PALGR AVE M ACMILLAN’S

CRITICAL STUDIES IN GENDER , SEXUALITY, AND CULTURE

Highlighting the work taking place at the crossroads of sociology, sexuality

studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and performance studies, this series
offers a platform for scholars pushing the boundaries of gender and sexual-
ity studies substantively, theoretically, and stylistically. The authors draw on
insights from diverse scholarship and research in popular culture, ethnogra-
phy, history, cinema, religion, performance, new media studies, and techno-
science studies to render visible the complex manner in which gender and
sexuality intersect and can, at times, create tensions and fissures between one
another. Encouraging breadth in terms of both scope and theme, the series
editors seek works that explore the multifaceted domain of gender and sexu-
ality in a manner that challenges the taken-for-granted. On one hand, the
series foregrounds the pleasure, pain, politics, and aesthetics at the nexus of
sexual practice and gendered expression. On the other, it explores new sites
for the expression of gender and sexuality, the new geographies of intimacy
being constituted at both the local and global scales.

Series Editors:

PATRICIA T. CLOUGH is Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies

at Queens College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. Clough is on the edi-
torial boards of Women’s Studies Quarterly, Body and Society, Subjectivity,
Cultural Studies/Critical Method, Qualitative Inquiry, and Women and
Performance. Clough is the coeditor of Beyond Biopolitics: Essays in the
Governance of Life and Death (with Craig Willse, 2011); author of The
Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social (with Jean Halley, 2007); Autoaffection:
Unconscious Thought in the Age of Teletechnology (2000); The End(s)of
Ethnography: From Realism to Social Criticism (1998); Feminist Thought:
Desire, Power and Academic Discourse (1994); The End(s) of Ethnography:
From Realism to Social Criticism (1992).
R. DANIELLE EGAN is Professor and Chair of the Gender and Sexuality
Studies Program at St. Lawrence University. Egan is the author of Dancing
for Dollars and Paying for Love: The Relationships between Exotic Dancers
and their Regulars (2006) and coauthor of Theorizing the Sexual Child in
Modernity (with Gail Hawkes, 2010), both with Palgrave Macmillan. She is
also the coeditor of Flesh for Fantasy: Producing and Consuming Exotic
Dance (with Katherine Frank and Merri Lisa Johnson, 2006). She is on the
editorial board of Sexuality and Culture.

Titles:
Magnus Hirschfeld and the Quest for Sexual Freedom: A History of the First
International Sexual Freedom Movement
Elena Mancini
Queer Voices: Vocality, the Uncanny, and Popular Music
Freya Jarman-Ivens
On the Literary Nonfiction of Nancy Mairs: A Critical Anthology
Edited by Merri Lisa Johnson and Susannah B. Mintz
Antarctica as Cultural Critique: The Gendered Politics of Scientific
Exploration and Climate Change
Elena Glasberg
The Parallel Lives of Women and Cows: Meat Markets
Jean O’Malley Halley
Positioning Gender and Race in (Post)colonial Plantation Space:
Connecting Ireland and the Caribbean
Eve Walsh Stoddard
A Critical Inquiry into Queer Utopias
Edited by Angela Jones
Young People and Pornography: Negotiating Pornification
Monique Mulholland
Juliet Mitchell and the Lateral Axis: Twenty-First-Century Psychoanalysis
and Feminism
Edited by Robbie Duschinsky and Susan Walker
The Aesthetics of Cute in Contemporary Japanese Art
Yoke-Sum Wong [forthcoming]
 Juliet Mitchell and
the Lateral Axis
Twenty-First-Century
Psychoanalysis and Feminism

Edited by

Robbie Duschinsky and

Susan Walker
JULIET MITCHELL AND THE LATERAL AXIS
Copyright © Robbie Duschinsky and Susan Walker, 2015.

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-38117-0

All rights reserved.

First published in 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
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ISBN 978-1-349-47958-0 ISBN 978-1-137-36779-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137367792

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Juliet Mitchell and the lateral axis : twenty first century psychoanalysis
and feminism / edited by Robbie Duschinsky and Susan Walker.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Brothers and sisters—Psychological aspects. 2. Psychoanalysis and
feminism. 3. Women and psychoanalysis. 4. Mitchell, Juliet, 1940–
I. Duschinsky, Robbie, 1986–
BF723.S43J85 2015
150.195—dc23 2014035155
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: March 2015
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Contents

Introduction 1
Robbie Duschinsky and Susan Walker
Chapter 1
The Etiology of Hysteria in Mitchell’s Mad Men and Medusas 23
Susan Walker
Chapter 2
Siblings, Secrets, and Promises: Aspects of Infantile Sexuality 43
Daru Huppert
Chapter 3
Ideologies of the Super-Ego: Psychoanalysis and Feminism,
Revisited 57
Judith Butler
Chapter 4
Debating Sexual Difference, Politics, and the Unconscious:
With Discussant Section by Jacqueline Rose 77
Juliet Mitchell
Chapter 5
Dialectic and Dystopia: “This might come as a shock . . . ” 101
Robbie Duschinsky
Chapter 6
Marked by Freud, Mitchell, and the Freudian Project 131
Daru Huppert
Chapter 7
Hysteria between Big Brother and Patriarchy 147
Paul Verhaeghe and Eline Trenson
Chapter 8
Reframing Obsessional Neurosis: The Rat Man’s Siblings 169
Robbie Duschinsky and Rachel Leigh
vi C O N T EN T S

Chapter 9
Minimal Difference: On Siblings, Sex, and Violence 193
Mignon Nixon
Chapter 10
Crimes of Identity 207
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Chapter 11
Sisters at the Gate: Mean Girls and Other Sibling Phenomena 229
Gillian Harkins
Chapter 12
How Can We Live Ourselves? An Interview with
Juliet Mitchell 255
Preti Taneja

Bibliography 273
List of Contributors 283
Index 287
 Introduction

Robbie Duschinsky and Susan Walker

Juliet Mitchell is widely acknowledged as a groundbreaking theorist and

psychoanalyst. Mitchell’s work has been influential, and there are many
testimonials to its influence. Grosz (1990, 19) has described her ideas
as a “moment of radical rupture” and as having inspired a generation of
researchers. And Lament (2013, 12) writes that “Mitchell’s far-ranging
sleuthing among numerous domains—psychoanalysis, anthropology,
sociology, psychology, literature, and her own personal reflections
deserves our applause and high praise.” Mitchell’s role is also significant
as a contributor to and commentator on the developments in Western
thought since the 1960s. In particular, as Flax (1992, 179) observes,
“Mitchell has been an influential contributor to the development of femi-
nist theory. She has entered into and affected some of the most impor-
tant intellectual and political debates stimulated by the re-emergence of
women’s movements.”
However, there has yet to be any book dedicated to Mitchell’s ideas.
Perhaps part of the reason for this absence is, as Connell (2012) has
noted, that Mitchell’s work has “the energy and passion of the liberation
movement without the showing-off.” Another volume could have been
written as a retrospective on the debates impacted by Mitchell’s work.
However, we were inspired by the acuity of her insights for tackling con-
temporary concerns. Changes in society have, curiously, made many of
her reflections on equality, violence, collective movements, subjectivity,
sexuality, and power more rather than less relevant over time, as these
issues have developed and become core parts of public and academic
debates. Reading Mitchell now, engaging with her ideas, offers access
to distinctive and highly valuable ideas that contribute directly to these
debates. For example, we live in a society in which women must walk a
tightrope of assumptions in performing an identity perceived as asser-
tive but not aggressive, successful but not square, sexy but not a slut;
Mitchell’s work offers resources for making sense of how sexuality, which
had been touted as the site of freedom, has itself become a fundamental
site of oppression in an ostensibly equal society.
2 R O B B I E D U S C H I N S K Y A N D S U S A N WA L K E R

Mitchell is a socialist, a feminist, and a psychoanalyst, and has com-

bined these three positions in her theorizing. Her career spans five
decades from the 1960s to the present day. In the 1960s, “The Longest
Revolution” pioneered the conjunction of feminism with Marxist
thought, laying the ground for socialist feminism in Britain. In the
1970s, Psychoanalysis and Feminism opened the way for feminist usage
of Freud. She edited influential volumes of the work of Lacan, Klein,
and Balint. In the 2000s, her work on the importance of siblings posed
a new research agenda for psychoanalysis and gender theory. The “lateral
axis” of the psyche, along which siblings and peers are encountered, is
considered by Mitchell as different from and complementary to the verti-
cal axis of parent–child relations and the Oedipal complex. In proposing
a “lateral axis” Mitchell has provided a rich new seam of insights and has
opened up a new horizon for those wishing to combine psychoanalytical
insights with sociological observation.
This volume addresses the contemporary implications of Mitchell’s
ideas for social theory, gender studies, politics, and psychoanalysis, with
a focus on the significance of the lateral axis as a new and powerful
theoretical framework for addressing concerns in each of these domains.
The development of these themes in the fields of politics, art, philoso-
phy, sociology, gender studies, cultural studies, anthropology, education,
peace studies, criminology, and psychology promises rich rewards. This
volume takes some of these disciplinary fields and looks at how Mitchell’s
theory can be applied and developed. Students of these disciplines will
find the book a useful source of applied psychoanalytical theory. Readers
well versed in Freud and psychoanalytical theory will find that this
volume allows the theory to be taken in a new and unexpected direction.
The volume provides the readers with the background to the theory, and
demonstrates how the lateral axis is of pressing significance for readers
from a range of disciplines, and for those interested in the currents that
move our social and cultural worlds.

* * *

Throughout her academic career, Mitchell has been concerned with

explaining the intractable nature of the position of woman as the second
sex, oppressed and positioned as inferior. It is from this starting point
that she encounters and develops new perspectives on six fundamental
issues: equality, violence, collective movements, subjectivity, sexuality,
and power. These themes were initially considered through a Marxist
perspective in her essay “The Longest Revolution,” published in 1966. In
this text, Mitchell was critical of the overly simple expectation of much
 INTRODUCTION 3

socialist theory that with the revolution, and subsequent “freedom” of

the working classes, would follow a revolution in the status of women and
their own emancipation. Mitchell, unsatisfied with socialist reductions of
women’s position to that of women position within the division of labor,
identified four bases upon which this position rested. These were pro-
duction, reproduction, sexuality, and the socialization of children:

The classical literature on the problem of woman’s condition is pre-

dominantly economist in emphasis, stressing her simple subordi-
nation to the institutions of private property. Her biological status
underpins both her weakness as a producer, in work relations, and
her importance as a possession, in reproductive relations. The fullest
and most recent interpretation gives both factors a psychological cast.
The framework of discussion is an evolutionist one which nevertheless
fails noticeably to project a convincing image of the future, beyond
asserting that socialism will involve the liberation of women as one of
its constituent “moments.”
What is the solution to this impasse? It must lie in differentiat-
ing woman’s condition, much more radically than in the past, into its
separate structures, which together form a complex—not a simple—
unity. This will mean rejecting the idea that woman’s condition can
be deduced derivatively from the economy or equated symbolically
with society. Rather, it must be seen as a specific structure, which is a
unity of different elements. . . . Because the unity of woman’s condition
at any one time is the product of several structures, it is always “over-
determined”. The key structures can be listed as follows: Production,
Reproduction, Sex and Socialization of children. The concrete com-
bination of these produces the “complex unity” of her position; but
each separate structure may have reached a different “moment” at
any given historical time. Each then must be examined separately in
order to see what the present unity is and how it might be changed.
(Mitchell [1966] 1984, 26)

In setting out this schema, it seems to us that Mitchell is wrestling with

a fundamental concern—of as much pertinence today as when “The
Longest Revolution” was written. Women continue to be oppressed and
positioned as inferior, regardless of major changes in the form taken by
that oppression through history and in the relations of production. If
more women are in work than ever, then why does there remain a femi-
nization of poverty? If women are free from Victorian sexual mores, then
why does a sexual double standard still operate? Mitchell was interested
in how continuities in the oppression of women could occur, given overt
intentions in individuals and in society to achieve a more meaningful
equality. The Marxist answer is ideological subjugation: power does not
4 R O B B I E D U S C H I N S K Y A N D S U S A N WA L K E R

simply operate upon our conscious intentions, but on our more tacit
sense of who we are and how to go about in the world. Mitchell identi-
fies this as an important factor, but suspects that this explanation still
cannot account for the continuities in women’s oppression over time and
across cultures. Mitchell did not reject socialist modes of explanation but
added to them a perspective drawn from Freudian psychoanalysis for the
purposes of making sense of the entrenchment of tendencies that run
counter to the espoused values of individuals and of society. In moving
from an analysis of false consciousness to the role of unconscious pro-
cesses, both the irrational and the intractable nature of women’s oppres-
sion became much clearer. In Mitchell’s words: “The unconscious that
Freud described could . . . be described as the domain of the reproduction
of culture and ideology” (Mitchell 1974, 413).
In the second half of Psychoanalysis and Feminism, Mitchell defends
Freud against the attacks and vilification heaped upon him by the second-
wave feminist because of his account of the inferiorized psychic status
of femininity. She highlights that this psychoanalytic account is not a
prescription of how things should be, but a description of an important
and neglected process through which women become the second sex.
The different relationship to the Oedipus crisis that forms the path-
ways to masculinity and femininity for male and female infants, forms,
for Freud, the basis of the psychic differentiation into male and female
subjectivity. That this drama leads to a state of psychic inferiority for
those whose fate is the feminine position is not inevitable: it is a result
of patriarchal culture, in which fathers are valorized and powerful, and
the power of the woman as reproductive mother is not. The hierar-
chy implicit in sexual differentiation is not, insists Mitchell, a distortion
caused by the patriarchal bias of the man who first described them.
The conditions of capitalism have led to a romantic idealization of the
nuclear family, and the ideology of patriarchy has led to a position of
psychic inferiority for women:

Freud’s analysis of the psychology of women takes place within a

concept that it is neither socially nor biologically dualistic. It takes
place within an analysis of patriarchy. His theories give us the begin-
nings of an explanation of the inferiorized and “alternative” (second
sex) psychology of women under patriarchy. Their concern is with
how the human animal with a bisexual psychological disposition
becomes the sexed social creature—the man or the woman. . . . . In
each man’s unconscious lies all mankind’s “ideas” of his history; a
history that cannot start afresh with each individual but must be
acquired and contributed to over time. Understanding the laws
of the unconscious thus amounts to a start in understanding how
 INTRODUCTION 5

ideology functions, how we acquire and live the ideas and laws within
which we must exist. A primary aspect of the law is that we live
according to our sexed identity, our ever imperfect “masculinity” or
“femininity” . . . Differences of class, historical epoch, specific social
situations alter the expression of femininity; but in relation to the law
of the father, women’s position across the board is a comparable one.
When critics condemn Freud for not taking account of social reality,
their concept of that reality is too limited. The social reality that he is
concerned with elucidating is the mental representation of the reality
of society. (Mitchell 1974, 402–406)

Following her encounter with the works of Freud, Mitchell trained

and practiced as a psychoanalyst. She continued to write and contrib-
ute to feminist debates, collaborating with Ann Oakley and Jacqueline
Rose, among others, to produce (single-handedly and in collaboration)
books and articles that examined psychoanalysis, feminism, and the rela-
tionship between them. With Michael Parsons, she also edited a collec-
tion of papers by her training analyst, Enid Balint, titled Before I Was I:
Psychoanalysis and the Imagination (1998). In 1996 Mitchell accepted a
professorial position in Cambridge University, United Kingdom.
Mitchell’s next major book, whose full title Mad Men and Medusa:
Reclaiming Hysteria and the Effects of Sibling Relations on the Human
Condition encompasses the full breadth of the work, was published in
2000, a hundred years after Freud’s Studies in Hysteria. In it Mitchell
tackles several related themes, viz. the apparent disappearance of hys-
teria after the First World War, the lack of recognition of male hysteria,
and the neglect of siblings in psychoanalytical theory. The book high-
lights the psychical significance of lateral relationships through an analy-
sis of the effect of siblings upon the presentation of hysteria. Mitchell
argues that the felt sense of “displacement” experienced by the child on
the birth of a sibling is caused by a loss of position within the family. In
this way, Mitchell carves out a space for attention to siblings within psy-
choanalytical theory, a topic that had previously received only glancing
attention or else omitted and neglected. Mitchell uses the legend of Don
Juan to illustrate how male hysteria looks if considered using both the
vertical and the lateral axes.

Don Juan’s absence from psychoanalytic theory is testimony to the

absence of the male hysteric and to the feminizing of hysteria. To read
him back into the theory is to shift its centre of gravity, or at least to
give it two focal dimensions: an intergenerational one and lateral one;
parents as representatives of the vertical axis and siblings as representa-
tives of a lateral axis. Don Juan’s story likewise gives phenomenology
6 R O B B I E D U S C H I N S K Y A N D S U S A N WA L K E R

of male hysteria which is otherwise missing from most psychoanalytic

observation. The thrust of his story is the hysterical transmission of
lateral jealousy. (Mitchell 2000, 259–260)

In her subsequent book, Siblings: Sex and Violence (2003), Mitchell

expands upon the importance of siblings in psychic structure. She urges
that psychoanalytical theory’s insistence on the importance of the verti-
cal axis alone has led to missed opportunities for exploring the effect of
sibling relationships. The trauma of a sibling’s birth (or the imagined
trauma of a sibling in the case of an only child), she argues, leads the
child to question its very existence. Displacement leads to questions like
“Where does the baby come from?” and “Where am I now that the baby
is in my place?” and on the other to the murderous desire to eliminate
the usurper. This murderousness is accompanied by narcissistic love,
due to the baby being experienced as a replica or extension of the child
itself, which can be expressed as incestuous love for the sibling. The chal-
lenge for the toddler is to overcome the violence and accept its sibling as
like itself but not identical to itself. This leaves room for more than one
person to be the mother’s child and introduces the concept of seriality.
Siblings form the first model for lateral or peer relationships—for the
achievement of meaningful equality—and so the success of the attempt
to overcome the murderousness of sibling relationships is important for
the establishment of social relations with peers and equals.
Mitchell coins the phrase the “law of the mother” for the prohibi-
tions, operative on the lateral axis, against sibling murder and sibling
incest. These prohibitions do not operate through negation as do the
Oedipal prohibitions, which forbid desire for the mother and permit
only a deferred desire for her substitute in adult partners. Instead, they
operate through differentiation, in giving each sibling a place. This role
is named for the mother, but can be played by any figure—including
by the siblings themselves as Freud and Dann’s (1951) account of the
quasi-sibling group of institutionally raised orphaned children showed.
Mitchell argues that the closeness of sexuality and violence, especially in
situations where outside controls are weak, such as war, and within the
private domestic or intimate sphere, is the psychic root of actions that
may seem disconnected, but in fact represent the closeness of sex and
violence in sibling relationships. Rape as a weapon of war (sexualized vio-
lence), and spousal/intimate abuse (violent sexuality) both result from
a failure to fully repress the narcissistic phantasy of being the one-and-
only and resolve the trauma that one is not by recognizing difference.
Incestuous sex and murderous violence are, on Mitchell’s account, are
both forms of acting out of the threat from a lack of differentiation. One
 INTRODUCTION 7

extreme response to this threat, warding it off, is to stake out the terms
of difference by fixating on reproductive possibilities between boys and
girls (genital difference) and magnifying its social significance out of pro-
portion to its real effect. This need to emphasize difference as a condition
of what is perceived as a fragile existence and the need to murder the
potential usurper can support continuities in the denigration of women
even through variation in relations of production, over time and between
cultures. On the other hand, the successful negotiation of the trauma of
displacement and the recognition that there is room for more than one,
can lead to self-esteem, tolerance, and meaningful equality.
Siblings and the lateral axis allow Mitchell to theorize gender as sepa-
rate from sexual difference. For Mitchell, gender is a difference that need
not be a binary nor a hierarchy—just like the relationship between sib-
lings. By contrast sexual difference is the place one inhabits in the service
of reproduction, which under patriarchy is formulated as of necessity one
or other side of the binary phallus/no phallus. As Mitchell has proposed,
the sibling relationship asks the question “who am I?” of the subject, to
which a key response is differentiation by the manner of gender perfor-
mance. This differs, Mitchell suggests, from the child’s relationship with
parents who, on behalf of society’s norms, categorize and differentiate
children by reproductive sex:

Because I am arguing that the absolute sexual difference demanded by

reproduction is an Oedipal vertical construction, I am instead using
“gender” to mark the girl/boy difference as it comes about along the
lateral axis. . . . Where the castration complex marks the sexual dif-
ference “required” by sexual reproduction, gender difference marks
lateral distinctions between girls and boys which include but exceed
sexuality.
By differentiating between her children the mother and her law
allow for the concept of seriality to be internalised—John has to know
that he has lost the possibility of being Jane. One is a child in the
same position as one’s siblings in regard to one’s parent or parents,
one’s peers in relation to one’s teacher or boss, but one is also differ-
ent: there is room for two, three, four or more. Of this the hysteric
in all of us is unaware. Hate for the sibling enables the first move to
be made: I hate you, you are not me, is the precondition of seriality.
The mother restricts this hate—enjoins its non-enactment. Children’s
games musical chairs, oranges and lemons, pig in the middle and all
the spontaneous play—are about seriality. The mother has enforced,
but the lateral relationship itself instigates its own processes of manag-
ing sameness through constructing difference. The law of the mother
thus also operates between siblings or between siblings and peers.
(Mitchell 2003:26, 52–53)
8 R O B B I E D U S C H I N S K Y A N D S U S A N WA L K E R

Cultural, psychological, and genital differences in the position of those

marked as boys and those marked as girls can taken up or recruited into
the struggle to denigrate lateral others; however, they are not intrinsic to
the negotiation of that struggle. Mitchell (2003, 219–220) argues that
“when the child is overwhelmed by the trauma of one who, in the mind,
was supposed to be the same as itself inevitably turning out to be differ-
ent, it finds or is given ways to mark this difference—age is one, gender
another . . . The cradle of gender difference is both narcissistic love and
violence at the traumatic moment of displacement in the world. Gender
difference comes into being when physical strength and malevolence are
used to make the sister as lesser.” When the symbolic and imaginary
resources are not available then gender can be deployed in warding off
the traumatic moment of lateral displacement though a virgin/whore
dichotomy and forms of sexual oppression and violence. However, where
such resources are available from experience, support from adult caregiv-
ers and from wider culture to allow each subject a recognized and intel-
ligible place, with sufficient meaning and dignity, then the child is able
to find a place for themselves:

With help, the ego is able to bind most of the raging energy—
never entirely and sometimes not very well at all. There remains some
identification with the violence of the traumatic experience, so that
throughout life, rages that echo or repeat the experience will be added
to already existent aggression and may erupt in personal violence or
be channelled into socially legitimated killing. (Mitchell 2013, 22)

Mitchell’s work in distinguishing the lateral axis offers a space for

addressing such issues. All too often, to date, attention to the psychi-
cal significance of others like oneself in childhood have been neglected
or assimilated to parent–child relations as there has been no framework
that could contain them and help them be developed. “Observations
without theory to crystallize them remain relevant but unintegrated,”
as Gilmore (2013, 54) observes. Yet with the introduction of the lateral
axis, such work from the past—and in the future—can add to Mitchell’s
own insights. An example is Merleau-Ponty’s ([1949–52] 2010) account
of how a child learns the distinction between role and individual required
for the imperfect tense:

The jealousy that is manifested at a younger brother’s birth can be

interpreted as a refusal to accept the change in situation. The arrival of
the newborn supplants the previous role. This stage disappears due to
the constitution of a kind of past-present-future schema . . . The child
 INTRODUCTION 9

learns to think of reciprocal relations: he distinguishes between the

concept of role and that of individual. He learns to relativise the actions
of the youngest and oldest. (Merleau-Ponty [1949–52] 2010, 244)

Merleau-Ponty then gives “the case of a little girl of thirty-five months

who was excited by coming across a dog having puppies”:

Two months later, at the birth of her younger brother, the girl sud-
denly acquired certain linguistic modes, notably the imperfect. A con-
nection exists between the acquisition, the brother’s birth, and the
past emotion. How can we explain what happened? For the little girl
who knows she is about to have a brother or sister, the dog repre-
sented a symbol. The future schema: “brother-me-parents” has been
anticipated by “puppies-me-dog”. To assimilate this schema, the child
came to quit her position as the privileged object and took a maternal
attitude towards the newborn. It is necessary to move from a captive
attitude to an ablative attitude, from a passive attitude to a positive
attitude. We thus see the appearance of the use of the imperfect, of
the “me”, the “I”, and four future verbs. The future is an aggressive
tense: the subject takes hold in the future and makes projects; the use
of “me” and of “I” indicates that the subject adopts a more personal
attitude. The use of the imperfect shows that the young girl under-
stands that the present is extended; it is the past, but the past that
abides in the present. The imperfect is employed each time the baby is
brought up, the baby being what she was until now. (Merleau-Ponty
[1949–52] 2010, 245)

Merleau-Ponty suggests that the imperfect tense requires being able

to think of reciprocal relations. This is a thought that the child needs
in order to negotiate his or her place in relation to others who are alike
but different—siblings, potential siblings, or peers. Merleau-Ponty does
not imply that the only child will be unable to use the imperfect tense;
naturally they will, but they will need to deploy other resources than
their actual siblings for thinking about the difference between a person
and their role. This process depends upon the experiences and cultural
resources the child receives for negotiating the meaning—in this case, the
meaning of puppies as a symbol. Merleau-Ponty’s account can be further
refined by placement in the context of Mitchell’s work, since Mitchell
suggests that establishing reciprocal relations with the sibling requires
identification both with the maternal attitude and with the new child
itself—both of which will ultimately be disappointed. However, excavat-
ing neglected accounts of lateral phenomena such as Merleau-Ponty’s, or
developing new work, can add to Mitchell’s theory.
10 R O B B I E D U S C H I N S K Y A N D S U S A N WA L K E R

In Siblings (2003, 44), Mitchell argues, in line with Lacan and Klein,
that “representation and hence language relates to absence—what is not
there must be signified. Seriality, although it takes place within lan-
guage, is about numeracy not literacy.” Yet more recently Mitchell has
highlighted the potential significance of a sibling for language develop-
ment. She notes that “the sibling arrives when the toddler is mastering
speech; it is a time when the frustrations of inarticulacy and inexpress-
ibility occasion rage and despair”; when the child has to address others
like themselves but different, at whatever age, “the traumatic nucleus of
the experience will be referred to the typical time of two to two and a
half years, through deferred or referred action” (Mitchell 2013, 23–4).
Further developing this thought, it can be suggested that language can
involve the differentiation negotiated by the lateral axis, as well as the
relations of absence and presence negotiated by the vertical axis. We have
seen with Merleau-Ponty that lateral axis processes can be recognized as
significance for the differentiation—rather than negation—of individual
and role required for the imperfect tense. The lateral axis opens up a
space for placing past insights and for developing further work. This has
been our project in Juliet Mitchell and the Lateral Axis, in showing the
value of engagement with Mitchell’s work for contemporary concerns.

* * *

In the first chapter of the volume, Susan Walker tracks the development
of Mitchell’s theory of the etiology of hysteria. It was from this investiga-
tion that Mitchell discovered the significance of siblings for psychoana-
lytic theory, a finding she presented in her book Mad Men and Medusas
(2000). Walker first sets out Freud’s classical theory of the origins of
hysteria using the vertical axis and the Oedipus complex. She traces
how, as the theory developed, the original traumatic etiology of hysteria
was replaced by an emphasis on an incompatible idea of a sexual nature.
This shift in emphasis is, Walker notes, reversed by Mitchell who places
traumatic experiences back into the origins of hysteria. Walker outlines
Mitchell’s account of the catastrophic effect, upon the fragile baby-subject,
of the arrival of a sibling. This provokes intense ambivalence character-
ized by murderous hatred, and narcissistic love, for the new arrival who
is both nearly identical to and yet a replacement for the baby.
Walker notes Mitchell’s fascinating suggestion that the ambivalence
and desires first experienced in the pre-Oedipal sibling situation, may be
misread, in the necessary reconstruction, which takes place in the analysis
of a post-Oedipal adult, as the ambivalence and desires arising from the
Oedipal situation. This masks the effect of the lateral axis and conflates
 INTRODUCTION 11

it with the effect of the vertical parent–child axis. Walker pulls together
Mitchell’s reworking of Freud’s metaphorical use of the “mystic writing
pad” to explain how trauma affects memory, and Mitchell’s account of
the regressive effect of trauma upon the hysterical adult. These two con-
cepts help the reader to understand Mitchell’s clinical observations and
explanations of some the symptoms of hysteria, such as bodily enactment
and memory loss. Walker then moves on to recount Mitchell’s use of the
Don Juan myth, to examine the forms that male hysteria may take, and
Mitchell’s suggestions for why male hysteria is denied or unrecognized,
both culturally and within psychoanalytic theory. Finally Walker outlines
Mitchell’s important emphasis on the presence of death and violence in
the hysterical condition. The close proximity of sexuality and death in
both the etiology and the enactment of hysterical symptoms are evidence
of the presence of violent hatred and love in the sibling encounter. The
chapter finishes with some thoughts on where Mitchell’s theory of the
importance of siblings for the psyche needs to be further explored and
developed.
In chapter 2, Daru Huppert explores further Mitchell’s innovative
theory of the lateral axis. He begins by noting that, prior to Mitchell,
siblings had no place within psychoanalytic thought: they were either
ignored because they did not fit within Oedipal theory, or were incorpo-
rated into that theory without remainder. As Mitchell (2013, 17) states,
“in Freud’s theoretical superstructure, sisters and brothers are placed in
the same category as mothers and fathers, and this amalgamation of par-
ents and siblings is usually followed without concern.” Mitchell’s work
gives sibling relationships a place within psychoanalytic theory, which she
calls the “lateral axis” in contrast to the “vertical axis” of parent–child
relations. At the heart of Mitchell’s account is an image of the older sib-
ling, who experiences the displacement from the position of “the Baby”
as an extreme existential threat.
In psychoanalytic terms, the newcomer represents a narcissistic injury.
Mitchell proposes that this injury is no less the experience of a younger
sibling—who has to find a place in an environment in which their older
sister or brother has already made their claim for parental attention and
availability. Furthermore, she suggests, the only child too has to face this
issue, but on a less favorable terrain: whereas real siblings can negotiate
with each other in actuality as well as in phantasy, “the ‘only’ child is
likely to have more, not fewer sisters and brothers than the child with sib-
lings. They are more active in the thoughts and feelings, the unconscious
and conscious fantasies, in the inner world of the ‘only’ child than they
are in those of its sibling peers. The ‘only’ child will ask What has hap-
pened? The ‘expected’ one has not arrived. What have I done wrong?”
12 R O B B I E D U S C H I N S K Y A N D S U S A N WA L K E R

