All Is Not Sexuality That Looks Like It

Abstract

. They have prompted me to read a whole range of clarifying texts-from Jacques Derrida's reflections on Friedrich Nietzsche to the work of classicist James Davidson on Michel Foucault and George Devereux (as well as more writings by Devereux) to historian Chris Waters's recovery of Edward Glover, and from literary scholar Shoshana Felman's brilliant Jacques Lacan-inspired rescue operation for psychoanalytic textual interpretation (in the special issue of Yale French Studies she edited in 1977) to Charles Shepherdson's turn-of-the-millennium revisionist take on Lacan and Foucault in Vital Signs. They have prompted me, too, to reconsider key texts by Sigmund Freud. And I am glad that the interlocutors challenge me with questions. These include: why the Left abandoned psychoanalysis (Robcis); how I have come to think about practices and desires and the relationships between "the sexual" and other realms of human existence (Shepard and Stewart-Steinberg, each in their own way); how a more integrated and comprehensive master narrative of psychoanalysis might be written, connecting the first and second halves of the twentieth century (Shapira); and how to delve more deeply into the role of analysands in shaping what counts as psychoanalysis (Kunzel).It will surprise no one to hear that "psychoanalysis" is nowadays an embattled project. On the one hand, we find elaborate grouplets of connoisseurs speaking an obscure language, often disdainful of other grouplets, while vigilantly guarding the guild's history against ignorant outsiders. On the other hand, in many departments of psychology or psychiatry, the name Freud merits at best a raised eyebrow. Freud is rarely required reading (except perhaps in a literary-or cultural-studies classroom). We are now in the world of pharmaceuticals and of neuroscience, and psychoanalysis is declared thoroughly outmoded. Why would a historian-or any politically engaged person-study the conceptual intricacies 1 terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi