australasian journal of Psychotherapy

Vol 34 Nº 2 2016

Unveiling the Sect 31 of the Phoenix

Dr. Gustavo Restivo

“The symptoms of the disease are nothing else than the patient’s sexual activity” Freud, Fragment of an analysis of a case of hysteria (1905)

Introduction: I would like to begin with a from , Argentine poet and short-story writer whose works have become classics of the 20th-century, The Sect of the Phoenix: I have mentioned that the history of the sect does not record persecutions. There is no human group which does not include partisans of the Phoe- nix, it is also true that there has never been a persecution which they have not suffered or a reprisal they have not carried out. Their blood has been spilled, through the centuries, under opposing enemy flags, in the wars of the West and in the remote battles of Asia. It has availed them little to identify themselves with all the nations of the earth. Lacking a sacred book to unify them as the Scripture does Israel, lacking a common mem- ory, lacking that other social memory which is language, scattered across the face of the earth, differing in color and features, only one thing​ — ​the Secret​ — ​unites them and will unite them until of time (Borges, 1962[1952], p. 3). The Sect of the Phoenix tells the story of a hidden sect dispersed among all peo- ples of the world, who transmit some secret, one to another, through a hidden ritual. Borges does not communicate what the Secret is; he simply suggests that it may be intrinsic to humanity. As Borges develops his description, we realize that this secret of the sect is no other than the secret of sexuality. Sexuality is what everyone experiences. Borges emphasizes that the whole world belongs to The Sect of the Phoenix. Everybody is concerned about sexual- ity and wants to decipher its secrets but, paradoxically, the more we want to 32 decipher it, the more it remains hidden. Jorge Luis Borges prompts the idea that perhaps sexuality is not fully decipherable using language. Linguistic representations regarding human sexuality and gender have been evolving rapidly in recent times. On this note I would like to comment on an arti- cle from the New York Times from January 30th 2016, in which Jessica Bennett, an American journalist, writes about gender, sexuality and culture. Ms Bennett, in her article “She? Ze? They? What’s In a Gender Pronoun” (Bennett, 2016), asks: What happens when 334 linguists, lexicographers, grammarians and ety- mologists gather in a stuffy lecture hall in Washington on a Friday night to debate the lexical trends of the year? And she asserts: ‘They become the unlikely heroes of the new gender revolution’.

Ms Bennett goes on to say that that’s what happened where members of the 127-year-old American Dialect Society anointed “they”, the singular, gender-neu- tral pronoun, the 2015 Word of the Year. Here, “they” is used for a person who

Vol 34 Nº 2 Vol does not identify as male or female, or is a filler pronoun in a situation where a

◊ person’s gender identity is unknown. New vocabulary is emerging as an attempt to solve the challenge of talking about someone who identifies as neither male nor female. Ms Bennett’s gives us some examples, among them the honorific “Mx.” an alternative to Ms. and Mr. that was recently added to the Oxford English Dictionary. She points out that the “x” in Mx. is meant to represent an unknown, similar to the use of x in algebraic equations, and similar to the use of x in the Lacanian formula of sexuation, which will be discussed later in this paper. of Psychotherapy Journal Australasian Ms Bennett also quotes in her article Sam Killermann1, who highlights that Facebook, which is arguably the most used social network platform, offers a list of about 58 different gender identity options to choose from, such as: ——

1 Sam Killermann, a self-described “social justice comedian,” is serious about how far the complexities of identity go beyond the traditional binary of male or female. In September 2015, he released The Social Justice Advocate’s Handbook: A Guide to Gender. Agender; androgyne/androgynous; bigender; cis/cisgender; cis female/ male/man/woman; cisgender female/male/man/woman; female to male/ FTM; gender fluid; gender nonconforming/genderqueer/non-binary; gen- derqueer; gender questioning; gender variant: intersex; male to female/ MTF; neither/other; neutrois; non-binary; pangender; trans: trans*; trans female/trans* female; trans woman/trans* woman; transgender female/ woman; trans male/trans* male; trans man/trans* man; transgender male/ man; transmasculine/transfeminine; trans person/trans* person/transgen- der person; transsexual/transsexual person/man/woman/female/male. 33

