Changes

[[Freud]]'s account of [[sexual difference]] is based on the view that there are certain psychical characteristics that can be called '"[[masculine' ]]" and others that can be called '"[[feminine']]", and that these differ from each other significantly.

However, [[Freud ]] constantly refuses to give any definition of the terms '"[[masculine' ]]" and '"[[feminine']]", arguing that they are foundational concepts which can be used but not elucidated by [[psychoanalytic theory]].<ref>Freud, {{F}} 1920a: [[SE ]] XVIII, 171</ref>

[[Masculinity ]] is taken by [[Freud ]] as the paradigm; he asserts that there is only one [[libido]], which is [[masculine]], and that the psychical development of the girl is at first identical to that of the boy, only diverging at a later moment.

[[Femininity ]] is thus that which diverges from the masculine paradigm, and [[Freud ]] regards it as a mysterious, unexplored region, a '"dark continent.'"<ref>Freud, {{F}} 1926e: [[SE ]] XX, 212</ref>

The '"riddle of the nature of femininity'<ref>Freud, 1933a: SE XXII, l 13</ref> " comes to preoccupy [[Freud ]] in his later writings, and drives him to ask the famous question, '"What does woman want?'"<ref>see Jones, 1953-7{{F}} 1933a: vol. 2[[SE]] XXII, 468113</ref>

[[Masculinity ]] is a self-evident given, [[femininity ]] is a zone of mystery:

[[Psychoanalysis ]] does not try to describe what a [[woman ]] is -- that would be a task it could scarcely perform -- but sets about enquiring how she comes into being, how a [[woman ]] develops out of a [[child ]] with a bisexual disposition.<ref>Freud, {{F}} 1933a: [[SE ]] XXII, 116</ref>

Apart from a few remarks on the function of the [[mother]] in the family complexes,<ref>Lacan, {{L}} 1938</ref> [[Lacan]]'s pre-war writings do not engage with the debate on [[femininity]].

The occasional statements on the [[subject ]] which occur in [[Lacan]]'s work in the early 1950s are couched in terms derived from [[Claude LÈviLévi-Strauss]]; [[woman|women ]] are seen as objects of exchange which circulate like signs [[sign]]s between kinship groups.<ref>see LÈvi[[Lévi-Strauss|Lévi-Strauss, Claude]]. 1949b</ref>

'<blockquote>"Women in the real order serve . . . as objects for the exchanges required by the elementary structures of kinship.'"<ref>{{E, }} p.207</ref></blockquote>

[[Lacan ]] argues that it is precisely the fact that [[woman ]] is pushed into the position of an exchange object that constitutes the difficulty of the [[feminine position]]:

For her, there's something insurmountable, let us say unacceptable, in the fact of being placed in the position of an [[object ]] in the [[symbolic order]], to which, on the other hand, she is entirely subjected no less than the man.<ref>{{S2, }} p.262</ref>

[[Lacan]]'s analysis of the [[Dora ]] case makes the same point: what is unacceptable for [[Dora ]] is her position as object of exchange between her [[father ]] and Herr K.<ref>see Lacan, {{L}} 1951a</ref>

Being in this position of exchange object means that [[woman ']] "has a relation of the second degree to this symbolic order.'"<ref>{{S2, }} p.262; see {{S4, }} p.95-6</ref>

In 1956, [[Lacan ]] takes up the traditional association of [[hysteria]] with [[femininity]], arguing that [[hysteria ]] is in fact nothing other than the question of [[femininity ]] itself, the question which may be phrased '"What is a woman?'".

This is true for both [[male ]] and [[female hysterics]] [[hysteric]]s.<ref>{{S3, }} p.178</ref>

The term '"[[woman' ]]" here refers not to some biological essence but to a position in the [[symbolic order]]; it is synonymous with the term '"[[feminine position']]".

[[Lacan ]] also argues that '"there is no symbolisation of woman's sex as such'", since there is no feminine equivalent to the '"highly prevalent symbol' " provided by the [[phallus]].<ref>{{S3, }} p.176</ref>

This symbolic dissymmetry forces the [[woman ]] to take the same route through the [[Oedipus complex ]] as the boy, i.e. to [[identify ]] with the [[father]].