(Mitchell 2013, 19). Huppert draws out that in Mitchell’s account of lat-
eral relations, the child’s first impulse is to presume that a sibling would
be more of themselves, a narcissistic extension of self. When this phantasy
is disappointed by the fact that the sibling is like me but different, then
feelings of hate will be evoked alongside feelings of tenderness. The issue
will be to what extent the child can recognize the other as warranting
love not because they are the same, but because of their mix of similari-
ties and differences. Huppert emphasizes that this is a difficult recogni-
tion, which is rarely a simple or linear process. However, it is helped when
a child has support from adults in making sense of their place and deter-
mining “who can stay up latest, have which piece of cake and survive the
murderous rivalries to win through to sibling and peer love, a law allow-
ing space for one who is the same and different” (Mitchell 2003, 52).
Having introduced Mitchell’s account of sibling relations, Huppert
then explores further its logic and implications. He observes that sibling-
oriented sexuality differs from the vertical sexuality of the Oedipus com-
plex. Above all, in contrast with some features of the Oedipus complex,
a wish for a baby does not form part of our sexual desire for a sibling.
He also considers that the taboos that prohibit sibling sexuality are often
organized differently. For example, he draws on his clinical experience to
suggest that siblings will often include a third child, who is not a brother
or sister, in their acts, so as to suspend, obscure, and thereby more easily
trespass the incest barrier. He also draws out that we are more likely to
have preconscious memories of early sexual wishes and acts with siblings
than with parents; Huppert urges recognition that behind these precon-
scious memories may well remain unconscious events or phantasies of
sexual wishes or hate for a sibling. Themes of keeping promises or keeping
secrets in our lives, Huppert suggests, may well receive investment from
our early and forgotten sibling relations in which these were in issue.
Huppert’s chapter closes by raising the question of whether the “sibling
complex” can be regarded as on the same level or of the same kind as the
Oedipus complex.
Juliet Mitchell’s account of the Oedipus complex continues to be at
the heart of the issues continued in chapters 3 and 4. Here, a dialogue is
presented between Judith Butler and Mitchell. In 2009 Butler addressed
a symposium held at the Centre for Gender Studies to honor Mitchell’s
retirement. Parts of this address were later published in an article for
the journal differences (Butler 2013), whereas other parts are published
here for the first time. In chapter 3 Butler praises Mitchell for the latter’s
“immeasurable influence” on subsequent feminist and psychoanalytical
thought. However, Butler also alleges that Mitchell remains tied to an
essentialist account of the difference between men and women, which
 INTRODUCTION 13

buys into the organizing assumptions of the oppressive culture it tries

to resist. Butler begins by raising the question of the transgenerational
transmission of rules regarding identity, and the role of unconscious pro-
cesses in countering emancipatory political activity. She considers how
this issue is treated in the 1999 introduction to the second edition of
Psychoanalysis and Feminim, attending in particular to Mitchell’s inter-
pretation of Freud’s ([1933] 2001: 167) remark that “Mankind never
lives entirely in the present. The past, the tradition of the race and the
people, lives on in the ideologies of the superego and yields only slowly
to the influences of the present and to new change . . . ” She argues,
however, that Mitchell’s interpretation of the role of the unconscious is
hamstrung by an inadequate account of gender and of a child’s identifi-
catory processes with his or her parent(s). The modes identification and
desire through which our identity is formed are always, Butler contends,
elaborated in response to the forceful impression, enigmatic and excit-
ing, of the world as we find it around us in its specifically-structured
forms of oppression. Drawing on Laplanche’s critical discussion of the
idea of unconscious communication across generations, Butler criticizes
Mitchell, who she reads as “saying that sexual difference is invariably
identified with masculine and feminine,” and argues that these latter
terms cannot be taken for granted as if they were an invariant and uni-
versal distinction, with stable and transmissible content.
Mitchell’s reply, in chapter 4, begins by clarifying the terms of dis-
cussion, showing that Butler’s interest in heteronormativity differs from
Mitchell’s own overriding interest in the oppression of women. This has
led them to use terms, most significantly “sexual difference,” in diverg-
ing ways, and this has caused confusion. Mitchell further suggests that
Butler’s emphasis on culture at the expense of fantasy misses two uni-
versal facets of the human condition—which nonetheless have no set
content. The first is that the position of women is shaped, variously, by
the psychological consequences of differences in reproductive possibili-
ties. The second is that all human societies require some prohibitions
on desire and murder, though the content of these prohibitions can cer-
tainly differ. Whereas Butler alleges that Mitchell identifies sexual dif-
ference with masculine and feminine, Mitchell argues that this is not
her perspective at all. Mitchell observes that biological femaleness and
psychic femininity never fully match up; it has always been her argu-
ment that we must consider “the way the anatomical male/female data
(with all its uncertainties) is mentally lived; the way the physical data, the
clitoris/vagina/penis, is phantasized and experienced” (Mitchell 1973,
131). Having clarified the meaning and significance of her invocation of
“sexual difference,” Mitchell goes on to engage in dialogue with Butler
14 R O B B I E D U S C H I N S K Y A N D S U S A N WA L K E R

on four fundamental issues: the intergenerational transmission of culture

and oppression, the meaning and variability of unconscious prohibition,
the relationship between the unconscious and desire, and how to formu-
late the political task of contesting the oppression of women.
Chapter 4 also includes Rose’s reply to Butler on the occasion of the
2009 symposium. Like Mitchell in her reply to Butler, Rose argues that
embodiment shapes the discursive construction of sex through the sig-
nificance of fantasy. This is not to suggest that embodiment legislates
what meanings a person will assign to their life, but that the formation
of a distinction between men and women will always but contingently
invoke anatomy. We cannot therefore solely attend to the discursive lim-
its of “sex,” but must also examine the variety of fantasies that can be
produced by the universal significance of anatomical differences for the
human unconscious. Attention to this issue allowed Mitchell in Madmen
and Medusas to consider the psychical significance of having or lacking
a womb, a significant contribution to psychoanalytic and gender theory.
Drawing on her own work in making sense of the Butler–Mitchell con-
troversy, Rose compares the transmission of the oppression of women to
the transmission of an ethnic heritage, noting that it is dependent upon
the contingencies of cultural performance and the contingent but more
enduring ways in which this heritage is sustained by fantasy.
In chapter 5, Robbie Duschinsky proposes that Mitchell’s debt to a
dialectical mode of thought supports the great value of her ideas for
contemporary concerns and for further developing post-structuralist per-
spectives. He argues that Mitchell’s texts have an iridescent quality that
allows us, as time passes, to see both particular passages and our world
differently. Part of this quality is the result of a core question that ani-
mates each of Mitchell’s books, and which keeps being reactivated by our
concrete personal and political experiences—even as circumstances are
reconfigured. This question is: “why are inequalities between men and
women so pervasive, even in movements which purport to be primarily
concerned with equality?” Duschinsky situates the stakes of this ques-
tion by considering the dissolution taking place of the Socialist Worker’s
Party in the Britain, following mishandling of allegations by a young
female activist that she had been raped by a leading member of party.
Party leaders alleged that those who were concerned by the way the alle-
gations were handled were diluting their socialism with other interests,
and gesture to Mitchell as an example of such apostasy a generation earlier
in her work for New Left Review. At the time, Mitchell described the
need to escape a complete severance of socialism and feminism, or losing
the latter within the former. She described these two positions as twin
sisters. By contrast, she set out that her goal was to find a space that could
 INTRODUCTION 15

recognize the concerns of both in working towards a more meaningful

equality for women.
In pursuing this goal, Mitchell became focused on a particular
moment of the dialectic: the moment in which a difference first emerges
between siblings. For Mitchell, attention to “minimal difference” orients
analysis to the movement that must found and structure any inhabit-
able subjectivity and which is denied in ideologies and fantasies of the
achievement of simultaneity and full unity. Siblings help Mitchell think
about the difficulties and meaning of recognition as the condition for
achieving equality. Duschinsky illustrates the acuity of Mitchell’s address
to politics, and gender, and sibling relationships by considering the pur-
chase of her ideas on the writings of Orwell.
For Duschinsky, Mitchell highlights the need to dig beneath formal
recognition of equality to achieve the meaningful equality, which requires
attention to social and economic inequalities and to differences between
and among men and women. He also suggests that, contrary to much
existing political theory, Mitchell’s perspective suggests that “recogni-
tion” between self and other cannot be achieved along the lateral axis
without support from the outside, which she theorizes with the concept
of the “law of the mother.” Duschinsky concludes that Mitchell’s per-
spective ultimately suggests that while each human takes our place in the
world in part from others, we are also irreducible to one another—and
that while frames of recognition allow us to settle a place for one another,
these frames are always potentially reversible and do not fully capture any
subject. The chapter ends by suggesting that Mitchell has modelled her
account of how such unreconciled and meaningful equality might work
in the relationship she has established between socialist, feminist, and
psychoanalytic concepts in her writings.
Chapter 6 of the volume, “Marked by Freud” by Daru Huppert,
situates Mitchell’s approach on the landscape of contemporary psycho-
analysis. Whereas the addition of a “lateral axis” and emphasis on sib-
ling relationships might seem a departure from Freud’s project, Huppert
argues exactly the opposite. He observes that since Psychoanalysis and
Feminism, Mitchell has attended to Freud’s texts with a fertile sense of
their unsettling, but unarticulated implications. That she brings his ideas
to bear on topics he recognized but did not consider in depth—the posi-
tion of women, and sibling relationships—indicates a further working
out of the logic of Freud’s position, rather than its abandonment.
Huppert specifies three particular concepts that affected Mitchell
deeply and which are at the heart of Freud’s approach: the uncon-
scious, sexuality, and the death drive. He draws a contrast between
Mitchell’s deep and acute attention to these themes, and contemporary
16 R O B B I E D U S C H I N S K Y A N D S U S A N WA L K E R

psychoanalytic thought, which he accuses of capitulating to the expec-

tations of wider culture, leaving behind what is most disturbing and
important in Freud’s thought on each topic. Huppert proposes that
Mitchell’s greatest and most original insights into the position of
women and sibling relationships come from accessing what is most valu-
able in Freud, and using it to disturb taken-for-granted assumptions
in other areas. For example, whereas many gender theorists are hesi-
tant to address reproduction for fear of falling into essentialism, Freud’s
account of the original perversity of the drive allows Mitchell to draw
sharp and effective distinctions between the bisexuality of all human
beings and different reproductive possibilities of men and women. Or
whereas Kleinians tend to reduce the death drive to aggressive tenden-
cies, Huppert contends that Mitchell retains the Freudian account of
the death drive and this allows her to identify the role of the repetition
compulsion, states of emptiness, and feelings of annihilation in hysteria.
The chapter ends with a comparison of Mitchell’s and Freud’s analysis of
the sadomasochistic fantasy of “a child is being beaten.” Huppert draws
from this discussion a call for further consideration of what defence
mechanisms and psychological processes might specifically characterize
the lateral axis: for example, does “identification” operate in the same
way with parents and with siblings/peers?
Having situated Mitchell’s relationship with Freud in chapter 6,
chapter 7 by Paul Verhaeghe and Eline Trenson considers Mitchell’s
ideas in comparative perspective with those of Jacques Lacan. Verhaeghe
and Trenson argue that Mitchell expands Lacan’s account of castration.
Whereas Lacan primarily considers the woman to be castrated because
she lacks a penis, Mitchell identifies that men experience a parallel ana-
tomical lack in their absence of a womb. It is this proposal, they suggest,
that allows Mitchell to truly recognize the universality of hysteria as a
potential for human subjects, as both men and women are subject to the
castration and sense of lack which hysteria protests. The hysteric treats
another person, positioned as master, as someone with the answers who
will satisfy the subject’s sense of lack. However Verhaeghe and Trenson
make an important observation. They note that the clinical examples
in Juliet Mitchell’s recent books do not look like the classic hysterical
patients of Freud’s day, or even Lacan’s.
Verhaeghe and Trenson argue that changes in contemporary society
have meant that hysteria appears today with different symptoms: it forms
what is now diagnosed as borderline personality disorder. Borderline
patients experience an unstable self-image and self-direction as a product
of labile identifications, and oscillate between overinvolvement and under-
involvement in relationships conceived of either as perfect or as devalued.
 INTRODUCTION 17

Verhaeghe and Trenson suggest that borderline personality disorder is the

form hysteria takes in a society dominated by lateral rather than vertical
forms of power. Rather than needing to obey the authority of a patriar-
chal master, they argue that today we organize our lives around receiv-
ing the approval of our peers for the forms of enjoyment we enact. They
relate this psychological formation to political ideologies and advertising
discourses that preach the total controllability and manageability of our
lives, based on our personal effort. Such ideas disavow the role of lack and
limit in our lives, and make it seem that if we are not achieving control
and managing well then this means that we did not put in enough effort
or made the wrong choices. Borderline personality disorder, Verhaeghe
and Trenson suggest, is the form hysteria takes where there is no ready
authority to form a master, and in which ways of making sense of the real-
ity of lack and limits have been foreclosed by our society.
Verhaeghe and Trenson use Lacan to consider Mitchell’s account of
hysteria in comparative perspective. Chapter 8, by Robbie Duschinsky
and Rachel Leigh, also uses a comparative lens, however their focus is
on using Mitchell’s account of hysteria to shed light on the other of
Freud’s “classical neuroses”: obsessional neurosis. In Siblings (2003, 19),
Mitchell suggests that “the introduction of a lateral paradigm reframes
the classical neuroses.” The two classical neuroses are hysteria and obses-
sional neurosis. Mitchell offers a generative and full account of the role of
the lateral axis in the etiology of hysteria; its role in obsessional neurosis,
however, remains unexplored. Duschinsky and Leigh reconsider Freud’s
case study of the Rat Man in light of the lateral axis. While lateral rela-
tions are not highlighted in the published text, the significance of the
patient’s siblings to his neurosis is evident in Freud’s case notes. Drawing
on an earlier analysis of the case by Zetzel, Duschinsky and Leigh con-
nect the Rat Man’s unconscious hatred of his father to a prohibition on
sexuality, which had been tangled up with the death of his sister. In the
case notes, Freud states that in a session with the patient, “I traced a
connection with death from his having been threatened with death at a
prehistoric period if he touched himself and brought about an erection
of his penis, and suggested that he attributed his sister’s death to mastur-
bating” ([1909] 2001, 309).
Duschinsky and Leigh also connect Lanzer’s desire for his cousin
to his unconscious feelings toward his older sister Katherine. A cousin,
as Mitchell observes in Psychoanalysis and Feminism, is structurally the
nearest person to a sibling. On the basis of this analysis, Duschinsky
and Leigh offer a new reading of the Rat Man’s famous fear that if he
does not repay a debt then a pot [Topf ] containing starving rats would
be placed on the buttocks of his cousin and (dead) father. This strange
18 R O B B I E D U S C H I N S K Y A N D S U S A N WA L K E R

fear becomes rather more explicable in light of the patient’s early mem-
ory that “he first noticed the difference between the sexes when he saw
his deceased sister Katherine (five years his senior) sitting on the pot”
[Topf ] ([1909] 2001, 276), his last memory of her before the memory in
which she dies. The Rat Man’s obsessional neurosis can, in this light, be
regarded as shaped by his confusion of love and hate for his dead sister
and father: the conflict between these feelings and those of his conscious
experience in adulthood animated obsessive symptoms directed toward
his beloved cousin, his younger sister, and a wish to exhibit his penis to
the ghost of his dead father.
Duschinsky and Leigh draw an account of what difficulties in nego-
tiating lateral relations might predispose an obsessional neurosis. They
suggest that siblings can raise two, related, issues: polarized opposition
between self and other, and the threat of encroachment. To some degree
a polarization of self-other and worries about encroachment by the sib-
ling are normative: Siblings often argue over which one has exclusive pos-
session of particular objects or spaces, for example experiencing clothes
as contaminated if handed down from older siblings. The clothes func-
tion here as a symbol of the potential encroachment of the sibling on
the existential place the subject is trying to carve out for themselves, and
the uniqueness that they fear may be required in order to warrant love.
However, it is argued that the trauma of the lateral axis can also pro-
duce more pathological behaviors, as in the case of the Rat Man where
lateral differentiation became confused with vertical negation, and love
with death. The chapter closes by reflecting on Freud’s observation that
“it is not at all rare for both of the two children to fall ill later on of a
defence neurosis—the brother with obsessions and the sister with hyste-
ria” (Freud [1896] 2001, 164). Duschinsky and Leigh suggest that same
cultural and familial forms that give the sister no recognized place and
thereby predispose her to hysteria encourage her brother to dream of
absolute presence or absence rather than degrees of differentiation, and
so predispose him to obsessional neurosis.
Relations of love and death are also explored in chapter 9 by Mignon
Nixon. Nixon takes Mitchell’s “lateral axis” and illustrates how it has been
presaged by, and provides a theoretical underpinning for, the postmodern
turn in the humanities, especially as it finds expression in commentary
on war, militarism, and sexualized violence. She begins by observing
that the separation of psychoanalytical theory from gender theory has
impoverished both. The need to understand, and think through, aspects
of “minimal difference,” “alliance and affinity,” which the lateral axis
allows, is especially important in a militaristic culture. Psychoanalysis,
Nixon claims, finds itself condemned as a defender of orthodox patriarchy
 INTRODUCTION 19

by those interested in gender theory and feminism, and viewed with sus-
picion as a science of subjectivity, by a “war culture [which] disavows
subjectivity.” Nixon charts the reasons for the engagement and later dis-
engagement of psychoanalysis and politics over the last 40 years.
Nixon sees in Mitchell’s portrayal of sexualized violence a prescient
account of the atrocities that occurred in the Iraq war, and in particular
in Abu Ghraib prison, and a belated theorizing of the abundance of vio-
lent sexuality, “violence perversion,” and “strangely subjective atrocity”
in war since the time of the Vietnam war. Nixon’s chapter illustrates
how these atrocities have been has been portrayed and protested by art-
ists, such as Spero. The final section of the chapter focuses on the chal-
lenges of representing seriality (what Nixon terms social subjectivity)
and lateral relations, how it has been represented in serial art and mini-
malism, and includes a detailed account of Yvonne Rainer’s protest work
Street Action.
Chapter 10, by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, also thinks about Mitchell’s
work and how it can help us think about violence. She considers how the
allocation of identities can provide important scaffolding for acts of vio-
lence to those whose identities then situate them as violable. In this, she
attends particularly to the identities that offer explicit or tacit support to
support acts of rape, which make rape in certain regards a collective act.
Spivak focuses particularly on the role of transcendent grounds, such as
the Kantian a priori, in formulating an image of the human as elevated
by reason—and the role of this elevated image of the human in dividing
between violable and inviolable, rapeable and nonrapeable subjects in
ways distributed by race, class, and sex. Spivak urges us to reconsider the
division between transcendental and phenomenal, which has continued
to guide our thinking about human life and ethics, and to attend to the
significance of rape as formulating and expressing the boundaries that
have been constructed for what it is to be human. Such attention brings
into view the significance of both the differences in reproductive possi-
bilities between subjects and the role of heteronormativity in organizing,
naturalizing, and simplifying these possibilities through tacit appeal to
the transcendent grounds of human life: in Spivak’s words, “reproductive
heteronormativity” can be regarded “as the social account of the tran-
scendental and unconditional discursivity of rape in the general sense.”
She draws out the implications of her argument by thinking about how
redress for rape should be enacted in global contexts without appealing to
“humanity.” Spivak also engages in a reading of cultural artifacts includ-
ing in J. M. Coetzee’s novel Disgrace and the copyright protocols for
photographs, raising questions about what counts as meaningful protection
from violation.
20 R O B B I E D U S C H I N S K Y A N D S U S A N WA L K E R

Also drawing upon cultural artifacts to develop considerations of psy-

chological and political processes, Harkins, in chapter 11, examines rep-
resentations of the story of Lot and his daughters from Genesis 19. In
this story, Lot is living in Sodom when he is visited by male angels. The
citizens of Sodom come to Lot’s house and threaten to rape his male
guests. Lot instead offers his virgin daughters to the citizens in order to
protect his guests. As Sodom is being destroyed, Lot’s wife turns back to
see the destruction and is turned into a pillar of salt. After the destruc-
tion of Sodom and the death of Lot’s wife, his daughters ply lot with
wine and become pregnant by him in order to continue his line. Harkins
suggests that this story cannot find adequate psychoanalytic interpreta-
tion without Mitchell’s ideas regarding the interplay of vertical and lat-
eral relationship, sexuality and reproduction, raw feelings of helplessness,
and the need to see or represent. Harkins is interested in the position of
the Law of the Mother, and how this function distributes authority and
gender within relations of power.
Mitchell asks “Can siblings themselves be each other’s lawgiver?”
(2003, 53). Harkins develops this question in considering alternative reg-
ulatory mechanisms for lateral relations besides the Law of the Mother.
Harkins finds in the contemporary discursive figure of the “mean girl”
an example of the way in which lateral aggressivity and lateral sexuality
between peers can be gendered, regulated, and disciplined in the absence
of an authority who offers recognition to each subject. Harkins also con-
siders how the physical space of a house can enact serial differentiation
between subjects and its representation in gendered forms. Mitchell iden-
tifies the violence and sexuality of the sibling trauma on the one hand,
and the role of the law of the mother in differentiating subjects on the
lateral axis and prohibiting sibling sexuality and murder on the other.
By contrast, Harkins explores the space between trauma and maternal
authority, in which lateral relationships and gender can be formulated
and represented to produce inhabitable forms of subjectivity with varying
forms of security and pain.
Writing in 1932, Melanie Klein describes an interpretation she made
to one of her young patients:

I now made a venture and told Ruth that the balls in the tumbler,
the coins in the purse and the contents of the bag all meant chil-
dren in her Mummy’s inside, and that she wanted to keep them safely
shut up so as not to have any more brothers and sisters. The effect of
my interpretation was astonishing. For the first time Ruth turned her
attention to me and began to play in a different, less constrained, way.
(Klein 1932/1975, p. 27)
 INTRODUCTION 21

Klein’s emphasis on sibling relationships here brought Ruth relief,

and opened up possibilities for experience and action that had not pre-
viously been readily available to her. We perceive that Mitchell’s intro-
duction of the lateral axis has had an equivalent effect on a wider level.
It opens up different, less constrained ways of reflecting on social and
psychological processes, engaging in clinical work and enacting political
change. The lateral axis helps us reflect on the possibilities that might be
achieved within or on the horizon of collective movements. And it makes
us reconsider the very political and psychological valence of our capaci-
ties for love, violence, and reproduction. Since the 1960s, Mitchell has
entered into and affected many of the most significant intellectual and
political debates of our time. Juliet Mitchell and the Lateral Axis has been
inspired by a sense of the great and distinctive value of her ideas for the
issues that confront us now.

References
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.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2012/04/22/academic-inspiration-raewyn
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Flax, Jane. 1992. “Juliet Mitchell.” In The Routledge Dictionary of Twentieth-
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228–229. London: Routledge.
Freud, Anna and Dann, Sophie. 1951. “An experiment in group upbringing.”
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Freud, Sigmund. [1896] 2001. “Further remarks on the neuropsychoses of
defence,” SE 3, 159–188.
Freud, Sigmund. [1909] 2001. “Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis.”
In Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund
Freud, Volume 10, edited and translated by James Strachey, 153–318.
London: Vintage (SE 10).
Gilmore, Karen. 2013. “Theory of sibling trauma and lateral dimension,”
Psychoanalytical Study of the Child, 67: 53–65.
Grosz, Elizabeth. 1990. Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction, London:
Routledge.
Klein, Melanie. [1932] 1975. The Psycho-Analysis of Children. London:
Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis.
Lament, Claudia. 2013. “An introduction.” Psychoanalytical Study of the
Child, 67: 1–13.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2010. Child Psychology and Pedagogy [1949–1952],
translation by Talia Welsh, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
22 R O B B I E D U S C H I N S K Y A N D S U S A N WA L K E R

Mitchell, Juliet. [1966] 1984. Women, the Longest Revolution, London:

Virago.
Mitchell, Juliet. 1973. “Female Sexuality” Journal of Biosocial Science, 5(1):
123–136.
Mitchell, Juliet. [1974] 2000. Psychoanalysis and Feminism, New York: Basic
Books.
Mitchell, Juliet. 2003. Siblings: Sex and Violence, Cambridge: Polity.
Mitchell, Juliet. 2013. “Siblings: thinking theory,” Psychoanalytical Study of
the Child, 67: 14–34.
 Chapter 1

The Etiology of Hysteria in Mitchell’s

Mad Men and Medusas

Susan Walker

In her book Mad Men and Medusas (2000), Mitchell starts with an
exploration of male hysteria and ends with the discovery of the impor-
tance of siblings, and the subsequent need for a lateral “sibling” axis, to
complement Freud’s vertical “parent–child” axis. The aim of this chapter
is to outline the complex arc of this theoretical development, starting
with Freud’s original theory.
Freud’s science of psychoanalysis owes its origin to the experiences of
attempting to categorize and treat the malady called hysteria. Hysteria,
in the nineteenth century, comprised a wide range of psychological and
physical symptoms, and of personality traits. These included anesthesia
and motor control (i.e., movement) problems, abulias (inhibitions of
will), amnesia, and characterological disturbances such as craving, flirta-
tiousness, compulsive lying, shallowness, jealously, and overemotionality.
Hysteria could present with a range of physical symptoms such a pseudo-
fits, death-like trances, neurologically unexplained paralyses, contrac-
tures, and “tics.” It was noted to mimic a range of organic diseases,
but also had theatrical qualities, in which the hysterical person could
display a range of bizarre postures or movements. Dissociative states and
“la belle indifference” (i.e., a lack of concern about manifest physical
symptoms) were psychological symptoms assigned to hysteria, as were
anxiety, depression, hallucinations, breathing difficulties and choking
sensations, and loss of the ability to speak. The wide range of symptoms
present in hysteria made it difficult to describe or categorize, but, by
Freud’s time it was accepted that these symptoms were of psychological,
not physical (i.e., organic), origin.
Unlike “obsessional neurosis,” hysteria did not come into existence as
a Freudian category. Hysteria itself, as a concept, has an ancient history,
24 S U S A N WA L K E R

which has been well described (Tasca et al. 2012). In Mad Men and
Medusas, Mitchell examines the apparent “disappearance” of hysteria in
the twenty-first century, in the context of the lack of recognition of male
hysteria, and argues that hysteria, affecting both men and women, is still
present but has become hidden. This chapter will explore Mitchell’s devel-
opment, first set out in Mad Men and Medusas (2000), of fundamental
and original Freudian ideas regarding the origins and manifestations of
hysteria and indicate how these complex arguments have illuminated the
need to further explore the psychic consequences of siblings, which led
to Mitchell’s development of a theory of the lateral axis.

Freud and Hysteria

Freud developed his theories of the etiology of hysteria throughout his
early writings. Charcot, by whom Freud was greatly influenced, had
attributed hysteria in men to a psychological reaction to trauma (Freud
1893b, 20–22, 27–39; Mitchell 2003, 8). Freud’s initial observations
regarding hysteria stressed the psychically traumatic aspect of the occur-
rence, which first produced a hysterical symptom (1893a, 30–1).

We regard hysterical symptoms as the effects and residues of excitations

which have acted upon the nervous system as traumas . . . (and) we are
accustomed to find in hysteria that a considerable part of this ‘sum of
excitation’ of the trauma is transformed into purely somatic symptoms.
(Case 2 Frau Emmy von N.) (Freud 1991, 146)

Freud’s initial belief was that hysterical symptoms are the result of
sexual trauma, caused by enforced sexual activity, which occurs before
sexual maturity. These were assaults, by adults, including fathers, against
children, but also assaults by older brothers against younger sisters (Freud
1896a, 151–156; 1896b, 162–185). The role of actual sexual trauma is
described clearly in his account of the “analysis” or conversation with
Katharina, who complained of hysterical symptoms, which Freud traced
back to an unsuccessful sexual assault on the girl by her father/uncle
(Freud 199, 190–201).
In the subsequent years, Freud revised his theory and the idea of a
traumatic element was to some extent replaced with the idea that “hys-
teria originates through the repression of an incompatible idea from
a motive of defence” (Freud 1991, 370–1). To defend itself from this
incompatible idea the ego deploys the defence mechanism of repression
(1894, 53–55). In Freud’s account of the origin of hysterical symptoms,
the ego “represses” the traumatic event into the unconscious part of the
 T HE ET IOLOGY OF H YST ERIA 25

mind, meaning that the person no longer has any conscious awareness of
it. The excitation attached to the incompatible idea is transformed into a
physical symptom. Freud named this process “conversion,” and with this
explanation provided a mechanism whereby incompatible or repressed
ideas in hysteria can find expression through the body (1894, 48–49).
Freud later adjusted his etiology of hysterical symptoms, from one
which suggested an origin in childhood sexual abuse, to one in which
the sexual relationship that forms the incompatible idea is a phantasized
one, and thus a universal facet of human development (i.e., not limited
to victims of childhood sexual abuse) (Freud 1896b, 168, footnote 1;
1917, 370).

I was driven to recognise in the end that these reports were untrue
and so came to understand that hysterical symptoms are derived from
phantasies not real occurrences (Freud 2005, 419).

Freud now suggests that it is a prohibited and incompatible idea or

desire, not an actual traumatic event, which is repressed.1 This change
marks a shift in the conceptualization of the etiological kernel at the
heart of hysterical symptoms, from an actual traumatic experience to a
sexual idea or desire, incompatible with the ego. The result of Freud’s
revision of his ideas was that the emphasis on sexuality remained, but
the possibility of actual trauma was less stressed. Importantly Mitchell’s
theory returns to the idea of an originating trauma in her development
of the part that siblings play in the etiology of hysteria.
According to Freud, the developmental time at which the seeds of hys-
teria are laid is the time of the formation and resolution of the Oedipus
complex, when both boys and girls wish to take the role of sexual partner
for their mother, and to conceive a baby with her. This wish is prohibited
because of the incest taboo. Acceptance of this prohibition is a step in the
path toward relatively healthy “normal” psychic development. Rejection
of the prohibition sets the young subject on the path of neurosis. For
boys and girls the permutations of the Oedipus complex differ, as does
the path to its eventual resolution. For boys the Oedipus complex, which
contains the desire to be a sexual partner for the mother and to con-
ceive a child by her, is destroyed under the threat of castration, while the
wish for a woman and to father a baby is deferred into adulthood. For
the girl (who is in Freud’s terms, psychically speaking, already castrated)
the Oedipus complex is not completely destroyed, but in the face of her
mother’s rejection, on account of her castrated state, she must redirect
her incestuous wishes toward her father, and then defer them into adult-
hood, when her desire will be fulfilled by a father substitute. She must
26 S U S A N WA L K E R

also accept that she is “castrated” and transform her desire for a penis
into a desire for a baby, originally from her father, but again deferred
until adulthood, and conceived in partnership with another man (Freud
1917, 329–338; 1924, 395–401; 1925, 402–411).
This formulation, at face value, makes it easy to see why Freudian
theory can be used to suggest that hysteria would affect women more
frequently than men. The girl child is lacking (a penis), and rejected (by
both mother and father as a sexual partner). A failure to accept this state
of affairs, and the prohibition which brings it about, and to continue to
desire (unconsciously) what she cannot have, leads to classical hysterical
symptoms affecting personality such as insatiable wanting, coquettish-
ness, and dissatisfaction, which demonstrate a sense of lack, as well as
movement between the feminine and masculine positions, in an attempt
to be the subject of desire for the mother, or object of desire for the
father. The trauma of Oedipal rejection can be reactivated by subsequent
perceived rejections or prohibited ideas later in life. The failed repression
of the forbidden desire or idea will manifest itself, in hysteria, in conver-
sion symptoms that somatically express that which is desired and which is
lost or forbidden. This is the template for hysterical symptoms of Oedipal
origin in women.
For boys the situation plays out somewhat differently. Given the above
explanation of the origins of the hysterical woman’s sense of “lack” we
might ask “what lack is the hysterical man unconsciously trying to make
up for?” Clearly the boy comes to experience his father as a threat and
as an obstacle to having his mother. He has a small penis compared to
his father (a comparative lack), but he can take his father’s place (with
another woman), not now but later. The symbolic castration introduces
the threat of the destruction of the boy’s phallic, narcissistic pleasure,
but this is an unrealized threat, unlike the “already carried out” castra-
tion of the girl (Freud 2005, 410). However Freud also believed (and
Mitchell has emphasized) that children, at and slightly preceding the
time of the Oedipal crisis, do not simply want to be the sexual partner
of their mother: they want to have a baby as she can (Mitchell 2003, 39;
Freud 1909, 1–150). This desire to produce a baby parthenogenically,
out of narcissistic plenitude, in identification with the mother, precedes
the girl child’s wish for a baby as a penis substitute. And for boys and
girls this second, somewhat eclipsed, desire is also prohibited as they
come to understand the reality of their reproductive positions, but has
separate outcomes for the girl and for the boy. This time it is the girl who
is told that she cannot have a baby now, but that she can later. For the boy
he must accept that fact that he cannot give birth to a baby. This is also a
prohibition experienced as “lack.” Mitchell coins the phrase the “Law of
 T HE ET IOLOGY OF H YST ERIA 27

the Mother” to express this second prohibition on parthenogenic birth.2

As the “Law of the Father” prohibits the child from becoming the sexual
partner of his or her mother, so the “Law of the Mother” prohibits boys
from giving birth to babies. This opens the way for a theoretical explana-
tion of male hysterical symptoms, which can include phantasies of preg-
nancy or of anal birth, but which does not rely on concepts of male
homosexuality. That is not to say that bisexual factors do not exist in
male hysteria, but it is to point out that the origin and expression of these
parthenogenic symptoms of male hysteria need not be inevitably associ-
ated with them.
So far we have considered only the vertical, parent–child axis, which
is central to Freud’s etiology of hysteria. As a complement to this clas-
sical Freudian etiology, Mitchell’s important contribution to theorizing
hysteria is the realization that a second, lateral axis is also involved in the
events that constitute the genesis of hysterical symptoms. This is the axis
of relationship along which we encounter siblings, and peers. This axis is
not constituted by generational difference and crucially is where repro-
ductive potential does not operate.
If the vertical axis constitutes structural “place” in a kinship sense (i.e.,
son of the father, daughter of the mother), the lateral axis involves differ-
entiation, and identity, within a series that is constituted neither in terms
of generational difference, nor reproductive/sexual lack. Differentiation
along this axis is a more subtle affair, and, as Mitchell has pointed out,
small differences often assume tremendous importance, because of the
narcissistic need to attain identity in the place of structural sameness
(i.e. where generational or parental relationships do not differentiate).
For siblings, rivalries and distinctions—such as who is the tallest,
who gets more pocket money, who goes to bed first—are squabbled over
incessantly. For peers, the “narcissism of small differences” comes into
play (Freud 1930, 114), where those nations and groups who are in fact
almost indistinguishable emphasize their differences and feel mutual hos-
tility (e.g., Germans/Austrians, Americans/Canadians, splinter groups
within religious sects).
Mitchell argues that the experience of the lateral axis, and of coming
to terms with siblings, marks the human psyche, scars it and possibly
structures it. Whereas the effects of the lateral axis on the individual
are the realm of psychoanalysts and their patients, the wider importance
of Mitchell’s emphasis on this axis lies in the fact that the effects of the
lateral axis are also distinguishable at a cultural level in terms of violent
sexuality and sectarianism. It is this playing out of the effects of the
lateral axis on a cultural and societal level that makes the concept so
important beyond the field of clinical psychoanalysis.
28 S U S A N WA L K E R

Mitchell formulates her theory of the lateral axis in her book Mad Men
and Medusas: Reclaiming the Effects of Sibling Relations on the Human
Condition, published in 2000. In the book, Mitchell sets out to examine
three facets of hysteria: the nonrecognition of male hysteria, including
hysterical violence; the elaboration of the death drive in hysteria; and the
neglect, in classical Freudian theory, of the role played the construction
of the psyche by lateral relationships (Mitchell 2000, ix, x). These three
are entwined at a conceptual level. In exploring the origins of hyste-
ria, Mitchell argues that the effect of trauma, and the threat of death/
a nnihilation, have been neglected, and that this neglect has facilitated
(and been facilitated by) the nonrecognition of male hysteria.
In returning to trauma as an originating factor in the genesis of
hysteria, Mitchell argues for a position that can recognize hysteria as a
universal (not simply feminine) possibility. In stressing the lateral axis,
Mitchell allows space for a type of difference that is not predicated on the
complementarity of two roles (male and female) in reproduction. It is the
recognition by the mother, of a series of children, each in the same struc-
tural and generational position, but different in their unique identities
that allows this alternative difference. Difference that is not determined
by polar opposites can accommodate diversity and “t ransversality.” The
coincidence of sameness and distinction, along a lateral axis, allows
for both/and, rather than the either/or (male/female; mother/father;
castrated/whole) of vertical relationships (Mitchell 2000, xi–xii).

