TY - JOUR
T1 - Do Psychoanalysts Dream of Polymorphous Sleep?
T2 - Clinical Desiring With Transgender Subjects
AU - Wiggins, Tobias B.D.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - This article borrows from the lessons of dystopic science fiction to analyze fantasies that surround gender variance and perversion in the psychoanalytic clinic. Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is used to substrate Lacan’s formations of perversion and their relationship to the paradoxical nature of desire. Lacan’s idiosyncratic handling of perversion formulates an essential truth about the problematic nature of human desiring, a problem that must be creatively mitigated. This article postulates that quotidian difficulties of desire manifest symptomatically in psychoanalytic and psychiatric work with transgender patients through clinical expressions of transphobia. These claims are illustrated with a close reading of a 1948 clinical case study with a transgender analysand. The case pays special attention to the patient’s pencil drawing, produced while in treatment, which visually represents their gender.
AB - This article borrows from the lessons of dystopic science fiction to analyze fantasies that surround gender variance and perversion in the psychoanalytic clinic. Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is used to substrate Lacan’s formations of perversion and their relationship to the paradoxical nature of desire. Lacan’s idiosyncratic handling of perversion formulates an essential truth about the problematic nature of human desiring, a problem that must be creatively mitigated. This article postulates that quotidian difficulties of desire manifest symptomatically in psychoanalytic and psychiatric work with transgender patients through clinical expressions of transphobia. These claims are illustrated with a close reading of a 1948 clinical case study with a transgender analysand. The case pays special attention to the patient’s pencil drawing, produced while in treatment, which visually represents their gender.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85133863661&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/15240657.2022.2072578
DO - 10.1080/15240657.2022.2072578
M3 - Journal Article
AN - SCOPUS:85133863661
SN - 1524-0657
VL - 23
SP - 146
EP - 162
JO - Studies in Gender and Sexuality
JF - Studies in Gender and Sexuality
IS - 2
ER -