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Panel Report
Castration and intolerance1
Robert D. Hinshelwood, ModeratorMarilyn Charles, Reporter
Anatomy is destiny, said Freud; but does it have to be so? It is in the natureof social interaction that difference so easily becomes opposition and invitesthe urge to oppress. People become trapped in those social and gender roles,and entrapping of each other. In this panel, the speakers looked at the inter-nal processes and mechanisms that complement the social attitudes, andwhich in turn respond to them. Psychoanalysis can nuance these life pro-blems of reality and point to hidden aspects not touched by the morerational and perhaps simplistic political processes.
The first speaker, Marilyn Charles (North America), considered howgendered knowledge inhibits thought and the hegemony of the voice ofauthority. Reiterating Freud’s question ‘what does a woman want?’ she usesher own experiences of marginalization as a way of considering how preju-dice, intolerance, and stigma serve the regressive forces in groups that canliterally cause us to ‘lose our minds’ – to not know what we thought weknew. This type of opposition to thinking exacerbates what LaCapra (1999)refers to as a ‘structural trauma’ that marks a deficit within the social fab-ric. LaCapra suggests that confusion between structural and individualtrauma invites projection of badness onto the other and inhibits the type ofmindful action that might invite more constructive social practice.
Charles (in press) discussed ways in which the gendering of knowledgeand power invites ongoing structural trauma, noting Felman’s (1993) argu-ment regarding the difference between men and women such that the womanas subject inevitably adds something to the conversation in a way that can-not be superseded by the male voice. Without the voice of an Other, poten-tially useful information can be trivialized and discarded without reflectionor consideration, and the voice of authority easily becomes a conjecturedprojection that cannot be located or disconfirmed or elaborated upon inactual discourse. She then discussed a case in which a young woman hadbecome de-subjectified. Failing to recognize ways in which she becomesimplicated in her parents’ stories left this woman disembodied, lost in theabstract, generalized realm of the type of absence described by LaCapra.Encountering the analyst as a gendered being helped this young woman toembody her own experience and bring it into language, thereby demarcating
1Panel held at the 46th Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association, Chicago, Illinois,USA, 29 July 2009. Panellists: Marilyn Charles (USA), Karl Figlio (UK), Donna Bentolila (USA).
Int J Psychoanal (2010) 91:1201–1203 doi: 10.1111/j.1745-8315.2010.00326.x
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the structural and personal aspects of her own self-abnegation such that shecould begin to consider her own self-denial and begin to imagine having alife rather than continuing to retreat towards death.
Karl Figlio (London) discussed the nature of masculinity and unpackedits twofold nature – both phallic and seminal. Figlio pointed to the absenceof ideas about generativity in views of masculinity, using the financial crisisas an exemplar of phallic masculinity. The hazard of phallic masculinity,suggested Figlio (2009), is that it sustains an impossible illusion fed by aparanoid–schizoid fantasy of growth without limit and reversals that canalways be recouped. Whereas phallic masculinity is intolerant, seeking toeither disregard or destroy the object, seminal masculinity is tolerant,‘‘troubled by guilt and the impulse to repair the object, and also to contri-bute to its fertility.’’ For Figlio, the financial crisis is a useful exemplar ofhis position because it was built on fantasies of the possession of the phallusas an illusory object that, because it is easily re-created, transcends castra-tion. ‘‘It knows no limitation, and inflates itself on the denigration of theother who is without it. … Yet there is an outcropping, like a geologicalfold, in which a depressive layer lies exposed. Exposed with it is an anxietyof desolation and a dumbstruck recognition of the banality of intolerance.’’Figlio made a powerful argument for a reconsideration of masculinity thatincludes within it the notions of limit that are essential for any possibility ofgenerativity.
The final speaker, Donna Bentolila (from Argentina but currently workingin the US), discussed the intolerance of otherness, from a Lacanian perspec-tive. Using a memory from childhood as a way of showing how easily intol-erance, prejudice, and stigma can arise as demarcations are made betweenself and other, Bentolila offered a vivid depiction of the ease with which dif-ference can become denigration. She notes Robert Levy’s claim that thetruly revolutionary discovery of psychoanalysis has to do with the insur-mountable division between the sexes and the ultimate irreducibility of thisdifference. Upon this difference, she contends, is built hatred for the‘‘woman as the one who sends us back to the horrors of castration’’ and the‘‘woman who, as Other, enjoys in a way that remains inaccessible to men.’’Women, therefore, face men with their own castration and ‘‘produces inthem repulsion, rejection and horror, feelings that could easily be played outin a social level through the dynamics of groups, into attitudes of deep pre-judice, active intolerance and stigmatization of women.’’ Bentolila notes,however, that castration can be a valuable tool in clinical work, and also inartistic productions, depending on our ability to tolerate lack and limit. Shethen offered the case of a young man who was caught between the loss of afather for whom he yearned and the too-present mother from whom hecould not sufficiently separate. Bentolila argues that her patient’s question:‘Where is my father?’ marks the need to be ‘castrated’ from a dyad thatstrangles him. Ultimately, she says, this question of ‘what does a womanwant’ must remain open as a series of questions that help to demarcate areal individual confronted both by the illusory phantasm of an unattainablewholeness, and also the possibility of asking ‘what do you want? … what doI want? – questions that remain open for both sexes.
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Robert Hinshelwood (London), who chaired the panel, then opened thediscussion by noting the tendency for ‘difference’ to become opposition inways that create polarizations between what is considered ‘good’ versus whatis considered ‘bad’. These false dichotomies then inevitably struggle withone another for ascendancy without necessarily affording greater knowledgeor understanding. He noted how Bentolila’s paper focused the subject ofdifference away from the gender problem and towards the more encompass-ing dilemma of the impossibility of pleasing the maternal object and theneed for the paternal object in order to separate from the mother. The audi-ence joined in a lively discussion of these issues.
References
Charles M. What Does a Woman Want?. Psychoanal Cult Soc. (forthcoming).Felman S (1993). What does a woman want? Reading and sexual difference. Baltimore, MD: JohnsHopkins UP.
Figlio K (2009). Phallic and seminal masculinity: A theoretical and clinical confusion. Int J Psychoanal91:119–39.
LaCapra D (1999). Trauma, absence, loss. Crit Inq 25:696–727.
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