However, some of those definitions, handy in these days, are not new; they have been around for a very long time: Two-spirit: This term, Mr Killermann says, comes from Native American cul- ture, describing someone who embodies both the spirits of a man and a woman. People were celebrated as wise, cultural leaders, because they could channel what people saw as the two ends of humanity. Closer to home now, one of the most astonishing and complicated aspects of Samoan culture is the story of the Fa’afafine. Fa’afafine has always existed within Samoan society, and literally means “in the manner of (fa’a) woman” (fafine). The recognition of this third gender is not a recent occurrence: Pre-Christian Samoans accepted and acknowledged that every individual had a separate role in society. The Fa’afafines cannot simply be termed homosexual, since in addition Unveiling the Sect of Phoenix to having a different gender identity, they have a varied sex life which may be with another man, or woman or Fa’afafine. Within Samoan society, tolerance of all individuals and their likes, dislikes and choices is of high importance. As well as the Samoan fa’afafine, Pacific gender-diverse identities include: Fakaleiti in Tonga, Mahu in Hawaii, ◊

Mahu or raerae in Tahiti, Gustavo Restivo Akava’ine or laelae in the Cook Islands, Vaka sa lewa lewa in Fiji Fiafifine in Niue and Whakawahine in Maori.

Paying attention to this list of new words attempting to signify subjective posi- tions regarding sexuality and gender, we realize that there is something that es- capes signification, an irreducible gap between sexuality and the signifier. Let’s see now what psychoanalysis has to say about sexuality, by briefly ex- ploring Sigmund Freud’s and Jacques Lacan’s respective accounts of it. At the end of the nineteenth century, contemporaneously with the begin- ning of psychoanalysis, sexology emerged as a new sub-discipline within the medical sciences. The work of the first generation of sexologists, including Richard von Krafft-Ebing2 and Albert Moll3 , were a major source of inspiration for Sigmund Freud. Freud went beyond the then prevailing medical-sexological approach and pro- duced some of the strongest criticisms of medical sexology. Freud argued against the idea that there are no inherent difficulties barring the full enjoyment of a com- 34 pletely satisfactory sexual life. Rather, he suggested that there is something intrin- sic about sexuality itself that prevents such satisfaction. Freud’s engagement with sexuality was so meticulous that it comes as no surprise that, for example, Jean Laplanche argues: “Freud’s most radical claims were not about the unconscious, but concerned the profoundly ambivalent nature of human sexuality and its omni- presence in human thought and behaviour” (Laplanche, 1985 [1970] p. 27). In his Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, Freud acknowledged: Sexuality does not simply intervene in the processes which characterize hysteria, it provides the motive power for every single symptom, and for every single manifestation of a symptom. The symptoms of the disease are nothing else than the patient’s sexual activity. I can only repeat over and over again that sexuality is the key to the problem of psychoneurosis and of the neuroses in general (Freud, 2001 [1905a] pp. 114–115).

Freud argues that “The symptoms are nothing else than the patient’s sexual activity”

Vol 34 Nº 2 Vol (Freud, 1905a, p. 156). This means that the neurotic symptom, which is addressed

◊ to his partner, as masking a significant Other, accounts for the subject’s sexual life. Freud’s most systematic account of human sexuality can be found in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (Freud, 2001 [1905b]), where he presents a detailed description of the vicissitudes of human sexuality and particularly of sexual psychopathology. Freud critically reviews the then contemporary con- ceptions of sexuality as exclusively biological, absent in childhood and emerg- ing after puberty. He expands the concept of sexuality and extends human of Psychotherapy Journal Australasian ——

