Asexuality: Towards a Freudian-Lacanian Understanding by Kevin Murphy B.A., M.Sc. Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Deakin University June, 2019 i Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my wife, Gina, who has been a constant source of support and encouragement. iv Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge the two people whose guidance and supervision have allowed this work to reach completion: former Associate Professor Russell Grigg and current Associate Professor Matthew Sharpe. Firstly, I would like to thank A. Professor Grigg for his help, from the outset, in bringing what had begun as a relatively unformed idea to a workable thesis idea and for allowing me the latitude to take that idea wherever it was necessary to go. His opinions and ideas over the years have been invaluable. Secondly, I would also like to acknowledge the contribution of A. Professor Matthew Sharpe in taking over the last year and a half of this six year project with such enthusiasm and belief in the dissertation. His attention to detail has allowed for the shaping of my research into a unified whole while his ideas, suggestions and editing skills have been an enormous support. Finally, my thanks to Dr Talia Morag for her close reading of the early draft of the Freud chapters and whose comments allowed me to see those chapters in a new and illuminating way. I would also like to thank my family for their perseverance over this time, in particular my wife, Gina, to whom this work is dedicated and whose support has been both unwavering and inspiring. My daughters, Alice, Georgie and Julie, were also a support through their encouraging words, their interest in the subject matter and their regular requests for updates on its progress. I would also like to thank my colleague Dr Dan Collins of Affiliated Psychoanalytic Workgroups (APW) who encouraged me to present my ideas on asexuality at five successive APW annual conferences. The fruits of that process are woven into the chapters on Lacanian theory. I would also like to thank my colleagues Dr Carol Owens and Nadezhda Almqvist for inviting me to contribute a paper on asexuality to their book “Studying Lacan’s Seminars IV and V”. The research from that paper is also included in this thesis. Many thanks also go to my clinical supervisor Dr Olga Cox-Cameron for her work on translating French texts and for her helpful comments and views. I would also like to thank Dr Eve Watson whose regular enquiries about progress and her encouragement for the work were invaluable. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the support of the Deakin University HDR administrative team who were prompt and patient in their replies to my various and numerous queries. v The Author Kevin Murphy is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist practicing in Dublin, Ireland. He is a Registered Practitioner member of the Association for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Ireland (APPI) and a member of the Irish Council for Psychotherapy (ICP). He is also a graduate member of the Irish Psychological Society (IPS) and an associate member of the Irish Psycho-Analytical Association (IP-AA). He is both a supervising psychoanalytic psychotherapist and a training psychoanalytic psychotherapist for students. His field is sexuality in both his private clinical practice and in his forensic psychotherapy work with sex offenders at a State prison. He has lectured on forensic psychotherapy to undergraduate and post-graduate students in Dublin. He has also presented papers on asexuality at numerous international conferences. vi Summary Asexuality is defined as the experience of having no sexual attraction for another person or thing. As an emerging self-defined sexual orientation, it has received little or no attention from psychoanalytic research. This dissertation is, therefore, the first sustained piece of exploratory and theoretical research from a Freudian-Lacanian perspective which seeks to contribute to an understanding of asexuality. It does so without presuming asexuality to be a form of pathology. The method employed in this research involves a close reading of the texts of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan to search for theoretical and categorical concepts that could offer an insight into asexuality’s aetiology. It also draws on the work of asexual writers and on the findings and clinical data from non-psychoanalytic asexual research. This dissertation proposes that asexuality, rather than being a desire for an unsatisfied desire, is a desire for no desire, a concept which has not been considered in psychoanalytic theory up to now. This desire, in turn, is supported by a fundamental asexual phantasy in which the objet petit a, as cause of desire, is the object “nothing”, as Lacan incorporated it in his theory. The aetiology of this desire for no desire