Fearful fantasies: sexuality as a response to love

Abstract

I argue that human sexuality, and in particular the difficulties associated with it, should be understood as responses, expressive and repressive, to love. Sexual trouble cannot be articulated in terms of a conflictual interplay between “nature” and “culture”, but instead manifests a fear of wholly giving oneself to one’s desire for the other, announced in arousal. I discuss the rôle of fantasies as defensive strategies through which desire is depersonalised, and thus limited and perverted, show how Freud’s attempt to sunder sexual desire from the “object”, the other person, misfires, and problematise certain Lacanian dicta on the alleged “impossibility” of sexuality and desire.

Keywords:

• sexuality
• love
• perversion
• depersonalisation
• Freud
• Lacan

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joel Backström

Joel Backström, Philosopher, Helsinki, Finland, has an interest in Freud and psychoanalysis, teaching Philosophy at the University of Helsinki and the Theatre Academy Helsinki. He is author of The fear of openness. An essay on friendship and the roots of morality (Åbo akademi UP, 2007). His current research focuses on repression, broadly understood, as crucially involved in moral difficulties and social conflict, indeed as the “mad” core of social “normality”.