2 Richard von Krafft-Ebing (14/08/1840, Mannheim, Baden, Germany; 22/12/1902, Graz, Austria), was a neuro-psychiatrist, and a pioneering researcher of sexual psychopathology. He established, among other things, the relationship between syphilis and general paresis and performed experiments with hypnosis. Krafft-Ebing is best known today for his Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), a groundbreaking examination of sexual aberrations. (Encyclopedia Britannica on line, accessed on June 2013) 3 Albert Moll, (4/05/1862, Leszno; 23/09/1939, Berlin) was a German psychiatrist and along with Iwan Bloch and Magnus Hirschfeld, he was the founder of modern sexology. sexuality back to the beginning of life. He also explicitly rejects the popular idea of a pre-assigned aim and object for the libido. In a section that he adds to the second essay in 1915, Freud discusses “The Phases of Development of the Sexual Organization” (p. 197) and introduces the notion of pre-genital organi- zations, that is, oral and anal stages preceding the genital organization. In 1923 he adds another note that advanced the idea of an intermediary stage, infantile genital organization: This phase, which already deserves to be described as genital, presents a sexual object and some degree of convergence of the sexual impulses 35 upon that object; but it is differentiated from the final organization of sexual maturity in one essential respect. It knows only one kind of geni- tal: the male one. For this reason I have named it the phallic stage of organization (pp. 199–200).

Phallus The term phallus plays a central role in both the Oedipus complex and in the theory of sexual difference. Freud’s work abounds in reference to the penis. He argued that boys and girls set great value on the penis, and that their discovery that some human beings do not poses one leads to important psychical conse- quences. However, the term phallus rarely appears in Freud’s work, and when Unveiling the Sect of Phoenix it does it is synonymous with penis. Freud does use the adjective “phallic” more frequently, such as in the expression of phallic phase, but again that implies no rigorous distinction between the terms phallus and penis. Lacan preferred to use the term phallus rather than penis in order to empha- size the fact that what concerns psychoanalytic theory is not the male genital organ in its biological reality but the role that this organ plays in fantasy. Lacan ◊

reserves the term penis for the biological organ and the term phallus for the Gustavo Restivo imaginary and symbolic function of this organ. While this terminological dis- tinction is not found in Freud’s work, it responds to the logic implicit in Freud’s formulations about the penis. For example, when Freud talked about a symbolic equation between penis and baby that allows the girl to appease her penis envy by having a child, it is clear that Freud is not talking about the penis (Freud, 1923b, p. 178). It can be argued that Lacan’s terminological innovation clarified some distinctions that were already implicit in Freud’s work. In Plutarch’s text on the myth of Isis and Osiris, Isis is a woman who is par- ticularly loyal. After her husband was cut into pieces, and these pieces were scat- tered in the Nile, she spends her time looking for them in order to reconstitute his body. But there is a piece she cannot find—the penis. In all the places where she fails to find it, she erects a statue to the phallus. The male organ, its imagi- nary representation, and the phallus are not the same thing. In the same way, Freud presents the fetish as a substitute for the penis, the substitute for what the mother lacks. Freud specifies that the fetish is therefore a “substitute for the phallus”(Freud, 1927, p. 33). An important distinction between views on sexuality was Freud’s statement that “Anatomy is destiny” (Freud, 2001 [1927], p. 176). For Lacan, anatomy is not 36 destiny; the choice of one’s sex is not a function of anatomy. This leaves open the question of what is the role of anatomy in that process. As an introduction to Lacan’s views on sexuality, it could be said that it is through the assumption of a sexual identity that the subject comes into being, into speaking-being. It is through the process of taking on a sexed role we are able to enter the symbolic world. As sexed subjects we enter the world of language, rules, culture and soci- ety. The issue of sexual identity is not something that is divisible from the sub- ject’s unconscious. Sexual identity cannotbe reduced to biology, to the body, to the various physical or genetic components, to a social construction, to gender discourses of masculinity and femininity, or to the various gendered forms of social bonds and practices.