is to be found in infantile sexuality, at the pre-Oedipal stage, when the child is obliged to take up the position of the Imaginary phallus in relation to the mother. This research proposes that the absolute nature of the absence of sexual desire in asexuality, and the absence of phallic signification in relation to sexual activity, is due to the foreclosure of the Imaginary phallus, another concept which has not been considered so far in psychoanalytic theory. This conclusion is arrived at based on Lacan’s early theorising in Seminar IV, Object Relations, in which he employs concepts such vii as the reversal of the relation of dependence on the Other, and the annulment of the object as symbolic, to illustrate how this can occur. The foreclosure in question, however, is not one which is causative of psychosis, as psychoanalysis classically understands the foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father. It is, instead, a foreclosure that has implications for the Symbolic phallus, as the signifier of sexualised meaning effects, and is foundational to the eventual annulment of sexual desire. Similar to the manner in which foreclosure of the Name-of-the- Father can be supported by the sinthome, a concept from the later Lacan that describes a self-created act of artifice, this research proposes that asexuality, while not a sinthome in itself, nevertheless can avail of the sinthome as a support in making up for the foreclosure of the Imaginary, and by extension, the Symbolic phallus. viii Popular opinion has quite definite ideas about the nature and characteristics of this sexual instinct. It is generally understood to be absent in childhood, to set in at the time of puberty in connection with the process of coming to maturity and to be revealed in the manifestations of an irresistible attraction exercised by one sex upon the other; while its aim is presumed to be sexual union, or at all events actions leading in that direction. We have every reason to believe, however, that these views give a very false picture of the true situation. If we look into them more closely we shall find that they contain a number of errors, inaccuracies and hasty conclusions. - Sigmund Freud, 1905.1 1 Freud, S. (1905d), Three Essays on Sexuality, Standard Edition VII, Vintage/Hogarth: London.p.135. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: Literature Review 30 Chapter 3: Towards a Freudian Understanding of Asexuality 58 Chapter 4: Key Freudian Concepts and Their Relation to Asexuality 94 Chapter 5: Towards a Lacanian Understanding of Asexuality 135 Chapter 6: The Challenge of Libido and the Annulment of Sexual Desire 171 Chapter 7: Asexual jouissance and the Lacanian sinthome 214 Chapter 8: Conclusion 260 Appendix 1: 292 Bibliography: 327 x Chapter 1 Introduction 1.0. Objective: The objective of this dissertation is to offer a Freudian-Lacanian understanding of asexuality, a sexual orientation that experiences no sexual attraction for another person or thing.2 It is also an area which has received little or no attention from psychoanalytic theorists.3 I will, firstly, be using a close reading of the work of Sigmund Freud, highlighting the significance and value of his theories about human sexuality which can be applied to asexuality. His work will be the primary source for this dissertation because it is not only foundational for Lacanian theory but also for my hypothesis about asexuality. Freud’s theories are predicated on the idea that every human subject has a sexual drive which is directly or indirectly acknowledged and experienced by the subject in one form or another; either through its expression, alteration or prohibition. However, certain areas of his theory, as I will show, offer limited scope for a specific understanding of a sexual orientation in which a sexual drive is theoretically present but experientially absent. This is why I will, secondarily, go on 2 Carrigan, M., Gupta, K. & Morrison, T.G. (2014), Asexuality and Sexual Normativity: An Anthology. Routledge: New York. p.25. 3 This amounts to three academic papers, offering diverse opinions. See Pardo (2010), Chassaing (2008) and Hansen de Almeida and Brajterman Lerner (1999) in Chapter 3. Many non-psychoanalytic researchers also refer to the paucity of asexuality research but their literature base is more extensive. 1 to a close reading of the theories of Jacques Lacan, since they advance Freud’s ideas in different ways. This approach also follows a long-established tradition of acknowledging Freud’s contribution to Lacanian theory, a tradition best exemplified in one of Lacan’s last statements: “It is up to you to be Lacanians if you wish; I am a Freudian.”4 Asexuality, as I will be using the term, is taken to be a self-defined orientation in which the asexual can engage with sexual activities even though they do not experience sexual attraction for another person or thing.