Infantile sexuality and Freud's legacy

Abstract

The topic of sexuality and infantile sexuality, though less frequently discussed by psychoanalysis in recent decades, has received renewed attention for some years. The intention of this paper is to share some reflections around the role of infantile sexuality in our thinking, how we encounter it in our work with patients and in clinical material. Through reference to questions put forward by Freud (1905) in Three Essays, this paper takes into consideration some areas of the debate that has developed on the subject of infantile sexuality, starting from Freud's original intuition, including various hypotheses on the genesis of the sexual drive. The author will concentrate on two specific points. Firstly, how infantile sexuality - as a permanent dimension of the subject's existence - unfolds in the relationship and is deeply influenced by it. And that is how in childhood and adolescence, infantile sexuality ushers in parental sexuality - just as, in the case of our patients, infantile sexuality ushers in the analyst's sexuality. The second point pertains to the temporal dimension within which infantile sexuality is inscribed. The hypothesis that the author proposes is that infantile sexuality may be understood in the specific time of psychoanalysis [Nachträglichkeit], distinct and different with respect to the linear, evolutionary dimension.

Nachträglichkeit and après-coup in the psychological scientific literature: A systematic review and future perspectives.

“…Whereas the first two domains focus more on psychic, subjective experience, the third domain addresses the role of N/AC in clinical, analytic settings, where the alliance between patient and analyst grounds the outcome of the therapeutic process. The main idea that emerges here is that N/AC involves both a phase of anticipation (an "already there") and one of retroactive meaning, which subverts not only the common conception of psychic temporality (as we have seen in the first domain), but also and especially the modes of understanding what occurs in the analytic situation (Birksted-Breen, 2003;Goldin, 2016;Marion, 2012Marion, , 2016Perelberg, 2006Perelberg, , 2013Perelberg, , 2017. In this context, what cannot be subjectively experienced seems to remain "a-subjective" until a process of reinterpretation of the patient's self-narrative allows for an integration of the previously segregated parts of the self.…”

“…Birksted-Breen (2003), explicitly referring to N/AC as a process that can occur between analyst and patient, evocatively referred to “reverberation time,” the specific temporal dimension when distressing elements can be “assimilated, digested, and transformed” (p. 1506). According to Marion (2012, 2016), N/AC refers to a kind of temporality that constantly turns back on itself, does not proceed in a linear fashion, and is, as such, also the specific time of psychoanalysis—the time when the past “emerges from the primitive relationship and is tied to a third (the analyst)” (Marion, 2016, p. 661) that breaks this connection, opening up new possibilities. Therefore, in the patient–analyst dyad, N/AC involves a process of developmental “disruption” and “recreation” of new ideas (Goldin, 2016).…”

Correlação de depressão, ansiedade e síndrome da bexiga hiperativa em mulheres

“…O sujeito não pode integrar na sua pessoa e na sua história as representações que surgem no decorrer desses acontecimentos. Estas formam, então, um grupo psíquico separado, suscetível de provocar efeitos patogênicos (no caso, sintomas urinários) decorrentes da ansiedade e da depressão causadas por uma situação traumática vivenciada (38).…”