1This 27th issue of Research in Psychoanalysis begins with three studies grouped together under the heading “Subject, Subjectivities, and Practices of the Body in the Contemporary World”.
2The first article Mariama: Between Excision and Ghosts, the Difficulties of Being as a Woman, Mireille Guittonneau-Bertholet looks at the processes involved in the construction of sexual identity. From the subjective point of view, this construction stems from the subject’s unconscious psychical processes, their place within the parental ideals, and their fantasies regarding the latter’s desires. The other aspect contributing to the construction of sexual identity involves the group and the culture within which the subject is inscribed. Certain cultures mark a child’s body through rites such as circumcision or excision, aimed at substantiating a difference between the sexes that was “awaiting confirmation”. However, when they take place without any grounding in the immediate cultural environment, these practices can leave wide open the trauma associated with the mutilation that characterises them. Thus, failing in their symbolic intent to inscribe a sexual distinction on the body. This in turn can lead to sexual identity disorders, as was the case for Mariama. The author demonstrates how Mariama, on the basis of her interpretation of the partial excision she underwent as a baby, and her childhood theories regarding the differences of the sexes, linked to her position as a child who had to unconsciously replace a brother who died in infancy, managed to invent a feminine being that encompassed her two cultures – Soninke and French – which conveyed contradictory ideas regarding femininity.
3Houria Abdelouahed’s article, Hymenorrhaphy, or the Search for Lost Virginity, continues this refection centred on the female body by reflecting on what it is to become a mother, this through an exploration of the subjective effects of hymenorrhaphy. By reducing it to its technical dimension, the medical discourse only envisions this surgical intervention aimed at repairing the hymen, from a physical point of view. A point of view that offers pragmatic answers (regarding cost, pain, time taken to heal, etc.) that tend to trivialise this surgical intervention, and reduces the patient to the position of consumer. However, this surgery is in no way trivial; on the contrary, as is illustrated by Samira’s case, it draws on a subjective unconscious process wherein the woman’s body, in conjunction with certain traditional discourses, is perceived as the object of a transaction in which the figure of the father plays a central role. Following a termination, Samira wishes to have hymen reconstruction surgery. How should this request, made by a young woman from a “Muslim culture” who is well integrated into a Western way of life, be interpreted? The author identifies that, at the heart of this request for hymenorrhaphy, lie combined the “fantasy of remaining a virgin for the father”, that of the “virgin who gives birth”, and a desire to both erase and revive the memory of a child that has been lost.
4The third article in this section, Radical Practices of Body Modification: Fantasy of Unicity and Contemporary Social Bond, written by Quentin Dumoulin, Romuald Hamon et Mickaël Peoc’h, looks at two cases that demonstrate the body as caught up in the cultural environment. The first case, is that of Erik Sprague, who has undergone multiple physical alterations to transform himself into a reptile - The Lizardman. The second looks at Vinny Ohh, who through multiple surgical operations aims to become an “alien without gender”. Each in their own way seek to display a body that is complete, without flaws (without a navel, without a sex). As the authors observe, these practices are based on a connection to society that combines scientism and neoliberalism: Erik Sprague and Vinny Ohh aspire to put into practice on the one hand scientism’s aspiration for a body that is eternal, and on the other hand the neoliberal promise that each individual, once reduced to their function of consumer, could attain the jouissance they are lacking. Their success on social media doubtless stems from this, from their ability to incarnate, through the exposure and propagation of their own image, something of the contemporary transhumanist fantasy, a figure freed from the vicissitudes of a human body, immortal. This unique position is however ultimately fragile, it makes them dependent on the gaze of others, which then pushes them to go ever further in their exploration of the body’s limits.
5The second feature in this issue, on ‟Clinical Dispositives” relates two experiences that demonstrate the inventiveness of clinical practices based on psychoanalysis. In “What Happiness???...!”, An Innovative Experience in Perinatal Group Support, Cécile Bréhat, Anne Thevenot et al. introduce us to the provision put in place within a maternity unit to support parents during the period that follow the birth of a child. Guided by a logic of evaluation, of control and education, current provision aims primarily at supporting parents in acquiring good habits on the basis of established norms, thus side-lining the process of subjective working through that the arrival of a child calls for. The provision offered by What Happiness???...! steps away from the normative path, and opens up other routes by demonstrating that the arrival of a child, and the experience of becoming parents, can be supported in a different way. This provision offers a space and the time to listen, something that is propitious for processing the anxieties linked to the upheavals of parenthood, as well as for building early bonds with the child.
6The second experience presented in this feature comes from Brazil. Between 2011 and 2016 the construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant, on the river Xingu, led to the displacement of the entire riverside population. It is the therapeutic work undertaken with this population which found itself removed from its habitual environment, exposed to desperation, and threatened with being branded as victims, that Ilana Katz et Christian Ingo Lenz Dunker relate in their article Care Clinic on the Banks of the Xingu River, A Psychoanalytic Intervention with the Riverine Population Seriously Affected by Belo Monte. Through collaborative work with organisations, a team of clinicians from all corners of Brazil was able to adapt the framework of the psychoanalytic cure to the situation on the ground; this in order to put in place innovative provision for support through listening. This provision was, on a case by case basis, able to support each subject’s discourse of protest – a necessity for asserting their rights –, without identifying solely with a status of victim.
7To close this issue, under varia, we have an article in which Laure Razon explores the subjective and familial configurations underlying phenomena of incest between brother and sister. In her article Incest Between Brother and Sister: or the Absence of Symbolisation of Violence from one Generation to the Next, the author demonstrates that this form of incest takes root in a twofold breakdown of the paternal function, both as regards the law of the prohibition on incest, and with respect to the “protective maternal function”. In these conditions, violence is the dominant relational pattern, and constituent of the family structure. A confusion of places is created, as well as a repetition of the violence in the next generation. The author argues for the hypothesis that the incestuous act of the aggressor-son could be the echo of an incestuous “fantasy/non-fantasy” present in the father, the consequence of which is to place one of the children in a privileged position. The incestuous violence could then be understood as an attempt to symbolically connect with the father, by killing the sibling who occupies that privileged position.
