Psychoanalysis reveals the politically incorrect unconscious and the harassing sexuality that lies dormant within us. From Freud to Lacan, from Catherine Millet to Artemisia Gentileschi, a subversive dive into the heart of the most obscure and transgressive impulses of the human psyche.
“The unconscious is politically incorrect and sexuality is fundamentally harassing”
This quote from psychoanalyst Jacques André reminds us how psychoanalysis remains a subversive discipline, shedding light on the most obscure and disturbing foundations of the human psyche. Far from any complacency or any moralism, it confronts us with the radical otherness of the unconscious and the wild dimension of sexuality, to better understand its mechanisms and issues.
By affirming that “the unconscious is politically incorrect”, Jacques André highlights the fundamental opposition between the logic of the unconscious and contemporary social norms, in particular those resulting from the “political correctness” movement. Where this movement aims to create a language and behaviors of right thinking, the unconscious proves impervious to these attempts at regulation and control of discourse, maintaining its own logic of desire which can come into conflict with social conventions. and contemporary ideals.
Likewise, by describing sexuality as “fundamentally harassing”, Jacques André underlines the instinctual and potentially invasive character of human sexuality, which manifests itself from childhood and persists throughout life. This “harassing” dimension opposes the idea of a “natural” sexuality, revealing, on the contrary, the most transgressive and very incorrect aspects of human desire. Sexuality, as a fundamental force of the unconscious, is perpetually in tension with social and cultural constraints.
Quick return to the foundations of psychoanalytic theory: the unconscious is an immaterial psychic instance which escapes the self and its adaptive inscription in reality. Unlike the ego, the unconscious is only governed by the pleasure principle and the energy that circulates there seeks immediate instinctual satisfaction. It ignores the constraints of rational thought. Because it is structured like a language, it is fundamentally marked by otherness, absence and lack, which makes it irreducible to any attempt at normalization or social regulation. Dreams, slips of the tongue, failed actions as well as symptoms are manifestations of these unconscious desires which escape conscious control. These expressions show how repressed desires constantly seek to emerge, often in inappropriate or socially incorrect ways. It is not uncommon for a dream, for example, to reveal a morally unacceptable sexual or violent desire.
The political correctness movement, which appeared in the 1980s in the United States, aims to promote language and behavior that respects differences, in particular by avoiding discriminatory expressions towards ethnic, sexual or religious minorities. It is a form of self-censorship and internalization of acceptable social norms, which seeks to create a more unifying public space.
However, the unconscious proves fundamentally impervious to these attempts at social regulation. Even among the most progressive people committed to the fight against discrimination, the unconscious maintains its own logic of desire which can come into conflict with democratic and egalitarian ideals. As Jacques André writes, “the unconscious of the most democratic of men ignores parity, the unconscious of the most feminist of women ignores equality”.
This opposition between the unconscious and political correctness is not simply formal, but deeply political. While political correctness seeks to transform social relations through the control of language and behavior, the unconscious resists any attempt to normalize or moralize impulses. This resistance reveals the fundamental limits of social transformation projects which do not take into account the unconscious dimension of the human psyche.
The second aspect of Jacques André's quote concerns the “fundamentally harassing” nature of human sexuality. We know today that human sexuality is not reducible to adult reproduction, but manifests itself from the first stages of infantile psychological development, particularly in a significant polymorphic form. This is how the child, before the age of four, goes through a normal period of “polymorphous perversion” thus revealing sexuality as fundamentally transgressive and completely incorrect. This precocious sexuality, as Jacques André points out, “speaks beside the point” and where it should not speak. And this harassing dimension persists throughout life, particularly through the impulse changes of puberty and adolescence. Puberty reactivates sexual urges in an intense way, which can lead to impulsive behavior, sexual hyperactivity or risky behavior. Adolescence thus appears to be a period of turbulence where sexuality can take on an invasive and potentially destructive character.
In our time, contemporary sexuality is characterized by a certain liberalization of morals and a multiplication of possibilities for sexual experiences. Sometimes this freedom is even described as “sexuality without limits”. However, it can slip into forms of addiction or compulsion, where the search for satisfaction becomes ever more intense and never truly satisfied. The “harassing” nature of sexuality then manifests itself through ritualized and obsessive behaviors, which escape conscious control and reveal the persistence of unconscious impulse logic.
Romantic passion illustrates in a paradigmatic way the “harassing” character of human sexuality. It is part of a regressive dynamic which reactivates the early stages of psychosexual development, notably the oral stage and the narcissistic stage. When it sets in in adults, it causes a real psychological regression which awakens affects of infantile origin, such as the need for fusion, the fear of abandonment or the desire for incorporation. This regression is manifested by an emotional dependence similar to that of the child towards his parents, which can lead to control, surveillance or clinging behaviors.
In its most pathological form, romantic passion can evolve into true fusional harassment, where the other is invested as a partial object supposed to fill all the gaps and respond to all the needs. This passionate harassment actually reveals an original emotional trauma, linked to early narcissistic deficiencies or poorly developed separation experiences.
In the literary domain, the work which perhaps best illustrates this transgressive dimension of sexuality is The Sex Life of Catherine M. by Catherine Millet, published in 2001. In this autobiographical story, the author relates with rawness and clinical precision her multiple and varied sexual experiences, from her adolescence to adulthood. She exposes a compulsive and repetitive sexuality, marked by an excessive multiplication of partners and a constant search for new experiences. This obsessive sexuality appears as a means of filling a fundamental and narcissistic lack, through an incessant quest for recognition and self-confirmation.
But the story also reveals the paradoxes and contradictions of this “liberated” sexuality. The narrator sometimes expresses hatred towards her partners, puts her own pleasure second and seeks recognition of her whole person through actions that reduce her to a simple body. This ambivalence underlines the fundamentally unsatisfactory and illusory character of this compulsive sexuality. Catherine Millet's cold and detached writing paradoxically reinforces the impression of a mechanical and disaffected sexuality, which never truly finds satisfaction.
In the pictorial domain, the work which illustrates this violent and irrepressible dimension of sexuality is Suzanne and the old men by Artemisia Gentileschi, painted around 1610 at the age of 17. This painting represents a recurring biblical episode, where the chaste Suzanne is surprised in her bath by two lecherous old men who try to force her into sexual relations.
This work is particularly significant because it is part of a painful autobiographical experience. The artist herself was the victim of rape in her youth, a traumatic experience that she transcribed in several of her paintings where we often find violence and cruelty. His representation of Suzanne shows a frightened and violated woman, trying to protect herself from the aggression of the two men whose sexual desire turns into a controlling force, insensitive to her vulnerability.
The strength of this work lies in its uncompromising pictorial treatment, which highlights the raw violence of male desire and the fragility of the victim. The bodies are represented with raw realism, emphasizing the carnal and predatory nature of the scene. The use of strong contrasts reinforces the impression of oppression and threat which weighs on a frightened and disarmed Suzanne.
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