Sexual Polyphony and the Necessary Failure of Group Analysis

Sexuality is full of arguments: a specifically psychosocial position, therefore. Analytic groups involve interminable processes of naming difference and similarity with multiple and often contradictory positions held simultaneously. This essay is a discussion of the shift in the conceptualization of the psyche from notions of individualized sexualized psyches toward psychosocial sexualized psyches. I draw upon the notions of potential and space for a polyphony of dialectic interchanges as a means to consider group analysis and its notable absence from Clinical Encounters in Sexuality. In group analysis, I suggest, theories of sexuality are absent and unsexed. Group analysis, however, is helpfully a psychosocial theory of lack and failure that permits the failure of identity. By doing this, I aim to give a consideration of group analysis as a field that is fully involved in identity knowledge production and its politics. I mobilize concepts from both queer theory and group analysis to bridge a gap in discourse between the two field domains as part of a wider aim to form a concept of sexuality in group analysis.