Psychoanalytic Rock-Paper-Scissors, Trans Discourse and Sexuations (2023)

Psychoanalytic Rock-Paper-Scissors, Trans Discourse and Sexuations

published online, November 2023.

To Patrick Valas,

To the analysands who have taught me what follows.

A few additions, disparate yet not only that, for the toolbox of the Clinical Practice of Gender in Psychoanalysis…

1. Mapping the Phallus and the object a (2023)
2. Formulas of a-sexuation (2023)
3. Discourse of a-sexuation or Trans Discourse (2023)

Warning:

The use of logical or mathematical tools has no predictive power regarding unconscious knowledge; it helps us, at the margins, to better grasp and support our understanding, which we must, moreover, always also distrust.

Furthermore, the exposition that follows does not reproduce all the diagrams and drawings necessary for the progression, phase by phase, of reversals, inversions, etc. I present here only the results and indications regarding the documents and prior work by analysts useful to this advancement. Each person will be able to benefit, individually, subjectively, from what they gain by exploring them and inventing them for their own account. No demonstrations worthy of the name, according to common expectations in this matter. Instead, fragments of knowledge invented with the unconscious by the analysands who come to work by speaking, and who learn from their psychoanalytic cure (and I as well, therefore others, by the same token). I arrived at these results through those who led me there. Part of it remains undemonstrable and irrefutable by experience. Other knowledge will come, as occurs each time, to illuminate this knowledge, later, when looking back on the path traveled, advancement will offer us a clear vantage point on the passage taken, illuminated by the most recent discovery. In the meantime, here are some elements useful to the present elaboration, if one ventures to engage with it…

1 — Mapping the Phallus and the object a (2023)

To the table of mapping gender, sex and sexuation from 2013, let us add the coordinates of the Phallus and Object a which have recently become clearer.

Mapping gender, sex, sexuation, Phallus and object a (2023)

To go further, let us bring these elements together with the table of mapping identity, identification and the identitarian (2018). We obtain the following table, where certain elements share a quality in the same dimension (Real, Imaginary or Symbolic); they are not, however, conflated (for example, Phallus, Identity and Genital Jouissance are all three object in the Imaginary, they are not the same objects etc.). On the other hand, this allows one to follow, another example, the transformation described in the cited article (“a-sexuation: perversion…”) regarding a-sexuation seeing the Phallus outmaneuvered by object a where the latter—instance in the Imaginary—prevails (“>”) over the object that the Phallus is in this same dimension. Following the rule of Psychoanalytic Rock-Paper-Scissors: rock, scissors, paper are here instance, object and process, supported by the following formulation: instance > object > process > instance…, it becomes possible to apprehend the modalities of interactions and passages of elements from one dimension to another, in relation to other elements.

2 — Formulas of a-sexuation (2023)

To extend the propositions briefly addressed in “a-sexuation: perversion of the phallic and function of castration”, and “Complementary Note on a-sexuation: from the heteros-patriarchal fantasy to the a-patricidal fantasy”, here is a proposal for formulations in connection with a-sexuation. This is based on the notes and proposals of Patrick Valas and the diagrams of Jean Brini discussed here (the diagrams below are taken from this page of Patrick Valas’s website).

The connection of the formulas of sexuation with the Discourses opens up multiple possibilities, probabilities (the complete list of which I will not present here). So much so that the mapping operation proves impossible to stabilize. Unless one relies on the formulas of sexuation proposed by Lacan, considering them valid. With them, and the use of the levorotatory or dextrorotatory tetrahedron, accompanied by the legends pertaining to the quantifiers (does not cease to…) and the designations in the discourses of the elements S, S1, S2 and a, it becomes possible to derive the formulas of another sexuation, the one I designate as a-sexuation and to propose a table for it.

* * *

Here, Patrick Valas distributes the elements on the dextrorotatory side of the tetrahedron. We could just as well start with the levorotatory side, which would correspond more closely, pedagogically, to the initial presuppositions adopted by Lacan having privileged this side, just as we have been encouraged to explore what the dextrorotatory side could accommodate and to discuss the knowledge derived thus far. What matters here is to grasp and extract the other from it.

