Deconstructing the feminine: Discourses, logics and power. Theoretico-clinical implications

This article begins with a discussion of the polysemy of the category of “feminine,” proposing a distinction between the feminine, femininity, female sexuality, maternity and women, while also establishing their interrelatedness. She approaches “the feminine” as a symptom of culture. The article examines: (a) the complex interconnections between psychoanalysis and each era’s prevailing discourses on sexual difference, the feminine and women, (b) the power relations between genders, (c) the logics used to think about these problems in psychoanalytic theory, and their effects upon clinical psychoanalysis. The following questions are considered: individual and collective changes in the feminine position over recent decades and the transformations of traditional roles, masculine and feminine. Against the backdrop of the growth in new reproductive techniques, non-conventional familial configurations, the expansion of cyberculture and globalization phenomena, they are examined. These factors prompt a rethinking of the construction of subjectivity from the perspective of the manifold itineraries of desire, which always functions in excess vis-à-vis the norm, as well as the plurality of identifications at play. The article highlights the difficulties in assigning women the position of subject, a hangover from modernity. This is evidenced by the limits of many theories in addressing this problem. The article incorporates clinical illustrations, pointing out that a single clinical reference does not do justice to the variety of problems and dilemmas that may be observed in the field of the feminine. The concept of viewpoint is considered in relation to the construction of theories of the feminine and women, with the hypothesis that there is no presumed neutrality of thought or language, rather a subject, in the masculine position, that constructs the theory regarding sexual difference and the masculine-feminine pair. Castration anxiety and societal norms and discourse mutuall