However, this is more [[complex ]] for the [[woman]], since she is required to take the [[image ]] of a member of the other sex as the basis for her [[identification]].<ref>S3, 176</ref>

Lacan returns to In this paper he notes the question impasses which have beset psychoanalytic discussions of femininity in 1958[[feminine]] [[sexuality]], in a paper entitled 'Guiding remarks and argues that [[woman]] is the [[Other]] for both [[men]] and [[women]]. <blockquote>"Man here acts as the relay whereby the woman becomes this Other for herself as she is this Other for a congress on feminine sexuality'him."<ref>Lacan, 1958d{{Ec}} p.732</ref></blockquote>

Lacan's most important contributions to the debate on femininity come, like Freud's, late in his work.  In the [[seminar ]] of 1972-3, [[Lacan ]] advances the concept of a specifically [[feminine ]] ''[[jouissance]] Which '' which goes '"beyond the phallus'";<ref>{{S20, }} p.69</ref> this ''[[jouissance ]]'' is '"of the order of the infinite', " like mystical ecstasy.<ref>{{S20, }} p.44</ref>

[[Women ]] may experience this ''[[jouissance]]'', but they knoW know nothing about it (.<ref>{{S20, }} p.71). </ref>

It is also in this [[seminar ]] that [[Lacan ]] takes up his controversial formula, first advanced in the [[seminar ]] of 1970-1, '"Woman does not exist" ('' (la femme n'existe pas''<ref>Lacan, {{L}} 1973a: 60</ref>), which he here rephrases as '"there is no such thing as Woman" ('' (il n'y a pas La femme''<ref>{{S20, }} p.68</ref>).

As is clear in the original French, what [[Lacan ]] puts into question is not the noun 'woman', but the definite article which precedes it.

In French the definite article indicates universality, and this is precisely the characteristic that [[women ]] [[lack]]; [[women ']] "do not lend themselves to generalisation, even to phallocentric generalisation'."<ref>Lacan, {{L}} 1975b</ref>

Hence [[Lacan ]] strikes through the definite article whenever it precedes the term ''femme '' in much the same way as he strikes through the A to produce the [[symbol ]] for the barred [[bar]]red [[Other]], for like [[woman]], the [[Other ]] does not exist (see [[barexist]]).

To press home the point, [[Lacan ]] speaks of [[woman ]] as "[[not-all]]" (''[[not-all|pas-toute]]'';<ref>pas-toute; {{S20, }} p.13</ref> ); unlike [[masculinity]], which is a universal function founded upon the phallic exception ([[castration]]), [[woman ]] is a non-universal which admits of no exception.

[[Woman ]] is compared to [[truth]], since both partake of the logic of the [[not-all ]] (there is no such thing as all [[women]]; it is impossible to say '"the whole truth'."<ref>Lacan, {{L}} 1973a: 64</ref>

[[Lacan ]] goes on in 1975 to state that '"a woman is a symptom.'"<ref>Lacan, {{L}} 1974-5: seminar [[Seminar]] of 21 January 1975</ref>

More precisely, a [[woman ]] is a [[symptom ]] of a [[man]], in the sense that a [[woman ]] can only ever enter the psychic economy of men as a [[fantasy ]] [[object ]] (a), the [[cause ]] of their [[desire]].

[[Lacan]]'s remarks on [[woman ]] and on [[feminine sexuality ]] have become the focus of controversy and debate in feminist theory.

Feminists have divided over whether to see [[Lacan ]] as an ally or an enemy of the feminist cause.

Others have argued that his concept of the [[symbolic order ]] reinstates patriarchy as a transhistorical given, and that his privileging of the [[phallus ]] simply repeats the alleged misogynies of [[Freud ]] himself.<ref>e.g. Gallop, 1982; Grosz, 1990</ref> 

[[Category:SexualityPsychoanalysis]]