* * *

From the position of one or the other of the tetrahedra oriented in the diagram, one or the other of the levorotatory or dextrorotatory perspectives and distributions are deduced. If we have said of a-sexuation that it engages with the dextrorotatory side of the Borromean knot, the passage from one to the other depending on whether one adopts such distribution on such side or such other does not hinder subsequent movements and the readings made possible. The following formulas of a-sexuation can possibly be deduced:

The vertical separation has no ambition, this time, to blur the lines or support segregation between two categories, as the reading of the formulas of sexuation (Lacan) has so often given rise to, to the point of establishing it as a tradition: the male side, the female side. No. Here, the vertical separation is intended only to make possible the reading of the formulas with the quantifiers associated two by two. Also, we can easily complete this with a horizontal line that clearly distinguishes the four situations written in formulas.

3 — Discourse of a-sexuation or Trans Discourse (2023)

Correspondence in terms of discourse, to recognize the Discourse of a-sexuation (or trans discourse).

It is deduced from the attachment on the tetrahedron, by Lacan, of an element of the formulas of sexuation in place of one of the elements of schematic presentation of the discourses, on May 14, 1974, Les non-dupes errent, from which it is possible to extend the proposal: to identify whether from an established discourse the formulas discuss the analogy or the connection (in my reading, that of the Master to bring the sexuation in formulas closer to the discourse established by Lacan whose elements correspond to those distributed: impossible, possible, necessary, contingent/S, S1, S2, a).

The Discourse of a-sexuation does not align with any of the other discourses presented by Lacan. It would be a new discourse, distinct in particular from the Master’s Discourse to which correspond, in our hypothesis, the formulas of sexuation, and according to our reading of these formulas amended by the legends mentioned above.

As a reminder, the formulations of the discourses by J. Lacan

Let us note in passing that this sort of reverse of sexuation (a-sexuation) is therefore neither the capitalist discourse, nor hysteria, nor the university, nor the analyst’s (the other discourses presented by Lacan). It is not, in particular, the capitalist discourse to which numerous critiques of sexual current events refer on the occasion of certain theoretical developments rather “opposed” to queer, LGBTQIA+, feminist expressions, etc. It is the most queer discourse of those formulated to date, it is the trans discourse. From which it remains to unfold the consequences and perspectives for thinking differently about what presents itself today in clinical experience. It is the discourse by which we recognize the new forms taken by identity expressions (gender and sex) in that they respond to a certain logic on the path toward a clarification in truths of the real of sex and its effects. It is the queer discourse, and also the inclusive discourse where it testifies to the solidary interactions of the solitary individuals designated by Lacanian sexuation. Each person will be able to read in it the modalities of connection to the object and to the function of castration (saying no to the phallic function) where minority and/or sororal bonds are organized outside the family structures of kinship.

It remains to describe what is thought from these tools, but it is first up to each person to venture into it so as not to spoil the additional clinical and theoretical discoveries that they induce and enable. And in particular to schematize the correspondences with the Borromean knot as oriented in the sphere with the tetrahedron. This will come in forthcoming texts.

So much the worse for those psychoanalysts ever more convinced that current expressions of sexual/gender identity are based on a belief, religious so to speak, in a social gender superior to the biological reality of sex, whereby it is so easy to assert that these current events would merely signify the excessively reinforced expression of the Master’s, or Capitalist, Discourse, attesting to the return of dictatorship, nothing less (see, for example, this recent article by Monique Lauret, so exemplary of this prophetic, pathologizing, and dismal interpretation – which, incidentally, speaks volumes about the deplorable way psychosis is treated in the mental health imaginary of some).

So much the worse for all those who prefer to base their catastrophist demonstrations on sociological, historical, or political approximations, forgetting to invoke the psychoanalytic clinical experience that would effortlessly counter the impasses of their bleak predictions. For, and this is rather sad, not even the contributions of sciences and disciplines external to psychoanalysis are referenced with respect to their content; everything is distorted, exaggerated, the most brilliant example of which remains the reification of gender as the antithesis of sex. What a shame not to see how social sciences extended a hand to psychoanalytic theorization long ago, highlighting creative complexities that Psychoanalysis with a capital ‘P’ rejects, accusing the advancements of Gender Studies of denial and threatening them with psychosis as a psychopathological menace superior to all others (where we clearly see, in comparison, how neurosis can just as well fuel harmful follies). There are thus moments when the analytical gaze no longer wishes to see anything other than the binarism that suits it, forgetting all its discoveries. Where will the defensive projection of Psychoanalytic Theory against the effects of its own advancements stop?

Thus, it is better to let each individual work with these additional tools presented in this text.

To your pens!

To be continued…