Chain of Eros : the Actuality of the Sexula in Psychoanalysis.

258 Pages·2002·9.46 MB·English

by  Green

THE CHAINS OF EROS
The Sexual in Psychoanalysis
Translated by Luke Thurston
KARNAC
LONDON
Reprinted 2008 by H. Karnac (Books) Ltd.
1 18 Finchley Road
London NW3 5HT
Rebus Press 2000
O Andr6 Green
translation by Luke Thurston
6 Editions Odile Jacob
Janvier 1997
15 Rue Soufflot
75005 Paris
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechiinical.
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the
publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
a C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978- 185575-960-2
For Guy Rosolato

Invincible, implacable Eros, 0
Eros, that makes havoc of all wealth;
That peacefully keeps his night-watch
On the tender cheek of a maiden:
The Sea is no barrier, nor
Mountainous waste to your flight; for
No one can escape your domination,
Man, no, nor immortal god. Your
Prey is possessed by madness.
By Eros, the mind even of the just
Is bent awry; he becomes unjust.
So here: it is Eros that stirred up
This quarrel of son with father.
The kindling light of Eros in the soft
Eye of a bride conquers, for
Eros sits on his throne, one of the great powers;
Nought else can prevail against
Invincible Aphrodite.
- Sophocles, Antigone, vv.782-800
(trans. H.D.F. Kitto [translation modified]).
'Eros, which holds together everything in the world ...'
- Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the
Ego (1921: 90).
A NOTE ON TEXTS
Quotations and references to Freud are given according to the
Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sipund
Freud. 24 Vols. Translated and edited by James Strachey in col-
laboration with Anna Freud, assisted by Alix Strachey and Alan
Tyson. London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-
Analysis; New York: Norton, 1953-1974.
PUBLISHER'S ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Rebus Press thank Sally Woof whose generous sponsorship
made the publication of this translation possible.
CONTENTS
Preface
1 Starting from the sexual
2 Freud's coherence
3 The sexual invariant and the return of Puritanism
4 Eros, from Vienna to London
5 The retreat of the sexual and its extreme forms
6 Maternal sexuality
7 And woman?
8 jouissance according to Lacan and others
9 Towards a Metabiology
10 On the limit-concept: 'a drawer is a push-button in
German'
11 The thing and the chain
12 Returning to origins: translation and drives
13 Trieb
14 Eros: drives of life or love
15 Eros and Psyche
16 Representation and the erotic
17 Theoretical strategies: dogmatic and genetic per-
spectives
18 Traumas: yesterday and today
19 Sexuality in contemporary analysis
20 The sexualisation of non-libidinal conflicts
21 Bisexuality and homosexualit(ies)
22 A note on paedophilia
23 Another translation
24 Biosexuality
25 The language of sex
26 Cultural variations
27 The double alterity
28 Pause
29 The chains of Eros
30 Outline
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Preface
It may as well be said: this book owes nothing to what is 'actu-
al' or contemporary,l at least to what fills the pages of our news-
papers and our television screens. It concerns another kind of
contemporary 'actuality': that which occupies the books and
journals appearing in psychoanalytic circles. In itself, this very
distinction is food for thought. It is as if psychoanalysis at times
cuts itself off from the world in which it lives, remaining closed
in by the four walls of the consulting room. What is 'actual' or
contemporary for psychoanalysis is thus based on a conception
of the psyche limited to what can be observed-analysed-in a
microcosm analysts tend to substitute for the world outside,
which they abandon to the psychiatrists, the biologists, the
lawyers and the sociologists. Yet even after this operation of
reduction, their field, scaled down in this way to the modest
proportions of their experience, remains a battlefield: practi-
tioners and theoreticians, with their divergent interpretations of
sexuality, fight it out there.
It was into such a framework that I wished to intervene,
being opposed to certain interpretative tendencies and anxious
to restore what I believe to be the truth about sexuality-
grounded in clinical practice and certain moments of theory,
which are sometimes forgotten. At the moment it is proclaimed
on every side that sexuality today is no longer what it was in
Freud's day. It is implied that the importance and force of sexu-
ality have been greatly reduced by the evolution of everyday
life, giving way to other factors with a different signification for
the psyche. Yet sexuality launches a violent retaliation, bringing
with it a trail of unimagined horrors, reminding us that this is
not true and emphasising the inadequacies of our current con-
ception, our tendency to minimise its significance or relativise it
in favour of other factors.
But there is something good about this return of the sexual
by way of the real. Not only does it call our armchair construc-
tions to order (on this subject, there will always be reciprocal
limitations between intensive and extensive approaches), mak-