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In November 2019, the philosopher Paul B. Preciado took over the psychoanalytic milieu when, after being invited, as keynote speaker, to a conference on “Women in psychoanalysis” at the École de la Cause Freudienne de Paris, he called for a revolutionary mutation of psychoanalysis, one that addresses and moves beyond its patriarchal and colonial presuppositions. For the Spanish trans public intellectual, psychoanalysis needs to get in touch with its own radical history and embark on a couch revolution. A revolution such that would move away from patriarchal frames and oedipal foundations, in other words, he asked for a revision of the theories of sexual difference. Whilst many feminist scholars and practitioners seemed mostly in tune with his eventful speech and later published book, not everyone in our field connected to his rather simple to understand remarks, paraphrasing Patricia Gherovici (2018) that: “Psychoanalysis needs a sex change”. In fact, the grand historian of psychoanalysis, Elisabeth Roudinesco, called Preciado's critique “unconvincing” in her review to Le Monde the following year (2020). On the ground, Roudinesco's standpoint seems to be also popular, making of Patricia Gherovici and Manya Steinkoler's recently edited tome Psychoanalysis, Gender, and Sexualities: From Feminism to Trans* an important and timely addition to such historical conversations.
Feminist and queer dialogues with psychoanalysis have a long history. From the late-1960s and 1970s, a range of writing engaged with psychoanalysis, at times in dialogue, and at others dismissing it completely, emerged in various countries. As early as 1975, for example, the anthropologist Gayle Rubin writes of psychoanalysis’ use for feminism, in the essay “The traffic in women”, famously calling psychoanalysis a “failed” type of feminism. For Rubin:
Psychoanalysis contains a unique set of concepts for understanding men, women, and sexuality. It is a theory of sexuality in human society. Most importan