys translation, who conceived of nachtrglichkeit as deferred action, as a delayed action. According to this view, a sort of seed is being planted in childhood that later germinates and causes a certain kind of behaviour or type of experience. What this means in the example above is that the child already experienced a form of oral sex, which later developed into an adult sexuality in the young man. Understood in this way, retroaction is a progressive, future-oriented process. The second interpretation is a kind of retroactive phantasizing. In the example, the young man would imagine the sexual pleasure he could
13
have gained as an infant at the breast of his wet nurse. This would be the modern (or post modern) version according to which the adult interprets an infantile experience from the perspective of the present. This interpretation approaches C.G. Jungs idea of phantasizing into the past, an idea that Freud was adamantly against.5 Laplanche (2004) criticizes two aspects in both of these interpretations. For one, he says, both versions are caught up in a one-bodypsychology, a psychology that has only one protagonist. What is missing in the example above is the wet nurse. For another, he finds fault with the unilinear sequence that is a one-track-mind going either from the past into the future or from the present into the past. Here the dissolution of linear time references inherent in the concept of retroaction makes this concept so relevant for me. Consequently, the wet nurse, in the example, has to be considered as an adult who introjects an enigmatic message into the child. This message drives the urgency for continually new translations, that is to say, transcriptions.6 What is at issue here is a model of temporality that effects both directions from the past to the present as well as from the present to the past. So, the various stages of drive development can now be understood as different forms of transcriptions: orality, anality, the phallic phase up to genitality. In this psychosexual development, the Oedipus complex represents a decisive juncture, a place of change. The child becomes the subject of his desire; he responds to the passively experienced seduction in which he himself desires his parents. In analogy to the cogito, the desideratus, ergo sum changes into a desidero, ergo sum. The demand of the Other is answered by the subjects own desire. In conclusion, I would like to summarize a few points. I presented a
14
model of sexuality that sees sexuality rooted in a social relation in terms of the primacy of the Other. The sexual desire of the adults constitutes the desire of the child. The experience of satisfaction is therefore prior to the desire and to the development of psychic structure. The experience of satisfaction is inscribed in the body of the child and of the adult; it generates the sexualized body. The erogenous zones function as memory traces. I see as an essential characteristic of human sexuality its independence from sensual perception. Sexual arousal can, in equal measure, be triggered by phantasies and memories as well as by tactile stimulation. In the course of psychosexual development, the memory traces are transcribed. Retroaction is of central importance. Because the transcriptions continue life long, they engender a multi-various, polymorphous sexuality, which seems to be independent of its biological function, reproduction. Infantile, polymorphous-perverse sexuality is therefore not limited to childhood but is actually a characteristic of human sexuality at large. (Translated by Angelika Rapaport)
64
15

Ilka Quindeau - Seduction and Desire-An Alterity - Theoretical Interpretation of Sexuality

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ilka Quindeau - Seduction and Desire-An Alterity - Theoretical Interpretation of Sexuality

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ilka Quindeau: Seduction and Desirean Alterity-Theoretical Interpretation of Sexuality; EPF-Bulletin 64; p.

You might also like