Lateral Relationships
For Mitchell, sibling relationships are the first social relationship and
one characterized by love and murderous hatred (Mitchell 2000, 20).
The love derives from the child’s expectation that the sibling will be a
narcissistic extension of itself (Mitchell 2003, 29, 64). The other side
of this coin is the realization that the sibling occupies the same place
as the child, both in the family structure, and, crucially in relation to
the mother. The realization, produced by the appearance of a sibling,
that the baby/child is not the only person in the position of “child to
the parent” is experienced as a trauma and as a possible annihilation
(Mitchell 2000, 20–21). The fragile subject (baby to the mother) is
annihilated because another baby has taken its place. This annihilation
of the “baby-subject,” unlike the threatened annihilation of castration
anxiety, is actual. The child/baby has lost its subjective identity. It is, to
its immature mind, nowhere and nobody, because of the arrival of the
sibling who has replaced it. The child/baby has lost its unique identity
because the sibling is the same as it. Because of the premature birth of
 T HE ET IOLOGY OF H YST ERIA 29

the human infant, and its complete dependence on its parents, displace-
ment may be fatal. The realization of a sibling’s existence can, Mitchell
argues, reawaken or cause regression to the state of infantile helplessness
and the anxieties that accompanied it. Loss of place, as the mother’s
(only) baby threatens death, and murder becomes a possible solution for
survival. On the other hand the arrival of a sibling may also be under-
stood as a narcissistic extension of the self, and someone so like oneself,
yet not oneself, can be loved, in a manner that may be on the border
of narcissistic and object-love (Mitchell 2003, 36). Mitchell insists that
both love and death are inherent in the sibling experience, and also in
hysteria, which she argues is provoked by the “catastrophic awareness
that one is not unique” (Mitchell 2000, 20).
Mitchell suggests that the love and hate inherent in the sibling rela-
tionship, when recounted and recalled from the present to the past in the
analysis of an adult, may influence the reconstruction of the (unconscious)
Oedipal emotions. It is important to stress that Mitchell does not suggest
that the Oedipal complex is unimportant, or merely a derivative of the
effect of siblings. However she does suggest that in an adult analysis, in
which unconscious desires and emotions are necessarily reconstructed,
some aspects of the love and hate derived from the sibling experience are
“read backwards” onto the parental relationships in the Oedipus com-
plex. In this way the effect of siblings may be overlooked in analysis, and
reconstructed as Oedipal desires and ambivalence.
The influence of the lateral axis on the vertical, in the genesis of
hysteria, is missed, in Freudian theory, because of the emphasis on the
vertical relations within the Oedipal complex. If the echoing effect of
past traumas upon subsequent ones is not recognized then the trauma
inflicted by a sibling earlier in the life of an infant, before the time of
the Oedipus complex, may be subsequently reinterpreted by an analyst,
treating an adult hysteric, as trauma associated with the Oedipal crisis.
Mitchell suggests that siblings threaten the existence (the being) of the
infant. The threat of “not being” is mistaken for the earlier threat of “not
having” the mother or her breast. But since the adult in analysis is inevi-
tably post-Oedipal, this “not having” is “read backwards” by the adult
hysteric, as unconscious threats around “having” or “not having” the
mother, and/or the father, in the Oedipal situation (Mitchell 2000, 47).
Thus although the craving and the conflicts around “having/not hav-
ing” (i.e., Oedipal conflicts) predominate in the clinical picture of the
adult hysteric, it may in fact be the threat to “being” (which the adult
is experiencing in the present) that precipitates a hysterical reaction, and
which echoes the threat to “being” from siblings in the traumatic past.
This lateral trauma is missed and leads to the omission of the influence
30 S U S A N WA L K E R

of the lateral axis in the etiology of hysteria (Mitchell 2000, 47). In

effect the hysteric “wants” the mother that the sibling has taken, before
he “wants” the mother that the father possesses and prohibits him from
having (Mitchell 2000, 66).

Trauma
Mitchell contends that the original trauma for everyone is the helpless-
ness of birth (Mitchell 2000, 291, 299). For Mitchell, a second universal
trauma is the annihilation of subjectivity, precipitated by the appearance
of a sibling, or in the case of an only child the apprehension of the pos-
sibility of a sibling. The loss of subjectivity is caused by the structural
displacement of the immature child from his or her position as “baby to
the mother.”
Mitchell regards this structural displacement (which should not be
confused with displacement as an unconscious process that constitutes
a defence mechanism) as equivalent to an annihilation of the immature
and fragile “baby-subject.” The annihilatory threat has two roots. The
first is the real risk of death to the infant if the mother does reject it upon
the arrival of a younger sibling. This threat builds upon the earlier real-
ity of the complete dependence of the baby upon the care of the mother
(or parental substitute). The second is the risk to the fragile, developing
sense of subjectivity in the infant. At this early stage, subjectivity is based
upon a “body-ego,” derived from the infant’s narcissistic investment in
its own body and the care supplied by the mother, and also by the mother’s
recognition of the baby and the identity that provides.
When the mother’s care is diverted to another baby, the infant is no
longer in the place of “baby to the mother,” and the subjectivity derived
from this position is threatened. Someone else (the new arrival) is the
same as the infant, and so both the baby’s unique identity and subjec-
tivity destroyed. The prominence of the body in terms of the infant’s
subjectivity at this stage in life may be related to the later use of the body
in conversion hysteria.
However, Mitchell argues that these traumas and threatened annihi-
lations, in themselves, do not set up a hysterical illness, but only lay the
groundwork for it. Subsequent rejections or displacements (in Mitchell’s
structural sense), which resonate with the trauma caused by the dis-
covery of a sibling, will reawaken the threat of annihilation in later life.
A present-day rejection or displacement, experienced by the hysterical
adult as a traumatic event that threatens the adult’s sense of subjectiv-
ity or “place,” or which delivers a narcissistic blow, will build upon the
original trauma of sibling displacement, and produce a hysterical reaction.
 T HE ET IOLOGY OF H YST ERIA 31

The present-day adult event will take the appearance of the cause of
the hysterical symptom or illness, whose roots are much earlier. As an
example, the breaking off of an engagement (which means one is no
longer a fiancé/e and future spouse) can be experienced as both a nar-
cissistic wound and an event that threatens the adult’s sense of place,
and can trigger a hysterical reaction. Freud explained this mechanism of
resonance between originating and present-day traumas in his discus-
sion of the treatment of Fraulein Elizabeth von R:

In the great majority of instances we find that a first trauma has left
no symptoms behind, while a later trauma of the same kind produces
a symptom. (Freud 1893a 1991, 245)

In Mad Men and Medusas, Mitchell uses the term “catastrophe” to

signal an event which necessitate the refinding of a “place” in the world.
Mitchell’s etiology of hysteria—infantile trauma leading to hysterical
symptoms via subsequent rejection or displacement—is explained in her
introduction to Mad Men and Medusas:

I suggest a picture of hysteria which looks like this: a catastrophe

in the present is experienced as traumatic . . . trauma . . . breaches
defences. In coping with the present experience the person regresses
to a catastrophic state, an infantile or childhood situation. I suggest
that this state is one in which the person has felt in danger of their
own non-existence—somebody [i.e. a sibling] seems to be the same as
them . . . In protesting against this by trying to become again the only
baby . . . the hysteric regresses so far that the differentiation between
mind and body is no longer clear. (Mitchell 2000, 40–41)

Mitchell is here placing the traumatic shock of the arrival of a sibling

at the heart of the formation of hysterical symptoms, in which early and
inevitable trauma plus subsequent rejection/displacement is converted
into physical symptoms. It is the regression to an earlier stage of life, to
the stage of the “body-ego” where the boundaries between mind and
body are not sharply drawn, which allows the mental trauma to be physi-
cally expressed.
Mitchell’s refocusing on trauma in the origins of hysteria necessitates
her reexamining of the links between trauma, hysteria, and memory
(Mitchell 2000, 281). Her starting point is that in hysteria “memory has
regressed to perception” (Mitchell 2000, 281). Hysterical patients exhibit
absences or gaps in their memory, which Freud (and Mitchell) put down
to the repression of memories of events, the thinking of which has been
subjected to prohibition (Freud 1898, 287–297; Mitchell 2000, 282).
32 S U S A N WA L K E R

Mitchell emphasizes that these events can return in a form that is not the
normal representation of memory (Mitchell 2000, 282).
Freud proposed that memory worked in the manner of a “mystic writ-
ing pad” where a double layer of celluloid and wax paper, overlying a slab
of dark wax, allows marks to be made with a stylus on the wax paper,
and then erased by lifting the paper from the wax (Freud 1925). Freud
proposed that perception is analogous to the wax paper, and memory
analogous to the permanent marks on the wax. The celluloid is necessary
to protect the wax paper, just as he proposed a protective shield against
stimuli, was part of the outermost surface of the mind. Working with
Freud’s original metaphor of memory as a “mystic writing pad,” Mitchell
suggests that psychic trauma breaks through the cellophane shield and
wax paper of “perception-consciousness” to form unconscious traces, of
which there are no wax paper marks (i.e., no memories) (Freud 1895;
1925; 1991; Mitchell 2000, 288, 291). She suggests that trauma should
be defined, not by its content, but by the criterion of whether or not it
breaches psychic defences, leaving a gap or a deathly void in the subject
(Mitchell 2000, 299). The pathological gap in the subject, she suggests,
is experienced as one of nonrecognition, and the subsequent absence of
the “I” (Mitchell 2000, 309). In the hysterical response a trauma, how-
ever small, repeats the perception, not the memory, of an earlier trauma.
The difference between memory and perception being that perception
feels and is experienced as reality, not fantasy nor memory (ibid).
Hysteria, Mitchell states, “models itself on trauma” (Mitchell 2000,
316). Mitchell notes that in hysteria, memory (of a specific event) is not
formed but is replaced by perception (Mitchell 2000, 315–6). The rel-
atively healthy process of experience and representation in memory is
replaced by oscillations between perceptual presence of the event (as in
hysterical bodily symptoms) and absence (of memory).
The concept of deferral of effect or Nachträglichkeit is revisited in
Mitchell’s discussion of trauma. A present-day traumatic event (i.e., one
that is subjectively experienced as traumatic) is, Mitchell argues, a catalyst
for the revival of a former, earlier experience of trauma (Mitchell 2000,
299). Due to resonance with earlier stages of life, when loss of place
as “baby to the mother” had the potential to be life-threatening, the
trauma of displacement is experienced by the hysteric as death-like, both
for the infant originally and for the adult who is regressed to infancy by
the present trauma, however mild it may seem to the outside observer.
Mitchell points out that many of the symptoms of hysteria, both
physical (i.e., frenetic activity, ceaseless chatter) and psychological (e.g.,
craving, compulsive lying) can be thought of as frantic attempts to fill
up the void that has opened, or has threatened to open, at the heart of
 T HE ET IOLOGY OF H YST ERIA 33

the hysterical person’s existence by the reawakened annihilatory threat to

subjectivity (Mitchell 2000, 41).
In addition the obliteration of the “baby- subject” (by displacement
by a sibling) may provoke desperate mimetic identification with another,
in an attempt to reinforce the fragile ego. Mitchell suggests that mimetic
identification, as a reaction to threatened loss of the infant’s fragile sub-
jectivity, may explain the general tendency toward mimesis (mimicry) in
the forms that hysteria will assume (Mitchell 2000, 41).

The Mimetic Qualities of Hysteria

Hysteria is rarely diagnosed in the twenty-first century, but Mitchell
presents an alternative to the idea that hysteria has disappeared. Mitchell
builds on the idea that hysterics mimic other people’s desires to argue
that the “manifestations and symptoms in hysteria will assume a form
that suits the therapist,” suggesting that hysteria will present in differ-
ing ways according to the expectations of those treating its sufferers
(Mitchell 2000, 86, 90). Hysterics will also mimic the symptoms and
diseases that they see in other people (ibid). This goes some way toward
explaining the myriad forms that hysteria can take, and the camouflage
that it has assumed in recent times. Mitchell suggests that hysteria can
and does mimic other mental illnesses and uses the example of the poet
Anne Sexton, whose severe hysteria caused her to be labeled as psychotic
(Mitchell 2000,126). She hypothesizes that hysteria can present as a
whole spectrum of disorders from relatively benign “hysterical creativity”
in artists, to hysterical personality traits, neurotic hysterical symptoms,
unexplained physical “conversion” symptoms, through to presentations
that may appear psychotic or mimic psychosis. She stresses that severe
hysteria inhabits the border between neurosis and psychosis, and is a
much more serious and destructive illness than that as which it is com-
monly regarded (Mitchell 2000, 176, 320).
Mitchell’s reexamination of Freud’s account of his analysis of Dora
highlights the fact that Dora, as a hysteric, would have identified with,
and become (mimetically), whatever she felt Freud wanted (Freud 1901;
Mitchell 2000, 86–107). The picture becomes confused, Mitchell sug-
gests, because Freud wanted a confirmation of his theories concern-
ing unresolved Oedipal desires as the root cause of hysteria (Mitchell
2000, 86). She argues that Dora would have unconsciously understood
this desire.
Mitchell’s main point, in examining the Dora case, is to highlight that
Dora initially consulted Freud the physician, with her bodily symptoms,
but left analysis having learned to tell a sexual story, which (perhaps)
34 S U S A N WA L K E R

satisfied the desire of Freud the listening psychoanalyst. The manifesta-

tion of her hysteria, and its apparent causes, had adapted to the desires of
the one who was attending (to) her.
In reexamining Dora’s case, Mitchell attends to the story of siblings.
She emphasizes that Dora’s hysteria was connected to her difficulty find-
ing a “place” in the family. She was “neither a boy (like her brother),
a girl (for she was her father’s confidante and object of Herr K’s sexual
attention) nor a woman (for she was rejected by both her father and Frau
K in favour of an adult)” (Mitchell 2000, 104).
Dora’s continual disappointments regarding finding her place in a
family/social situation and her comparative (compared to her brother)
sidelining in social structure, which is a fate shared by sisters in all patri-
archal societies, resulted in hysterical protest, and in exuberant bisexual-
ity, as means of finding a stable place for herself (Mitchell 2000, 107).
Mitchell implies that it is primarily the trauma associated with Dora’s
lack of “place,” not her subsequent sexual desires and phantasies that lie
at the root of her hysteria.

The Feminization of Hysteria and the Invisibility of

Male Hysteria
Mitchell is clear that everyone is vulnerable to hysteria. It is a response to
universal aspects of the human condition because everyone experiences
the helplessness of “premature” birth, and the subsequent trauma of the
arrival (or in the case of the youngest or only child, anticipated arrival)
of a sibling (Mitchell 2000, 42). Her exploration of the “disappearance”
of hysteria ties together both the history of the development of psy-
choanalytical theory (which “foreclosed” on sibling relations in favor of
a theory built on vertical parent–child relations); the invisibility of male
hysteria; and the nonrecognition of the death-drive in hysteria.
Mitchell controversially claims that as male hysteria became more
fully recognized at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
the existence of hysteria, with its infantile wishes, dreads and violence,
became intolerable to the psychoanalytical community, including Freud,
since it was now seen as a condition not just of women, but of all humans.
As a reaction to this, “hysteria” as a diagnosis disappeared, and the
emphasis on hysteria (within psychoanalysis) was replaced by an emphasis
on the problem of femininity and female sexuality (Mitchell 2000, 161).
Interest in hysteria and its symptoms became replaced by interest in the
trials and mysteries of femininity and its production.
Mitchell asks, if hysteria became femininity, what became of male
hysteria? The answer she gives is that male hysteria is unrecognized as a
 T HE ET IOLOGY OF H YST ERIA 35

version of normal male heterosexuality. She uses the Don Juan story, in
which death and compulsive empty sexual encounters, are both promi-
nent, to illustrate the apparently normal heterosexuality of the male hys-
teric (Mitchell 2000, 251–6).
The absence of Don Juan from psychoanalytical myth (as distinct from
Oedipus) is, for Mitchell, a repudiation of a clear depiction of male hyste-
ria, in which sex and violence are contiguous, lying compulsive, jealousy
rife, death feared but not accepted as final, and sexuality is serial and
nonreproductive. Mitchell finds a contemporary clinical description of
male hysteria in Limentani’s Vagina man, who is also charming, narcissis-
tic, and identified with the “women as mother” who protects him from
primal anxiety (Limentani 1984; Mitchell 2000, 261). Identification, in
the psychoanalytical sense, is a regressive “merging” with another person,
at an unconscious level. It is the developmental prelude to an emotional
tie with another person (an object choice) but can also be a means of cop-
ing with the loss of an important person.
Mitchell emphasizes that hysteria is triggered by displacement (loss of
place) in lateral relations, first of all by siblings and subsequently peers,
marital or sexual partners (Mitchell 2000, 266). For the male hysteric,
exhibiting Don Juanism, repeated sexual encounters with women, far
from being repetitive object choice, are in fact repetitive enactments of
regressive identification with the mother, the reactivation of whose origi-
nal loss (with the arrival of a sibling) causes unbearable anxiety (Mitchell
2000, 266). Mitchell sees in endless seduction and seductiveness, which
is a characteristic of the hysteric, male or female, a desperate, repeated
attempt to fill a void in the seducer.
In contrast Freudian explanations of male hysteria hinge solely around
the Oedipus conflict. Oedipal conflict involves incestuous wishes towards
the mother, which are resolved by accepting the prohibition emanat-
ing from the father, and acknowledging his prior rights to her. If a man
refuses to accept the prohibition (in Lacan’s phrase, the “Law of the
Father”) he becomes neurotic, with his Oedipal desires and position
unresolved (Freud 2005, 361 footnote; 1917, 328–338). But Mitchell
insists that what Freud could not see was his own (at the time of the
development of his theory) contemporaneous, hysterical identification
with his close friend Fleiss who stood in a peer or sibling relationship
with Freud (Mitchell 2000, 45–63).
Mitchell uses Freud’s “little hysteria,” reported in his letters with
Fleiss during which he conducted a self-analysis, as her starting point for
a reexamination of the repression of male hysteria from psychoanalyti-
cal thinking, which has persisted until the present day (Mitchell 2000,
49). She argues that, as a consequence of not fully acknowledging the
36 S U S A N WA L K E R

hysterical and the sibling element of the relationship with Fleiss, Freud
developed a distaste for the subject of hysteria, and an unconscious ten-
dency to neglect the existence of male hysteria, which has influenced
subsequent psychoanalytical and cultural understandings of the condi-
tion (Mitchell 2000, 63).
Attempting to provide an explanation for the construction of hysteria
as a female disorder, Mitchell makes a number of observations. Firstly, in
a hysterical patient the inability to accept the prohibition of incestuous
desire for the mother can appear much more pathological in a female
patient, than in a male, in whom unconscious desire for the woman/
mother can masquerade as normal heterosexuality. The “negative”
Oedipal position, in which a boy has incestuous wishes for his father,
and identifies with his mother, is recognized as hysterical, but is often
conflated with homosexuality (Mitchell 2000, 75).
Secondly, a hysterical man, who in Don Juan–like fashion, identifies
with woman after woman, in a stream of sexual conquests, which are
strictly nonreproductive in intent, can pass off his behavior as “normal”
hypersexual masculinity (Mitchell 2000, 323–326).
Furthermore, the greater numbers of women who are diagnosed as
hysterical today may be partially explained, in the developed and devel-
oping worlds, by the greater social propensity for sisters to be displaced
in the kinship structure, without an adequate compensatory mecha-
nism for them to regain their place, to re-find their feet or “standing.”
Displacement (i.e., loss of place), if it provokes a hysterical response,
throws the girl/woman back to the trauma of the original loss of the
“baby-subject” and triggers hysterical symptoms. In this way Mitchell
adds onto the classical account of a girl’s “lack” of a phallus, a social
account of a girl’s “lack” of a place.
Thus gendered social expectations can mask or highlight the symp-
toms of hysteria differently in men and women, leading to hysteria
appearing to be a gendered phenomenon, affecting primarily women and
homosexual men.

Death and Sexuality in Hysteria

The vertical axis provides the mechanism for Oedipal conflicts, which if
unresolved can lead to hysteria. Mitchell’s examination of the lateral axis
provides a complimentary mechanism by which hysterical symptoms may
arise. Mitchell argues, using the lateral axis, that the possibility of death,
following the arrival of a sibling (see discussion in section on “Trauma”
above) also forms a nucleus of hysterical potential, which can be activated
in later life.
 T HE ET IOLOGY OF H YST ERIA 37

Noting the constant presence of death in the accounts of early cases

of hysteria, Mitchell argues that Freud’s theory of hysteria has been too
much concerned with sexuality, and has neglected the importance of
death (Mitchell 2000, 76). She attributes this omission to Freud’s uncon-
scious reluctance to examine the effect, upon his own hysteria, of the
death of his younger brother in infancy.
As Mitchell points out, sibling relationships, while full of love, are
also full of death, either as a wish to kill, or as a feeling of being subjec-
tively obliterated, or the actual experience of the death of a sibling, and
the ambivalence that may provoke (Mitchell 2000, 76). Mitchell hints
that murderousness toward the sibling, over rivalry for possession of the
mother, has been overshadowed, in psychoanalytical theory, by murder-
ousness toward the father, with the same goal (the mother’s undivided
love) driving both.
From the standpoint of the adult analysand and his or her analyst,
sibling rivalry can be hidden within aspects of the Oedipus complex
(Mitchell 2000, 80). The trauma of a sibling rival regresses the child
to a stage where he or she craves unity with the mother, but if the child
is beyond the Oedipal stage, that craving for unity has a sexual flavor.
Furthermore the problem of the mother’s love for the sibling rival, and
the craving to “have” the mother/mother’s breast, and thus escape anni-
hilation becomes, in the necessary reconstruction of adult phantasies that
takes place in analysis, from present to past, the problem of the mother’s
desire for the father/phallus.
Violence and hatred for the rival can arise in both Oedipal and sib-
ling situations. However, Oedipal violence and sibling violence differ in
one crucial respect. In the Oedipal situation the desire is to love/possess
one parent and kill/vanquish the other. In the “sibling crisis” the desire
to love and the desire to kill are centered upon the same person. As a
consequence of this, Mitchell argues strongly that present in hysteria
are sexuality and death, love and hate, playfulness and cruelty, which
are intertwined, and whose states can be switched rapidly from one to
another (Mitchell 2000, 134–5). The presence of the destructive parts
of hysteria may account its repulsive nature, in as much as there is a com-
pulsion for it to be assigned to the “other,” the weaker, the female, the
stranger, which is as apparent in its scientific and clinical treatment, as in
its cultural ascription.
Mitchell posits the mobility of the sexual drive, such that it can com-
bine with the life drive, to form unions, but is also activated along with
the death drive, in moments of trauma (Mitchell 2000, 141). The sexual-
ization of trauma becomes a means of psychic survival, by way of which,
when under threat, the hysteric first hates, then sexualizes the hatred, as
38 S U S A N WA L K E R

a means of asserting his existence, albeit in a narcissistic and auto-erotic

way (Mitchell 2000, 145–149). Compulsive, repetitive violent sexuality,
either in war or in perversion, signals the effect of the death drive but
may also be a means of reaffirming survival against the threat of anni-
hilation (ibid).
The First World War provided a situation in which many soldiers
became traumatized. Mitchell’s attention to the prevalence and then ref-
utation of the diagnosis of hysteria among male soldiers suffering from
“war neurosis,” who exhibited aphonia, nonorganic paralysis, and other
symptoms virtually pathognomonic of hysteria, reveals the connection
between the decline of hysteria as a psychoanalytical diagnosis, and the
theoretical omission of attention to the role of death in the traumatic
etiology of hysteria.
Mitchell points out that the Oedipus myth recounts the flaunting
of two taboos, that against incest and against patricide (Mitchell 2000,
32). In thinking about hysteria, she says that we have tended to con-
centrate only on the first prohibited desire, that is, incest, and there-
fore excluded the violence of the condition. The possibility of fratricide
invoked by sibling trauma in the lateral axis, which is prohibited primar-
ily by the mother, may form an alternative repressed wish and prohi-
bition, which may also be expressed in hysterical symptoms. Mitchell
contends that both the fear of death, preceding and following trauma
in war, and the knowledge that the soldier has of breaking the taboo on
killing another, can lead to hysterical symptoms, which were renamed
or misdiagnosed as traumatic neurosis in the First World War. This new
diagnosis concealed male hysteria, and the apparent absence of Oedipal
origins in many cases, justified the avoidance of the diagnosis of hysteria
(Mitchell 2000, 29).
In summary, Mitchell makes a double claim about the effect of
“war neurosis” on the lack of recognition of male hysteria. In the first
instance, because Oedipal, sexual elements were overemphasized in the
etiology of hysteria, the lack of these in hysterical soldiers, or the impos-
sibility of recognizing these (because of the taint of homosexuality),
led to the impossibility of diagnosing hysteria in traumatized soldiers.
Concurrently the lack of recognition of the effect of trauma in hysterical
etiology, meant that its place in the etiology of hysteria in times of war,
could not be recognized, and once again hysteria could not be diagnosed
(Mitchell 2000, 128–9).3
The prevalence of sexual violence in the context of war underlines
the importance of recognizing the sibling qualities exhibited in the
fusion of sexuality and violence in hysteria. Without this recognition, the
intertwining of sex and death, in the form of sexual violence in war, is
 T HE ET IOLOGY OF H YST ERIA 39

unrecognized as a hysterical symptom. In the epidemic of violent repeti-

tive sexuality that accompanies war, Mitchell argues that sexuality comes
under the influence of the death drive, with its compulsiveness, repeti-
tion and destructiveness (Mitchell 2000, 158). For Mitchell, in hysteria
“something violent has become sexualised” (Mitchell 2000, 135).

Conclusion
Mitchell draws together, firstly, the loss of “place” (displacement) of
the baby-subject, upon the real or anticipated arrival of a sibling that
results in the loss of a primitive “I”; secondly, subsequent events that
are experienced as traumatic because they connect with and recall/
relive displacement and subjective extinction; and finally the action
of “Nachträglichkeit” (deferred or retrospective effect), which allows
previous traumas to become flavored by or defined by later events or
developmental processes. This third point means that psychoanalytic
treatment, which acts from the present to examine the past, is always
uncovering events viewed through the lens of subsequent later events
and understandings.
This constellation of understandings leads directly to Mitchell’s sub-
sequent “discovery” of the importance of siblings and the existence of
sibling-induced trauma, in the genesis of hysteria, and provides an expla-
nation for why it has been overlooked in favor of an Oedipal focus.
Mitchell is firm that the potential for hysteria is a universal human
condition and that men and women are equally susceptible to it. The
genesis of hysteria is the precarious position of the human baby, born
“prematurely” and so utterly dependent on having a place, as “baby
to the mother.” The close proximity of life and death at this juncture
has profound effects on the psyche. Her firm belief in the universality
of hysteria encourages Mitchell to investigate of the fate of male hys-
teria. Mitchell starts by adding to the Oedipal prohibition (you can-
not possess your mother for she belongs to your father), which the
hysteric refuses, a second parthenogenic prohibition, which is that you
cannot, as a child, have a baby that will be an extension of yourself.
Mitchell insists that the hysteric, male or female, refuses both these
prohibitions.
The event that traumatically displaces everyone, thus reviving the
threat of death from parental neglect, is the arrival, real or imagined,
of a sibling. The profound ambivalence toward a new sibling, that is,
hatred for the one who displaces the subject, thus exposing him or her to
annihilation, and love for the sibling who is so much like oneself, must
be overcome.
40 S U S A N WA L K E R

If jealousy of the sibling, who has taken one’s place, results in a regres-
sive craving to possess the mother, and to be everything to the mother,
and /or a regressive identification involving a parthenogenic fantasy of
giving birth like the mother, then both of these wishes are likely to be
prohibited. Similarly the violent desire to kill the sibling, who has taken
the infant’s place, will also be prohibited.
If both regressive and murderous solutions are prohibited, this throws
the child back to the threat of annihilation. And the regression to this
point can be repeated, by the hysterical adult, every time a displacement
or rejection occurs in later life.
The extent to which the child is able to overcome his/her sense of
annihilation, and find a place along the lateral axis, with the sibling who
has an equal claim on both parents, determines whether sibling trauma
will produce a temporary regression or a propensity to full-blown hysteri-
cal condition (Mitchell 2000, 320).

The hysteric stays stuck with the catastrophe of displacement by a sib-

ling which throws him or her into the Oedipus complex, the primal
scene and the helplessness of premature birth, all of which he protests
against by fantasies of parthenogenic omnipotence and by overcasting
a self that has also gone absent. (Mitchell 2000, 331)

If the trauma inherent in finding one’s place along the lateral axis is
not recognized, but only the sexual strivings and identification of hyste-
ria in the vertical axis are acknowledged, then Mitchell argues that the
male hysteric must always be seen as feminine or as homosexual. More
importantly the “deathliness” of hysteria will not be fully recognized.
Mitchell charts the development of hysteria along these lines. The
arrival of a sibling entails the reordering of the child’s place in the world,
as no longer unique but one of many, each part of a series of subjects
who are in the same structural place (i.e., peers) but not identical. One
solution to this displacement is regression to the desire to be one with/
the only one for the mother, but this move will be prohibited, and with
this the trauma of a-subjectivity (having no place/not being recognized)
becomes a threat. The regression to the trauma of potential annihilation,
caused by the arrival of a sibling, along with the murderousness, and
identification with the one to whom one feels murderous (i.e., the sibling
who is almost identical to oneself), places death and the death drive at
the heart of hysteria, as much as sexuality.
Each subsequent displacement that triggers a hysterical reaction in
the adult, is a re-ordering that cannot be thought through but is instead
treated as a trauma, and calls up the deathliness of the original trauma,
 T HE ET IOLOGY OF H YST ERIA 41

resulting in regression, repetition (a feature of the death drive), and

bodily protest, all of which may exhibit a sexual flavor or seem to refer
to sexual desires (Mitchell 2000, 336–338). In hysteria the threat to the
infant’s early ego, its primitive ‘I’, is relived.

Hysteria’s moment is the moment when the displaced ego reasserts

itself, fragile but too insistent. The Oedipal drama it plays out on is
a stage; hysteria is not a malnegotiation of the Oedipus complex but
an enactment of it, a masquerade of object relations in the service of
narcissism. (Mitchell 2000, 343)

The theoretical implications of the effect of siblings upon the etiology

of hysteria need further clarification and exploration, which can only be
carried out through clinical observation and practice. One of the ques-
tions that need to be answered is whether the arrival of a sibling after the
child passes through the Oedipal crisis has the same effect as the arrival
of a sibling when the child is still pre-Oedipal.
Another is whether the prohibitions on the desires that arise from the
lateral axis are sufficient to make these desires fully unconscious, and
thus allow them to have profound effects on psychic structure in a manner
analogous to the desires and prohibitions of the vertical axis.
Despite the need for further development, based on clinical practice,
Mitchell’s reexamination of the genesis of hysteria has three important
outcomes. It allows hysteria to become a universal phenomenon, affect-
ing men and women. It warns of the deathliness inherent in severe hys-
teria, enacted in suicide, sexual violence, and some aspects of peer or
affinal violence. Lastly and perhaps most importantly it opens the way
to a rediscovery of the importance of siblings in psychic development,
which is explored in other chapters in this volume.

