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The founder of psychoanalysis, S. Freud based his theory on sexuality by asserting that what underlies every kind of psychic activity is in fact the sexual drive, and that this is tightly bound up with childhood sexuality.
However, in contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice, sexuality has been taking up progressively less space, giving way instead to desexualized concepts from object relations and intersubjective theories, such as attachment, primary love, interpersonal relations and identity formattın. The emphasis placed on the here-and-now has resulted in the severing of experience from the past, and thus from childhood sexuality.
Whereever sexuality is present, there is always prohibition and conflict; the repression that emerges as a result can only exert its effect on what is representable, that is on what already exists. With the increasing emphasis in psychoanalysis on very early, pre-representational periods, psychoanalytic work has focused more on absence, and the psychoanalytic paradigm has shifted from the drive's search for a pleasure object that would provide its satisfaction to the subject's search for an object through which they can sustain their own existence.
In this context, the Oedipus complex has also been subjected to re-evaluation. At the same time, changes over the last 20-30 years in the way sexual behaviours are approached have played an important role in pushing the oedipal issue –regarded as if it were a heteronormative approach- into the background. This situation has not remained confined solely to the domains of sexual identity and heterosexuality; the concept of genital sexuality has also lost its importance in favor of pregenital sexuality.
The theory of the unconscious which places sexuality, desire and boundary violations at the center of the picture, requires repression, which has until now been regarded as the cornerstone of psychoanalysis. In light of these developments, the question arises: what has happened to repression and to the unconscious?
Gender and Queer theory have also given rise to debates in the field of psychoanalysis; in this situation, it has become increasingly important for psychoanalysis to regain its originality by opening up to discussion its own independent theoretical and clinical domain, away from the turmoil and pressures of ideologies.
In the text, the author suggests that psychic bisexuality and the concepts of bisexualization and bisexual mediation proposed by C. David may add new dimensions to these debates.