Psychoanalytic theory provides the conditions of intelligibility for analytic listening. Thus, the starting point of this study is the idea that another model of psyche and body, different from that of castration and lack, would lead to a different, possibly less prescriptive, way of listening in psychoanalysis. The purpose of this research is to theorize a new model for the “body-psychism” in psychoanalysis. The thinking of philosopher Luce Irigaray is central to my proposals – especially the inseparability between materiality and signification postulated by this thinker, as well as her approach to sexuation, inherent in all discourse. Stemming from the ethics of sexual difference that Luce Irigaray notably proposed, I advocate an ethics of differences, one that prioritizes intersubjectivity. I reinterpret her concept of the “mucous”, giving it the status of a model. The mucous tissues, thanks to their permeability, allow different elements to coexist without cancelling each other out – including bodily and psychic elements. The mucous membrane is a tissue present in every body. It includes sexuality through the drive and differences through intersubjectivity, but does not essentialize identities. 

In Freud’s thinking, we find a notion of the anatomical body coexisting with the drive body. Concepts that seem to refer solely to the psychic often turn out to exist in relation to a certain gendered corporality, which functions as a prism of intelligibility. As pointed out by Luce Irigaray, psychoanalytic epistemology has an idea of the subject that turns out to be that of man, a body with a penis and threatened by castration. Thus, a discourse that excludes gender and non-standard subjectivities seems to find arguments in psychoanalysis, since concepts that are intended to be purely psychic or symbolic do, in fact, have an anatomical and gendered basis. All the same, taking materiality as a means of intelligibility does not necessarily lead to abjectness. Bodily models can be effective in representing the psyche. However, we need to consider the discursive conditions in which anatomical and gendered conceptions of the body originate. When we understand bodies in their intimate relationship with the norms that produce them, body models can expand the field of the intelligible. 

The mucous permits the confluence of differences, the hybrid and the paradoxical. This model aims to give intelligibility to existences of “betweenness”, such as those between inside-outside, otherness-dependence, frontier-domain, subject-subject, body-psychism, matter-symbol, flesh-reason. What’s more, the mucous is particularly capable of representing the paradoxical non-standard existences of subjects and bodies that exist, that are fabricated and have not yet find ontology, representation or intelligibility. In this way, the mucous model aims to make room for differences and apparent contradictions. As intersubjective, this model thinks about differences as always arising in relationships. Ultimately, my proposal is an invitation to moving towards the creation of different images and representations, with the aim of accounting for the plurality of subjectivities and bodies.

References

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• Irigaray, L. (1974). Speculum – de l’autre femme. Paris : Éditions de Minuit.
• Irigaray, L. (1977). Ce sexe qui n’en est pas un. Les Éditions de Minuit.
• Irigaray, L. (1984). Éthique de la différence sexuelle. Les Éditions de Minuit.
• Irigaray, L. (1990). Je, tu, nous. Grasset.
• Irigaray, L. (1992) J’aime à toi. Grasset.
• Irigaray, L. (1997). Être deux. Grasset. 
• Le Moigne, J.-L. (1994). La théorie du système général : théorie de la modélisation (4e édition mise à jour). Presses Universitaires de France
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• Whitford, M. (1991). Irigaray’s body symbolic. Hypatia, 6(3), 97-110.