Notes
1. Although in the case of the repression of Oedipal phantasies in the
boy, it is the traumatic possibility of castration that leads to repression
of both the desire and the prohibition.
2. Mitchell also uses the phrase the Law of the Mother to express the
interdict on either murdering or incestuously possessing one’s sibling.
In these ways the Law of the Mother polices the lateral axis (see later
section on “Death and Sexuality in Hysteria”).
3. In her development of her theory outlined in Siblings (2003), Mitchell
differentiates between traumatic/war neurosis and hysteria, by stat-
ing that in traumatic neurosis the trauma is happening in the present,
whereas in hysteria the originating trauma has happened in the past.
42 S U S A N WA L K E R

References
Freud, S. [1893b] 1991. “Charcot.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Vol. 3, translated by James Strachey,
11–23. Hogarth Press, London (SE3).
Freud, S. [1894] 1991. “The Neuropsychoses of Defence,” SE3, 41–61.
Freud, S. [1895] 1991. “Project for a Scientific Psychology,” SE1, 283–397.
Freud, S. [1896a] 1991. “Heredity and the Neuroses,” SE3, 151–6.
Freud, S. [1896b] 1991. “Further Remarks on the Psychoneuroses of Defence,”
SE3, 162–85.
Freud, S. [1898] 1991. “The Psychical Mechanism of Forgetfulness,” SE3,
287–303.
Freud, S. [1901] 1991. “Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria,”
SE7, 1–122.
Freud, S. [1909] 1991. “Analysis of a Phobia in a Five Year Old Boy,” SE10,
5–148.
Freud, S. [1910] 1991. “Five Lectures of Psychoanalysis,” SE11.
Freud, S. [1917] 1991. “The Development of the Libido and the Sexual
Organisations,” SE16, 329–38.
Freud, S. [1924] 2005. “The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex” in The
Essentials of Psychoanalysis, 395–401.
Freud, S. [1925] 1991. “A Note Upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad.” In The
Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud,
Volume XIX (1923–1925): The Ego and the Id and Other Works, SE19,
225–232.
Freud, S. [1925] 2005. “Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical
Distinction between the Sexes” in The Essentials of Psychoanalysis, 402–411.
Vintage: London.
Freud, S. [1930] 1991. “The Future of an Illusion and Other Works” in
Civilisation and its Discontents, SE21.
Freud, S. [1955] 2005. The Essentials of Psychoanalysis. Translated by J. Strachey.
London: Vintage.
Freud, S. and Breuer, J. [1893a] 1991. “On the Psychical Mechanism
of hysterical Phenomena: Preliminary Communication” in Studies in
Hysteria Penguin Freud Library Vol. 3. London: Penguin.
Limentani, A. 1984. “To the Limits of Male Heterosexuality: The Vagina
Man” in (1989) Between Freud and Klein: the Psychoanalytic Quest for
Knowledge and Truth. London. Free Association Books.
Mitchell, J. 2000. Mad Men and Medusas: Reclaiming the Effects of Sibling
Relations on the Human Condition. London: Penguin.
Mitchell, J. 2003. Siblings. Cambridge. Polity.
Tasca, C., Rapetti, M., Carta, M.G., and Fadda, B. 2012. ‘Women and Hysteria
in the History of Mental Health,” Clinical Practice & Epidemiology Mental
Health. 8: 110–119. Published online, October 19, 2012.
 Chapter 2

Siblings, Secrets, and Promises:

Aspects of Infantile Sexuality

Daru Huppert

E ver so rarely, we come upon theories that force us to acknowledge

what everyone knows, but have somehow been able to disregard. This
is the case with Mitchell’s work on siblings. While it is a commonplace
that siblings are a decisive influence in shaping who we become, this has
largely remained an empty assertion with negligible effects on our sys-
tematic ideas. Indeed, disregard of siblings is the rule in psychoanalysis,
and this is its “great theoretical omission” as Mitchell writes (2000a,
xxxiii), though her claim could be extended to psychology and the social
sciences more generally.
In psychoanalysis we can discern two lines of approach to siblings.
On the one hand, we find that, every few years, a number studies appear
on the effects of siblings on some detailed aspect of our psychic lives.1
These studies, though often of considerable clinical interest, have very
little impact on the discipline and soon fall into oblivion. Their neglect,
I would suggest, is due to their ill-fit with the Oedipal theory (in its
various permutations). It is for this reason that detailed explorations of
siblings have remained a “foreign body” within the psychoanalytic litera-
ture. The other, far more common fate of siblings within psychoanalysis
is that their importance is noted and even carefully described, only to be
comprehended almost entirely in Oedipal terms. In this approach, which
is so deeply entrenched that it is no longer noticed, siblings are regarded
either simply as rivals for the passion of our parents, or merely as parent
substitutes. Neither of these of these assertions is necessarily wrong—
indeed they may mark essential insights in particular clinical cases—but
they do ignore the obvious: sometimes a sibling is only a sibling (or pri-
marily that). So, to date, either studies concerning siblings have been
overlooked by psychoanalysis, because the insights that arise from them
44 DARU HUPPERT

cannot be assimilated into the Oedipal theory, or, on the contrary, sib-
lings have been completely incorporated into this theory, with the result
that insight into the specific effects of siblings as siblings is lost.
Mitchell was the first to realize that to overcome this impasse we do
not require primarily more studies on siblings, but rather a general theory
of sibling relationships, or what she called lateral relations, in contra-
distinction to the vertical relations between parents and children. She
argues that we lose sight of siblings because we do not know how to
determine their role—and that what is thereby lost is essential, because
the effects of siblings upon the formation and functioning of our minds
differs significantly from the effects due to vertical relationships. What
is required then is a theory that, in regard to siblings, accomplishes what
the Oedipal theory does in regard to parents: it makes their effect on us
thinkable and thereby explorable. Such a theory of lateral relations will
alter the way we conceive of ourselves, of others, and our reciprocal rela-
tionships: as Mitchell (2003, xvi) notes, “bringing in Siblings changes
the picture we are looking at.”

Sibling Theory
Mitchell’s more recent work is an attempt to develop a general theory
of siblings and their influence on the formation of our mind. While it is
still being articulated, some of its essential contours have taken shape.
Mitchell (2000b, p. xi) explains that “when a sibling is in the offing, the
danger for the existing child is that he or she, previously—‘His Majesty
the Baby’—will be annihilated, for this is someone who stands in the
same position to parents (and their substitutes) as himself.” What is dev-
astating is that another being, too similar to oneself, threatens to usurp
the throne of infancy. The subject is not only displaced, deposed, and
dispossessed, he is, Mitchell insists, psychically annihilated. The essential
response to this annihilation is to try to kill the sibling, who has obliter-
ated the subject (Mitchell 2003, xv). The younger sibling in turn will seek
to defend himself, by wishing to annihilate the elder one. Destruction—
unilateral or mutual—is averted by different, simultaneously pursued and
conflicting solutions.
First there is the possibility of investing the sibling narcissistically,
as more of oneself or an extension of oneself. This solution, however,
founders because the sibling is different and this is felt to be devastat-
ing; it reawakens the obliteration initially experienced. There is also the
attempt to invest the sibling libidinously and with aim-inhibited tender-
ness, but these solutions are always threatened by the hate arising from
the feeling of being annihilated by the sibling. As a result, in infancy
 SIBLINGS, SECRETS, AND PROMISES 45

and often in adulthood, the feelings of love for a sibling are labile, easily
prone to revert into hate and destruction. Yet, in Mitchell’s view, siblings
do not only have problematic effects. If the obliteration of self, elicited by
the sibling, is mourned and the destructive urges against the sibling are
sufficiently bound by libidinal and tender impulses, then murderousness
gives way to rivalry, competiveness, and eventually to a sense of solidar-
ity not only with siblings, but with other lateral figures. Siblings pro-
vide the possibility of grasping ourselves as part of what Mitchell (2003,
149) calls a series—as someone who is like others, but with differences.
In this way, we may come to realize individuality based on what we share
with others. In the language of classical psychoanalysis we could say the
Mitchell describes a development:

1. that begins with the narcissistic injury caused by the advent of a sibling;
2. develops into a crucial negotiation of the narcissism of small differences
that mark sibling relations;
3. before then moving toward object love along the lateral axis.

This development is long, complicated, prone to pathological resolu-

tions and regressions—Cain is its constant companion.
Mitchell’s theory is the most general and intense portrayal within psy-
choanalysis of the effects that siblings have on us. Her ideas have crucial
implications for thinking about the entirety of our psychic life. In this
chapter, I will use some of her concepts to discuss the role played by
siblings in the development of important aspects of our sexuality. I hope
to outline the particular place and character of sibling sexuality in rela-
tion to sexual interactions a child may have with children who are not
siblings. This, in turn, will help clarify the relationship between sibling
and Oedipal passions.

Infantile Sexuality and Siblings

Although psychoanalysis is still commonly associated with an insistence
on sexuality, the days in which this discipline could be mistaken as a
teaching of pan-sexualism are now long gone. A casual reader of current
psychoanalytic literature could be forgiven for believing that sexuality
plays a peripheral role in the discipline (Green 1995). As Mitchell notes,
this neglect of sexuality has coincided with a reduced notion of what sex
is; increasingly it has come to be understood only in terms of reproduc-
tion. Mitchell (2003, 122) remarks that, “the theoretical subjugation
of sexuality to reproduction is a hidden version of the repudiation of
sexuality itself.” This repudiation is baffling given that Freud’s notion of
46 DARU HUPPERT

libido broke with any necessary link to reproduction; the latter became
merely one of its possible aims (Freud 1905). Siblings, Mitchell argues,
remind us of the nonreproductive and disturbing features of sexuality.
That is because, in contrast with some features of the Oedipus complex,
a wish for a baby does not form part of our sexual desire for a sibling. As
Mitchell (2003, 22) categorically states: “sibling sexuality is sex without
reproduction.” There are four core components of Mitchell’s claim that
the role siblings play in the formation of our sexuality is distinct from,
though related to the role played by our parents:

(a) The desire for a sibling is not organized by sexual difference, that
is, by the lack of the phallus (in the girl) or lack of an ability to give
birth (in the boy).
(b) Sexual taboos are, in general, less restrictive regarding siblings than
parents. As a consequence polymorphous perverse manifestations of
the sexual drive are more pronounced in relation to siblings than in
Oedipal sexual strivings.
(c) The libidinal investment of the sibling is initially a preponderantly a
narcissistic object choice. It is evident, though not trivial, that sib-
lings are more similar to each other than to their parents. Mitchell
gives this observation greater poignancy by claiming that, when as
children we were awaiting a sibling, we were expecting more of our-
selves. Siblings therefore easily take the position of the ideal-ego for
each other; the older one for being more capable, the younger one
occupying the role of what Freud called His Majesty the Baby. We
might say that we love our sibling according to our own image, or,
to be more precise, to our ideal image. Yet this narcissistic invest-
ment arises is impelled and imperiled by anxiety, as it seeks to fend
off the earlier experience of annihilation.
(d) Hatred and destruction, arising from the threat of annihilation,
are not differentiated from the sexual longing for a sibling, at least
initially. Passionate embraces between siblings quickly give way to
strangling; indeed, it can be difficult to distinguish one from the
other. Mitchell suggests that parental prohibitions address the vio-
lent aspect of children’s play more overtly and intensely than the
sexual aspect—the fundamental task of parents is to prevent siblings
from killing each other. What we must bear in mind is that in the
lateral axis it can be difficult to distinguish between sexual investment
and destructive proclivities.

This outline of Mitchell’s claims suggests that the form and meaning
that sexuality will take between siblings will be significantly different and
 SIBLINGS, SECRETS, AND PROMISES 47

have different effects to those of Oedipal relationships. Since in psycho-

analytic theory siblings have been widely disregarded, there have been
no attempts to address this issue at a more general level. We can attempt
to make up for this lack by introducing siblings into the first of Freud’s
Three Essays on a Theory of Sexuality, which still remains the crucial text
on the sexual drive. However, I will not begin by discussing sibling sexu-
ality in particular. Instead I will briefly explore the sexual relationships
between pre-latency children, between the age of three and five, even if
this means going over territory that may be all too familiar. While this
approach may seem circuitous, I would argue that we can only appreciate
sibling sexuality if we relate it not only to Oedipal strivings, but also to
the sexual activity found among children who are not siblings. Taking a
detour will give more precision to later claims.

Perverse Activities
If we follow the first of the Three Essays and take heterosexual genital
intercourse as our point of departure, we find that the sexual drive shows
manifestations that deviate both in terms of the object and in terms of
activity. Heterosexual and homosexual object-choices are both possible:
a great part, often the greater part, of the sexual excitement involved in
play is shared with objects of the same sex. However, animals and other
children can also become targets of sexual strivings, and play a salient
role in the sexual fantasy and activity of children. Children are fascinated
by the open display of copulation or excretion found in animals and it
is quite common that children enact sexual desires with each other by
assuming the role of dogs, etc. With regard to children as sexual objects,
it is evident that they are so for other children. Psychoanalysis has taken
this for granted, perhaps too much so, and has instead emphasized the
less intuitively apparent Oedipal desire.
Let us proceed to the deviation of the sexual aims, or what we would
ordinarily call sexual activities; here Freud distinguishes between ana-
tomical transgressions and fixations of preliminary aims; what these cat-
egories have in common is that they do not aim at genital intercourse.
Anatomical transgressions include the mouth or the anus as sexual organ
as well as fetishism. Fellatio or cunnilingus may not be frequent in young
children, but the mouth plays a primary role in their excited play, while
the mutual inspection and stimulation of the anus is common. The use
of toys or objects in these games can have a determining influence on the
choice of a fetish (Winnicott 1971). With regard to the fixation on pre-
liminary aims, Freud describes the pairs of voyeurism/exhibitionism and of
sadism/masochism. In the Bible it required the intervention of the devil
48 DARU HUPPERT

for Adam and Eve to realize that they were naked and to develop shame;
it befalls parents or other adults to curb the exhibitionism and voyeurism
of children. Anyone who has been able to observe a kindergarten knows
that for many children furtive journeys to the toilets, to witness each
other’s genitals and excremental activities, represent the culmination of
the day’s pleasure. The sexual excitement elicited by rough play and by
fights, whether due to suffering or inflicting pain, are unavoidable expe-
riences of growing up, as are the intense and often disturbing pleasures
derived from debasing others or becoming the object of another child’s
degradation.
We have seen that the sexual activity of children shows all aspects that
Freud chose to emphasize in his study of the perversions—indeed, he
chose to limit his study of perversions to those manifestations that occur
universally amongst children. So far, I have discussed this sexual activity
without addressing the prohibitions that it may meet. This will now be
rectified.

Prohibition
Given conventional wisdom, it seems astonishing that adults generally
tolerate, if not explicitly, the often crass sexual activity among children.
Reasons for this are manifold. Perhaps most importantly, parents and
institutions have no means to hinder this play, unless they wish to put the
child under continual surveillance. Moreover parents, due to the repres-
sion of their own infantile sexuality, will tend to misapprehend the sexual
aspects of children’s excited interactions. They will see play, where their
children are striving for sexual pleasure. Parents will also feel a mixture
of resignation and a dim intuition that such play has a formative role in
the development of their child; it may also be that adults wish to grant
children experiences they enjoyed themselves while growing up. Yet rea-
sons for the uneasy and mostly unacknowledged toleration of this activ-
ity should not be sought in the adults only. Children, of course, will hide
their play.
The effects of this sexual play between children are different than
those arising from contact that may stimulate sexual feelings in a child
in regard to a parent. When Freud in a crucial observation, describes the
mother as the first seductress, he is not thinking of sexual abuse, which
I will not address in this chapter, but of the mother as providing the
necessary stimulation for the efflorescence of the child’s sexual drive.
Her behavior, at least in the formative influence that concerns Freud,
is aim-inhibited: it is delimited by the sexual barriers of disgust, shame,
pain, and morality. Amongst pre-latency children these barriers are in
 SIBLINGS, SECRETS, AND PROMISES 49

the process of being established and intense excitement is to be gained

by transgressing the continually shifting boundaries. Consequently, the
sexual activities between children are generally less aim-inhibited than
that between a child and his parent. It would, of course, be absurd to
suggest that children have sexual relationships with each other that
are utterly uninhibited. Constraints of libidinal development and aim-
inhibited feelings of tenderness for each other impose limitations on
their play, as do impositions and control from without. Children know
that their behavior is “naughty” and they will have internalized some
prohibitions and they will try to avoid being caught, at least in their most
flagrant acts. Yet sooner or later—either due to age or the excessiveness
of the activities—the parents or someone else will separate the children,
cutting them off from their sources of sexual excitement.

Introducing Siblings
This separation also befalls siblings. Aristophanes’s parable in Plato’s
Symposium of the round beings that are cut in half by the gods, and
since then seek each other, lends itself to being read as depicting the
moment in which siblings become the objects of an intense prohibi-
tion. Indeed, adults frequently remember a particular moment in which
their parents anxiously decided to prohibit them from sharing the same
room or bathing with their sibling, etc. The reason for this prohibition
is evident: while the extent of overt sexual play and shared excitement
with siblings varies considerably, its possibility is rarely entirely absent.
All the sexual activities found between children can occur between sib-
lings and frequently do. There is, however, a significant difference: the
taboos with regard to sexual acts between siblings are severe, for they
concern incest. It may be true that in our culture these taboos are pre-
ceded by a period of relative tolerance of sibling sexuality, but eventu-
ally the prohibition is imposed, either through parents, other adults,
or institutions and the prohibition is highly invested. For this reason,
breaking it elicits not only great excitement, but also—potentially—
powerful feelings of shame, guilt, or disgust, at least nachträglich (i.e.,
after the child has established the incest taboo more firmly and, due to
some later experience, becomes fully aware of the sexual nature of his
earlier play). My clinical experience shows that siblings will often there-
fore include a third child, who is not a brother or sister, in their acts,
so as to suspend, obscure, and thereby more easily trespass the incest
barrier. In short, among siblings the possibilities of sexual transgression
are many—proximit y breeds temptation—but the prohibition can have
significant and severe consequences.
50 DARU HUPPERT

What emerges from our discussion is a spectrum in which, on the one

end, there are prohibited Oedipal strivings and on the other, covertly
accepted sexual activities between children. In this scheme the sexual
play between siblings represents an intermediate area, in which permis-
siveness and prohibition, ignorance and taboo coexist in an uneasy truce.
Since the prohibition on sibling sexuality are less severe than along the
vertical axis and children have not fully internalized the same taboos as
the adult have, there can be expected to be, in general, both more sexual
activity and this activity will be more overtly sexual between siblings
than between a child and its parents. The consequences of this last point
and the intermediate position of sibling sexuality—between Oedipal sexu-
ality and sexual relationships to other children—raises issues that have
not been resolved satisfactorily in the psychoanalytic literature.

Is Sibling Sexuality Preconscious or Unconscious?

In psychoanalytic case studies sexual acts between siblings are often
described, but rarely given much importance, because they are subsumed
within Oedipal explanations. Mitchell proposes that the reason for this
neglect is that Oedipal desires are, as a rule, repressed, while sexual expe-
riences with siblings are often available to consciousness and therefore
considered to be of lesser pathogenic force. Mitchell acknowledges that
many memories of such acts are, in fact, available to a person, but she
does insist that they “contribute independently to the construction of
unconscious processes” (2003, 34). Our enquiry may help to clarify this
issue. The lesser degree of prohibition and the greater degree of enact-
ment means that, in general, more memories of sexual acts between sib-
lings will be preconscious than would be the case with Oedipal passions.
This, of course, does not entail that in regard to siblings we observe no
repression.2 Such a view, if taken without qualification, fails to address
the taboo on incest, which distinguishes sexual acts with a brother or a
sister from such acts with other children. It also gives too much credence
to the preconscious memories. Often preconscious memories will be
screen memories, which distort past occurrences by recasting the event
or the fantasies associated with it—these remain unconscious. A case in
point would be Helene Deutsch’s (1932) description of a female patient
suffering from compulsive obsessive symptoms, which the patient in part
relates to seduction by her elder brother. Deutsch, however, reveals this
as a screen memory, diverting from another scene, in which the patient
seduced her younger brother (who later, after contracting syphilis, com-
mitted suicide). We should keep in mind that even in cases where the
memories are accurate, they may nevertheless function as screen memories
 SIBLINGS, SECRETS, AND PROMISES 51

in that they depict certain sexual acts, while both alluding to and cover-
ing over other such acts and fantasies with the sibling that have under-
gone repression. This last claim I wish briefly to illustrate by looking at a
particular kind of secret shared between siblings.

Secrets and the Irritability between Siblings

Sibling relationships are marked by an intense, often overwhelming irri-
tability. Mitchell’s theory is fundamental in explaining this affect: the
sibling is felt to obliterate me and becomes object of my annihilating
wishes. Over time this annihilating contest is transformed, among other
expressions of affect, into an intense irritability dictated by what Freud
would call the narcissism of small differences. We hate the sibling for
claiming to possess what we believe are our own qualities or we hate him
or her for insisting on privileges the justifications for which we would
like to consider baseless. Differences and similarities, as well as privi-
leges, acquire urgent significance because of their narcissistic investment.
Conflagrations over these issues can have drastic consequences, at the
limit leading to fratricide. Here I want to examine a more obscure source
of irritation that can be equally forceful or, at least, augment the force of
the narcissistic irritation and even rage.
In the course of a therapeutic treatment we will occasionally hear a
patient tells us about a pleasant and innocuous conversation with a sibling
that suddenly and inexplicably provoked the patient’s fury. Patients will
not be forthcoming in trying to explain this sudden irruption of affect.
Listening carefully we will find that the irritation may be prompted by
a particular word such as “bathroom,” which, although it easily fits into
the exchange and in this context seems to be innocent enough, elicits a
sudden and furious indignation in our patient. We may develop the sus-
picion that the word “bathroom” has prompted such a reaction because
it touches on a secret. I have found that conflagrations of this kind often
have their source in sexual exchanges between siblings during their child-
hood. These intimacies are secret, both in that no one (or hardly anyone)
else knows about them and also in that, insofar as the siblings remember
such acts, they do not talk about them with each other, or, if they do, the
conversation soon leads to painful dead ends, issuing in statements such
as: “we were children then,” “you started it,” “it is not true.” If we accept
this line of argument and apply it to our example, we find that the irrita-
tion erupts when something a sibling says or does is associated with the
secret—“bathroom” may refer to the place in which the sexual act took
place; sometimes a gaze that is felt to express an accusation or a long-
ing may provoke the furious reaction. In some cases the secret may be
52 DARU HUPPERT

unconscious, but in the cases I have encountered they were preconscious,

though the patient had no inclination to explore it. This, however, raises
a question: Why would the patient, who is able to remember the sexual
scene, not recognize that his indignation is evoked by what he takes to
be a reference to this secret? The reason, I contend, is that, although the
memory is potentially conscious, it is linked with other sexual memories
and fantasies regarding the siblings that are repressed. By bringing the
memory to attention, the repression of this entire constellation is under
threat. We might say that the secret is the guardian of the repressed.
The secret, however, can only take on this function so long as it is not
examined too closely.
While the secret derives from an interaction between siblings, it can
have far-reaching intrapsychic consequences. A patient I treated was once
observed by his elder sister when, as a three- or four-year-old, he engaged
in a sexual act with another boy. She used this knowledge to continually
taunt him and exhort all kinds of painful acts from him until he reached
puberty. Later he developed a compulsive-obsessive neurosis, with starkly
sexual content, that in many ways was modeled on his interactions with
his sister. In yielding to his compulsive commands or revolting against
them he was reviving his relationship with his sister and thereby repeat-
ing the sexual investment of her exhortations and her taunting of him.
This illustrates how siblings can occupy aspects of our psychic structure,
here the super-ego, that is commonly assumed to be the sole preroga-
tive of parental figures. It would go beyond the scope of this chapter to
ask whether the functioning of this structure is thereby altered. Let us
instead return to the intersubjective sphere.

The Promise
One important consequence of early sexual interactions between siblings
and of the secrets that arise from these is that they often issue in promises
or oaths between the siblings; promises to passionately love each other
more than anyone else; promises to avenge any slight or abuse suffered
by the other, etc. These promises need not have been verbally articulated
to acquire psychical force. Whether kept or broken such promises play
an important and underestimated role in sibling relationships and in the
clinical material concerning them. Often severe sacrifices are taken on to
keep such promises and sometimes a person will seek to punish himself for
having broken oaths to a sibling that he has no memory of having made.
Such promises may, of course, be conscious, as with the wish to protect
the sibling from adversity at any cost. But the reason for this promise
taking such a drastic form and gaining such force are unconscious. The
 SIBLINGS, SECRETS, AND PROMISES 53

compulsive force of such promises derives from repressed aspects of the

early sexual interactions and sexual fantasies concerning a sibling. While
these promises over time suffer alterations, and are partly disinvested and
defended against, they continue to exert a powerful influence. Later they
are revived in the passionate oaths that are made to siblings and friends
(blood brotherhood) during adolescence. The weightiest expression of
such promises is found in the vows exchanged during marriage. It goes
some way to explaining the ineliminable tension between marital partners
and siblings if we consider that to love a spouse is at once to break a prom-
ise to a sibling and to keep it insofar the spouse is a sibling substitute.
I would contend that Antigone is the most implacable depiction of
such a promise, even if, or perhaps, because neither the promise nor the
secret are referred to explicitly in Sophocles’s play. One of the play’s main
themes is that Antigone sacrifices the pleasures of marriage, indeed her
life, in order to bury her brother. But in Sophocles’s text, the act of burial
is full of sexual imagery and the imagery of marriage, allowing to us to
claim that for Antigone the burial place of her brother is her wedding site
(Williams 1993). If we assume that Antigone’s sacrifice for her brother
issues from such a promise, this would clarify the confluence of two other-
wise disparate and conflicting trends in her act: her sexual passion and
the sense of inexorable duty. This sense of duty is not derived solely, as
she professes, from her enacting the “unwritten, solid laws of the gods”:
it has motives that are carnal, but equally forceful and binding. Antigone,
we can say, takes the promise given to a sibling to its terrible extreme.

Conclusion
The themes of the secret and of the promise have helped to bring certain
aspects of our sexuality into focus, which are raised with a particular
intensity by sibling relationships. In sibling relations there will be more
sexual acts and therefore secrets—preconscious guardians of repressed
memories—than along the Oedipal line; the promises, I have looked
at, arise directly from these secrets. More generally, the material we
have discussed gives ample support to the features that Mitchell has
emphasized in sibling sexuality. Let us recall that she considers sibling
sexuality to be nonreproductive, that it is not organized around sexual
differences, that the taboos on it are less restrictive than on Oedipal
relationships, that the initial investment of the object are primarily nar-
cissistic and often difficult to distinguish from powerful destructive
urges. In Antigone we find the non-reproductive nature of her passion
(she rejects marriage to bury her brother), the absence of sexual differ-
ence (she does not love her brother passionately because he has what she
54 DARU HUPPERT

lacks, i.e., the phallus), its perverse quality (intimations of incestuous

desire and necrophilia), its narcissistic force (expressed in Antigone’s
powerful self-assertion not least against her sister Ismene) as well as its
violent moment, culminating in her self-sacrifice. All this would sup-
port Mitchell’s claim that attending to siblings will help elucidate the
perverse expressions of our sexual drive.
Precisely because the scope of my chapter was relatively narrow and
addresses issues that are not at the center of Mitchell’s ideas, it attests
to the truly general significance of her theory. What, however, is still
open to debate, is whether the “sibling complex” plays as crucial a role
in our mental lives as the Oedipus complex. This I take to be the claim
implicit in Mitchell’s project. At the beginning of this chapter I discussed
the Oedipus complex as the reason for why we have failed to grasp the
specific effects of siblings. While this has been detrimental, it also attests
to the explanatory power of the Oedipal theory. Its extraordinary signifi-
cance rests not only on its conceptual depth and cohesion, but on its abil-
ity to elucidate a vast array of clinical and social phenomena, in a detail
and richness, not conceivable before the articulation of this theory. The
other reason for the importance of the Oedipus complex derives from its
relation with metapsychology, particularly the structural theory (id, ego,
super-ego), of which it is part and parcel. Using the Oedipal theory Freud
was able to elucidate both the formation and the functioning of what he
called the psychic apparatus. For this reason, within psychoanalysis, the
Oedipus complex is not only something we observe, but also a structure
informing our observation. While it is probably too early to tell whether
sibling theory can become similarly central to psychoanalysis, what is
beyond doubt is that Mitchell’s theory has made the crucial implications
that siblings have on us thinkable. Thereby she has not only changed the
picture we are looking at, but also the way we look at it.

Notes
1. See Colonna and Newmann (1983), Volkan and Ast (1997), Colonna
and Newmann (1983).
2. I shall here leave out a discussion of other defence mechanisms (denial,
projection etc.) that may come into operation when repression fails.

References
Colonna, A. and Newman L. 1983. The psychoanalytic Literature on
Siblings. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 83, 285–309.
Deutsch, H. 1932. “Obsessional Ceremonial and Obsessional Acts.” In
Psycho-Analysis of the Neuroses, translated by W.D. Robson-Scott, 175–197.
London: Hogarth Press.
 SIBLINGS, SECRETS, AND PROMISES 55

Freud, S. 1905. “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.” In The Standard

Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Vol. 7, trans-
lated by James Strachey. Hogarth Press, London, Standard Edition 7.
Green, A. 1995. “Has Sexuality anything to do with Psychoanalysis?” The
International Journal of Psychoanalysis 75, 871–883.
Loewald, H. 2000. “The waning of the Oedipus Complex.” Journal of
Psychotherapy Practice and Research 9, 239–249.
Mitchell, J. 2000a. Psychoanalysis and Feminism. New York: Basic Books.
Mitchell, J. 2000b. Mad Men and Medusas. London: Penguin Books.
Mitchell, J. 2003. Siblings. Cambridge: Polity.
Volkan, V. and Ast G. 2000. Siblings in the Unconscious and Psychopathology.
Madison: International University Press.
Williams, B. 1993. Shame and Necessity. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Winnicott, D. 1971. Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock Publications.
 Chapter 3

Ideologies of the Super-Ego:

Psychoanalysis and Feminism, Revisited

Judith Butler

This chapter and the next presents a dialogue between Judith Butler
and Juliet Mitchell. In May 2009 Butler addressed a symposium held
at the Centre for Gender Studies to honour Mitchell’s retirement from
Cambridge University with a paper titled “Ideologies of the Superego.”
Parts of this address were later published in an article for the journal
differences (Butler 2013); this chapter presents Butler’s full address.
In the next chapter, Mitchell offers a reply to Butler’s account of psycho-
analysis and the oppression of women. We hope that, in presenting these
texts here, they preserve some of the excitement of the symposium as fun-
damental concepts of psychoanalytic and feminist theory were discussed
and reconceived.

