You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
With the publication of The Enigma of Desire, Galit Atlas establishes herself as an important new voice in the world of psychoanalysis. The theoretical landscape she occupies is contemporary relational ideas. The clinical terrain she navigates is the integration of the intersubjective with intrapsychic aspects of the mind, and in particular sexuality. She couples thick theoretical descriptions with clinical illustrations of the sexual in the consulting room. Atlas moves from the personal to the cultural and from the clinical to the theoretical with the ease and grace of a talented and confident thinker and practitioner.
Atlas holds that in many instances it is early relationships that generate and complicate desire and create sexual problems. She upholds an important principle of contemporary relational theory by being careful about binaries and hierarchies. For example, she avoids privileging the Oedipal over the pre-Oedipal and mother-infant ties over later development. Her book is an expansion of relational theory to include erotic desire and its infantile roots. Other than the dazzling contributions of psychoanalysts Andrea Celenza and Jody Davies not much of impact seems to have been written about sex and desire since the classical days of psychoanalysis. Hence, Atlas’ book is a refreshing and important addition.
The original theoretical contribution of The Enigma of Desire is an integration of modes of thinking about our subjective and intersubjective sexual experiences, what Atlas coins as the Enigmatic and the Pragmatic. This integration is difficult to put into words because one of the two major elements, the Enigmatic, is elusive. Unlike the Pragmatic which can be witnessed, the Enigmatic cannot. Atlas refuses to make a clear split for the sake of conceptual convenience. The Enigmatic is a feeling that is slippery. It is confusing by its nature. It has multiple meanings. In my mind I can link some of the meaning to vitality, God, the Great Mother or Divine E