Logic and the Phallus With entry into language and with the resolution of the Oedipus complex the

Vol 34 Nº 2 Vol subject comes to the realization that no one has privileged access to, or posses-

◊ sion of, the phallus. The subject comes to realize that there is some difference between themselves and the phallus. The subject’s access to the signifier phallus within the symbolic order is always mediated by the verb being, or having, the phallus. The phallus only exists through the mediation of language, Lacan argues that the “relations of the sexes to the phallus are regulated by the verbs being and having” (Grosz, 1990, p. 125). This distinction between being and having the phallus, which in The Significa- tion of the Phallus (Lacan, 2006 [1957b]) is used to approach sexual difference, can of Psychotherapy Journal Australasian be clarified by the use of logic. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Lacan concluded that Freud’s myths of sexuality, found in Totem and Taboo (Freud, 1913) and concern- ing Oedipus (Freud, 1927), had to be approached within contemporary logic. Lacan recommends his readers to follow the logician Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege. “Each sign corresponds to a definite sense and to that in turn a definite refer- ence, to an object, whereas for each reference to an object there might be more than one sign” (Frege, 2009 [1892], p. 38). Frege tell us that there are many ways to describe an object, although each way may use different signs and may allow different senses. On hand, Frege points out that some statements may convey a sense without necessarily having a reference to any possible object. The difference between sense and ref- erence means that, in language, there will be a non-relation at some point. Lacan states that for the phallus, even if the only reference, there is no object to which the phallus refers.

The Process of Sexuation 37 Sexuation is a term introduced by Jacques Lacan to designate a concept different from sexuality. Lacan offered his formulas of sexuation, or how the speaking be- ing chooses to align themselves as a man or a woman. The fact that most people decide to align themselves as either man or woman according to what they per- ceive as distinguishing the sexes should not deceive us as to what determines how the choice has been made. The logic quantifiers introduced by Frege captured the distinction between All and Some. All became Universal, and Some became Existential. Universal quantifiers are either true or false in all possible worlds, and Existential quanti- fiers are true or false in some possible worlds. Unveiling the Sect of Phoenix ◊

Figure 1: Lacan’s Formulae of Sexuation (Lacan, 1999 [1972–73], p. 78) Gustavo Restivo

The left-hand side corresponds to the man, while the right-hand side corre- sponds to the woman. Those are positions taken with respect to the signifier and jouissance4. Lacan comments that “Every speaking-being situates itself on one side or the other” (Lacan, 1999 [1972–73], p. 79).

——

4 English speaking psychoanalysts borrowed the term jouissance from the French; the derived noun, jouis- sance, has three current meanings in French: it signifies an extreme or deep pleasure; it signifies sexual orgasm; and in law it signifies having the right to use something. The upper part of the formula

The left side of the formula, the man’s side:

38 Upper Level

There exists at least one x who does not succumb to the phallic function. Thus, there exists at least one being that is not subject to the law of castration. This be- ing did not make a sacrifice of jouissance in order to enter the social field, which represents the fantasy of unlimited jouissance which is not subject to the law of castration. Where do we find that exception to the law of castration that sustains the universality of the law? Freud’s myth of the primal father in Totem and Taboo (Freud, 2001 [1913]), exemplifies this proposition of the primal father who has no limits on his jouissance. The primal father not only could enjoy all the women of the tribe, he could enjoy his own mother and daughters as well. God is also conceived as the exception that grounds and creates the world. God is concep- tualized as omnipotent, infinite, and absolutely free, not subject to any law of limitation. The masculine side of the graph of sexuation represents a logic of

Vol 34 Nº 2 Vol incompleteness, the universalization of the law generates the necessity of an

◊ exception. There is always at least one entity that stands above the law; this exception creates the illusion that the Other exists, and generates a masculine fantasy that complete jouissance exists. Therefore, the man would find insufficient all the jouissance that is available to him.