J udith Butler: It is a daunting task to be here today, to have been invited

to address the continuing challenges of Juliet Mitchell’s Psychoanalysis
and Feminism. It is, as you know, a formidable and broad-ranging work
whose influence on feminist theory, psychoanalysis, theories of sexual
difference, ideology, and kinship, is simply immeasurable. The simple but
overwhelming fact is that there was never a book like this book and there
has never been one since. Under such circumstances I had then to con-
sider what use I might be on this occasion, how I might take up a more
narrow set of challenges, and so I re-read the text along with the quite
perspicacious introduction its author offered a decade ago. The introduc-
tion was as interesting as the book itself, since it suggested something
about the reception of this most important text, including some lamenta-
tions about the direction that feminist scholarly work had taken, but also
some strong suggestions about what might be some better directions.
Let me begin, then, by reviewing that introduction so that we might
know better what the author wants of us, and then let me see whether
58 JUDITH BUTLER

I can try to meet some of these challenges in ways that, I hope, will prove
productive for further thinking on matters of kinship, ideology, and the
changing tasks of psychoanalysis.
Let’s begin with one of the most basic propositions and consider what
it implies for how we think about sexual difference, the unconscious, and
the problem of generational transmission. This proves to be a fundamen-
tal notion for her since, as she wrote in her 1999 preface, “The superego,
with its transgenerational transmission of rules and laws; the id, where
drive representatives meet what has been repressed; the ego, which com-
prises countless other egos—all are concepts which offer a way forward
into thinking about ideology as ‘how we live ourselves’ as sexually dif-
ferentiated beings.” (xxxi). I would like to focus first on the transgen-
erational transmission of rules. Mitchell insists that sexual difference has
largely unconscious dimensions, that these unconscious dimensions are
transmitted through time and across generations, and that there is a kind
of stasis or “drive to stay put” that characterizes sexual difference under-
stood in this way. If we focus further on what sexual difference is, we
find that the following formulations are central: sexual difference has to
be included among those phenomenon that “persists” and that remains
“incommensurate with the real social situation.” As a result, Mitchell
tells us, “deliberate socialization is inadequate to explain the structure
of sexual difference and the inequalities that always arise from it, despite
the fact that there is enormous diversity of social practice.” At a certain
point she tries to find other metaphors for explaining this “persistence,”
suggesting that it is perhaps more like a recalcitrance; for instance, she
asks, “Why, despite massive social, economic, and legal changes, is there
still a kind of underwater tow (my emphasis) that makes progress regress
on matters of ‘gender’ equity.” I should note here that “gender” is in
quotation marks, suggesting that it is a term that Mitchell is provisionally
willing to use, but not fully to condone. But I will return to this later as
we try and think about all of this in relation to kinship and ideology.
Although sexual difference is not exactly defined (and may well be
something that maintains a tense relationship with definition, promul-
gating metaphors of various kinds), something about its operation is
being characterized through a variety of means. It is a kind of persis-
tence; it is “a kind of underwater tow” or, again, a “current” as she writes,
“feminism seems to be rowing against a current that is ultimately the
stronger force.” She concludes here—still the new introduction—with
the following remark: “conservatism actually seems inherent in the very
construction of sexual difference—as though the difference itself has in
its construction insisted on stasis.” (xviii) This conservatism is inherent
in what Mitchell calls “the psycho-ideological living of sexual relations”
 ID EOLOGIES OF T HE SUPER- EGO 59

and it is distinguished by the fact that “it is women . . . who become the
ascribed repositories of that human conservatism.” (xix)
Mitchell tells us that this conservatism is largely unconscious, although
she does not try and offer a precise topography of the unconscious. In
other words, we would not be able to locate this conservatism in a par-
ticular place. Rather, we are asked to understand this conservatism has
transmitted across generations. There is a “kind of thought” about mas-
culinity and femininity, understood as equivalent to the thought of sexual
difference, that takes place in the course of a transmission, a relay, a
transposition, and this would be understood as the particular temporal
modality of this thought which, although partially conscious, “is primar-
ily an unconscious process.” (xix) This process is a transmitted one, and
I am tempted to say that transmission is the mode of its reality, the epis-
temological modality of the thought of sexual difference itself. It does
not belong to a single psyche; when it does belong to a psyche, it is only
by virtue of its having been transmitted, and in the course of its further
transmission. So any given psyche would be a kind of way station or relay
point for the transmissibility of this thought. This point seems to me
to be important for Mitchell since she wants to establish what she calls
“a shared mental terrain,” one which ultimately serves as the condition
for understanding the nexus of the psyche and ideology.
It is interesting to note the two examples that Mitchell offers to sup-
port her claim about the transmission of unconscious ideas, especially the
transmission of unconscious ideas regarding sexual difference. But first,
I want to draw attention to the commitment that her position makes to
a semantic understanding of masculine and feminine. She not only refers
to ideas about sexual difference, which would undoubtedly include inter-
pretations and semantic delimitations, but she is willing, throughout, to
identify sexual difference with masculine and feminine. I am wondering
whether it is not possible, as some psychoanalytic accounts of sexual dif-
ference have insisted, to say that sexual difference is persistent, that it
works as “an undertow,” characterized by a constitutive conservatism,
without saying that sexual difference is invariably identified with mascu-
line and feminine. Can there be sexual difference, say, within homosexu-
ality that cannot quite be described as masculine and feminine, and what
implications would that have for separating sexual difference, under-
stood as a deep-seated and largely unconscious thought, and specific
social ways of determining that thought? In other words, at what point is
sexual difference separable from its social determinations? It would seem
that we need to assume such a separation when we claim that changes
in the social organization of men and women are impeded by a conser-
vatism that seems to be inherent to sexual difference itself. If we define
60 JUDITH BUTLER

sexual difference as “masculine and feminine,” are we not already giving

social organization to those terms? And if the “shared mental terrain”
established through the generational transmission of the terms is also
a social reality, however unconscious, then it seems we are not talking
about a psychic reality, presumptively unconscious, and a social reality,
presumptively conscious, but two modes of sociality, even two temporali-
ties of the social, one that lags behind, struggles to impede progress, and
another that forges ahead, trying to effect social change.
On the one hand, there are progressive social reforms involving gen-
der equity that find themselves impeded by something unconscious,
something unconscious that belongs to sexual difference. On the other
hand, what impedes such social reforms is itself “a largely unconsciously
acquired history,” one that presumes “a shared mental terrain.” So the
social clearly occurs twice, each time in a modality of history, one that
is acquired and performs a regressive and conservative function, and
another that belongs to a more deliberate orientation toward an illumi-
nated present. As Mitchell, citing Freud, aptly puts it, “Mankind never
lives entirely in the present. The past, the tradition of the race and the
people, lives on in the ideologies of the superego and yields only slowly
to the influences of the present and to new change . . . ” (SE XXII, 167).
Of course, it is this phrase, “ideologies of the super-ego” that interests
Mitchell, and right so. The super-ego belongs to the later topography of
Freud, and it is the one that Lacan largely neglects when he considers the
conscious (mapping it onto the castration complex almost exclusively).
Mankind does not live fully in the present: some history is transmitted at
the level of the unconscious, and it has to do with sexual difference. How
do we understand this slower and more recalcitrant history, this strange
undertow, as part of an ideology of the super-ego?
I am not altogether sure how to make this link, but it seems to me
that one of the two examples Mitchell offers to illustrate this point help
to shed light on the connection. The first is “the unconscious sense of
guilt” experienced by those who have not committed any crime. To use
this example to support the idea of “a shared mental terrain” or a gen-
erationally transmitted set of unconscious thought, we would have to
assume that the guilt actually attached to past deeds, and that at some
point in history, the guilt was commensurate with a crime. And yet,
as we know from Freud’s own analysis in “Criminals from a Sense of
Guilt” that guilt can be related to a wish or a fantasy, even grounded in
a confusion about what is a wish and what is a deed. In that essay from
1916, Freud describes people who relate stories, mainly from their early
youth, about committing crimes in order to achieve a sense of “mental
relief” from “an oppressive feeling of guilt.” (SE, IV:332) He concludes
 ID EOLOGIES OF T HE SUPER- EGO 61

that “the sense of guilt was present before the misdeed” and he asks after
the “origin of this obscure sense of guilt” that precedes the deed. He
concludes that this guilt derives from the Oedipus complex, not to deeds
performed, but to “intentions” or wishes to commit incest and parricide.
But let us note that even here the guilt pertains to intentions or wishes,
but not to deeds done.
The criminal act that follows from a sense of guilt seeks to install a
commensurability of guilt and crime where there is none. In other words,
there is no reason to infer from crimeless guilt that there was once a
crime, but only that there were desires which, if acted upon, would result
in crimes; it may well emerge from an anxiety over unacted desire—a
desire to have done with the anxiety—and may well be a way that the
psyche punishes itself in advance for an act it has not yet committed—
and never will. Perhaps guilt is finally more bearable than anxiety or,
indeed, fear of punishment, especially if one can orchestrate being pun-
ished by one’s hand, as it were.
In Kleinian terms, that guilt that corresponds to no act may well be
a way of managing an impulse that could possibly destroy an object of
love and dependency, and so operates as a prophylactic against destruc-
tive aims. In any case, we can see that the existence of an unconscious
sense of guilt (or partially conscious one) which seems to correspond to
no misdeed may well refer to a possible future just as well as to an inher-
ited past. But one could say that the fear of punishment follows from the
awareness of a crime and, so, the prior the awareness of a set of rules or
laws. But it could be the other way around. In that same essay, Freud
notes that “criminals from sense of guilt” was known to Nietzsche as
well. In Nietzsche, the social necessity to curb destructive impulses gives
rise to law, even forms part of the very genealogy of law. And for Freud
as well, can we really say that law precedes the possibility of crime? Or
is it rather that the understanding that certain acts will destroy those
relations upon which we depend most fundamentally, we devise law to
stop us from acting on those destructive impulses and imperilling the
social and intimate conditions of our own survival? So one question that
emerges here is whether rules and laws are transmitted, or whether they
are, in fact, remade time and again precisely in order to limit and manage
the destructive consequences of unimpeded impulse or desire?
Mitchell likens this example of guilt that precedes crime to a second
one in order to make the case for an unconsciously acquired history that
proves recalcitrant in the face of demands for social change. In the second
example, she writes, “a child raised by two parents of the same sex . . . may
make a “ ‘normative’ adjustment to heterosexuality . . . ” In fact, the argu-
ment suggests that the child emerges into heterosexuality (by which,
62 JUDITH BUTLER

I suppose, she means a presumptively normative heterosexuality, what-

ever that might be) not simply or only by virtue of biology, educational
influences, media, and other environmental factors; rather, some other
force has intervened, one that cannot be accounted for by “the actual sit-
uation.” Mitchell writes, “unconscious thought processes are an impor-
tant contribution to these instances of normalization.” (xxiv) So here we
are meant to assume that unconscious thought exercises its “conserva-
tive” force on sexuality, that a set of socially transmitted and acquired
thoughts about sexual difference emerge in the heterosexuality of the
child where it might not be predicted on the basis of parental influence
and identification. In some ways, this confirms what Mitchell argued
in Psychoanalysis and Feminism, namely, that that “conscious, deliberate
socialization is inadequate to explain the structure of sexual difference.”
And yet, it seems that here the heterosexuality of the child raised by same
sex parents is another example of this “persistence” of sexual difference.
How are we to understand sexual difference in this instance as exempli-
fied by heterosexuality? Is this a paradigmatic exemplification? And if so,
does that mean that the persistence of sexual difference, understood as
historically transmitted unconscious thoughts, is also the persistence of
heterosexuality as the social organization of sexuality?
I am of course reminded here of the late Eve Sedgwick who argued
that heterosexuality contains within it all sorts of affiliative links and
erotic ties with homosexuality, that sexual acts, including anal inter-
course or even kissing, can be relatively indifferent to matters of gender,
and that cross-identifications and modes of triangulation often install
homosexuality at the heart of heterosexuality. Similarly, we know from
various modes of lesbian and gay sexuality that heterosexuality can be
rehearsed and restaged in the context of homosexuality, and that we are
talking about a nexus here that can and does form complicated con-
figurations of sexuality. So if a child of one parent, two parents, or four
parents, of different or same sex, or a child with one sibling or six, turns
out to “be” heterosexual, that does not actually tell us very much about
what that person wants or, indeed, how she or he wants it.
I could go on at length, and maybe I will have a chance to do that
later. But I want, as I promised, to use this example to arrive at the
questions to which Mitchell has asked us to return: kinship and ideology.
But to do so, I have to ask for some patience as we follow the steps of
this argument. First, let us consider the two examples in relation to one
another. The child who has done nothing wrong and is not exposed to
hyper-critical judgments from his or her parents nevertheless suffers from
self-beratement and guilt. The child—who remains ungendered for the
purposes of this example—is raised by two parents of the same sex, and
 ID EOLOGIES OF T HE SUPER- EGO 63

turns out to be heterosexual in orientation. We are meant to see incom-

mensurabilities in both instances, and we are meant to infer that only a
time lag between the present and the past can account for this anachro-
nistic emergence of guilt or desire. The crime happened earlier, and so
the guilt is effectively acquired from another time. That heterosexuality
is also somehow transmitted from earlier times, and so emerges now
in the child in spite of the homosexuality of his or her parents seems
also to be a sign of this conservatism, this “undertow” we call sexual
difference.
The first example does not pertain immediately to sexuality, though
it certainly could. It could be the nameless or timeless crime of Oedipus
transmitted through the ages; or it could be any number of guilt reac-
tions to the potential consequences of living out sexual desire. Taken
together, the examples suggest a circuit of guilt and desire, if not a resur-
gence of Oedipus himself. But whether or not Oedipus gets the last word
in this scenario is of less interest to me than some other assumptions at
work here.
The first has to do with the emergent or accomplished heterosexual-
ity of this child. To understand the importance of this example as a way
of confirming historically acquired unconscious thoughts about sexual
difference, we would have to accept sexual difference is not already oper-
ative in the home or in the larger circuits of kinship and surrounding
social relations. I do not mean to take a fully sociological approach to
this question, but rather to consider the peculiar ways in which “trans-
mitting” and “acquiring” take place when it comes to the development
of more or less stable forms of sexual orientation. After all, if we were
to change the example, and ask how it is that a lesbian is in some ways
formed within a family with heterosexual parents, we would not be able
to say with ease that some unconscious content regarding sexual differ-
ence was transmitted to the child, and that this accounts for the incom-
mensurability between the actual parental situation and the form of that
child’s sexual desire. Apparently, the straight kid who emerges from gay
or lesbian parents acquires a desire that cannot be accounted for by “the
actual situation.” But the lesbian kid who emerges from straight parents
or a single parent may also not be easily accounted for by the actual
situation. But this not-accounting, this incommensurability does not
seem necessarily to follow from the constitutive conservatism of sexual
difference or, indeed, its ostensible corollary, heterosexuality. It may
well be the case that sexuality is formed in response to something that is
not manifest in the parenting environment, but why would that be any
more or less true for the straight or gay kid, or indeed for the bisexual
or asexual?
64 JUDITH BUTLER

I am not sure that the formation of sexual desire emerges on the basis
of a clearly readable mimesis. I want to be like the one parent and to
desire the other, so I model myself on the one I want to be like. Maybe,
but it could easily be the case that the only way a girl can inhabit a certain
feminine position is with another girl, or the only way a boy can inhabit
a certain masculine position is with another boy. Or it may be that the
adolescent seeks to respond to a maternal demand to be the husband
she never had, and the adolescent can in this instance be a boy (and so
emerge as heterosexual) or a girl (and so emerge as homosexual). It can
be that only within certain sociological framings that fantasy can come
alive, and very often there is no commensurability between the sociologi-
cal framing (queer, straight, gay, bi) and the form of desire, so that we
find straight couples with strong queer desires, and queer couples enact-
ing forms of transformed or transposed heterosexuality.
Our vocabularies tend to falter here, since we are no longer sure
whether we are to call this straight or gay, and our not being able to
call it by the right term may be part of its erotic significance and its
social importance. In any case, mimesis is hardly the route to desire,
and even if it were, every effort at mimetic doubling risks veering off
from its model, functioning through displacement or metonymy. So
this allows a lesbian to identify with the father or to find the father
in another woman, or not to find him at all, but to construct another
fantasy, one that may well be a palimpsest that does not settle into one
object or another, even though it takes place at the site of some girl. She
may well have more in common with some guy who is doing the same
sort of thing in relation to his father or some other masculine figure,
but at the site of a girl as well. Indeed, the child of lesbian parents may
well end up desiring a girl as a form of identifying with his parents
objects, or becoming part of the crowd. This may well be a greater form
of loyalty than becoming gay, which would introduce the masculine
object of desire in another way, or set up a rival for the lesbian prince
who knows he has the absolute and irreplaceable love of both of his
mothers. I heard a great story in which a young adolescent girl says to
her two dads, will you be disappointed in me if I am not gay, and they
respond, listen, if you are gay, you will be like us; if you like men, you
will be like us, so in either case, you can’t escape us! This may seem
to be a strange parental narcissism, perhaps, but one that seeks to give
permission to any possible trajectory of desire, which, of course, may
function as an interdiction all the same, especially if one considers the
potential burden of limitless options.
We could certainly say in all of these scenarios that sexual difference
is at play, and I do not have a problem with that claim. But if something
 ID EOLOGIES OF T HE SUPER- EGO 65

about sexual difference persists, how do we describe it? I am not sure that
what persists are established semantic ways of organizing sexual differ-
ence, already formed legacies of the past that are relayed into the present
without translation, transposition, without some loss, without some new
twist or turn. For this reason, I am even less sure that heterosexuality is
a sure way of confirming sexual difference or providing its paradigmatic
instance. But even if both of those speculative propositions proved true
(and I am not sure how they could finally prove true), an ever more fun-
damental problem emerges in my mind. And that has to do with how we
understand “transmission” and “acquisition”—and this seems related to
the key problem of “communicating unconscious ideas” intersubjectively
and trans-generationally or, indeed, any broader thesis about shared
mental terrain or, indeed, collective mind.
First of all, we have to ask whether what is communicated actually
arrives in the form in which it is sent. In other words, is unconscious
communication transparent and effective or does it function a bit more
like Kafka’s “imperial message,” where the message is sent, but circuits
through so many detours that its arrival is never quite certain, and no
arbiter is really on site to tell us whether or not any message actually
arrived. And if the content or the message does arrive, does it arrive in a
form that recognizable, or has it undergone alterations and displacements
on the course of its journey? What are the operative presumptions behind
the idea of communication and acquisition? Does one invariably acquire
something other than what was sent? Does one receive something more
or less than what was proffered? Through what chains of displacement
does unconscious communication occur, if it really can be said to occur
at all? And is there not, as Jean Laplanche suggests, always a question of
translation? If so, through what language, or set of languages, do such
translations occur?
Indeed, for Laplanche the idea of unconscious communication is not
finally acceptable, although certainly messages are sent, interpellations
are made, and at an unconscious level. There is no guarantee and, indeed,
no possibility that the conditions of their reception accord with the con-
ditions of address. In fact, messages arrive in enigmatic form, inscru-
table. So, according to Laplanche, we cannot look to the unconscious
communication of ideas without first interrogating the conditions of
any such communication, and without asking whether content remains
intact as it is relayed from one unconscious to another. Importantly,
then, if the transmissibility of the laws of culture depend on the pos-
sibility of the effective unconscious communication of such laws, then
calling into question the transparency and effectivity of that mode of
communication has important consequences of thinking about the laws
66 JUDITH BUTLER

of culture, the laws that are said to be essential to human society, the
laws that are generally thought to be the laws of sexual difference, that
explain the persistence of patriarchy and the relative intransigence of the
symbolic order.
We can accept, for instance, that there is an unconscious operation
at work that seems to relay another time into this time, that we are not
completely of the present, and that another scene acts upon us as we try
to find our way within present time. But even if we accept this time-lag
as constitutive of the psyche, it does not follow that we have to accept a
universal set of rules or laws as belonging to that other time, or transmit-
ted from that other time. Indeed, that other time may well be an histori-
cal time, the times that belong to prior generations, but that is not the
same as saying it is the time of cultural law, of the paternal law, of the
symbolic, or of the laws that are essential to culture. This structuralist
presumption supplements the theory of the unconscious, but it is in no
way presupposed by its operation. As Laplanche departs from Lacan, he
calls into question the means and mechanisms by which the unconscious
desires of the adult world impinge upon the infant; this impingement
does not communicate an intact set of laws in clear and effective ways.
On the contrary, these enigmatic signifiers become lodged in the psychic
life of the infant and initiate the drives as both overwhelming and excit-
ing (these are, in effect, the terms through which Laplanche reformulates
the scene of general seduction.
Something of this is given a specifically historical analysis in
Psychoanalysis and Feminism when Mitchell notes in the final chapter,
“The Cultural Revolution,” that “the complexity of capitalist society
makes archaic the kinship structures and incest taboos for the majority
of people and yet it preserves them through thick and thin.” So, there
seems to be a mandate to preserve an archaism in the face of social real-
ity. How are we, then, to understand this archaism? In 1974, Mitchell
wrote, and underscored, the following important claim: “the capital-
ist economy implies that for the masses demands of exogamy and the
social taboo on incest are irrelevant; but nevertheless it must preserve
both these and the patriarchal structure that they imply.” (409) The
argument reminds me of the recent debates in France in which some
opponents of gay marriage actively worry that gay marriage will dis-
solve the institutions of marriage and family even when it turns out that
the majority of social arrangements cannot be described as family orga-
nized by heterosexual marriage. What is called “demarriage” has already
become the norm. And so we might conclude that precisely because, at
the social level, demarriage has become the norm, heterosexual marriage
must be defended at the ideological level.
 ID EOLOGIES OF T HE SUPER- EGO 67

In this example, Mitchell is showing how two temporalities are work-

ing in tension with one another or, rather, how the injunction to preserve
an older temporality is made in the face of a present one, and how that
injunction impedes the progress of the present. The contradiction seems
to take place between two historical times. But this is different, to be
sure, from what seems to emerge as the later position, evidenced by the
1999 introduction, namely, that the rules of human society are invariant,
that they belong to human society as such, and that, as a consequence,
although they are transmitted through time, they belong properly to
no specific time. It may be that Mitchell wants to say that the rules of
human society belong to human society as such, but that they take dif-
ferent forms at different times. But even then, how would we distinguish
between the invariant rule and the variable historical form?
Much of the debate about transmission depends upon how we under-
stand what it is that drives convey. I cannot here go into the various com-
ponent parts of the drive or the debates that have ensued. But I wish only
to note that Freud despairs of finding a sure biological basis for the theo-
rization of drives, even as he does not dispute the biological condition for
their inception. In “Drives and Their Vicissitudes” (1915) he makes the
famous claim that “an ‘instinct’ (Triebe),” which he puts in single quota-
tion marks, “appears to us as a concept on the frontier (Grenze) between
the mental and the somatic,” after which his sentence seems to meander
and stumble: “as the psychical representative of the stimuli originating
from within the organism and reaching the mind, as a measure of the
demand made upon the mind for work in consequence of its connection
with the body.” (SE 14, 121–22) It is rather the idea of the drive differ-
entiated from instinct,1 defined infamously as a border concept in which
soma and psyche are not fully or finally separable from one another.2
This produces a tension within Freud’s thought, if not a development
from one conception of drives to another.3 As border-concepts, drives
do not precisely attach to representatives, since the drive is defined as
the very border between somatic and ideational domains; indeed, later
in New Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis (1932), Freud will find a
mode of affirmation for his theoretical despair: “The theory of the drives
is so to say our mythology. Drives are mythical entities, magnificent in
their indefiniteness.” And in the following year, he wrote something
similar to Einstein: “It may perhaps seem to you as though our theories
are a kind of mythology and, in the present case, not even an agreeable
one. But does not every science come in the end to a kind of mythology
like this? Cannot the same be said today of your own Physics?” Here it
seems that drives are that which elude definition itself, that which exceed
and confound the concepts by which they might be grasped, even as we
68 JUDITH BUTLER

have to assume that the desire for definition is motored by drive as well.
Freud moves invariably into metaphor precisely here: “a stimuli reach-
ing the mind” a “border” or “frontier” and then finally, a mythology.
Something exceeds our conceptual grasp, and so compels us to encoun-
ter the limits of conceptualization. Mythology in this instance is precisely
the effort to give an account for that which no definition or explanation
can suffice.
How we conceptualize the drives has everything to do with how we
imagine what it is that drives convey. And what and how drives convey
has everything to do with how rules may or may not be transmitted
trans-generationally. I am not sure that drives can be effectively sepa-
rated the ideation, and that even the effort to define the drive is but
a further instance of its operation. My wager is that drives do not loy-
ally replicate the “messages” that initiate them; in fact, the messages, or
signifiers, are inscrutable and overwhelming, and they prompt a set of
displacements, so that drives, and sexuality more generally, take form
through metonymic processes that are not easily foreseen or predicted.
The trajectory of displacement is the trajectory of the drive itself. This
is why, for instance, Laplanche insists that the drive is not constrained
by biological teleologies, including reproduction. In a sense, there is
no drive that preexists that metonymic sequence or, rather, there is no
drive that is not transformed by the sequence it sets in motion. In other
words, what is passed down or, indeed, communicated, is not the same
law in the same form, and not the same law in a different form, and not
even the traumatic force of law. Rather, what is passed down is a forceful
impression, enigmatic and exciting, from an adult world whose libidinal
communications are overwhelming and unreadable for the infant. That
impression seems to carry a message, but only in encoded forms that
remain indecipherable for the infant and child and remain so to some
extent throughout adult life.
So, this is not the ordering of desire through law, but the prompting
of displacements through messages both powerful and enigmatic. But
before I seal the impression that I am trying to counter Laplanche to
Mitchell, let me confess to having some problem with the Laplanchian
idea of a “message.” This notion of communication implies, from the
outset, that some semantic content is separable from the form of its
delivery. I don’t think that can be the case, since forms of delivery are
already saturated by semantics, and that we cannot easily separate these
functions of speech and discourse from their semantic action and con-
sequence. The message, in other words, is not a propositional content
embedded in a mode of address; we would probably object if students
read poems that way, trying to dig out a propositional meaning from
 ID EOLOGIES OF T HE SUPER- EGO 69

a poetic form by throwing the form away. Similarly, I would object if

anyone failed to see that even modes of address, such as the famous “hey
you there,” are themselves citational and ritual moments, and that they
assume, carry, and dispel semantic meanings precisely through modes of
delivery. (Let us consider that almost all of Brechtian theatre relies on
this insight: we can and do change the “message” depending on how it
is delivered or performed, and this is because inflection, gesture, bodily,
and vocal comportment turn out to be essential to what is being said,
are indeed part of the saying.) Thus, the modes of addressing the infant
is a way of establishing its semantics, including the use of the proper
name, which often installs gender, or any of the interpellations that collect
around gender assignment: “what a beautiful girl you are!”
It seems to me that propositional forms cannot be easily extracted
from rhetorical modes of address, and that this holds consequences
for how we come to think about how the interpellation of gender and,
indeed, kinship takes place. One the one hand, I want to seek recourse to
Laplanche to insist that whatever generational transmission takes place,
it is not the relay of a “human set of laws” considered to be invariant and
established, but rather a powerful set of impressions, whose power is not
extricable from its semantics, and whose final translation into proposi-
tional form is invariably thwarted. On the other hand, I want to counter
this view by suggesting that interpellation is its own semantics; it is not
just carrying a message, but it is, in its form and delivery, a certain kind
of message, and that the particular way its force is stylized has everything
to do with the effect it wields.
What propels the displacements of desire is less an effort to evade the
murderous consequences of a prohibitive law than an effort to fathom
a set of adult desires that have impinged upon, and formed, an internal
structure of the psyche. The infant is unknowing and, indeed, helpless,
in relation to these overwhelming and confusing messages relayed more
or less unconsciously by the adult world. As a result, the sexuality that
emerges, understood as a series of displacements from instinct, is a result
of this helplessness in the face of the desirous adult world. The infant
becomes an investigative theorist on such an occasion, trying to fathom
the strange force and direction of his or her own impulses. The problem
for infantile sexuality is not how to evade death by punishment, but how
to fathom a desire that is, from the start, already the desire of the other.
For those who appreciate how the Lacanian position has been bound
up with structuralist models of kinship, this departure from Lacanian
doxa is enormously consequential. Let’s remember that several analysts
and social psychologists of Lacanian persuasion have been active in
arguing against gay and lesbian parenting in France (what is called
70 JUDITH BUTLER

“homoparentalité”), and that they often refer to the symbolic positions

of Mother and Father as necessary points of reference for any child who
hopes to emerge into the world in a nonpsychotic way. This intense
effort to install a contingent form of heterosexual parenting as a precon-
dition of culture itself and even as an invariant norm of psychic health
has led to serious legal disenfranchisements and unnecessary patholo-
gizations. It has led as well to a widespread misunderstanding, if not
phobia, about the variability of kinship structures, the concrete practices
of a post-structuralism, and the viability for the infant and child of any
number of parenting and care-taking arrangements that provide condi-
tions of love.
Theoretically, Laplanche’s departure from Lacan in this regard implies
a full critique of the paternal law, linked to the structuralist account of the
exchange of women and the universalist premises of “culture.” This view
of the paternal law is countered by a conception of a non-gendered “adult
world” that generates and imposes enigmatic signifiers on an infant who
responds with both cognitive helplessness and incitation of the drive. As
a result, primary unconscious and sexual messages are impressed upon
the child (though “impression” may well be too soft a term). Moreover,
those primary others whose desires are communicated through various
practices are themselves in the grip of such messages (have themselves
been incited unconsciously by such messages). The ones whose desires
become the foreign and inciting elements in my own desire are them-
selves propelled by what is foreign and inciting, and invariably so. In this
way, transgenerational transmission probably resembles Borges’s story,
“Circular Ruins” where one person discovers that he has his reality only
in another person’s dream, and that the same principle applies to that
dreamer, whose reality is secured only in another’s dream. This goes on
for generations, without end.
Hence, all the characters in the scene are to a large part, and irre-
versibly, unknowing about the meaning and content of the messages
by which they are incited and impelled. They have contracted someone
else’s dream, or they are themselves living in “the other scene.” There
is something foreign in desire, and desire makes us always in some ways
foreign to ourselves. This is because what is foreign has not only made its
way into us, but has become the source of drives, that which incites the
very possibility of an “I” who constitutes a subject of desire.
So here we can see that there is a difference between an idea of uncon-
scious communication that presupposes the inevitable transmission of a
set of laws or rules that are essential to human society and another mode
of sending messages which, via Kafka, Borges, and Laplanche, arrive in
forms that were not expected, remain enigmatic or unreadable, or prompt
 ID EOLOGIES OF T HE SUPER- EGO 71

modes of displacement along metonymic lines that establish sexuality in

excess of both biological teleologies and social normalization.
The difference between these two views has implications for how
we understand the idea of cultural laws and their relation to variable
forms of gender and kinship. In Mitchell’s chapter, “The Different Self,
the Phallus and the Father,” she writes, “Before it is born, the child is
assigned a name and is son or daughter of . . . ; it has to learn to fit into
this already ascribed place. Whatever the child does, whatever the spe-
cific accidents of its individual history, all take place within the larger
framework of this human order. It is within the Freudian ‘unconscious’
that the laws of this order speak.” (391)
Later, she discusses why the father represents those laws that govern
the human society, and here is where she describes such laws as “essential
to society.” Even in the 1999 preface, Mitchell reconfirms her belief in
such an underlying set of laws. She notes that object relations has under-
scored the importance of the mother “but was uninterested in any under-
lying laws.” She worries as well about those Lacanian efforts to establish
the mother in a “pre-Symbolic domain” and argues that both Lacan and
object-relations fail to situate the mother “within the laws of the human
order.” If it is those laws that are supposed to be communicated to us
through the stable and predictable mechanisms of unconscious communi-
cation, and if the unconscious can work only by translating and displacing
any set of injunctions it may communicate, then we cannot rely on such
a domain to validate the invariant rules of culture. We can only look to
such a domain to find the series of invariant rules, spawned from transla-
tion and transposition, that follow the logic of the drive, that is, displace-
ment along routes that are never fully predictable or expected. Of course,
we have to be able to account for that recalcitrance, that undertow, that
countercurrent that makes our efforts at social change so difficult. This
remains a crucial, irreversible insight of Psychoanalysis and Feminism. But
there is no reason to take that recalcitrance and countercurrent as a sign of
the invariant laws of human society; why cannot that conservative under-
tow be precisely the drag of history, something communicated through
the norms of kinship, norms that change, with difficulty, over time?
Mitchell throws down the gauntlet in the 1999 preface when she
notes that Lacan’s rereading of Freud “is in some ways more dismal for
feminist politics than is Freud’s original version.” Without the super-ego,
Lacan cannot give an account of change. Positions can be shuffled in
relation to the problem of castration. Her challenge is to get us to return
to the second metapsychology, over and against Lacan, but without sub-
scribing to ego psychology. And she worries that recent trends in queer
theory and various modes of postmodernism, whatever those might be,
72 JUDITH BUTLER

are derived from this dismal reading of Freud, bequeathed by Lacan.

The idea of “deliberately enact[ing] different stances” seems to follow
from the incommensurability between which identificatory relation a
body takes in relation to an invariant position; so the phallus can be
occupied by this body or another, regardless of gender, or someone may
occupy a position of castration, and someone else, the position of the
castration threat, regardless of gender. The problem with such positions,
variously characterized as the “political practices of ‘performance’ and
‘performativity,’ ” is that they do not give us “any account of historical
change.”(xxxii) I would add that such positions, which I think are rather
distinct from practices of performativity, presume and ratify an invariant
structure to the symbolic order, and make of “agency” and “resistance”
a futile, sometimes amusing effort, to simply to work the transposability
of the law, but not, finally, its legitimacy or timeless pretensions.
I do not think that theories of performativity were derived from the
Lacanian reading of Freud, and, indeed, the “pink Freud” that became so
important to critics such as Leo Bersani, Diana Fuss, and John Fletcher
represented a return to Freud within queer theory. Indeed, it might make
more sense to read Gayle Rubin’s (1975) “Traffic in Women” and her
particular use of Juliet Mitchell to understand the theoretical moment
of departure for queer theory. She thought that by remaking kinship, we
could remake gender. In her subsequent work, she sought to establish
sexuality as a semiautonomous domain, and this produced a certain ten-
sion between feminism and queer theory. But I do not think Lacan was in
the picture at that point: Foucault, however, was. My own view is that it
was a mistake to leave kinship beyond, since the question of what can and
cannot be changed within the rules of kinship became central questions
for new modes of association and intimacy. We had not yet answered the
question of why it is so hard to change kinship relations, or why it is that
experimentation in social organization is so often accompanied by a cer-
tain slowness, if not recalcitrance, on the part of the psyche.
The study of kinship has always been linked with the study of ritual,
and that this has, after structuralism, given way to historical accounts of
changing kinship organizations through an examination of how rituals
can and do change; indeed, how rituals must change. The feminist and
gay/lesbian work on kinship, including the work of Marilyn Strathern
and Cath Weston, has argued not only that kinship arrangements do
vary, but that variability marks the very process of transmission. Kinship
denotes those web of relations by which we are sustained—or, indeed,
in which failures of sustenance are enormously consequential. But kin-
ship can be reduced neither to the family nor to triadic relations. We can
surely ask how Oedipalization occurs within single parent families or
 ID EOLOGIES OF T HE SUPER- EGO 73

within gay families or, indeed, in extended kinship networks where there
is a distribution of parental function and position. But to ask these ques-
tions is precisely to ask how psychoanalysis must be reformulated in light
of changing kinship arrangements. It is also to ask how changing kinship
arrangements come up against a countercurrent or undertow that is not
so easily transformed through purely social means.
If we think about the variable conditions of kinship and what new
challenges they pose for psychoanalysis, we may well think about the
tasks for psychoanalysis and for feminism differently. To what extent
do we operate within certain idealized, if not normative, conceptions
of kinship when we describe the initial moments of gender assignment?
I mentioned before this example of gender assignment and familial place
in Psychoanalysis and Feminism: “Before it is born, the child is assigned a
name . . . ” Well, that is not always true, especially if the child is born and
directly given up for adoption. It can remain nameless in the interim,
or be given only a provisional name with the understanding that the
name will change. And who is the “one” who makes this assignment?
Sometimes a child is left abandoned by virtue of a natural disaster or con-
ditions of poverty. And it may be that the child is in social services, in a
series of foster homes, or ends up finally in a family situation where more
than one person is occupying the maternal function. Let us remember
Winnicott’s quite important suggestion that the maternal may not be an
object or a person, but, rather, a field, and that what one might find in
that field are “bits and pieces” of maternal function. So is there an already
ascribed place here? Or must we understand ascription and assignment as
acts that must be performed time and again, part of an iterable structure
with its own risks of failure, derailment, and reformulation?
So if we agree with Mitchell that a return to questions of kinship and
ideology are necessary, even a new examination of the “ideologies of
the super-ego,” and if we are to seek recourse to the theory of ideology
through an Althusserian interpellation in particular, then it seems to me
we have to be prepared for the fact that interpellation does not just hap-
pen once, but time and again, and that the chain of interpellative assign-
ments forms something of the social history within which a particular
psychic life is formed and lived. In this way, the infant is not born into
a structure, but into a temporally reiterated chain of interpellations or
assignments that have to be negotiated in time, that precede and exceed
the life of the child, which may well, in the case of adoption, entail a
series of geographical, if not geopolitical, and linguistic displacements.
No single set of laws replicates itself in the unconscious of that infant, but
only a series of transpositions and impingements, never fully conscious,
demanding a process of translation that can never fully return to, or
74 JUDITH BUTLER

grasp, the powerful and enigmatic impression that prompts that largely
unpredictable trajectory of the drives.
Let us note here that the act of gender assignment or, indeed, the
giving of a name, is one that already carries some enigmatic desire from
the adult world. An assignment encodes some inscrutable desire from the
adult world. It is carried in the proper name, but also in the assignment
of gender. In this sense, some trace of sexuality is already at work in the
interpellation of gender, in the sociological practice of gender assign-
ment (a point on which I disagree with Laplanche). One might even say
that through gender assignment, “unconscious thoughts are communi-
cated,” but there seems to be no nonspeculative way to ground the claim
that the laws of human society are precisely what are communicated in
and through such unconscious thoughts.
According to Laplanche, communication is invariably errant; what is
sent is not the same as what arrives. If this is true, a truth that would
also establish something of the relevance of Kafka for thinking about the
transmission of sexual difference, then what would that continual misin-
terpretation and displacement do to the “communication” of sexual dif-
ference? Perhaps then we could begin to understand why it is that some
people change their assignment, or wish to, and how keeping or refusing
the name is bound up with a larger sense of the network of kinship to
which one belongs. How else would we understand the claims made, for
instance, by the intersex movement that an infant should be assigned a
gender, but that the assignment should be subject to re-consideration by
that person as she grows older, or the demand for legal re-assignment
that has formed the political site of mobilization for so many transgen-
dered people. Or even within genderqueer or butch-femme contexts,
when pleas such as “call me a boy” or “let me be your girl” become the
site of intense erotic exchange on the part of any number of genders.
How else would we understand the violent attacks on transgendered
people on the street or the continuing pathologization of homosexual
“femininity” in boys within the DSM and other diagnostic tools? And
how do we understand compulsory maternity or even anorexia as injunc-
tions that are transmitted as part of a legacy of gender norms? Are they
not ways of communicating the “rules” of sexual difference? Are there
really rules that are not norms? And what modes do we have to intro-
duce errancy and the unforeseen into such a transmission or communica-
tion? And how might we reconceive kinship once this errant and fecund
sort of transmission becomes the way that one generation emerges from
another, at once bearing the historical weight of what comes before and
moving toward something new—what we might understand as the very
dynamic of social struggle.
 ID EOLOGIES OF T HE SUPER- EGO 75

Notes
1. “[Freud] uses instinct in the traditional sense, which designates a
behavioural schema that is adapted to a particular end or aim, with a
pregiven object . . . is hereditary and innate, so not acquired . . . ” (23)
whereas “drive”—“the more properly psychoanalytic concept” (24),
which involve “primal fantasies” understood as “precipitates from the
history of human civilization.” (23–4) Laplanche, Essays on Otherness,
tr. John Fletcher, London: Routledge, 1999.
2. “Since we cannot wait for another science to present us with the final
conclusions on the theory of instincts (Triebe), it is far more to the
purpose that we should try to see what light may be thrown upon this
basic problem of biology by a synthesis of the psychological phenom-
enon.” (SE 14: 19)
3. See Laplanche, “The Drive and its Source-Object” in Essays on
Otherness.

