Do Psychoanalysts Dream of Polymorphous Sleep?: Clinical Desiring With Transgender Subjects

ABSTRACT

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.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Throughout this article I use transgender and trans as umbrella terms that encompass, but are not limited to, an ever-multiplying field of non-cisgender identifications, including Two-Spirit, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming. I also make occasional use of transsexual or transvestite to emphasize the taxonomical context and medical panics associated with gender variance.

² Cisgender or the prefix cis refers to those who identify with the gender that they were assigned at birth.

³ To be clear, I am not arguing that transgender people and androids share a psychic structure, nor that they are generally analogous.

⁴ This analysis focuses primarily on the book. While much of the storyline is altered in the films, the central themes persist.

⁵ Notably, this is the only verbatim text from the novel to appear in both films.

⁶ The “mOther” (first Other) and “Father” (second Other) take up symbolic functions in relation to the subject, and do not correspond to the gender and specific cultural/social roles of a mother and father. The paternal function in separation, in fact, can be taken up by the first Other.

⁷ Swales (2012) argues that this matheme might be better conceptualized as a <> A, as the pervert attempts to cancel the lack in the other to revoke alienation.

⁸ Although androids have not undergone the universal human experience of emerging from a human body, it is possible that they would also undergo some process of castration. Therefore, I choose to frame my argument through human fantasies surrounding the android, as opposed to any universal argument for android life.

⁹ I use the gender-neutral pronouns “they/them” for the patient.

¹⁰ Lacan writes largely in opposition to Kleinian thought. However their convergences can be as informative as their sometimes contentious divergences (Ruti and Allen, 2019).

¹¹ Grotjahn argues that the penis is hidden behind the batwing, under the “delicate” undergarments, or in the hair.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tobias B. D. Wiggins

Tobias B. D. Wiggins, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of women’s and gender studies at Athabasca University (AU). His research centers transgender mental health, queer visual culture, clinical transphobia, community-based wellness, and psychoanalysis. His writing has been published in the Transgender Studies Quarterly, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, and the anthology Sex, Sexuality and Trans Identities: Clinical Guidance for Psychotherapists and Counselors.