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"Desexualization" may be most easily [[understood ]] through a [[discussion ]] of its antonym, "sexualization" ([[Freud]], 1905d). From an [[analytic ]] point of view, sexualization is a response on the one hand to the endogenous imperatives of the [[sexual ]] [[instinct ]] and on the [[other ]] to the exogenous imperatives of the [[encounter ]] with the [[object ]] and its [[otherness]]. The sex [[drive ]] comes into play at the boundary of the [[biological ]] [[body ]] and the [[psyche]], tracing [[signs ]] of its [[libidinal ]] [[energy ]] on the body. The body then becomes "erogenous," and bears the stamp of [[pleasure ]] and [[unpleasure ]] it experiences from encounters between a [[bodily ]] source and a complementary object, the prime example of which is the encounter of mouth and [[breast]].

The object, which is [[partial ]] but complementary to the [[instinctual ]] source, is [[present]]-[[absent ]] as soon as [[mental ]] [[life ]] begins. Through its [[presence ]] it participates in the [[experience ]] of pleasure; its [[frustrating ]] [[absence ]] will push the mental [[subject ]] toward the initial [[hallucinatory ]] experience, which, interacting with [[perception]], will constitute the basic of ideation. Sexualization and objectification are coexistent and coalescent. Sexualization is both a manifestation and an effect of the sexual impulse that libidinally cathects the object in a way that is both quantitative and qualitative, as reflected in the strength and the emotional [[form ]] of the object-[[cathexis]].

In Freud's first [[theory ]] of the [[instincts]], sexualization is subservient to and anaclitically dependent on the [[self]]-preservation that governs biological and mental life. Because of the paths taken by the object-[[libido]], sexualization operates not only with respect to the object, but also with respect to the ego in the shape of the [[withdrawal ]] of [[narcissistic ]] libido. We may thus assume the [[existence ]] of a desexualization of the object that goes hand in hand with the sexualization of the ego, and conversely.

If, for Freud, the sexual and the [[infantile ]] are constitutive of the [[unconscious]], it is strictly because of [[repression ]] that they are preserved on this underlying level and separated from the [[conscious ]] one. On the conscious level, the sexualizing [[activity ]] of the psyche is not systematically [[apparent]]; signs of [[anticathexis ]] and reaction [[formation ]] may be discerned in [[manifest ]] [[psychic ]] [[contents ]] that are desexualized while their [[latent ]] inscriptions in the unconscious remain sexual. The gamut of psychic [[formations]], including not only [[symptoms]], be they [[hysterical]], obsessive, or [[phobic]], but also [[dreams]], [[parapraxes]], and slips, may appear to be "desexualized" yet betray, as compromise formations, latent sexual aspects that are accessible through free [[association]]. [[Childhood ]] phobias are a [[case ]] in point. The [[fear ]] of a wild or domestic [[animal ]] appears in the conscious [[mind ]] as the repercussion of a [[traumatic ]] [[event]], associated with a [[concrete ]] experience, but in fact it may be the transposed expression of, say, a [[guilty ]] unconscious [[wish ]] to have [[sexual relations ]] with one's [[mother]]. In that case it will also express a fear of [[castration ]] by the [[father]], which is experienced as the [[prohibition ]] of that wish.

Desexualization can thus be viewed as a conscious mental [[process ]] that leaves [[repressed ]] sexualization intact in the unconscious. Whence the importance of the [[preconscious ]] as a meeting ground, a [[place ]] where desexualization—characterized by the repression of sexual impulses—and resexualization—arising from the [[return ]] of repressed [[ideas ]] attached to infantile sexual activities and aroused during [[analysis ]] by free association—can come together.

The [[Freudian ]] [[concept ]] of [[sublimation ]] can [[help ]] us [[understand ]] the process of desexualization. It indicates a [[change ]] of aim and object, which become [[social ]] rather than sexual, and a shift from the pleasure [[principle ]] to the [[reality ]] principle. The sublimation of [[sexual impulses ]] is associated with their plasticity; desexualization is in a way the precondition of access to socialization. [[Another ]] psychic process, [[idealization]], accounts for the transformation of the object, which, brought to perfection thanks to narcissistic [[projection]], then becomes a [[model ]] for [[identification]].

The second theory of the instincts, and the second [[topography ]] of the psychic [[apparatus ]] that resulted from it, round out our [[understanding ]] of the phenomena of desexualization. What is often called the great turning point of 1920 led Freud to rethink his instinct theory, taking into account a realm "beyond the [[pleasure principle]]" which he described in [[terms ]] precisely consistent with the [[Nirvana ]] principle, one of the basic tendencies of the psyche underpinning the [[compulsion ]] to [[repeat ]] and the push for a return to the inert and inanimate. Alongside the sexual instincts, therefore, and indeed predating [[them]], another [[category ]] of instincts, the [[death ]] instincts, now needed to be considered. This meant that a tendency to non-sexualization and to deobjectification was present from the beginning of the [[development ]] of the mind, a tendency that could serve as a focal point for desexualization now conceived as a return to the inert and the inanimate, as a kind of paradoxical [[desire ]] for non-desire. The Freudian conception of [[primal ]] [[masochism ]] proposes a fundamental psychic [[structure ]] involving the coalescence of sexual and death instincts. Masochism is fundamentally the organizer of [[autoeroticism ]] as it is of [[narcissism]], and it is at once the motor and consequence of instinctual fusion. As a sexualizing factor it may be a "guardian of life," but it can also be lethal, fostering desexualization and leaving the field open, as it were, to the [[death instinct]]. The [[work ]] of [[melancholy ]] that is present, more or less, in every depressive [[situation]], includes the effects of desexualization and deobjectification: the tendency to [[suicide ]] represents the most extreme form of the desire for non-desire and the victory of the death forces characteristic of this ultimate form of desexualization.

The notions of sublimation and idealization were also changed and refined by Freud's new conceptualization of instinctual [[dualism ]] and of the functioning of the mind. [[Processes ]] of identification, and more specifically [[primary identification]], now presupposed a desexualization that can facilitate the transmutation of object-[[cathexes ]] into the new instinctual vicissitudes implied by sublimation and idealization.

Although in the analytic [[literature ]] the term "desexualization" later received more systematic [[treatment ]] by Heinz [[Hartmann ]] in the context of the "desexualized ego," as applied to [[adaptation ]] to the social [[environment]], it still seems important to distinguish clearly between a [[neurotic ]] kind of desexualization characterized by repression of the sexual impulses, or by their sublimation and the idealization of the object, from a [[psychotic ]] process engendered by the leveling effects of the death instinct on the sexual instincts.

In sum, as a result of the stimulation they [[represent ]] relative to instinctual defusion, the psychic phenomena of desexualization are most clearly bound up, specifically, with the processes of unbinding, [[decathexis]], and deobjectification; they also have a [[dialectical ]] [[relationship ]] with processes of identification.

Ego and [[the Id]], The; Ego [[autonomy]]; "On the [[History ]] of the [[Psychoanalytic ]] Movement"; Self, the; Sublimation; [[Superego]].[[Bibliography]]

* [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1905d). [[Three ]] essays on the theory of [[sexuality]]. SE, 7: 125-245.

* ——. (1921c). Group [[psychology ]] and the analysis of the ego. SE, 18: 65-143.