Sexual equality, gender equality, paedophilia…

Adding to the scandals concerning paedophilia at church, French society is rattled by debates, with sometimes divided opinions, regarding the equality between men and women, particularly equality of sex and of gender.

These discussions often solely come down to the theme of human sexuality. That’s why we’ve asked psychoanalyst Jean-Luc Vannier, a lecturer at the University of Côte d'Azur and at Edhec and Ipag in Nice and Paris, a few burning questions.

Nice-Premium: What do you think about the debates concerning human sexuality currently shaking French society?

Jean-Luc Vannier: Psychoanalysis, safe within the four walls of a clinic during therapy sessions, deals with all these topics on a daily basis. The only difference – and it’s an important one – is that patients do or have previously experienced them first-hand, often accompanied by a great amount of suffering. This is the mystery and paradox of the psyche: real, or sometimes fantasized, these experiences related to sexuality are never theoretical in terms of their consequences or virtual in their effects. It is also striking to note to what extent, in what is commonly called analysis, the throes of human sexuality, (“sexual aberrations” to use the chapter title of one of Freud’s most controversial books), remain the central issue of our work. This is rarely at the beginning of sessions, of course, patients are often resistant at first, but, over time, certainly. As soon as we approach the unconscious mind we inevitably grapple with sexuality along the way.

Nice-Premium: But why is human sexuality so difficult to deal with?

Jean-Luc Vannier: What psychoanalysis has brought to light, in spite of an entire analytical movement (Ego Psychology) which has tried to brush sexuality under the carpet or to call it “pregenital” in order to water down its most subversive aspects, is that human sexuality is diphasic: contrary to popular belief, which is surprisingly tenacious even today, there exists an infantile sexuality which precedes adult sexuality intended for reproduction. When the latter arises at puberty, the place is already taken up by the former which will continually brim over and get a kick out of messing up the sexuality of its replacement.

Nice-Premium: Is it important to accept the existence of this infantile sexuality when worrying about issues such as paedophilia and gender equality?

Jean-Luc Vannier: It’s essential. Let’s make sure we all understand – when psychoanalysis evokes infantile sexuality, it is not, contrary to a common-sense reaction, regarding paedophilia, nor incest. Albeit for this second term, the boundary is much more problematic. Allow me to explain: any adult caring for their child (and I willingly say adult and not parent to put forward the most generic form, therefore possibly open to same-sex couples) when feeding, when caring for, when playing with their child, when teaching them about cleanliness, any adult, as I said, implants messages into their child’s universe which are infiltrated by their own repressed infantile sexuality.

Nice-Premium: In what forms do these messages appear?

Jean-Luc Vannier: In this respect, breastfeeding or bathing are the most telling in the clinic: they mobilise many unconscious parental fantasies. It’s a little like how an uproar coming from the parent’s bedroom is quite capable of arousing many strange hypotheses in a child’s mind. To raise the question of paedophilia is therefore to interrogate the failings of this infantile sexuality: for the paedophile, his infantile sexual drive, powerfully reactivated in the presence of any child, overwhelms him completely, regardless of his age, adult sexuality or even his parental status. It's important to remember that one of the major characteristics of this drive is the constant search, never satiated, for direct satisfaction. In this sense, perversion, as a psychic structure and not in the moral sense of the word, where popularisation has falsely categorised the notion, denotes any being who has not (psychically)entered adult genitality.

Nice-Premium: How could this infantile sexuality also elucidate debates on gender equality issues?

Jean-Luc Vannier: We make the mistake of confusing “sex” and “gender” far too often. Let me make it clear: the distinction between genders precedes the difference between sexes. The former concerns the characteristics of masculine and feminine gender roles. The latter pertains to sexual function and sexual pleasure. It’s not the same thing at all! In the psycho-sexual development of human beings, gender is attributed from the outside, often by parents and sometimes even before the birth of the child, during an ultrasound for example. Once the sex of the foetus is made known, parents will have fantastical ideas about their child’s future career, even about their name: the choice of name can (unconsciously) hide some real skeletons in the closet!

Nice-Premium: And regarding the difference between the sexes?

Jean-Luc Vannier: The difference between the sexes is, for its part, observed, tested, positively or negatively experienced, integrated or rejected during the different stages of the lengthy process of sexuation: that’s to say all the individual will do, first of all, with their anatomy (is this still someone’s “destiny” to plagiarise Freud?). How will they, after, live through their maternal and paternal identifications, their heterosexual and homosexual identifications [as both are needed], over the course of their Oedipal journey? Not to mention castration which remains, now and always, the core of all life’s tribulation during the hazardous construction of identity. All this stems from the uncertainties of infantile sexuality.

Nice-Premium: So infantile sexuality permanently marks the sexual destiny of a human being?

Jean-Luc Vannier: In a posthumous note, Freud argues that “infantile sexuality is the prototype of all sexuality”. This “trademark”, to reuse the terms of your question, determines a large part of our lives. The human must ultimately come to terms with the broadness of their sexuality, something focused on pleasure and always incapable of being reduced to the mere reproduction of the human race. Allow me to illustrate – in any manoeuvre of seduction (and seduction is an asymmetrical mechanism by nature), what we call foreplay is in fact merely the remnants of this infantile sexuality: protean, fragmented and marked by extreme mobility of the erogenous zones. Nonetheless, during the adventures of meeting new people, foreplay is like the “moment of truth” for the future of the relationship: in other words, what makes it so important!

March 2019

NB: This text is the English translation of an interview realized for the webmagazine Nice-Premium. It has been edited with the agreement of NP.

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