References
Freud, S. [1915] 2001. “Instincts and Their Vicissitudes.” SE 14, 109–140.
Freud, S. [1916] 2001. “Introductory Lectures.” SE 15–16, 1–463.
Freud, S. [1933] 2001. “New Introductory Lectures.” SE 22, 1–182.
Laplanche, J. 1999. Essays in Otherness, tr. John Fletcher, London: Routledge.
Mitchell, J. 1999a. “Introduction, 1999” to Psychoanalysis and Feminism.
New York: Basic Books.
Rubin, G. 1975. “The Traffic in Women” in Toward an Anthropology of Women,
edited by R. Reiter, pp. 157–210. New York: Mon Rev.
 Chapter 4

Debating Sexual Difference, Politics,

and the Unconscious: With Discussant
Section by Jacqueline Rose

Juliet Mitchell

The previous chapter presented Judith Butler’s address at the symposium

held to mark Juliet Mitchell’s retirement from Cambridge University in
2009. The first part of this chapter presents Mitchell’s reply to Butler.
Mitchell identifies misunderstandings, and debates Butler’s account
of psychoanalysis and the oppression of women. The second part of this
chapter presents remarks made by Jacqueline Rose, discussant at the
symposium.

Juliet Mitchell: When it was first presented at the Symposium for my

retirement from Cambridge in 2009, Jacqueline Rose was the discussant
of Judith Butler’s paper then called “Ideologies of the Superego,” which
has been developed and renamed as “Rethinking Sexual Difference and
Kinship in Mitchell’s Psychoanalysis and Feminism” (2013). On the ear-
lier occasion Rose commented: ‘I am sure . . . that I am not the only person
in this room who might have felt at moments that the gap between these
two thinkers is too vast to be bridged’ (see Rose, below). Rose perceived
that, interesting as Butler’s work undoubtedly is, its interests are tangen-
tial to mine. Rose managed to make something of a bridge across the
gap she had perceived but only through offering her own very interesting
but different perspective—a third position. Here I argue that Butler’s
interest in heteronormativity has led her to neglect what is specific to the
oppression of women, which leads her to misread my argument.
Her account of gender performativity is a powerful analytical tool
and can be helpful politically in contesting essentialism. However, it
misses the psychological consequences of sexual differences in women
and men which arises, formulated through prohibitions on desire and
murder which every subject must face. Butler alleges that I identify sexual
78 JULIET MITCHELL

difference with “masculine” and “feminine,” fatalistically pinning biology

to culture. This is quite wrong. Biological femaleness and psychic femi-
ninity never fully match up.
I start with a general discussion of why Butler and I might be moti-
vated by problems which overlap on some terrain. Then I move to a
dialogue with Butler, through replies to selections from the original talk
which include previously unpublished material. This dialogue will address
issues of the intergenerational transmission of culture and oppression,
the implication of unconscious prohibition, the distinction between the
drive and desire, and how to formulate the political task of contesting the
oppression of women. It is my hope that presenting the two perspectives
together in this way can suggest a contact between them so that disagree-
ments can be grasped creatively.

“Sexual Difference”
Alerted by Rose’s perception and considering my own and Butler’s work
side-by-side, I have come to believe Butler and I are writing with differ-
ent agendas, different objects, different subject-matter in mind. There
is here a déjà vu with the work of Gayle Rubin, famous for her essay
“Traffic in Women” (see Rubin 1975; Rubin and Butler 1994).
In 1974 I gave a large public lecture at Ann Arbor. The lecture was a
synopsis of the argument of Psychoanalysis and Feminism, which was in
press with Pantheon and Allen Lane/Penguin, awaiting its publication
date later that year. I was asked to meet a student of the eminent anthro-
pologist, Marshall Sahlins; I did. This was Gayle Rubin. Though we
have long ago lost touch, I kept much of Rubin’s side of our subsequent
correspondence. In one of the letters we exchanged, she wrote that our
interests diverged—that hers were with the oppression of heterosexual
supremacy where mine were with male supremacy. This distinction in
our feminisms, she commented, had not been explicit between us.
I think that Butler shares Rubin’s concern when she addresses my
work. The different concerns of Rubin and Butler on the one hand, and
myself on the other, have to date remained inexplicit. Yet much falls into
place if I now read Butler’s critique of Psychoanalysis and Feminism as an
analysis and an attack on heterosexual supremacy, which contrasts to my
concern with the position of women and “sexual difference.” The psy-
choanalytic explanation of women and of homosexuality/heterosexuality
are often confused but they are different problematics.
At the beginning of the 1970s I was writing from my practical and
intellectual concern about what, at the time, we called the “oppres-
sion” of women. In the UK we saw “oppression” as an interim, umbrella
 S E X UA L D I F F E R E N C E , P O L I T I C S , A N D T H E U N C O N S C I O U S 79

term which could be used to signal we were not claiming women were
“exploited” in the highly technical sense deployed by Marx. We needed
therefore a different analysis and a different revolution. Calling ourselves
“women liberationists,” we were trying to construct this analysis on the
political Left. Butler in her Symposium paper (2009; chapter 3 of this
volume) and in her later differences article (2013) was critiquing my argu-
ment about women as though her field of enquiry—the abuse of homo-
sexuality, and mine—the oppression of women—were the same topic.
To have done this is to produce an interesting perspective, but to miss
the point of my 1974 book. My insistence on the changing times is to
underline a temporal distinction, so as to contextualize my argument.
So: different topics in different times.
First things first: we need greater clarity on the term “sexual differ-
ence.” Butler (2013) writes: “[Mitchell] is willing throughout, to iden-
tify sexual difference with masculine and feminine.” At no point does
Psychoanalysis and Feminism do this. The term “sexual difference” refers
to Freud’s (1933) essay on “Femininity.” The line that demarcates where
a woman can’t be a man and vice versa. All the aspects the line can fall
over—such as psychology, culture and anatomy are never in a reflec-
tive or one-to-one relationship with each other. “Sexual difference” is
a distinction between women and men that as a distinction is universal
in human societies: it is also a distinction without any specific or given
content whatsoever. Instead, it finds its content in variable ways which
relate to the fact that any society must place some prohibitions on sexual
desire and murder.
Let me illustrate as best I can. All men possess a penis unless for one
reason or another, they are castrated. But the important distinction is
not between a penis and a vagina, but between the penis and the phal-
lus. Everyone can at times lay claims to being phallic—for instance, the
phallic “mother”; but possession of the phallus is ultimately not possible
for anyone: some variable formulation of a universal prohibition on desire
and murder stands in the way. Butler’s perspective treats universal as if
it means “fixed,” but this is not a necessary corollary. I distinguish the
universality of sexual difference from the variability of gender; concepts
which operate on different levels of analysis.
Butler replaces my “sexual difference” with the term “sexual dif-
ferences,” thereby firmly confusing it with gender. Now “sexual dif-
ferences” is an interesting concept, developed for example by Barbara
Johnson (1998), for considering gender. But the use of the plural is never
the same as the use of the singular as in Psychoanalysis and Feminism
and my subsequent writings (2006). In the sense I intend by the term,
it does not make sense to describe “sexual difference” as performative.
80 JULIET MITCHELL

The universality of the mark of sexual difference and the flexibility of

its expressions can be seen in the prohibition on incest and violence that
organize kinship relations.
“Kinship” is a far more extensive network of relations than the family.
It is, and always has been highly variable. For Psychoanalysis and Feminism
the exchange of women, as one feature of kinship, was key. I realized
that this should be specified as an exchange of rights in women. But
overriding this was my concern about the “law” at the center of kinship
arrangements: the prohibition on the highly variously classified sexual
relationships that go under the classification of “incest” and the forms of
killing which go under the classification of “murder.” Other diverse laws,
“Thou Shalt Nots” accrue to this law which is the nub of the Oedipus
and castration complex and their effects on the uncertain construction
of sexual difference—on which side of the line women and men in so
far as their sexual/reproductive aspects are “normatively” supposed to
stand—and never completely do. This theme is central to the argument
of Psychoanalysis and Feminism.
Butler asks if we can use the terms “femininity” and “masculinity.”
Psychoanalysis and Feminism quotes Freud in its first section at length
(27 lines, pp. 46–7) to establish this point which is a fundamental basis
for the entire argument:

It is essential to understand clearly that the concepts “masculine” and

“feminine”, whose meaning seems so unambiguous to ordinary people,
are among the most confused in science . . . Every individual . . . displays
a mixture of the character-traits belonging to his own or the opposite
sex; and he shows a combination of activity and passivity whether or
not these last character-traits tally with his biological ones. (pp. 46–7)

It is no offence to Eve Sedgewick’s important work if we note that

Butler in this context credits to her what is the sine qua non of Freud’s
life-long position. Heterosexuals are always homosexual and vice versa.
This is accounted for by the use of the concept of bisexuality. Unlike
“femininity” and “masculinity,” bisexuality is a psychoanalytic concept.
Butler makes exactly the same shift from “sexual difference” (the mark
that all societies make in a million different ways between the sexes) to
heterosexuality which underlies Rubin’s interest. She then ascribes a neg-
ative version of it to me—where it was never a feature of Freud’s think-
ing, nor one I have invented for him in Psychoanalysis and Feminism.
Butler writes of my argument about the conservation by sexual differ-
ence and “its ostensible corollary heterosexuality.” A distinction is being
read as a relationship. Though it can be taken this way, there is no such
 S E X UA L D I F F E R E N C E , P O L I T I C S , A N D T H E U N C O N S C I O U S 81

corollary in Freud nor in Psychoanalysis and Feminism. The contrary is

the point of my argument: the object of desire is as wide as the range of
human fantasy.
The Freud I used based his work on the fact that the sexual object, and
hence its orientation, is always contingent—the sexual drive only seeks
satisfaction however this satisfaction might be attained. Freud starts his
Three Essays on Sexuality with perversions and shows that we are all
perverse; he proceeds to claim the child (at the time (1905) officially
regarded as “innocent of sexuality”) is in fact what he labels “polymor-
phously perverse.” As we have all been children and as our childhood
persists in our unconscious life, we all continue as this. Homosexuality
is not a perversion—it is an inversion of heterosexuality which is there-
fore an inversion of homosexuality. In everyday life, sexual orientation is
indeed described within existing terms but the theme of Freud’s work is
to contest rather than abandon them. Freud’s is a theory of the subject—
the way in which that subject uses its particular parents will be highly
various. There is a complex argument at stake about “identification”
which certainly takes place and whether this or the bisexuality by which
the person is driven is the more important when it finally comes to
“object choice,” a choice which will contain all the other apparently
“unchosen” objects. The same is obviously the case for those parents’
parents way back in time. This, indeed, is an aspect of “transmission.”

Transgenerational Transmission
Judith Butler: Let’s begin with one of the most basic propositions
and consider what it implies for how we think about sexual difference,
the unconscious, and the problem of generational transmission. This
proves to be a fundamental notion for [Juliet] since, as she wrote in her
1999 preface, ‘The superego, with its transgenerational transmission of
rules and laws; the id, where drive representatives meet what has been
repressed; the ego, which comprises countless other egos—all are con-
cepts which offer a way forward into thinking about ideology as “how
we live ourselves” as sexually differentiated beings” (Mitchell 1999, xxxi).
I would like to focus first on the transgenerational transmission of rules.
Mitchell insists that sexual difference has largely unconscious dimen-
sions, that these unconscious dimensions are transmitted through time
and across generations, and that there is a kind of stasis or “drive to
stay put” that characterizes sexual difference understood in this way. If
we focus further on what sexual difference is, we find that the follow-
ing formulations are central: sexual difference has to be included among
those phenomenon that “persists” and that remains “incommensurate
82 JULIET MITCHELL

with the real social situation.” As a result, Mitchell tells us, “deliberate
socialization is inadequate to explain the structure of sexual difference
and the inequalities that always arise from it, despite the fact that there is
enormous diversity of social practice . . . ”
Although sexual difference is not exactly defined (and may well be
something that maintains a tense relationship with definition, promulgat-
ing metaphors of various kinds), something about its operation is being
characterized through a variety of means. It is a kind of persistence; it is
“a kind of underwater tow” or, again, a “current” as she writes, “femi-
nism seems to be rowing against a current that is ultimately the stronger
force.” She concludes here—still the new introduction—with the fol-
lowing remark: “conservatism actually seems inherent in the very con-
struction of sexual difference—as though the difference itself has in its
construction insisted on stasis” (Mitchell 1999, xviii). This conservatism
is inherent in what Mitchell calls “the psycho-ideological living of sexual
relations” and it is distinguished by the fact that “it is women . . . who
become the ascribed repositories of that human conservatism.”

Juliet Mitchell: I think “transgenerational transmission” is the nub of a

real difference between us. Butler segues into sexual difference as uncon-
scious, the unconscious as what is transgenerationally transmitted, and
sexual difference as what I believe persists because of transgenerational
transmission. She alleges that, for me: sexual difference has the charac-
teristic of stasis, being unchanging, a permanence which is out of key
with the present (or any present) social situation. It is true that I identify
an intransigence of the position of women in society, and that this wor-
ries me. However the final section of Psychoanalysis and Feminism (to
which she refers in her version in differences) is precisely dedicated to see-
ing if there might be a way through and beyond this unpalatable position
in so far as it affects “sexual difference.”
The final section of Psychoanalysis and Feminism uses Levi-Strauss to
suggest an imbalance of kinship and class regulation for the working-
classes that might mean an end to the sway of the former—a sort-of
rewriting of Engels through a somewhat poorly grasped Lacanian
psychoanalysis and (probably ditto) structural anthropology of Levi-
Strauss. My concern here is that, like Butler, just as with the conclusion
to “Women: the Longest Revolution” (1966) I wanted to find a way out
of what my own argument leads to. But Butler is motivated by a wish
to conceive a world without the appalling discrimination against homo-
sexuality and I to imagine one in which the oppression of women is no
longer “in-built” to human organization. We share our wishes; the tasks,
however, although related, are not the same.
 S E X UA L D I F F E R E N C E , P O L I T I C S , A N D T H E U N C O N S C I O U S 83

Beyond the divergence of our interest—Butler to homosexuality, me

to sexual difference, there is further ground for our “non-meeting.”
Until she introduces Laplanche’s theses of the implanting of enigmatic
signifiers in the infant, Butler argues against the idea of transmission.
I do not think we have a good or even good-enough understanding of
how transmission works—but that it happens and that the good is trans-
mitted with the bad, seems to me beyond doubt. My point is simple:
however marked the progress—the vote, sexual freedom, equal pay—
something prevents the realization of equality. At the heart of progress
there is a deathly stasis or backward lunge. Of course, how something is
transmitted and what is being transmitted are linked issues, but they are
not the same issue. What today I would call the “inter-subjectivity” that
underlies the clinically observable process of unconscious communica-
tion may be a sine qua non for this transmission of something that ought
to have been eradicated but has not—the “oppression” of women. There
is no answer (anyway, as yet) but there are a number of approaches to
formulating the question of transmission.
It is relevant to our differences to place conceptualizations of gender
in historical perspective. Butler’s development of the concept of “per-
forming gender” came 16 years after Psychoanalysis and Feminism. It was
not that the “performative” (which at that earlier date we had known
from Austen) had changed meaning—it was “gender” that had done so.
For me “gender” and “sexual difference”—though certainly muddled up
inside us—are not analytically the same. In the UK “gender” was intro-
duced by feminism from the work of psychoanalyst, Robert Stoller (Sex
and Gender, 1968). Early on it was most interestingly deployed by the
sociologist, Anne Oakley (1972). However, “gender” in this use was too
sociological for me. It implied society adds the construct “gender,” which
could be changed, to biology’s “sex,” which could not. For Freud there
was never an equation between biology and psychology but nor was there
a schismatic separation; biology was one important factor among others
that humans relate to in some way or other. I later reviewed Stoller’s work
on transsexualism at length and had a subsequent interesting correspon-
dence with him around this question until his premature death. Gender
in the early feminist use also did not involve a consideration of sexuality
and that too was why I would not use it. I changed my ideas about it
when its meaning changed.
For me the change was exemplified by Joan Scott’s (since self-dis-
puted) use of gender as a category of analysis. Following Scott I thought
that although “women” could be an object to analyze, they/we could
not be an analytical category. As Scott so well demonstrated, gender
could. Since that Pauline moment I have developed gender to refer to the
84 JULIET MITCHELL

lateral relations of siblings, peers etc. and retained “sexual difference” for
the vertical intergenerational ones. Gender, the lateral, would seem to be
more fluid and multivalent than sexual difference. I use “gender” then
for the polymorphous possibilities and differences to which I had offered
a fanfare at the end of “Women: the Longest Revolution”:

Any society will require some institutionalized and social recognition

of personal relationships. But there is absolutely no reason why there
should be only one legitimized form—and a multitude of unlegiti-
mized experience. Socialism should properly mean not the abolition
of the family but the diversification of the socially acknowledged rela-
tionships which are today forcibly and rigidly compressed into it. This
would mean a plural range of institutions—where the family is only
one, and its abolition implies none. Couples living together or not liv-
ing together, long-term unions with children, single parents bringing
up children, children socialized by conventional rather than biological
parents, extended kin groups, etc.—all these could be encompassed in
a range of institutions which matched the free invention and variety of
men and women. (Mitchell 1966, p. 36)

Because Butler is talking about gender, her theory may reflect this great
fluidity, and an absence of the potential conservatism/stasis that sexual
difference brings to the arena. We now have a plethora of descriptions
of the theatres of our minds; “femininity” and its many masquerades,
“masculinity,” could be performed for sure, but not “sexual difference”
which means no more than that one sex is not the other.
The first section of Psychoanalysis and Feminism, “The Making of a
Lady” part I, starts with a chapter that offers an account of the uncon-
scious; this is followed by one on Freud’s still (in 2014) rich and revo-
lutionary understanding of sexuality. Chapter 3 explains masculinity,
femininity, and bisexuality. The purpose of this arrangement was to
demonstrate that sexual difference must be situated in the basic psycho-
analytic concepts of an unconscious mind and a sexually driven body.
Throughout the book it is made clear that of the concepts and terms
used, only “bisexuality” belongs to psychoanalysis: “we cannot say what
a woman is, only how she comes into being from a child with a bisexual
disposition.” (Freud 1933) Ditto a man.
In 1974 I presented a reading of Freud that was utterly contrary to
the ego-psychology that dominated psychoanalysis in the USA. Jacques
Lacan had not as yet hit American shores; his “return to Freud” empha-
sizing the unpalatable notion of the castration complex and penis-envy
spoke to the depth of the problem of why women faced “the longest
revolution.” This is what Rose, at the Symposium of 2009, and today
 S E X UA L D I F F E R E N C E , P O L I T I C S , A N D T H E U N C O N S C I O U S 85

Gayatri Spivak (in her Juliet Mitchell Lecture 2014) have perceived as the
issue that was raised by my book of 1974. Something that despite all the
forward moves—prevents women moving forward. For Freud this was
recognized in what he observed as a “repudiation of femininity” with its
passivity toward a man, by both sexes.
In 1966 when “Women: the Longest Revolution” was published in
New Left Review, an editorial board member, Quinton Hoare wrote
a scathing attack. My memory of first looking into this riposte was of
having my breath taken away: Hoare was arguing that women, by defi-
nition, have no subjecthood. In countering his claim that the entire his-
tory of women had taken place only within the family and that women
as such could not be thought about outside its terms, I stated that “not
unless women are literally exchange products can they be identical with
objects and property.” Today the discussion has moved on well past
these arguments—thank goodness! However, that I can still feel the
impossible experience of thinking and acting as a subject while being
analyzed as only an object is testimony, unfortunately, to something
that persists.
Women, of course, range across all the other social categories with
consequently very different effects. However, I still follow a classical line
of Freud’s that the position the bisexual girl takes up to become her
woman self is to be the object of another’s desire (initially, prototypi-
cally, her father’s); this differentiates her from the position of the bisexual
boy who to become his man-self positions himself as subject of desire.
“Before” this and in a way that for my theses implicates siblings, for-
ever after as well, both sexes have been both the subject of desiring the
mother and the object of her desire. This pre-Oedipal position I call
“gender.” The person in their gender has subjecthood—the toddler is
just insisting on it when it is threatened by separation from its mother if
it murders or commits incest with its usurping sibling.

The Law
Judith Butler: We can accept, for instance, that there is an unconscious
operation at work that seems to relay another time into this time, that
we are not completely of the present, and that another scene acts upon us
as we try to find our way within present time. But even if we accept this
time-lag as constitutive of the psyche, it does not follow that we have to
accept a universal set of rules or laws as belonging to that other time, or
transmitted from that other time. Indeed, that other time may well be an
historical time, the times that belong to prior generations, but that is not
the same as saying it is the time of cultural law, of the paternal law, of the
86 JULIET MITCHELL

symbolic, or of the laws that are essential to culture. This structuralist

presumption supplements the theory of the unconscious, but it is in no
way presupposed by its operation. As Laplanche departs from Lacan, he
calls into question the means and mechanisms by which the unconscious
desires of the adult world impinge upon the infant; this impingement
does not communicate an intact set of laws in clear and effective ways.
On the contrary, these enigmatic signifiers become lodged in the psychic
life of the infant and initiate the drives as both overwhelming and excit-
ing (these are, in effect, the terms through which Laplanche reformulates
the scene of general seduction; Butler pp. 20–21).
Juliet Mitchell: This is a misunderstanding; the law is the law of the defi-
nition and prohibition of incest. An effect of this desire and its taboo insti-
tutes sexual difference but there is no “law of sexual difference.” I don’t
know what Butler has in mind by the suggestion that we should challenge
unconscious communication. Does she mean we challenge the fact of its
existence or challenge those thinkers who hold it is important? The first
is like saying: let’s challenge the existence of dark energy and dark matter;
the second like saying let’s challenge those who think dark energy and
dark matter are important and work on understanding them.
Many psychoanalysts have tried different understandings of uncon-
scious communication; I have found it particularly interesting in the psy-
choanalysis of groups. Many people have argued against the universality
of incest prohibitions. But if we see that incest refers only to some forbid-
den sex then its universal presence and its forbidding seems highly likely.
In a variety of ways societies allow and prohibit some killing and some
sexual relations. There are no laws of sexual difference—the bisexual
child is to take up a position in relation to these laws against incest and
murder—the laws are the same. Their obedience (or otherwise) to those
laws are the same: neither girl nor boy, woman nor man must commit
incest or murder. From this misunderstanding comes what follows.
Butler contests my concern that a marker of sexual difference is trans-
mitted down the ages and that I argue that the law from which it takes
its always “unsatisfactory” effect—the law against incest and murder—is
invariant. This suggestion often annoys people. There of course are only
laws because there are what are constituted as “unholy desires.” There
would otherwise be no need for a law. These laws are that there are
some people with whom sex is forbidden, there are some people whom
you must not murder. In fact although I keep repeating it, it is a rather
obvious claim—referring to nothing much in itself other than its very
intractability. The law will always be expressed differently. Again with
enormous variation (and frequent breaches) it leads to legislating against
maternal incest and paternal murder. With all its different forms, this is,
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I believe, an “invariant” stumbling block or small “spot” which will take

various forms and be variously transmitted. The persistence of patriarchy
is a formulation of these laws, but is not itself by any means invariant.
Against her own claim about the need to contest unconscious com-
munication, Butler accepts that past time can unconsciously impinge on
time present. There then seems to be some slippage from the individual
historical to the mass historical. This is followed by the assertion that the
past can enter the present but the laws cannot. Psychoanalysis claims that
the child must fail to resolve, or resolve, never adequately the law against
incest/murder and that this resolution/irresolution persists through life.
The conflict between the desire and its prohibition in past Oedipal time
(3–5 years for us) in the present time of later childhood or adulthood
can be manageable or it can produce life-eroding symptoms (neurosis
and psychosis) with which psychoanalysis works. We can transfer this
understanding of the individual to the larger history but rather as some-
thing of a metaphor. This is why literature, art, mythology help construct
the metapsychology of psychoanalysis—they apply the individual uncon-
scious to the larger world.
Butler can accept the past in the present so long as it does not involve
accepting that the law will be transmitted. However, the law and the
desire that prompts it is why this past persists; can you have one without
the other? Laplanche, whom Butler argues, is saying something different
does not, I think, dispute the desire and the prohibition—only how the
desire enters the child. The idea that the laws are transmitted in “intact,
clear and effective ways” is supported by no-one.

Drive and Desire

Judith Butler: How we conceptualize the drives has everything to do
with how we imagine what it is that drives convey. And what and how
drives convey has everything to do with how rules may or may not be
transmitted trans-generationally. I am not sure that drives can be effec-
tively separated from the ideation, and that even the effort to define the
drive is but a further instance of its operation. My wager is that drives do
not loyally replicate the “messages” that initiate them; in fact, the mes-
sages, or signifiers, are inscrutable and overwhelming, and they prompt
a set of displacements, so that drives, and sexuality more generally, take
form through metonymic processes that are not easily foreseen or pre-
dicted. The trajectory of displacement is the trajectory of the drive itself.
This is why, for instance, Laplanche insists that the drive is not con-
strained by biological teleologies, including reproduction. In a sense,
there is no drive that preexists that metonymic sequence or, rather, there
88 JULIET MITCHELL

is no drive that is not transformed by the sequence it sets in motion. In

other words, what is passed down or, indeed, communicated, is not the
same law in the same form, and not the same law in a different form,
and not even the traumatic force of law. Rather, what is passed down is a
forceful impression, enigmatic and exciting, from an adult world whose
libidinal communications are overwhelming and unreadable for the
infant. That impression seems to carry a message, but only in encoded
forms that remain indecipherable for the infant and child and remain so
to some extent throughout adult life. (Butler p. 22)
Juliet Mitchell: This might be some aspect of Laplanche’s work with
which I am unfamiliar. None of it is what I understand by “the drive” as
I used it from Freud in Psychoanalysis and Feminism. Drives only drive—
they don’t convey anything—they force the mind to work in order to
avoid unpleasure. They are a hypothesis for a process that is observed but
they can themselves only be observed in their effects. Drives are in con-
flict with each other and have representatives which are in conflict with
each other: Sexuality and self-preservation; Life and Death.
As I understand it, Laplanche is talking about enigmatic messages
which impinge and create desire in the recipient. I can see that he could
dispute Freud’s drive model (as many others have done) and substitute
his model of enigmatic signifiers. A while back I was Laplanche’s dis-
cussant at the Institute for Contemporary Art and I recall his delight
when I said I saw him as the new Ferenczi—this would still fit. There
is room on this earth for both these perspectives—but they shouldn’t
be confused. Butler uses Laplanche to explain transmission through the
infant’s puzzled reception and helplessness before the enigmatic signi-
fiers sent out by its desiring parents (and others). I suggest that rather
than an either/or proposition (this and not Oedipus) we should see this
explanation as one of those both/and scenarios which are the hallmark of
psychoanalytic theory. I think of “enigmatic signifiers” as on a par with
other both/and accounts.
Rose cites Winnicott’s case of a middle-aged man whose many analy-
ses threatened to become interminable and useful but nontransformable
because they never reached the fact that the man thought he was also a
girl. We could continue with Winnicott’s account to think both about
transmission and stasis. When the girl is discovered through Winnicott
hearing her penis-envy the patient agrees but thinks he will be thought
mad; Winnicott answers that is it he, the psychoanalyst (in the transfer-
ence, the mother), not the male patient, who was mad to hear the speech
of a girl coming from a man. Together Winnicott and his male patient
construct that his mother had wanted a girl baby—but the story doesn’t
end there. This girl-in-the-man lying on the couch makes one hell of
 S E X UA L D I F F E R E N C E , P O L I T I C S , A N D T H E U N C O N S C I O U S 89

a scene when the man-in-the-man confronts her. She also has never
grown up. Winnicott also did not subscribe to Freud’s drive theory—
disputing in particular the death drive. I was not a clinician at the time of
writing Psychoanalysis and Feminism so had no alternative source mate-
rial as had Ferenczi and Laplanche. I could of course have used other
psychoanalytic theoreticians for my feminist aims as Nancy Chodorow
(1976) did to great effect a little later. When reading Butler’s response to
my work, it is important to remember the position I take (Freud/Lacan)
is often absent from her critique. My concern is to use Freud and Lacan
to show how we have to tackle what seems intractable within the oppres-
sion of women—the longest revolution.
Judith Butler: What propels the displacements of desire is less an effort
to evade the murderous consequences of a prohibitive law than an effort
to fathom a set of adult desires that have impinged upon, and formed, an
internal structure of the psyche. The infant is unknowing and, indeed,
helpless, in relation to these overwhelming and confusing messages
relayed more or less unconsciously by the adult world. As a result, the
sexuality that emerges, understood as a series of displacements from
instinct, is a result of this helplessness in the face of the desirous adult
world. The infant becomes an investigative theorist on such an occa-
sion, trying to fathom the strange force and direction of his or her own
impulses. The problem for infantile sexuality is not how to evade castra-
tion by punishment, but how to fathom a desire that is, from the start,
already the desire of the other.
Theoretically, Laplanche’s departure from Lacan in this regard implies
a full critique of the paternal law, linked to the structuralist account of the
exchange of women and the universalist premises of “culture.” This view
of the paternal law is countered by a conception of a non-gendered “adult
world” that generates and imposes enigmatic signifiers on an infant who
responds with both cognitive helplessness and incitation of the drive. As
a result, primary unconscious and sexual messages are impressed upon
the child (though “impression” may well be too soft a term). Moreover,
those primary others whose desires are communicated through various
practices are themselves in the grip of such messages (have themselves
been incited unconsciously by such messages). The ones whose desires
become the foreign and inciting elements in my own desire are them-
selves propelled by what is foreign and inciting, and invariably so. In this
way, transgenerational transmission probably resembles Borges’ story,
“Circular Ruins” where one person discovers that he has his reality only
in another person’s dream, and that the same principle applies to that
dreamer, whose reality is secured only in another’s dream. This goes on
for generations, without end.
90 JULIET MITCHELL