Lower Level of Psychotherapy Journal Australasian

The lower proposition reads that all speaking-beings are subject to the phallic function, which is to say that all speaking-beings are subject to the law of castra- tion. For all x, the phallic function is valid. Castration is understood as the loss that the speaking-being bears as a result of being subordinated to the signifier. Castration is the sacrifice that every sub- ject makes in order to enter the Symbolic Order and, therefore, the social field: It is through the phallic function that man as whole acquires his inscrip- tion … When we say that there is a universal for man, we can write all men. Man is completely in the phallic function and it is not because the subject is man that he is in the phallic function, on the contrary, it is be- cause, in terms of jouissance, an undetermined x is placed completely in the phallic function that the subject could be called a man. The signifier man will be imputed to every x that is completely situated in the phallic function (Lacan, 1999 [1972–73], p. 79). 39 Colette Soler notes: “This leaves entirely open the question of knowing whether even one of them exists” (Soler, 2005, p. 301). On this same issue, the Lacan translator of Seminar XX, Bruce Fink, notes: There is a barrier between my desire for something articulated in signifi- ers and what can satisfy me. Therefore, the satisfaction I take in realizing my desire is always disappointing. This satisfaction fails to fulfil me; it always leaves something more to be desired. That is phallic jouissance (Fink, 2002, p. 160).

All jouissance that is mediated in the Symbolic is experienced as coming up short or lacking in some way. Therefore, the jouissance I obtain is less than the jouis- sance that I expect. Unveiling the Sect of Phoenix

The right side of the formula, the woman’s side:

Upper Level

The upper level should be read as stating that there does not exist a speaking- ◊

being who is not subject to the law of castration. Gustavo Restivo

Lower Level

The lower level reads: for not all of x, the phallic function is valid. Not all of the woman’s jouissance is phallic jouissance. It also reads: not all of the speaking- being is subject to the law of castration. There is something of being that escapes the loss imposed by language. It is between these two propositions that we encounter the inconsistency of feminine Sexuation. On one hand, not all of the speaking-being is subject to the law of the signifier, yet, on the other hand, there does not exist a speaking- being that is not subject to this law. means that there is no universal of woman. Women are not wholly in the phallic function. Here we have moved from the universal quantifier to the existential quantifi- er. Where masculine sexuation presents a universal law under which all subjects fall, feminine sexuation is premised on the existential or particular, where each subject is taken on a case-by-case basis. In feminine sexuation the subject is certainly subject to the law of castration 40 but this differs for each particular individual. Lacan’s formula illustrates the re- lationship of woman to the logic of the not-all; not all of her being is subject to the law of castration.

The lower part of the formula

At the lower part of the formulae of sexuation Lacan represents man’s and wom- an’s side, adding arrows that indicate what they seek from their partner:

The left side of the formula, the man’s side: and Vol 34 Nº 2 Vol

◊ The arrow goes from to a, that is, that the desire of the subject aims to find on the side of the partner, the object a, the cause of the subject’s desire. Lacan adds: … this never deals with anything by way of a partner but object a in- scribed on the other side of the bar. He is unable to attain his sexual part- ner, who is the Other, except inasmuch as his partner is the cause of his desire [...] the oriented conjunction of and a, this is nothing other than fantasy (Lacan, 1999 [1972–73], p. 80). of Psychotherapy Journal Australasian

Lacan points out that the man believes that he addresses the woman, but what he addresses is the cause of his desire. He says, regarding the act of love: To make love, as the very expression indicates, is poetry. But there is a world between poetry and the act. The act of love is the male polymor- phous perversion, in the case of speaking-beings (Lacan, 1999 [1972– 73], p. 72). On this note the woman will appear as a symptom for a man, which is con- sistent with Freud’s thesis presented earlier.

The right side of the formula, the woman’s side: , and the object

In the Woman’s side, there are two arrows going from (Barred woman) in dif- ferent directions: the arrow going to , describes the phallic relationship with man; the woman seeks the semblance of the phallus in her partner, as repre- 41 sented by the signifier. The other arrow, which goes from La to designates the not-all phallic jouissance portion of her being, that is a not-all-phallic jouissance, also called femi- nine jouissance or Other jouissance: Woman has a relation with , and it is already in that respect that she is doubled, that she is not-whole, since she can also have a relation with (Lacan, 1999 [1972–73], p. 81).

