Desire and Being Desired

The presenters on this panel were asked to focus their attention on the unique role played by desire in psychoanalysis. The inspiration was a cover story in the New York Times Magazine (January 25, 2009) that asked the question “What is female desire?” In his effort to answer that question, the author, David Bergner, referenced a variety of research into female desire. Results were reported from sociological and cultural studies. Also included were laboratory studies in which male and female, homo- and heterosexual subjects were shown films of human and animal sexual behavior. Consistently in these studies, women subjects reported themselves as less aroused than was indicated by the physical measures of arousal collected during the viewing. This discrepancy between self-report and physiological measurement stimulated the curiosity of the researchers, and of Bergner himself. Since, however, there was no psychoanalytic contribution to the piece, there was no way to approach the role of the unconscious in explaining this finding. The article attempted to be thorough, but psychoanalysis, with its unique perspective on the unconscious, was missing. Because of this omission I proposed a panel on female desire, a topic that eventually expanded to include the condition of desiring and being desired irrespective of gender. There seems no lack of curiosity about desire in the contemporary imagination. The recent commercial success of Fifty Shades of Grey has occasioned great interest in the question of why average women find masochistic fantasies sexually arousing.

In introducing and framing the panel, Melinda Gellman reminded us that psychoanalysis began in the conundrum of desire. Anna O.'s hysterical pregnancy, and the onset of “labor” during a therapy session, enacted her desire for Josef Breuer. Panicked by what he could not understand, he fled. Fortunately for psychoanalysis, he referred his patient to