Juliet Mitchell: Here Butler shifts what she has previously ascribed to
the “drive” to “desire” where I think it belongs. However, reading this
extract against my account of Freud does produce something quite diver-
gent. Not, I think an unbridgeable gap but a really different explanation
of what is going on. This centres on the concept of the drive.
The drive is an ineffable, mythological push forward (the life drive)
and urge backward to stasis (the death drive). The drive is a hypothesis
of Freud’s, conjured up to explain phenomena within psychoanalytic
observation and treatment: the psychic conflict. Laplanche suggests that
instead of the drives being something hypothesized which drive us; they
are established instead within us by the desires of the adults toward us.
This is to change the terms—desires drive us. As I said, many analysts
have more or less disposed of Freud’s theory of the drives. Laplanche,
however, is talking about something else—that we are driven by the
desires of others. That may be so—it could happen as well. But in itself it
does not to get rid of the notion of a conflict between the desire and the
prohibition. Certainly, the neonate will not survive if there is no desir-
ous adult to tend it; however to make the desires of others foundational
of a drive changes the concept of a drive. Such a drive does not postu-
late, as does Freud’s, that a drive forces the mind to work to get what
the body needs and desires. I honestly don’t know which hypothesis is
correct or whether we still can’t have both. In Butler’s Laplanche the
drive results from communication with its displacements, its translations
but it is no less metaphoric, only somewhat more contemporary, than
Freud’s “mythology.” And how Butler describes drives is how Freud/
Lacan explain desire. Here for Butler there is apparently intergenera-
tional transmission, so transmission is not the problem—only what is
transmitted.
Certainly we are all “ungendered” a good deal of the time—but
we are also gendered and sexually differentiated even, at times, in each
other’s dreams. As a working concept is “ungendered” that different
from “bisexuality”? Butler’s Laplanche does not need either any laws, or
sexual difference. But in not needing these, I cannot see how it offers us
anything with which we might begin to grasp the oppression of women.
Indeed there seem not to be women. Perhaps the “unbridgeable” gap
between Butler and myself and where I started this reply is that she is
primarily concerned with developing an understanding of the way out
of the abuse of homosexuality as read through sexuality and, while not
underestimating this, I remain convinced that something else is going
on for women. At least that was my focus in 1974 and still in 1999 and
2014. Is this why Butler and I differ?
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Judith Butler: In Mitchell’s chapter, “The Different Self, the Phallus

and the Father,” she writes, “Before it is born, the child is assigned a
name and is son or daughter of . . . ; it has to learn to fit into this already
ascribed place. Whatever the child does, whatever the specific accidents
of its individual history, all take place within the larger framework of this
human order. It is within the Freudian ‘unconscious’ that the laws of this
order speak” (Mitchell 2000, 391).
Later, she discusses why the father represents those laws that govern
human society, and here is where she describes such laws as “essential to
society.” Even in the 1999 preface, Mitchell reconfirms her belief in such
an underlying set of laws. She notes that object relations has underscored
the importance of the mother “but was uninterested in any underlying
laws.” She worries as well about those Lacanian efforts to establish the
mother in a “pre-Symbolic domain” and argues that both Lacan and
object-relations fail to situate the mother “within the laws of the human
order.” If it is those laws that are supposed to be communicated to us
through the stable and predictable mechanisms of unconscious commu-
nication, and if the unconscious can work only by translating and dis-
placing any set of injunctions it may communicate, then we cannot rely
on such a domain to validate the invariant rules of culture. We can only
look to such a domain to find the series of invariant rules, spawned from
translation and transposition, that follow the logic of the drive, that is,
displacement along routes that are never fully predictable or expected.
Of course, we have to be able to account for that recalcitrance, that
undertow, that countercurrent that makes our efforts at social change
so difficult. This remains a crucial, irreversible insight of Psychoanalysis
and Feminism. But there is no reason to take that recalcitrance and coun-
tercurrent as a sign of the invariant laws of human society; why cannot
that conservative undertow be precisely the drag of history, something
communicated through the norms of kinship, norms that change, with
difficulty, over time?
Mitchell throws down the gauntlet in the 1999 preface when she notes
that Lacan’s rereading of Freud “is in some ways more dismal for feminist
politics than is Freud’s original version.” Without the super-ego, Lacan
cannot give an account of change. Positions can be shuffled in relation
to the problem of castration. Her challenge is to get us to return to the
second metapsychology, over and against Lacan, but without subscribing
to ego psychology (p. 26).
Juliet Mitchell: The whole thrust of Psychoanalysis and Feminism is to
stress the invariance in the framework in order to ask how this might
be tackled. Rose has got me completely right when she says of the 1974
92 JULIET MITCHELL

book that I argue that “the analysis of the seeming intractability of sexual
difference, and the vision for change were inseparable.”
Elsewhere in her response to me Butler writes of “the changing tasks of
psychoanalysis” and says, “We can surely ask how Oedipalization occurs
within single parent families or within gay families, or indeed, in extended
kinship networks where there is a distribution of parental functions and
position. But to ask these questions is precisely to ask how psychoanalysis
must by reformulated in light of changing kinship components.” This is
to misunderstand Oedipalization—the child of a gay couple or single par-
ent is still not allowed to murder or commit incest. Psychoanalysis is about
unconscious processes, the conscious and preconscious material of the
clinic will change, different issues will have priority in Tokyo or Timbuktu
and different psychic mechanisms will gain prominence. Unconscious
processes will be understood differently with further work but this will
not be an adaptation to changing social practices.
Unconscious processes come from two directions: there are initiating
traumas that are the hallmark of the prematurely born human infant; and
there are expressions of desires that arise within the context of premature
helplessness with its utter dependence on others. Some of which must
be not allowed, these non-allowances are highly variable as are indeed
the practices of homosexuality. Sexual difference is an effect of invariant
ones. We part company on our dominant concerns not on our attitude
to the laws. We part too on our estimation of these laws and what indeed
they are.

The Political Task

Judith Butler: If we agree with Mitchell that a return to questions of
kinship and ideology are necessary, even a new examination of the “ide-
ologies of the super-ego,” and if we are to seek recourse to the theory
of ideology through an Althusserian interpellation in particular, then it
seems to me we have to be prepared for the fact that interpellation does
not just happen once, but time and again, and that the chain of interpel-
lative assignments forms something of the social history within which a
particular psychic life is formed and lived. In this way, the infant is not
born into a structure, but into a temporally reiterated chain of interpel-
lations or assignments that have to be negotiated in time, that precede
and exceed the life of the child, which may well, in the case of adoption,
entail a series of geographical, if not geopolitical, and linguistic displace-
ments. No single set of laws replicates itself in the unconscious of that
infant, but only a series of transpositions and impingements, never fully
conscious, demanding a process of translation that can never fully return
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to, or grasp, the powerful and enigmatic impression that prompts that
largely unpredictable trajectory of the drives.
Juliet Mitchell: Despite its subtle complexity I think Butler’s argument
makes the political task too easy and too sociological. If the recalcitrance,
the “under-tow” always pulling us back, is only the “drag of history” are
we just to wait for the end of history?
Now I have written myself into what feels like an understanding, I can
properly appreciate and thank Judith for her exciting contribution. Let me
summarize; this time speaking for what I hope is Judith as well as myself:
For Judith, the multiple sexualities and internal and external differ-
ences can so displace heterosexuality which has hitherto been domi-
nant, so that it just becomes one among many with no hegemonic status
either in fact or the fiction about facts. With heterosexuality displaced,
psychoanalysis (predicated in its Oedipal centrality) will have to adjust.
Laplanche shows the way: we are the recipients of messages we barely can
grasp but which set up our drives and desires and which have no absolute
status; the transmission is itself a series of displacements without fixed
content. These messages establish the drives within individuals so there
need be no fixed laws of sexual positions.
For me: in 1974, I addressed psychoanalysis to ask why women, as
women, were not perceived as subjects; why there was always a slipping
back so that when all the socioeconomic conditions had changed so
there was no need for women’s oppression, it still persisted. In 1999
with 25 years of clinical work behind me, I used rather than addressed
psychoanalysis. Looking at the question of my 1974 book in this brief
new introduction, I thought that maybe the “solution” I had heralded in
1966 (“Women: the Longest Revolution”)—sexuality as the weakest link
breaking its bounds into multiple different sexualities and hence the end
of the “exchange of women” forming the knot of kinship—had instead
become part of the problem; as though the end result had been achieved
prematurely and the real difficulty of women’s oppression, avoided.
Today, as the rich and getting rich reproduce less and less, care-taking
has replaced reproduction; as the one declines the other grows exponen-
tially and it is still largely attached to women. For poor everywhere and
for the wretched of the earth, reproduction remains central and care-
taking is carried out by what for the rich are a declining species: siblings
(mostly sisters) and female adjuncts (aunts, grandmothers . . . ). Sexuality
without reproduction for the rich may bloom as a thousand flowers,
for the rest it is global sex-trafficking above all of women. Within each
of the three structures of sexuality, reproduction and child rearing for
women that I proposed in 1966, something holds women back and all
94 JULIET MITCHELL

affect and are affected by the economy where equality eludes them. So I
still think we have to take on board the sexual difference of women and
men particularly where that is established around reproduction (sex and
death) even if the demographic transition to nonreplacement populations
for some has displaced pregnancy and parturition on to child-care and
socialization by others.
Butler believes oppression will change through the march of history,
the slow change of kinship will get us there in the end. I think the prob-
lem is larger—at least for women. Feminism must take command of the
theory and of the political practice. We need to grasp and remove the
rock that blocks the river, to combat the undertow, and move forward.

Discussion Paper: Jacqueline Rose

Judith Butler started her presentation by speaking of the immeasurable
significance of Juliet Mitchell’s Psychoanalysis and Feminism for feminist
theory. Let me begin by paying my own personal tribute to the book
whose impact on my life and thought likewise is immeasurable. My first
activity as a feminist in the 1970s had been a childcare campaign for the
mothers of the Cowley workers industrial estate outside Oxford where
I was a student. I returned from Paris two years later having read Freud,
dismayed at what seemed to be the unbridgeable gulf between feminist
activism and the language of the unconscious, a language which had
been so profoundly enabling for me. For stating so clearly that feminism
was not incompatible with psychoanalysis, Juliet’s book—waiting for me
as it felt on my return—was the book I needed to be written. It opened a
door that has not closed since. I will always be in her debt.
As Judith’s presentation makes clear, indebtedness can coexist with
the profoundest disagreement. I am sure I am not the only person here
who has felt privileged to listen to this dialogue—if that is the right
word—between Judith Butler, key theorist of sexuality and gender, and
this work which laid down the terms in which any thinker on these ques-
tions has to orient herself. I am sure too that I am not the only person
in this room who might have felt at moments that the gap between these
two thinkers is too vast to be bridged.
Let me try then to summarize how I understand this disagreement
whose seriousness I have no intention, nor indeed, desire to downplay.
I will try then to say where it might, productively, take us. Taking her
reference from the Paris-based feminist group, Psychanalyse et Politique,
Juliet Mitchell’s aim in 1973 was “to analyse how men and women live
as men and women within the material conditions of their existence”
(Mitchell 1974: xx). Dissatisfied with a normative biologism that made
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sexual difference the unanswerable consequence of nature- or god-given

arrangements, but also the feminist sociology that made femininity a
crudely false social imprint on the mind, it was Juliet’s intention instead
to see how sexual difference entered the psyche and took up residence
as an uninvited guest, unwelcome and yet accommodated in the deep-
est recesses of the mind. To understand the force of that process was
to lay down the terms for its transformation—as Lenin said, you must
always confront your enemy at its strongest point. To cite Psychanalyse
et Politique again from the 1973 Introduction, psychoanalysis was to
the “ideological and sexual fight” what Marx, Lenin, and Mao were to
class struggle—the “only discourse that exists today on sexuality and the
unconscious” (1974: xxii). While she was cautious about the analogy: “It
has yet to be seen by all of us in the women’s liberation movement,” she
continues, “whether the analysis of ideology is tied as closely to a logic
of sexual struggle” (1974: xxiii), the impetus, notably as it emerges in
the last chapters of the book, was clear. The aim was nothing less than
the overthrow of patriarchy, whose kinship rules, etched into the hearts
of women and men, had now been rendered redundant by the organi-
zation of work. The first point to make then is that the analysis of the
seeming intractability of sexual difference, and the vision for change,
were inseparable. The family was in its “slow death throes”; with the
end of capitalism, “new structures will gradually come to be identified
in the unconscious.” In more than one sense, therefore, Psychoanalysis &
Feminism was—and I use the term advisedly—a revolutionary book.
By 1999, something, for Mitchell, has gone astray. Let’s leave aside for
a moment the way the introduction to the new edition of Psychoanalysis
and Feminism (Mitchell 1999) sounds at moments like a chastising of
undutiful daughters or perhaps I should say siblings (from which I myself
incidentally do not escape). The point Juliet makes in 1999 for today’s
debate, and for the brilliant intervention we have just heard from Judith,
is key—that a focus on the instabilities of sexuality and desire in the
feminist theory that came after, has risked dethroning the law of sexual
difference from the mind, and with it, paradoxically, the possibilities
of transformation which depended on first recognizing its force. It has
introduced a type of short-circuit into the system—as if the variety of
the sexual lives we lead, so much more openly now than then, and of the
fantasies that accompany them, was being taken in and of itself to have
dispensed with the question of the law. Unconscious instability became a
type of bid for freedom, lifted out of the depths of the mind to do service
for a better world. What this means among other things, I would want to
add, is not just an idealization of the unconscious, but also that the gap
between our unconscious and conscious lives has been closed.
96 JULIET MITCHELL

I see everything Judith has said today in terms of this move, which is
not to say that I think it is a fair, or perhaps I should say full, representa-
tion of that later thought (of course Juliet I consider you to have com-
pletely misread me, but that is beside the point!). But it is clear that for
Judith, the inexorability of symbolic law, the idea that sexual difference
is transmitted with such power into the unconscious, offers us all a grim
unanswerable destiny. Hence, as I see it, the two central planks of her
critique today. First, that the law is not an inheritance but an endlessly
renegotiated process: the law does not take precedence, it does not neces-
sarily predate desire, but can instead be thought of, as she suggests Klein
for example thought of it, as the always imperfect response to our most
dangerous inner drives. Secondly, that even if there is such a law, its trans-
mission into the minds of new generations will be as precarious, distorted,
reworked, and enigmatic as the logic or rather illogic of the unconscious.
Freud insisted that unconscious thoughts were normal, but the processes
of the unconscious were another matter: the unconscious does not, he
said, “think, calculate or judge in any way.” “I am not sure,” Judith
writes, “that what persists are . . . already formed legacies of the past into
the present without translation, transposition, without some loss, some
new twist or turn.” And taking her cue from Jean Laplanche: “Messages
arrive in enigmatic form, unscrutable.” “What is passed down is a forceful
impression, enigmatic and exciting, from an adult world whose libidinal
communications are overwhelming and unreadable for the infant.”
And if—as I understand it—there is no infallible transmission of
the law, but rather—I quote again—“a powerful set of impressions,”
then no immutable sexual difference. In fact I will risk pushing it, if the
transmission of the law is “invariably thwarted,” then no law. We have
entered—I quote—a “non-gendered adult world.”
As I was reading this response, I have to say that there was something
about the very force of the disagreement that struck me as odd. I have no
doubt that Judith is right to point to the conservative positions occupied
by some analysts toward homosexual parenting and other new organisa-
tions of sexual life—I would however want to stress “some,” having met
on Saturday a Paris-based woman analyst who signed a recent petition
against the legalization of surrogacy in France but whose friend, another
eminent feminist thinker and psychoanalyst, had refused to do so. In fact
she had signed it not out of hostility to surrogacy—she was happy with
the idea of artificial uteruses—but because she believed sexuality should
not in any form fall under the remit of the law. Nonetheless the inherent
conservatism of psychoanalytic institutions on these questions should
never be underestimated. I also agree that the 1999 Introduction stresses
the invariance of the law with renewed force.
 S E X UA L D I F F E R E N C E , P O L I T I C S , A N D T H E U N C O N S C I O U S 97

But I fail to see in anything Juliet writes a tribute to or call for what
Judith referred to this evening as “accomplished heterosexuality.” What
Juliet is talking about it, as I understand it, is precisely the law of sexual
difference—that cruel, arbitrary, and unjust law— “unjust” as Freud
explicitly termed it—which requires of all human subjects that at some
point they reorder a polymorphous perverse bisexual disposition into
a diacritic opposition between male and female according to an ana-
tomical distinction which becomes as obligatory as it is a travesty of
everything that went before, and that will subsist for ever in the uncon-
scious. The basic Freudian premise, as I say to my students when I am
teaching psychoanalysis, is that we all know, anatomically speaking, if
we are a man or a woman, but, if the unconscious knows this as Juliet
would insist, it also knows better. The moment is as fraudulent as it is
inexorable. Or as the mother of feminist theorist Constance Penley put
it to her as a child, you can be a boy if you can kiss your elbow. What
happens next is anybody’s business. You cannot legislate for the after-
effects of any one subject in terms of their subsequent sexual lives. But
that is not the same thing as to suggest—and this is the rub as I see it—
that the multifarious experiences of sexual life have in and of themselves
dispensed with the law.
Two extraordinary moments from psychoanalytic literature can I think
make this point clear. The patient of D. W. Winnicott (1971) described
in “Creativity and its Origins,” who Winnicott analyzes as experienc-
ing penis-envy toward himself from the position of an unconscious girl:
“I know perfectly well,” Winnicott observes, “that you are a man, but
I am listening to a girl, and I am talking to a girl. I am telling this girl:
‘You are talking about penis envy.’ ” “If I was to tell someone about this
girl,” the patient responds, “I would be called mad.” Or the famous
patient from Robert Stoller’s (1973) case study Splitting who was con-
vinced she had a penis. Wanting to acknowledge the force of that fantasy
while disintricating it from the body sitting before him, Stoller observes:
“Look, physically, biologically, according to a doctor’s examination,
there’s no penis. Right?” To which the patient replies: “I don’t know that
I’ve ever been examined that closely” (1973: 13). What to make of these
extraordinary moments if not to point to the stunning disparity between
the inner experience of these two patients and the inexorable law of sexual
difference to which they both do and do not submit themselves?
Judith is surely right therefore to point to the disparity between uncon-
scious desires, lived social arrangements, and the injunctions of a heter-
onormative world. But perhaps you weaken your case by requiring that
those forms of errancy and experimentation subsist outside or beyond
the reach of the law which they endlessly contest. At the same time, as
98 JULIET MITCHELL

we indeed watch the law close around the subject in Juliet’s thought,
perhaps we should also remember how far her argument in Psychoanalysis
and Feminism rested on just such a disparity between reality and norm:
In her brilliant critique of Shulamith Firestone, for example, who, in
order to read penis-envy in terms of power, had to make the mother pow-
erless. Whereas, as you insisted, the mother is psychically all-powerful for
the infant. Happily there is no perfect match between the law of culture
and how we experience each other and ourselves. We cannot therefore
dispense with either side of this equation. We have been presented with
a false alternative. I would like to effect a reconciliation of sorts since it
is, for me, in the gap between the law and its failing that transformation
takes place.
On this, a correction vis-à-vis Lacan might be in order. As much as it
refers to kinship, Lacan’s account of the law stresses its inherent perver-
sion as well as the utter fraudulence of anyone who claims to embody
it (the law and the super ego are the specific focus of his Ethics semi-
nar of 1969). He also lifted from Freud—although Freud never quite
articulated it as such—that there has been no adequate account of the
origins of law. Similarly, the emphasis on language as structure gave way
in his thought to the idea of an inherent failing of meaning: meaning,
he stated in Seminar XX, always indicates the direction in which it fails.
That Lacan ignores the superego or freezes the subject into the laws of
language—the one point perhaps on which you seem agree—is there-
fore, perversely you might say, something I would wish to contest.
A final point from my own recent thinking. I could not help but be
struck by how closely this discussion of the transmission of the law, as the
key issue for both Juliet and Judith, mirrors the preoccupation of Freud
with the question of the transmission of his own Jewish legacy. To say
Freud’s inheritance on this matter was complicated is an understatement.
Passionately affiliated to what he referred to as the “essence” of Judaism,
at the same time he dissociated himself from the lore and language of his
fathers, the injunctions of Holy Writ, and the nationalist aspirations of
his people. I see traced out in this struggle, the same tension as the one
rehearsed here today between recognizing the force of an inheritance
and discarding or reworking the worst of its effects. Today Freud’s dif-
ficult negotiation of that trajectory has become for me one of the most
powerful and effective models for thinking about how to avoid the most
dangerous components of ethnic and group identities at the same time
as we have to acknowledge, so frighteningly in the new century, their
continuing force. I would like to conclude by suggesting that we could
do worse than to think about the persistence and undoing of sexual
difference in similar terms.
 S E X UA L D I F F E R E N C E , P O L I T I C S , A N D T H E U N C O N S C I O U S 99

References
Butler, J. 2009. “Ideologies of the Superego.” A paper presented at the
Symposium for the retirement of Juliet Mitchell. University of Cambridge,
May 2009.
Butler, J. 2013. “Rethinking Sexual Difference and Kinship in Mitchell’s
Psychoanalysis and Feminism.” differences 23(2): 1–19.
Freud, S. 1905. “Three Essays on Sexuality.” In Standard Edition of the
Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 7, translated and
edited by James Strachey. London: Hogarth. SE7, 123–246.
Freud, S. 1933. “On Femininity.” In Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 22. Translated and edited by
James Strachey,112–135. London: Hogarth.
Johnston, B. 1998. The Feminist Difference: Literature, Psychoanalysis, Race
and Gender. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Mitchell, J. 1966. “Women: The Longest Revolution.” New Left Review 40:
11–37.
Mitchell, J. 1974. Psychoanalysis and Feminism. New York: Basic Books.
Mitchell, J. 1999. “Introduction.” In Psychoanalysis and Feminism. New York:
Basic Books.
Mitchell, J. 2000. Psychoanalysis and Feminism. New York: Basic Books.
Mitchell, J. 2000. “The Different Self, the Phallus and the Father.”
Psychoanalysis and Feminism, 382–298. New York: Basic Books.
Mitchell, J. 2006. “Procreative Mothers (sexual difference) and Childfree
Sisters (gender).” In Browne, J (ed.). 2007. The Future of Gender. Cambridge
University press pp. 163–188
Rose, J. 2009. A discussant reply given at the Symposium for the retirement
of Juliet Mitchell. University of Cambridge May 2009.
Rubin, G. 1975. “The Traffic in Women.” In Toward an Anthropology of
Women, edited by R. Reiter, 157–210. New York: Mon Rev.
Rubin, G. and Butler, J. 1994. “Sexual Traffic.” differences 6(2–3): 62–99.
Stoller, R. 1968. Sex and Gender. New York: Science House.
Stoller, R. 1973. Splitting. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Winnicott, D. W. 1971. Playing and Reality, London: Routledge.
 Chapter 5

Dialectic and Dystopia: “This might

come as a shock . . .”

Robbie Duschinsky

E ach of Juliet Mitchell’s texts has an iridescent quality that allows us,
as time passes, to see both particular passages and our world differently.
Part of this quality is the result of a core question that animates each
of Mitchell’s books, and which keeps being reactivated by our concrete
personal and political experiences even as circumstances are reconfig-
ured: Why are inequalities between men and women so pervasive, even
in movements that purport to be primarily concerned with equality?
Mitchell has been described as a “conservative” by scholars such as Lynne
Segal (2001) for even asking this question, since it seems to presume
sexual difference as a single, natural, and immovable binary along repro-
ductive lines (see also Grosz 1990; Chiland 2004). Yet in fact Mitchell’s
interest has been to interrogate why genital and reproductive differences
between human beings, which in themselves imply little at all about how
our lives or our society should be structured, have been figured with a
significance that allows them to support the entrenchment and naturaliza-
tion of inequalities.
In a tract for the Fabian society, asking what values a socialist should
hold, Bernard Crick (1984, 13) proposed that “only equality is specifically
socialist in itself; liberty and fraternity, however, take on a distinctively
socialist form when the three are related to each other.” This analysis
helps highlight the commitment to exploring meaningful equality, which
links together Juliet Mitchell’s early work on liberty (exploring women’s
liberation for the New Left Review) and her more recent, psychoanalytic
work on fraternity (exploring sibling relationships and gender). “This
might come as a shock,” Mitchell (2011, 2) notes, “but I never actually
stopped thinking of myself as a Marxist.” Drawing out this “red thread”
of continuity between Mitchell’s early and late work, this chapter will
102 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y

focus on her enduring attention to a particular moment in the dialec-

tic: the emergence of the most minimal difference between subjects. An
examination of the way this minimal difference is organized in relation
to sex has been crucial to Mitchell’s theorization of meaningful equality,
as a set of relations along the lateral axis.

Socialism, Women, and New Left Review Syndrome

Mitchell is well known for her commitment to psychoanalysis and
feminism as analytic frames and as movements. However, for Mitchell,
psychoanalysis and feminism also need a third point as mediator and
catalyst, to avoid quietism or fatalism. Here lies the importance of a
socialist thread in Mitchell’s analysis, which works to counter the way in
which “the independent forces of conservatism in psychoanalysis and in
feminism at times interlock and reinforce each other” (2002, 218). This
is not to say that socialism is devoid of conservative currents. In particu-
lar, Mitchell’s early work considered the lack of recognition of sexuality
and reproduction as issues within socialist theory, resulting in an inad-
equate account of the condition of women. Whereas socialist theory
had considered the role of production and socialization in shaping the
modern subject, Mitchell was concerned that leaving reproduction and
sexuality out of the picture had resulted in a neglect of the position of
women, making women’s liberation seem like a distraction from true
socialist struggle and causing ongoing problems for female members
of the socialist movement. Her conclusion was that “the liberation of
women can only be achieved if all four structures in which they are
integrated are transformed—Production, Reproduction, Sexuality and
Socialisation” (1971, 120).
The iridescent quality of Mitchell’s analysis means that it reads differ-
ently, though no less insightfully, today. The relations between socialism
and feminism have changed a good deal since the early 1970s. Yet dif-
ficulties with placing reproduction and sexuality in socialist theory are
played out on a new front, in the context of increased pressure on young
women to walk the tightrope of showing themselves to be free, self-
possessed in their desirability, “sexy but not a slut.” Mitchell’s concern
for the effects of female members of a movement that treats women’s
liberation as a distraction from class struggle thus gains new resonance.
The renewed pertinence of Mitchell’s reflections on the difficul-
ties socialism has in finding a place for women can be illustrated with
a contemporary case. The Socialist Workers Party is the largest far-left
organization in the UK and a major political force within the Left—for
instance, it was integral to the Stop The War Coalition, which staged a
 D I A L E C T I C A N D DY S T O P I A 103

demonstration of two million people against British involvement in the

Iraq war. In 2012, the organization received an allegation from a young
female activist (W.) that she had been raped by Comrade Delta, a lead-
ing member of party, in repeated incidents over a period of six months.
Rather than reporting the allegation to the police, the claim was dealt
with by the Party’s Disputes Committee, made up of friends and close
colleagues of the accused. Comrade Delta was unanimously acquitted by
the committee. Consideration of the case, as was usual for the Disputes
Committee, took place in private, over four days; at the SWP Conference
on January 5, 2013, the Disputes Committee chairman reported on the
deliberations and decision:

We heard from W and from Delta, who gave us two very different
accounts of what had taken place in 2008 and 2009. We heard from
and questioned a number of other comrades. They were people who
had been brought as witnesses, either by W or by Delta. However nei-
ther of them were witnesses to the actual events . . .
We didn’t think that Delta raped W. And it was not proved to the
disputes committee that Delta had sexually assaulted, harassed or
abused W. We found it difficult to rule on these issues, because the
versions of events differed substantially and there were no witnesses.
The disputes committee didn’t recommend any disciplinary action
against Delta . . .
We discussed, debated, considered, changed our minds, listened to
each other, and then we came to the best conclusions that we could,
to the best of our abilities, and it’s on that basis that I put this report
to you and to the conference. (applause)
(transcript of the Disputes Committee Report to Conference,
CPGB 2013a).

Members at the SWP Conference voted narrowly to accept the Disputes

Committee Report. However, during and after the conference concerns
were raised that the SWP leadership had mishandled the allegations. Sadia
Jabeen spoke on behalf of W. during discussion of the report, explaining
why she did not approach the police and relating the experiences of W.
with the Disputes Committee:

She thought that if she put a complaint to the party that it would be
dealt with in line with the party’s politics and our proud tradition on
women’s liberation. Sadly her experience was quite the opposite . . . She
was questioned about why she went for a drink with him, her wit-
nesses were repeatedly asked whether she’d been in a relationship with
him, and you know, she was asked . . . about relationships with other
comrades including sexual relationships. All this was irrelevant to the
104 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y

case . . . She felt she was being interrogated and felt they were trying to
catch her out in order to make her out to be a liar. She did not accept
the line of questioning, saying “they think I’m a slut who asked for
it” . . . she feels she’s been treated as this non-person. The disgusting
lies and gossip going round about her has been really distressing and
disappointing for her to hear, and the way her own witnesses have
been treated in Birmingham hasn’t been much better.
(transcript of the Disputes Committee Report to Conference,
CPGB 2013).

A second women (X) also presented allegations of sexual harassment

again Comrade Delta. At the conference she spoke of losing her position
within the SWP because “in many meetings and appeals to the central
committee I was repeatedly told that I’d disrupt the harmony of the
office” (transcript of the Disputes Committee Report to Conference,
CPGB 2013a). After the conference, the Communist Party of Great
Britain (2013) announced that “with the best will in the world, the
SWP’s Disputes Committee is clearly ill-equipped to deal with serious
criminal charges. Such matters belong in the courts.” Yet major figures
within the SWP argued in defence of the actions taken. Addressing accu-
sations of institutionalized sexism in their March Bulletin, the Central
Committee of the SWP (2013, 10) responded that “historically the fate
of women is tied to the fate of the working class. This is not about the
working class leading a struggle on behalf of women or other oppressed
sections of society. Instead it is within the organised working class that
the mass of women find their power.” Alex Callinicos (2013), a leader
within the SWP and professor at Kings College London, specifically
defended the procedure by which this “difficult disciplinary case” was
handled, which “scandalously, a minority inside the SWP are refusing
to accept.” Callinicos urged recognition that “democratic centralism,”
the idea that the voting members of the party can produce a unity of
opinion from which members cannot subsequently deviate, is “what our
critics dislike most about us—how we organize ourselves—is crucial
to our ability . . . to punch above our weight.” Callinicos’s defence was
e-mailed to all members of the SWP, as well as published in the journal
Socialist Review. Callinicos subsequently described those who have criti-
cized the SWP as the equivalents of Perry Anderson and his editorial
team at the New Left Review a generation ago—that is, Juliet Mitchell,
Tom Nairn, and Robin Blackburn—who claimed to speak for socialism
while diluting their commitment out of, Callinicos suggested, “politi-
cal ambition” (cited in CPGB 2013b; cf. Matthews 2002). Callinicos
termed this debasement of socialist commitment “New Left Review
syndrome” (ibid.).
 D I A L E C T I C A N D DY S T O P I A 105

The mishandling of the rape allegations has prompted many mem-

bers to leave the SWP, suggesting that the failure to adequately respond
to the rape allegation was inseparable from wider gender norms within
the organization. For example, the University of Manchester Socialist
Worker Student Society disaffiliated from the SWP en masse. The author
and SWP member China Mieville (2013) describes this crisis of legiti-
macy and exodus of members as “the biggest crisis we have ever faced,”
leaving the “party on the brink of political annihilation.” In his resig-
nation letter from the SWP, Ian Walker (2013) expressed concern that
“party workers are being spoken to individually, and if they refuse to
give a guarantee that they will never so much as mention the case again,
they are being told they must leave their party jobs. Some have already
gone, others may be going as I write.” He added that “it may shed some
light to learn that ‘feminism’ is used effectively as a swear word by the
leadership’s supporters . . . it is being used today against young, militant
anti-sexists coming into the party. In fact it is deployed against anyone
who seems ‘too concerned’ about issues of gender.” The SWP incident
was placed in broader context by Laurie Penny (2013). Writing in the
Guardian, Penny identified that the mishandling of the allegation was
one in a string of incidents that reflected not just sexism within the Left,
but also a particular, characteristic response to and justification of sexism.
She observed that “the past years have been dispiriting for anyone who
believes that feminism should be at the heart of any struggle against
oppression . . . women on the left, along with those brave men who sup-
port our fight against abuse and exploitation, find ourselves accused of
being ‘bourgeois media stooges’ or, worse, police informants. To hear
such ugly nonsense from people with whom you had expected to find
common cause isn’t just depressing, it’s painful. Sexism and misogyny
are by no means unique to the left, but the response is—the angry, self-
justifying implication that little things like rape allegations against male
leaders can be dismissed in the context of the ‘wider struggle.’ ”

Twin Sisters
In discussions of her work by younger scholars, Mitchell’s tale is often
recounted: “I remember sitting at a table with all the men of New Left
Review, and going round the table with people saying ‘Well, I will think
about Algeria’, ‘I will think about Persia’, ‘I will think about Tanganyika’,
as they then were, and I said, ‘Well, I’ll think about women’—and
there was silence” (1995, 74). Mitchell went on to write Women: The
Longest Revolution. As already mentioned, Callinicos has character-
ized such works by members of the New Left Review editorial team as
106 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y

a debasement of true socialism, motivated by political opportunism. An

actually plausible and far more common reading has been that this story
represents the moment that Mitchell’s socialist concern with ideology
and inequality were “quietly abandoned” (Lovell 1996, 322), as the lack
of a responsiveness in socialist circles to the issues she was raising meant
that Mitchell instead became drawn to pursue psychoanalytic rather than
political lines of inquiry. Swindells and Jardine (1990) offer an acute and
detailed account of the period, but they are not correct when they imply
that having had the socialist door shut in her face when she raised the
issue of gender, Mitchell simply went off to do something else. Mitchell’s
tale is, I wish to contend, better regarded as the recollection of a fac-
ture within a continued socialist commitment, which has sustained an
analysis of ideology and inequality in a new and evolving form. It is true
that Mitchell did not flag her socialist commitments after the 1970s by
“wearing sandals and burbling about dialectical materialism” (Orwell
[1937] 2001, 208)—but even without caricature markers, the commit-
ment remained and is visible in her texts. Its fracture did not degrade
but reorganized the vitality of Mitchell’s socialism as a spur toward an
analysis of how the way in which sexual difference is configured in our
society relates to the possibility of meaningful equality.
Mitchell and Oakley (1976, 381) came to perceive that “equal rights
are an important tip of an iceberg that goes far deeper. That they are only
the tip is both a reflection of the limitation of the concept of equality
and an indication of how profound and fundamental is the problem of
the oppression of women.” The concept of equality alone was insuffi-
cient: it required supplementation and regeneration from sources beyond
socialism. Reflecting on the shift in practice this required, Mitchell
(2011, 2) has described her trajectory from protesting on the streets for
“equal work, pay and conditions” to clinical and theoretical reflection
as a movement “off to the hills to rethink what needs to be done politi-
cally. It is, as Adorno says, like putting messages in a bottle. I will remain
in the hills until the streets, where there is still radical work going on,
welcome me back.” Mitchell’s socialist interrogation of the meaning of
equality, though little noted by commentators for decades, has not been
left behind: “looking at it from the point of view of a clinical psychoana-
lyst, thinking as a feminist about its gendering, and, as a socialist and
social scientist, reading about it historically and cross-culturally—for me
all are interlinked” (2002, 218). Whether in a socialist, a feminist, or a
psychoanalytic frame, Mitchell’s work can be understood as animated
by an interrogation of how differences between subjects—whether how
much they are paid or their capacity to give birth—are recognized or
misrecognized as signs of equality or inequality.
 D I A L E C T I C A N D DY S T O P I A 107

The topics of siblings and of place have served as among Mitchell’s

most privileged themes for rethinking the dynamics of equality. Note
the appearance of both in Women’s Estate, as Mitchell argues against
either allowing socialism to subsume other oppressions or of giving up
on socialism because of its inadequacy:

The rejection of socialism by radical feminists is only the other side

of the same coin as the over-hasty rush into revolutionary social-
ism by those left-wing sisters who have always hovered around the
edges without a “place” within it—either theoretically or practically.
The demand that “what we’ve got to understand is the relationship
of Women’s Liberation to socialism” is twin-sister to “socialism has
nothing to offer us.” (1971, 92)

Identifying the axes of identity and difference between these twin sis-
ters, Mitchell suggests that radical feminism is utterly correct to analyze
the role of sexism in positively forming our subjectivity itself, rather than
solely its material conditions of possibility. Ideology shapes what we per-
ceive and who we are as sexed subjects, not just the conditions and divi-
sions of the labor conducted by men and women. This trains attention
on the importance of experience, and “starts to grapple with the ideo-
logical and psychological oppression of women” (1971, 95). Yet Mitchell
incisively observes that “the notion of undifferentiated male domination
from the earliest to the latest times simply gives a theoretical form to the
way oppression is usually experienced,” and is therefore insufficient on its
own. An undifferentiated “full presence” of patriarchy is interpreted by
Mitchell as a conceptual trap, with no escape possible. Likewise, Mitchell
observes that a socialist orientation is required because “the unequal dis-
tribution of wealth and ownership” provide the context “from which all
lack of freedom and of possibility for realisation of individuality follows
as night the day” (1971, 177). Yet to lose attention to the diversity of
oppressions by, for example, presuming they run in ways neatly homolo-
gous or subordinate to class, serves to “evade the specific oppression of
women and idealise the role of the oppressed” (1971, 94). To presume an
undifferentiated “full absence” of patriarchy within a socialist orientation
forecloses attention to the intersection of oppressions, including within
organizations committed to the attainment of meaningful equality.