This Other jouissance is a jouissance that woman experiences and about which she knows nothing. We also find in that arrow that goes from La to what Lacan calls mystic jouissance. Concerning the relation of Woman to the not all, Bruce Fink notes: All the jouissance that exists is phallic. According to Lacan, in order to Unveiling the Sect of Phoenix exist something must be articulated within the signifying system deter- mined by the phallic signifier; but that does not mean that there cannot be some jouis- sance that is not phallic. It is just that it does not exist; instead, it ex-sists. The Other jouis- sance can only ex-sist, it cannot exist, to exist ◊

it would have to be spoken, articulated, and Gustavo Restivo symbolized (Fink, 2002, p. 161).

Lacan hypothesized a form of jouissance that is outside of language. He associated this jouissance with the depicting of Saint Teresa by the artist Bernini. For Saint Teresa there were experiences described as ec-static or beyond finite limitations, partial reproduction knowing no earthly limits. In relation to the mysti- of the ecstasy of saint cal experiences of Saint Teresa, Lacan remarked: teresa at santa maria “It’s like for Saint Teresa—you need to go to Rome della vittoria in rome and see the statue by Bernini [The ecstasy of Saint Theresa] to immediately un- derstand that she is coming. It is clear that the essential testimony of the mys- tics consists in saying that they experience it, but don’t know anything about it” (­Lacan, 1972–73, p. 76).

Does the subject have a choice? Freud, speaking about psychoneurosis of defence, presented the hypothesis of 42 the “choice of neurosis”. The notion of defence implies a subjective position in relation to what constrains him​ — ​according to Freud, his drives. For Freud, be- ing a man or woman depends strictly on anatomy. There is place for subjective alternatives but they are at another level, essentially that of each person’s re- sponse to the experience of the castration complex. Lacan’s conception of sexua- tion suggests a process. Subjects have a choice between the side of man and the side the woman, he said; and later, even more strongly: sexed beings authorise themselves. There is a major disconnection between sex and anatomy. Anatomy implies much more than the form of the image; it is linked with the living organism as sexed. The anti-naturalism of Lacan’s formulas is clear and could obviously give rise to the suspicion of anti-realism, even of anti-biologism, as if the denatura- tion through language in the speaking being were such that his position as sexed owed nothing to the living body. With his formulas of sexuation, Lacan puts forward the idea that,in the identity man/woman, neither follows anatomy nor

Vol 34 Nº 2 Vol even semblance of the images and ideas of woman and of man. One is a man or

◊ a woman according to the mode of jouissance; that is, depending on whether for a given subject its jouissance is all, or not all, phallic. The evaluation of the anti-naturalism depends on the conception of jouis- sance. We can say that this anti-naturalism is not an anti-biologism; it does not neglect the Real outside the Symbolic, the one that Lacan inscribed in his Bor- romean knot, which includes precisely all that is called life, without being able to represent it. Jouissance is linked to this reality of life and not to the anatomical form of the body, that is, the Imaginary. of Psychotherapy Journal Australasian Sexuated speaking beings authorise themselves With regard to their sexuated identity, many subjects do not trust their anatomy. On the contrary, they develop doubts about being a man or a woman, sometimes to the point that they challenge the civil status that recognises only their anato- my. The feminine and the masculine seem to affirm sex in using the images and symbols of man and woman, but this masks the question: Am I a true woman? Am I really a man? Most subjects are far from having a sense of choice. Indeed, the whole of clinical practice immediately confirms the fact that they suffer from their sexu- al reality. Confronted with their symptoms: impotence, frigidity, repetitions of their choice of object, and also love, happiness. Lacan’s thesis needs to be read alongside the conception of the division of 43 the speaking being, who despite being divided, is still just one individual, since he has only one body. The choice of sex is the choice of jouissance, but in the subjective sense, to the point that one could almost say that it is jouissance that chooses. Jouissance has already chosen you, and far from it speaking, it makes you speak. Unveiling the Sect of Phoenix ◊ Gustavo Restivo References

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Dr Gustavo Restivo ◊ Gustavo Restivo Skype: gustavo.nz www.gustavorestivo.com