Sexuality and biotechnology: the logic of pleasure and the discomfort of desire

Journal title PSICOTERAPIA PSICOANALITICA
Author/s Paola Marion
Publishing Year 2018 Issue 2018/2 Language Italian
Pages 9 P. 32-40 File size 172 KB
DOI 10.3280/PSP2018-002003
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Starting from the issue of sexuality and the place reserved to it in the psychoanalytic theory, this paper discusses the changes that have taken place in this area in the light of the breakthroughs of biotechnologies. The term psychosexuality introduced by Freud emphasizes the connection between mind and body, the kind of work the psyche needs to accomplish given its links with the body and the deep elaboration that sexuality and child sexuality undergo in terms of conscious and unconscious fantasies. Sexuality is a big actor in individual development and psychoanalysis acknowledges its crucial role both in the construction of the sense of personal identity, the identification processes, and as concerns the ability of building links and developing thoughts and knowledge. In this situation the changes introduced by biotechnologies are especially relevant as they concern fundamental phases of existence: life, birth, death. This paper discusses how the separation of sexuality from reproduction, required in the process of assisted fertilization, is reflected in fantasies and in matters of desire and pleasure, and in the very question of origin.

Keywords: Psychosexuality, body, primal scene, pleasure, desire.

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Paola Marion, Sessualità e biotecnologie: la logica del piacere e il disagio del desiderio in "PSICOTERAPIA PSICOANALITICA" 2/2018, pp 32-40, DOI: 10.3280/PSP2018-002003