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The moderator opened the panel and gave the floor to the panellists. Cláudio Eizirik began as follows: ‘Post-modern critics, though not congruent with one another, all disavow the notion that human beings have any essential or unitary core. Post-modern accounts of human experience are united only in their opposition to the ideals of Enlightenment beliefs, which are considered an elaborate, if also convenient, set of “fictions”.
‘Femininity and masculinity are usually seen as the quality, nature or state of the female or male sex. Psychoanalytically, these terms designate a constellation of characteristics of each sex, including anatomy, appearance, gender identity, gender roles, sexual object preference and culturally determined social behaviour. In recent years, three major psychological differences have been established between the sexes: core gender identity, sexual behaviour, overt and fantasised and culturally determined institutionalised non-sexual attributes and behaviour. Although the psychoanalytic concepts of femininity and masculinity refer to a complex system of beliefs that each individual forms in relation to anatomy and anatomical distinctions and although unconscious fantasy leads each individual to form a personal sense of masculinity or femininity, consistent or not with biological sex, there is a widespread acknowledgement that cultural influences that contribute to masculinity and femininity are not absolute models, but change from one culture to another.’
Eizirik makes the point that the role and importance of the family in creating and maintaining human values is collapsing. Also the concept of power is breaking down into ‘pockets of micropowers’, present in almost all systems; power becomes relational. ‘There is a claim to the right of being different, the rights of women, pacifists, homosexuals and other minorities are overtly claimed.’
Eizirik's question is whether psychoanalysis, and its views on masculinity and femininity, have anythin