Beyond Gender From Subject to Drive

In this volume, Paul Verhaeghe's lectures on the development of psychoanalytic theory between Freud and Lacan are reproduced as a written work of astonishing versatility, which stands at the vanguard of Lacanian studies. Beyond Gender examines Freud's discovery of the unconscious and Lacan's elaboration of this discovery as a gap in the subject between what (s)he knows and the real driving forces in the psyche. The implications of this gap are manifold, and their impact on areas of study and practice from gender theory to obsessional neurosis, trauma, hysteria, and dream interpretation are profound. It is Verhaeghe's contention that, far from being the bedrock of gender differentiation, castration masks another anxiety: anxiety over another original lack that is beyond gender. This book moves past the classic binary opposition between body and psyche, and challenges the reader to reexamine both the sexual relationship and the troublesome notion of gender identity. Paul Verhaeghe is one of the most brilliant of those few writers who can relate questions found in Freud and Lacan to the passions and suffering of everyday life. These essays present a variety of concepts, all of them at the heart of the psychoanalytic enterprise. He constructs a pathway whose staging posts are desire and the dream, the body and love. Here you will find described the fabric of human engagement, the real conditions under which men and women attempt to construct relations of sexual love.Bernard Burgoyne, professor at the Institute of Social Science Research, Middlesex University, London.This book finally sets the record straight. Psychoanalysis is not about gender, nor is it about sex. It is not even about thesignifier. It is about the impossibility of bridging the gap between the body and the drive. Verhaeghe, with his usual, methodical, pedagogical, and refreshingly calm approach, uncovers for us the truths of Freuds discoveries and the unexpected clarity of Lacans theoretical formulation.Judith Feher Gurewich, director of Lacans Seminar, Harvard University