Gender, sex, and the sexual

Studies in Gender and Sexuality

Volumn 8, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 201-219

  Laplanche, Jean ^a,b,c   Fairfield, Susan ^d  

^a UNIVERSITÉ PARIS DESCARTES   (France)

^b Association Psychanaltique de France (APF)   (France)

^c Massachusetts Institute for Pscyhoanalysis ^*  (France)

^d MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34247582783     PISSN: 15240657     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/15240650701225567     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. In a rather general way, though not systematically, Freud uses the term Unterschied (difference) to describe a binary opposition and Verschiedenheit (diversity) when there is a plurality of terms.
2. The derivation in German of the terms sexuell and sexual is very close. Both come from Latin sexualis. Sexual is more learned and more Germanic; sexuell sounds more like the Romance languages and is the more everyday term.
3. Conversely, Freud uses the term Geschlechtlichkeit in a very specific sense, different from that of "sexuality."
4. Sex and Gender: On the Development of Masculinity and Femininity. New York: Jason Aronson. The French translation was entitled Research on Sexual Identity. The change of title alone shows how hard it is for classical French thinking to integrate the term and the idea "gender."
5. Gender ohne Sex. Geschichte, Funktion, und Funktionswandel des Begriffs Gender [Gender without Sex. History, Function, and Changes in the Function of the Concept of Gender]. Psyche 51:926-957 (1997).
6. In Peter Osborne, ed. (1996). A Critical Sense: Interviews with Intellectuals. New York and London: Routledge, p. 112. [Translator's notes: the Osborne text was unavailable; I'm translating from Laplanche's French here.)
7. In L'Anatomie politique. Paris: Côté-femmes, 1991.
8. Dictionnaire critique du féminisme, Paris: PUF, 200, pp. 197-198. Italics added.
9. Unless one goes as far as the radicalism of certain feminists, who, in order to suppress the notion of sex completely, find themselves having to fight against the very concept of difference on the level of logic (Monique Wittig). But I can do no more than allude to this here.
10. This is the precise point at which I am against the attempt, from the outset, to situate (and translate into French) gender as "psychosocial sex" and "sex" as "biological sex." Such a categorization reduces the contrast gender/sex, which is much richer and more complex, to the old refrain biology/sociology. Among other matters, I'll show later on that the sex entering into a relation of symbolization with gender is not the sex of biology but to a great extent the sex of a fantasmatic anatomy profoundly marked by the condition of the human animal.
11. Used for linguistic "gender," but its range could be expanded.
12. See "Notes sur l'après-coup" ["Notes on Retroactivity"] in Entre séduction et inspiration l'homme [Man between Seduction and Inspiration], Paris: PUF, 1999.
13. "Psychoanalytic Theories of Gender Identity," in Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, 11:203-226.
14. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995.
15. Madison, CT: International Universities Press, 1981.
16. At the beginning of Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Freud states that "from the very first, individual psychology ...is at the same time social psychology as well" (Standard Edition, 18:69). But we soon see that the "social psychology" he is talking about is that of close interactions with what I call the narrow circle of the socius: "his parents and ...his brothers and sisters, ...the person he is in love with, ... his friend, and ...his physician" (p. 70).
17. For a critique of these absolutely enigmatic and symptomatic passages from Freud, see my Problématiques I, pp. 335-337. [Translator's note: I was unable to locate this passage in SE.]
18. J. Florence, L'identification dans la théorie freudienne. Facultés Universitaire Saint Louis, Brussels, 1978.
19. This translation is preferable to "anatomy is destiny." German allows for such a translation, and I believe it is more striking than "anatomy is destiny."
20. Problématiques II. Castration, symbolisation. Paris: PUF, 1980.
21. D. Widlöcher, ed. (2002). Infantile Sexuality and Attachment. New York: Other Press.