The Enigma of Desire: Sex, Longing, and Belonging in Psychoanalysis

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The Enigma of Desire: Sex, Longing and Belonging in Psychoanalysis, introduces new perspectives on desire and longing, in and outside of the analytic relationship. This exciting volume explores the known and unknown, ghosts and demons, sexuality and lust. Galit Atlas discusses the subjects of sex and desire and explores what she terms the Enigmatic and the Pragmatic aspects of sexuality, longing, female desire, sexual inhibition, pregnancy, parenthood and creativity.

The author focuses on the levels of communication that take place in the most intimate settings: between mothers and their babies; between lovers; in the unconscious bond of two people― in the consulting room, where two individuals sit alone in one room, looking and listening, breathing and dreaming. Atlas examines the ways in which different languages, translations and integrations focus on birth, death, sexuality, and human bonds.

In The Enigma of Desire each chapter opens with a narrative, a therapeutic story which illustrates both the analyst’s and patient’s desires and the ways these interact and emerge in the consulting room. This book will be of interest to anyone who is interested in the intricacies of sex and desire and of great appeal to psychoanalysts, therapists and mental health professionals.

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Freud and the Desire of the Psychoanalyst

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Freud's invention of psychoanalysis was based on his own desire to know something about the unconscious, but what have been the effects of this original desire on psychoanalysis ever since? How has Freud's desire created symptoms in the history of psychoanalysis? Has it helped or hindered its transmission?

Exploring these questions brings Serge Cottet to Lacan's concept of the psychoanalyst's desire: less a particular desire like Freud's and more a function, this is what allows analysts to operate in their practice. It emerges during analysis and is crucial in enabling the analysand to begin working with the unconscious of others when they take on the position of analyst themselves. What is this function and how can it be traced in Freud's work?

Cottet's book, first published in 1982 and revised in 1996, is a classic of Lacanian psychoanalysis. It is not only a scholarly study of Freud and Lacan, but a thought-provoking introduction to the key issues of Lacanian psychoanalysis.

Lacanian Graph of Desire

Lacan developed his graph of desire in four stages – you find them below. The graphs and the theory behind it can be found in the 1960 essay “The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious.”

In: Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: W.W.Norton &Company, 2006), p. 435.

The concept of desire is at the center of Lacanian psychoanalysis as a theoretical, ethical and clinical point of reference.

See also: Introducing Lacan: A Graphic Guide

~ Lacan For Beginners
~ Free Ebook - The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis