24,656
edits
Changes
→Becoming a Sexed Subject
According to [[Lacan]], then, it is not identification but the [[subject]]'s relationship with the [[phallus]] which determines sexual position.
This relationship can either be one of "having" or "not having"; men have the symbolic phallus, and women don't (or, to be more precise, men are "not without having it" [''ils ne sont pas sans l'avoir'']).
The assumption of a sexual position is fundamentall fundamental a symbolic act, and the difference between the sexes can only be conceived of on the symbolic plane.<ref>{{S4}} p.153</ref>
<blockquote>It is insofar as the function of man and woman is symbolized, it is insofar as it's literally uprooted from the domain of the imaginary and situated in the domain of the symbolic, that any normal, completed sexual position is realized.<ref>{{S3}} p.177</ref></blockquote>
However, there is no [[signifier]] of [[sexual difference]] as such which would permit the [[subject]] to fully [[symbolize]] the function of [[man]] and [[woman]], and hence it is impossible to attain a fully "normal, finished sexual position."
The mysterious "other sex" is always the [[woman]], for both men and women, and therefore the question of the [[hysteric]] ("What is a woman?") is the same for both male and female hysterics.
Although the anatomy/[[biology]] of the [[subject]] plays a part in the question of which sexual position the [[subject]] will take up, it is a fundamental axiom in psychoanalytic theory that anatomy does not determine sexual position.
Hence the [[phallus]] is "the pivot which completes ''in both sexes'' the questioning of their sex by the castration complex."<ref>{{E}} p.198</ref>
It is this fundamental dissymetry in the [[signifer]] which leads to the dissymmetry between the [[Oedipus complex]] in men and women.
<blockquote>"For a woman the realization of her sex is not accomplished in the Oedipus complex in a way symmetrical to that of the man's, not by identification with the mother, but on the contrary by identifcation with the paternal object, which assgns her an extra detour."<ref>{{S3}} p.172</ref></blockquote>
<blockquote>"This signifying dissymmetry determines the paths down which the OEdipus Oedipus complex will pass. The two paths make them both pass down the same trail - the trail of castration."<ref>{{S3}} p.176</ref></blockquote>
===Opposition Masculine--Feminine===
If, then, there is no symbol for the opposition masculine-feminine as such, the only way to udnerstand understand [[sexual different]] is in terms of the opposition activity-passivity.<ref>{{S11}} p.192</ref>
This polarity is the only way in which the opposition male-female is represented in the psyche, since the biological function of sexuality (reproduction) is not represented.<ref>{{S11}} p.204</ref>
This is why the question of what one is to do as a man or a woman is a drama which is situated entirely in the field of the Other,<ref>{{S11}} p.204</ref> which is to say that the subject can only realize his sexuality on the symbolic level.<ref>{{S3}} p.170</ref>
[[Image:DIAGRAM.jpg|right|[[Sexual Difference|The diagram of sexual difference]]]]
However, there is no symmetry between the two sides (no sexual relationship); eahc side represents a radically different way in which the [[sexual relationship]] can misfire.<ref>{{S20}} p.53-4</ref>
==See Also==
