Critical Notes: Moustapha Safouan’s “transexualism” case
These are notes relating to the following clinical case presentation from Moustapha Safouan, which appears in English within Returning to Freud: Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan, under the title of “Contribution to the Psychoanalysis of Transexualism.” I invite readers to consult this text before reading my notes.
- Scientific or Psychoanalytic Discourse?
The case concerns the analysis of “three boys, four of five years of age, who at this early age were already avowed transexualism.” Already, within the first sentence of the case, there is a supposition of their gender as “boys.” From where, outside of discourse, was this designation found? We find our answer in the next paragraph: “[t]hey are anatomically normal. There was no ambiguity at their birth as to their belonging to the masculine sex, and no ulterior examination permits the least doubt on this subject. The sexual chromosomes, in particular, are XY, normal.” Already, here, we can see that psychoanalysis was put to the certainty of science, that is, a delusional practice outside of discourse. Are we to suggest that the psychoanalytic discourse is the one which proceeds upon the certainties offered to it by science?
2. The Objects
Next, we are informed: “these children put on feminine clothing each time they have the opportunity, at home, on visits, or, later, they improvise with napkins, blankets, tablecloths or anything else that is useful.” The paragraph continues with their “playing the role” of femininity. Here, we can see, that there is something of the relationship to the object which must be further specified: by what standard are objects, a priori, feminine or masculine? These clothing objects are indicative of a relation of the speaking-being within discourse: it is not that the clothes are feminine before they are put on in role playing, but that, in role playing with the objects one essentially demonstrates feminine masquerade.
In one child, the “taste for feminine clothing” began at the age of two, while learning to walk: this person would put on mother’s shoes and walk. Yet, again, it is not that the shoes are intrinsically feminine but rather the use that is made indicates an object not far removed from the mother, that is, an object which consists of a ‘sign’ of the child’s continued dependence upon her.
3. The Phallus
The children sit while urinating. This implies, or so the author suggests, that it is a concealment of the phallus. Or, rather, the author, implicitly pointing toward a statement made by Lacan in 1956, reasons that “transvestism” comes from an “exigency of the phallus.” The author continues: “the subject attributes [the phallus] to all creatures without exception, since he [sic] would not know how to tolerate its absence in any case.” The author points toward the concept of “phallus” to demonstrate a psychosis and the consequent perversion without at all recognizing Lacan’s fundamental statement regarding foreclosure of the name in the third seminar. Moreover, the phallus is too quickly related to biology, that is, to the scientific real: the impossibility of its lacking. Once again, it is, precisely, the author, that is, the psychoanalyst, who sees, in his own scientific delusion, a phallus which is not lacking in the “boy.”
4. The Mother
The author describes the mother of two separate cases: both share a penchant for suits, short hair, and so on. The insinuation is that the mother is denying her own discursive position, that she is presenting herself as a phallus to the child and thus that the child was not able to see her as a woman. Moreover, the mothers are depressed, in each case, and demonstrate a depressive tone in their discourse. The problem here is simply that the clinician presumes that a mother is a mother, which is, quite simply, the clinicians delusion, and, once again, the analyst’s own inability to see the mother as a woman.
5. The Father
The author describes missing fathers, in every case. Yet, what is the father? Again, the mother is clearly a father, that is, a phallus — what is missing is not the father, then, but the woman, since, according to the author, the woman is dressed up as the phallus. Where is the name? The mother may be a father, but she does not transmit the name of the father, nor does she transmit the jouissance which has gone missing. Finally, the author does conclude an absense of the paternal function — which is clear, and yet, this is clear also in the analyst’s interpretations. The analyst interprets from a place of delusion, that is, from a place of knowledge and theory which cannot find the name of the father. Hence, the analyst did not see in the objects, the inventions of table cloth clothing, and so on, the opening into a relation with the Other: mother’s shoes, yes, but not entirely mother.
6. Delusion
The question is asked: what brings these “anatomical boys” to come to believe, despite all evidence, that they are “girls.” This question reveals, on the part of the clinicians, a retreat from psychoanalytic discourse, that is, a belief in the analyst’s own delusion. After all, what makes the analyst believe, any more than the children, that these are boys except for the scientific and biological discourse upon which his certainties rely? It is on this basis that the clinicians make the following statement: the difference between the neurotic and the “transexual” is the following, that the former wants to keep his penis and the latter doesn’t. Again, we see the extent to which the delusion persists in the analyst since, after all, which penis?
The temptation is to lapse into the common-sense delusion or the scientific and biological one, and this, at all costs, must be avoided by the analyst. It seems to me that one could just as likely conclude that the analyst seems to want to remove the penis of the girl; since the penis — that is, the phallus — in the author’s conception, is obviously there in the child’s inventions: shoes, tableclothes, clothing, and so on. It is there, precisely, that one detects a preliminary ‘sign’ that the body of the child is separated from the body of the Other, or the mother.
Lacan said it clearly: the phallus is not the penis.
Hence, the scientific delusion allowed the author to mistake the desire to remove the penis for the invention of a phallus in the objects. The analyst would be wise to recognize his own delusions, and to see that the child has perfectly well attempted to abandon the phallus through her inventions.
