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Clinical psychoanalysis and queer theory have at their core a deep exploration of sexuality. Although the link between shame and sex has generated a strong theoretical reflection (Butler, 1993; Dimen, 2013; Saketopoulou, 2013, 2014; Sedgwick, 1993; Stein, 1997, 2012; Straker, 2007), shame is in this literature primarily a threatening affect in need of psychic elaboration. In contrast, I look at shame as a critical and surprising intervention provoked by the analyst. I argue that analysts perform in their work not only psychic labor but also “excessive” nonverbal states which challenge the established boundaries of the analytic relationship. I show that such moments function as “cognitive strikes,” which can be productively deployed by analysts to reap their benefits.
The aim of my argument is to show that the analysts “enter the perverse” when they momentarily stop processing difficult mental states. According to the professional ideal of “mentalization” (Fonagy & Target, 1996), psychoanalysts are put in the position to permanently do cognitive work. Yet refusing this demand offers the analyst the freedom to shift the relationship between a paid laborer and a beneficiary of therapeutic work. I theorize these noncognitive acts of “excessive shame” to expand on and criticize theories of queer performativity such as Judith Butler’s and Eve Sedgwick’s. The first contribution of this article is to draw the attention of clinicians to queer work that theorizes the emergent materiality of affects. The second contribution is to ask queer psychoanalytic theorists to take seriously the potential of surprising interventions which interrupt the demand to incessantly perform mental labor for their clients.