Dialectics
Fundamental to Mitchell’s movement within/beyond socialism has
been the theme of dialectical processes. A dialectical perspective, which
explores the interplay of “sameness and difference, the subject and the
108 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y

other,” was one she first encountered “when as a student I read Simone
de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and discovered that I was, as a woman, the
very site of a primal alterity” (Mitchell 2006, 35). The widespread and
crude reduction of the “Hegelian dialectic” to a static and totalizing
process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis was an interpretation already
ridiculed by Marx and Lenin as “wooden trichotomies,” and utterly dis-
missed by Hegel, who specifically describes this “triplicity” as “noth-
ing but the merely superficial, external side of cognition” (Hegel [1832]
2010, 746). A more acute interpretation understands dialectics as social
ontology in which monism or dualism are necessarily precluded by the
ongoing weave of our existence out of contradictory relations within and
between phenomena. Hegel identifies that “the being as such of finite
things is to have the germ of this vergehen [spatial transgression/pas-
sage of time] in their in-itselfness” (ibid., 101); the reason for this is that
for a phenomenon or form of subjectivity to “positively” exist, it must
establish determinate relations of exclusion and “negation” with other
phenomena. However, this means that their very existence depends upon
maintaining a contradiction with these other phenomena. This places
contradiction and otherness, and therefore some degree of change and
sensuous motion, into the beating heart of each “positive” phenomenon
or subject: “The positive, since implicitly it is negativity, goes out of itself
and sets its alteration in motion. Something is alive, therefore, only to
the extent that it contains contradiction within itself” (ibid. 382). The
implication is that where apparent unities or simple oppositions occur as
characterization of human experience or relations, such characterizations
require critical investigation as deflections or containers of contradiction
(ibid. 416; cf. Jameson 2010).
Mitchell likewise affirms that “there is a contradiction within any-
thing that can change and one between it and its relationships to other
things” ([1974a] 1984, 91). Yet against any caricatured and crude
“Hegelian demands” (1967, 82), the dialectic for Mitchell never reaches
a moment of closure, beyond historicism and change. In Woman’s Estate
(1971, 90), she describes the concept of dialectics as positing “a com-
plex (not dualistic) structure in which all elements are in contradiction
to each other; at some point these contradictions can coalesce, explode
and be overcome but the new fusion will enter into contradiction with
something else. Human society is, and always will be, full of contra-
diction.” Whether the idealism is familialist (Marie Stopes) or radical
(Shulamith Firestone), Mitchell perceives that any “notion of transcend-
ing the divisions that plague our world,” ending the dialectic in a closed
shape, form, and established limitation, can only be illusionary; deploy-
ing the idea of “ultimate union no more solves divisions than it explains
 D I A L E C T I C A N D DY S T O P I A 109

them” (Mitchell 1973, 125). To Mitchell the operation of this dialectical

process of contradiction certainly did not imply, as it did for Engels,
that universal laws of history can be discerned or exist. Yet neither did it
imply that, because individual particularity would always be too singular,
social and psychological processes could not be described (a stance reiter-
ated in Mitchell and Spigel 2003). Like her colleagues in the New Left
Review editorial team (e.g. Blackburn 1972), Mitchell was influenced by
Althusser ([1962] 2005) for whom dialectics implied a world structured
and disturbed by multiple determinate contradictions, each capable of
affecting and partially constituting the others. Ideology would attempt
to hide these contradictions but it could also further cause them; humans
would experience these contradictions as bearable and unbearable every-
day difficulties but could also organize using them to achieve social and
political change.
The conviction that apparent unities within ideological formations
can be interrogated as masks for determinate objective contradictions
underpins Mitchell’s analysis of femininity and the family as natural and
inevitable in their apparent purity and unity: “It is the function of ideol-
ogy to present these given social types as aspects of Nature itself. Both
can be exalted, paradoxically, as ideals. The ‘true’ woman and the ‘true’
family are images of peace and plenty; in actuality, they may both be sites
of violence and despair” (1966, 11). Mitchell analyzes how the femininity
and the family can appear as images of natural purity, when in fact both
are organized in concrete practice by disjunctures and contradiction:

The contemporary family can be seen as a triptych of sexual, repro-

ductive and socialisatory functions (the women’s world) embraced
by production (the man’s world)—precisely a structure, which in the
final instance is determined by the economy. The exclusion of women
from production—social human activity—and their confinement to
a monolithic condensation of functions within a unity—the family—
which is precisely unified in the natural part of each function, is the
root cause of the contemporary social definition of women as natural
beings. (1966, 34)

Her analysis suggests that it has above all been “the woman’s task”
to sustain femininity and the family as ostensibly natural unities. She
concludes that “women in the family are used to deflect the tide and
implications of social labour” (1971, 161), masking determinate contra-
dictions in society as merely the flaws of particular women who deviate
from the imputed “truths” of femininity and the family. Yet, Mitchell
also observes that precisely the strain of trying to contain the movement
of dialectical contradictions within the monism of femininity and the
110 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y

family has resulted in the Movement for Women’s Liberation, since “out
of the increasingly numerous contradictions of their position, a sense of
their oppression is growing” (ibid.).
Mitchell’s analysis places the subjective experiences of women as both
an expression and as a containment of contradictions in the objective
relations between production, reproduction, sexuality, and socializa-
tion in society and the family. In this she is aligned with studies using
the concept of “the dialectic of negativity as the moving and generating
principle” (Marx [1844] 1977, 101), which have presumed that the tri-
als of subjectivity will co-vary with objective contradictions—until this
subject comes to recognize the contradictions it faces are common to
a whole group of subjects, and in doing so achieves the possibility of
freedom from them. Within this dialectical approach, the examination
of contradictions at the level of subjective experience and at the level of
objective conditions in society must be considered together, as part of
the very same event occurring at two different levels in potential sup-
port or disjuncture with one another (cf. Williams 1973). In Mitchell’s
usage, this approach offered a method for investigating the interrelation
between contradictions at the level of both the personal and the political,
treated as one event—but not necessarily as mirroring one another. This
agrees with Marx and Engels ([1846] 1994, 130), who argued that so
long as there exists any form of division of labour “the productive force,
the state of society, and consciousness”—each of which themselves will
be threaded by contradictions— “can and must come into conflict with
one another.”
A dialectical movement in which contradictions within a particular
form lead both deeper within and beyond it characterized both Mitchell’s
own relationship with socialism (which entered into a productive contra-
diction with feminism) and her analysis of the position of women under
patriarchy (as masks and containers for ultimately unbearable contradic-
tions between production, reproduction, sexuality, and socialisation—as
the four bases of sexism in society). This was concerted. From the time
of ‘Women: the Longest Revolution,” Mitchell (1967, 82) insisted that
her work could not be understood if readers were to enact any “separa-
tion of methodology from content. I consider that the two are correla-
tives”; indeed, perhaps the only accurate comment in Hoare’s (1967,
79) vituperative critique of Longest Revolution is to note that Mitchell’s
“method is more than a method—it demonstrates her whole ideological
orientation.” Precisely a combination of a dialectical relationship with
socialism and a dialectical analysis together led Mitchell to integrate
socialist analysis with further insights from feminism and from a further
intellectual movement, psychoanalysis.
 D I A L E C T I C A N D DY S T O P I A 111

Despite what she perceived as the degradation of psychoanalysis in

normalizing therapeutic practices, Mitchell discerned that “the last
thing Freud meant this to be was the adaptive process prevalent today.
He saw psychoanalysis as revolutionary, shocking, subversive—a plague
that would disrupt society” (1971, 167). She emphasized Freud’s ([1933]
2001, 116) claim that “psychoanalysis does not try to describe what a
woman is—that would be a task it could scarcely perform—but sets about
enquiring how she comes into being,” pointing out the potential value of
an analysis of unconscious processes for making sense of how gendered
inequalities can remain entrenched even within institutions and move-
ments bent on social change in the name of equality. Mitchell ([1974c]
1984, 228) argued that “opposition to Freud’s asymmetrical history of
the sexes . . . may well be more pleasing in the egalitarianism it assumes,”
but it neglects to “realise that it was exactly the psychological formations
produced within patriarchal societies that he was revealing and analysing.”
Looking back, Mitchell (1999a, xvii) has explained that “psychoanalysis
seemed to offer some way into the question of how, along with social
changes, something persists that is incommensurate with the real social
situation,” which organizes “the structure of sexual difference and the
inequalities that arise from it.” That is to say, “if equal rights are accepted
in principle, what is the stone in the stream of progress? What obstacle
prevents the move forward to equality between what was then the sexes,
and now is gender? The turn to psychoanalysis was to think through
that question” (1999b, 186). The appalling vibrancy of the unconscious,
in which the “the logical laws of thought do not apply . . . and this is
true above all for the law of contradiction’ ” (Freud [1933] 2001, 79),
meshed well with Mitchell’s existing critique of monism or static dualism
within human experience and social structures. In Freud’s ([1933] 2001,
176) analysis, “dialectical evolution” from contradiction to closed syn-
thesis is certainly no “natural law” dominating all of human life: within
human development he identifies a disjuncture between early life—pre-
served in unconscious processes in which all the various “contradictory”
reactions to experience survive—and later development and conscious
thought in which “the power of synthesis” is stronger ([1938] 2001, 229;
see also Milner 1969, 241 and Green 1999).
In her book opening a rapprochement between Psychoanalysis and
Feminism, Mitchell (1974b, 402) would emphasize again: “the principle
of dialectics is contradiction, not simple unity: elements contradict one
another, resolve themselves, join together, and enter into further con-
tradictions with other aspects—any ‘unity’ is a complex one contain-
ing contradictions.” In her later work, as the recourse to psychoanalytic
reference points became more overt and to socialist reference points
112 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y

less frequent, Mitchell would not abandon this use of a commitment

against monism or static dualism as an tool for analyzing practices and
phenomena. In particular, from Psychoanalysis and Feminism onward,
this analysis has been framed as a discussion of how a “minimal differ-
ence” is founded and structured. Mitchell’s attention to “difference” is a
far cry from vague notions of social diversity; the term comes—probably
through Marx, de Beauvoir, and Lévi-Strauss—from a specific moment
within the dialectic, a moment of emergence, and recognition, which
“negates the simple, [and] thereby posits the determinate difference of
understanding” (Hegel [1832] 2010, 10, 535). Specifically, for Mitchell,
attention to “minimal difference” orients analysis to the movement that
must found and structure any inhabitable subjectivity and which is denied
in ideologies and fantasies of the achievement of simultaneity and full
unity—such as that which may at times animate the SWP’s “democratic
centralism,” in which the voting members can produce a view for the
party that fully binds its members. For it is, Mitchell (2000, 312) insists,
only through some degree of acceptance of the “play of presence and
absence, existence and non-existence” that our lives and encounters with
others are bearable and sustainable without the deployment of neurosis
or psychosis to block or circumvent what we know or feel. This agrees
both with Hegel and with psychoanalytic accounts of symbolisation as
requiring loss; Lacan ([1953] 1977, 69), glossing both, claims that any
form of individual or social subjectivity “without dialectic” can only be
a “delusion,” whether of a form “fabulous, fantastic, or cosmological;
interpretive, demanding, or idealist.” A person or a group may long for
the plenitude of full unity, or to retreat into full nothingness; in fact
these longings are, Mitchell (1983) argues, the precise terrain that dis-
tinguishes psychoanalytic inquiry. Yet she perceives that to achieve or
inhabit the object of such longing is not possible “without in the process
setting in motion its own dissolution” in our mixed-up and differentiated
world—except in phantasy, or symptom, or mystical experience or death
([1974a] 198, 106). As Mitchell ([1982] 1984, 293) explains, “ ‘Oneness’
is the symbolic notion of what happens before the symbolic; it is death
and has to be death.” The reason for this is “the necessity of incomplete-
ness” in our lives; as a result, plenitude “would be omnipotence—the
concept of God is the concept of total fullness” (1988, 82).
A sustained example of these processes for Mitchell, from her early to
her more recent writings, relates to the dream of simultaneity and full
unity associated with the feminist discourse of “sisterhood,” which have
in part been animated by “a love of sameness” (2006, 39). While fully
acknowledging that “sisterhood can undoubtedly be a relationship of soli-
darity and support,” Mitchell and Oakley express particular concern that
 D I A L E C T I C A N D DY S T O P I A 113

the concept of “sisterhood” has worked against attention to other forms

of oppression, such as class and race, within the feminist movement:

When the present phase of the women’s movement established itself

in the second part of the sixties, there was a need for a unifying ideol-
ogy while ideas were being worked out or rediscovered. “Sisterhood”
served the rhetorical purpose of political under-development; it was
a useful rallying-cry. But its implications were not thought out and it
seems to us now to mask both an absence of any real unity beneath
it and to ignore the highly problematic relationships that in itself it
implies. We do live in hierarchical world; the women’s movement does
not just combat structures of dominance, it is also surrounded by them
and embedded in them. (Mitchell and Oakley 1976, 12–13)

Mitchell (1986, 44–5) recalls that “with torturous arguing in the

early days, we tried to see whether we could call ourselves a class, a caste,
a social group, and so on. The point it that, calling ourselves “sisters”
operated effectively as a polemic against the hierarchies between men
and women and among women. However, it did so in a way which risked
underestimating the reality of these hierarchies, through a “polarity that
disguised other distinctions by the comprehensive, all-embracing oppo-
sition” of sisterhood and patriarchy. In this way, “we helped to produce
the ideological notion of a ‘classless’ society,” which has subsequently
been so important to neoliberal ideology.

Siblings and the Lateral Dialectic

Through an investigation of hysteria, Mitchell came explicitly to a con-
clusion already present in latent form from her work in the 1970s: that
sibling relationships are an integral (and neglected) site for understand-
ing the social and the psychological relations that organize sex into an
entrenched absolute difference. Indeed, “recognition of siblings as the
same but different seems to me to be the Ur, or primal situation, that
underlies the particular problematic of sameness and difference” (Mitchell
2002, 227). The reason for this, Mitchell proposes, is that the “sibling
is the concrete embodiment of a general condition in which no human
being is unique—he can always be replaced or repeated by another”
(2000, 26). This substitutability and displacement includes within it,
from the very start, the possibility of the absence of the subject—a pos-
sibility that is denied in hysteria, in which the lateral other is phantasized
as a repetition and extension of oneself.
Lacan ([1956] 1997, 179) had asked “Can we now spell out the fac-
tor common to the feminine position and the masculine question in
114 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y

hysteria—a factor that is no doubt situated at the symbolic level, but per-
haps isn’t entirely reducible to it? It concerns a question of procreation.”
Mitchell specifies this link between hysteria, procreation, and imaginary
forms that unsettle symbolic thought, offering a new interpretation of
the “primal scene” to which Freud assigned such importance. In doing so
she deploys her ongoing attention to reproduction—criticized by theo-
rists such as Segal (2001) as crude gender essentialism. In fact, Mitchell’s
perspective is subtle, firmly eschewing both “biological determinism”
and “socialisation” theories. Mitchell’s analysis suggests that “biological
femaleness and psychic femininity in certain but by no means all situa-
tions are co-incident. Even in these instances we should remember that
there is never a perfect fit” (1988, 88–9). This perspective leaves open
the possibility of attending to “the way the anatomical male/female data
(with all its uncertainties) is mentally lived; the way the physical data, the
clitoris/vagina/penis, is phantasized and experienced; the way these are
lived in people’s heads and in their experiences” (1973, 131). This subtly
allows Mitchell to identify the fantasies of the primal scene and parthe-
nogenesis (the birth of another exactly like oneself from oneself), which
address the question of how difference occurs or does not occur within
the reproduction and birth of new identities. This question, Mitchell
insists, is shared by men and women, since “giving birth is no more psy-
chically gendered than is dying. It is, however, actually gendered—as
is having a penis, which, because it can be cut off, can also represent
the annihilation of the subject” (2000, 200–1). Since reproductive inter-
course between the parents “is a perfect image for an originary absence
of the subject at the very place where he comes into being—we are not
present at our own conception. It is, however, the catastrophe of the sib-
ling displacement which occasions a retrospective imaginary perception
of this ‘unimaginable’ event. Hysteria protests this displacement, this
absence of the subject” (Mitchell 2000, 24).
Mitchell suggests that, for both sexes, themes of sexual and parthe-
nogenic reproduction as well as death predominate in the experience of
hysteria, because each is a fundamental site that can be used to “repre-
sent the annihilation of the subject” (2000, 200–1). This potential for
an experience of annihilation in the threat of substitutability and dis-
placement, Mitchell theorizes, is a threat that every subject must either
surmount or try to evade in hysteria and which is necessarily evoked by
the potential for a sibling who is not merely an extension of the subject.
Whether through the advent of a new sibling, a potential sibling, or the
intrusion into mother-baby of the needs and demands of an older sibling,
there appears “a black hole where we thought we stood” (Mitchell 2003,
42). Together with the parent–child vertical axis, the horizontal axis of
 D I A L E C T I C A N D DY S T O P I A 115

possible siblings draws out the dimensions of a frame within which every
subject is established in a matrix of relations of similarity and difference.
Perpendicular to the dialectic through which a child emerges from a rela-
tionship with an adult caregiver, in Madmen Mitchell therefore identifies
another horizontal dialectic in which “the minimal difference between
brothers and sisters is the difference that must be socially established”
(2000, 324–5). The idea of an identity which could be a self-enclosed
point is a necessary phantasy but is not a sustainably inhabitable form of
subjectivity, Mitchell proposes, because it is precisely through the matrix
of relations along the vertical line and the lateral line that we first find
our place in the world:

The sibling experience organises narcissism into self-esteem through

accepted loss—through a mourning process for the grandiose self, the
“death” of His Majesty the Baby. This is the necessary acceptance that
one is ordinary, which does not mean that one is not unique—just
that all those other brothers and sisters are also ordinary and unique.
Without this gradual and never fully established transformation of the
self, the distress and disruption of the anti-social child or the maladies
of madness are on the cards. The shock of the sibling trauma will also
be repeated and have to be reworked through in any future event that
displaces and dislodges a person from who and where they thought
they were. (Mitchell 2003, 205)

To restate Mitchell’s analysis of the threat of sibling substitutability

and displacement for the subject in explicitly dialectical terms: any point
occurring within our differentiated world is, regardless of whether we
want to conceptualize it as self-contained, already and irreducibly situated
by its relationship with others outside of it. Whether they like it or not,
their dialectical relationship means that siblings “hinge on each other”
(Wandschneider 2010, 35). For this reason, the human who wishes to be a
simple and totalizing point can only ever do so in phantasy, since the world
will continually provide experiences of troubling continuity and contradic-
tion from and with others in the world: the single point, as Hegel ([1832]
2010, 100) says, is inexorably and faced by “the transition as it occurs and
has already occurred into the line.” A parallel dialectic occurs in relation
to time, framed as birth order on the lateral axis. The subject understood
to come “first” is not independent and outside of dialectic if it stands in
relation to a potential second, even if that second is yet to appear. The first
must negotiate a loss of narcissistic primacy. The second (and any subse-
quent additions) will be subject to a different but parallel task in trying
to establish itself as an identity with respect to others, including at least
one who antedates her. To overlay the dynamic of birth-order and the
116 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y

moments of the dialectic directly: “Because the first or the immediate [the
first-born] is the concept in itself or implicitly [as ‘the Baby’], and therefore
is the negative also only implicitly [because the next child may only exist as
a possibility], the dialectical movement in it consist in the positing of the
difference that is implicitly contained in it [learning of difference, griev-
ing for parthenogenesis]. The second [child] is on the contrary itself the
determinate, the difference or relation [faced by always being ‘the Baby’
in relation to an older ‘relation’: the sibling]; hence the dialectical moment
consists in its case in the positing of the unity contained within it [and the
younger sibling has to find its identity within a relationship coeval with
its birth]” (Hegel [1832] 2010, 745). In particular, as Mitchell ([1964]
1984) observes of Heathcliff in her commentary on Wuthering Heights,
the child loaded by their caregiver as a replacement for or in the shadow of
a dead sibling has among the more acute and rocky forms this task can take
(see also Guntrip 1975). Even the only child must negotiate the issue of
substitutability and displacement, and Mitchell’s analysis agrees with that
of Klein (1932, 73) that “an only child suffers to a far greater extent than
other children from the anxiety it feels in regard to the brother or sister
whom it is forever expecting . . . because it has no opportunity of develop-
ing a positive relation to them in reality.”
Attention to sibling relations as a site for the negotiation of sameness
and difference helps Mitchell identify why genital and reproductive dif-
ferences have been figured with a social significance that allows them to
support the entrenchment and naturalization of inequalities. Unless the
subject is provided with the symbolic and imaginary resources to nego-
tiate their place within the matrix of vertical and horizontal relations,
the threat posed by the difference comprising the lateral axis remains
active as a destabilizing trauma. Then genital and reproductive differ-
ences are picked up or suggested as symbols to staunch the trauma of
substitutability and displacement, which provides an impetus for sexual
oppression, which will take different forms depending on culture and
context. Mitchell (2003, 219–220) argues that “when the child is over-
whelmed by the trauma of one who, in the mind, was supposed to be the
same as itself inevitably turning out to be different, it finds or is given
ways to mark this difference—age is one, gender another . . . The cradle
of gender difference is both narcissistic love and violence at the traumatic
moment of displacement in the world. Gender difference comes into
being when physical strength and malevolence are used to make the sister
as lesser” (2003, 219–220). When the symbolic and imaginary resources
are available from adult caregivers and from society to allow each sub-
ject a recognized and intelligible place, with sufficient meaning and dig-
nity, then genital and reproductive differences are registered and given
 D I A L E C T I C A N D DY S T O P I A 117

social meaning. However, they do not need to be deployed in warding

off the traumatic moment of lateral displacement though a virgin/whore
dichotomy and forms of sexual oppression and violence: “When this rec-
ognition is missing then either idealising love or demolishing hate or a
love without boundaries (incest) or a hate without boundaries (murder)
become rampant and social relations predicated on equality cannot be
established. De Beauvoir’s thesis on men and women in The Second Sex
now sounds to me like unresolved sibling relations” (2003, 132). Though
Mitchell is not fully clear on the particular conditions that would lead
to incest as opposed to murder when trauma on the lateral axis is not
contained, her overall point is that the unbound sibling trauma instigates
unbounded behavior, whether idealizing or callous—or both.
When oppression is reduced to vertical axis, such important dynamics
are missed. Mitchell (2006, 36) notes that “our explanation of parental
abuse rests on an assertion of how the abusing adult was previously the
abused child—vertical explanations. [Yet] in England the most prevalent
abuse of all is older brothers to younger brother or sister.” A parallel can
be drawn with the SWP Disputes Committee, which reported that they
decided to assess the rape allegations of W. against her comrade Delta
themselves—party big brother against younger sister—rather than passing
the matter to the police because of concern for the oppression W. would
experience if she took her case to the patriarchal state legal system. To the
extent that meaningful recognition of each other as the same but different
is absent within socialist organizations, Mitchell (1971, 84) reports, the
result for women is likely either to be a sham of “respect” or else some-
thing more overly malevolent: “where socialist groups have apparently
‘respected’ the position of women, the ‘respect’ has had all the implica-
tions of paternalism and mystification with which its meaning in capitalist
society is redolent. Again, as in contemporary society, where ‘respect’ is
absent, thuggishness takes its place: the wife and the prostitute.”
It must be insisted, however, that what Mitchell means by “recogni-
tion” on the horizontal axis is quite distant from much contemporary
usage, for example in the work of Axel Honneth (1996), in which Hegel
is read as suggesting that difference—including sexual difference—can
be reconciled by respect and understanding between peers (see McNay
2007). Mitchell’s use of the term “recognition,” throughout her writ-
ings, has always highlighted the need to dig beneath formal recogni-
tion of equality to achieve the meaningful equality, which requires
attention to social and economic inequalities and to differences between
and among men and women. Her “socialist . . . perspective suggests that
‘equality’ in capitalist society is based on class inequality; in a classless
society there will still be differences or inequalities, inequalities between
118 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y

individuals, strengths or handicaps of various kinds. There will be differ-

ences between men and women, differences among women and among
men; a truly just society . . . would take these inequalities into account and
give more to he who needed more and ask for more from he who could
give more. This would be a true recognition of the individual in the
qualities that are essential to his humanity” (1976, 397).
Mitchell’s concept of “recognition” also highlights the importance of
the external framework within which lateral encounters are folded and
situated. In her earlier writings (addressing equality primarily in relation
to liberty), this external framework is necessary because any adequate
“recognition” along the lateral axis is likely to require more redistribu-
tion, collective provision, and curtailment of the capacity for exploita-
tion than society currently employs. In her more recent work (addressing
equality primarily in relation to fraternity), Mitchell uses the figure of
the mother distinguishing between siblings as equals, but as different
(for example in their capacity one day to gestate a child), to depict a form
of recognition modeled on seriality and space: “one, two, three, four
siblings, playmates, school friends . . . tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor. There is
room for you as well as me—something of which the hysteric in all of us
has no cognisance” (2003, 44). In contrast to any notion of recognition
as reconciliation through respect and understanding, Mitchell’s attention
to the external framework of recognition gives her a container in which
hate and conflict can be acknowledged and have a place. She firmly criti-
cizes as a form of theoretical repression and as unproductive any perspec-
tive that sees the possibility of lateral relations reconciled and devoid of
conflict, including “Hegel’s perception of the sister-brother relationship
as ideal because of its closeness without sexuality” (2003, 232). Whereas
Hegel ([1807] 1977, §457) suggests that “between brother and sister”
lies a relationship, outside of dialectic or other social relations, in “a state
of rest and equilibrium” in which “they do not desire one another,”
Mitchell’s analysis treats the sibling trauma of substitutability and dis-
placement as directly tied to a dialectic of sex and violence and love, and
as a paradigm of later lateral relations outside the family. The material-
ized, embodied aspects of the psychical dynamics of sibling squabbles
and affection are also always described by Mitchell: in this, her account
of the sibling dialectic is distant from Hegel’s tendency to abstract con-
flict from its sensuous and physical dimensions.
Mitchell theorizes the sibling trauma of displacement and substitut-
ability as a black hole within subjectivity, a disappointment with qualita-
tive difference to which the first response is hate and sexual aggression;
this agrees with Freud’s ([1915] 2001, 139) claim that “the relation of hate
is older than that of love” as the subject registers difference, because this
 D I A L E C T I C A N D DY S T O P I A 119

difference is only registered on the occasion of frustration. Yet Mitchell

argues that it is not a problem that difference is first recognized in hate—
if this hating subject acknowledges the other as discrete from the subject,
with their own place within the relations that tie them together: “hate
for the sibling enables the first move to be made: I hate you, you are not
me, is the precondition of seriality” (2003, 53). The concept of seriality
has two components: it is “the unity of these moments, of continuity
and discreteness” (Hegel [1832] 2010, 154). One component of serial-
ity is continuity—all the units are the same in some relevant sense, and
as such are commensurable and can be recognised together. Another
component is discreteness—each unit is separated off from the others as
having a meaning, even if this meaning is partly shaped by its context in
continuity. Two takes its meaning in part from one, but is irreducible to
one, and both can be situated within the frame of integers, though this
frame does not fully capture their possible senses and uses. To deploy
the configuration of continuity and discreteness of seriality is a new and,
I think, ingenious move within social and political theories of differ-
ence and equality. Each subject takes its meaning in part from another,
but they are irreducible to one another, and each can be situated within
frames of recognition, though these frames are always potentially revers-
ible and do not fully capture any subject.
Part of the concept of seriality situates the differences between sub-
jects as a matter of quantity, since they partially exist in continuity. Yet
each subject is also discrete, with properties that cannot be assimilated
to mere continuity and rather mark some degree of qualitative differ-
ence. Siblings may be situated on the continuum of age, but this does
not capture their possibilities: the continuum of age variously means that
some can stay up that bit later, some can bear children, and some can
drive a car. As Marx ([1867] 2011, 338) notes, any dialectical perspective
must acknowledge that “quantitative differences beyond a certain point
pass into qualitative changes.” The dimension of sameness will under
some conditions be disrupted by some “becoming-other that interrupts
gradualness and stands over against the preceding existence as some-
thing qualitatively other”: for instance, in the perception of those who
are in some sense the same as oneself, “every birth and every death, far
from being a protracted gradualness, is rather its breaking off and a leap
from quantitative to qualitative alteration” (Hegel [1832] 2010, 322).
Mitchell’s concept of recognition, symbolized by the mother organizing
sameness and difference and privilege and future reproductive capabili-
ties among her children (the Law of the Mother), does not attempt to
reconcile these qualitative differences and retains a place for the conscious
and unconscious conflicts inherent to qualitative differentiation. Rather,
120 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y

it provides a framework within which conflicts become both manage-

able and productive. A framework of recognition is set out by the Law
of the Mother in which lateral dynamics such as differentiation and envy
are not experienced or enacted as annihilating, and a meaningful place
can be found in “who can stay up latest, have which piece of cake and
survive the murderous rivalries to win through to sibling and peer love,
a law allowing space for one who is the same and different” (2003, 52).
Mitchell’s account therefore grants no quarter to any tendency to end
contradiction and activism: “Rhetoric and anger have their place—[and]
that place is within political strategy” (1971, 163). Since she perceives
that “there has to be conflict somewhere” (1988, 87) within any social
relations, Mitchell criticizes claims to have ended social contradiction
between peers as themselves an ideological strategy for managing rela-
tions along the lateral axis.

Dystopia and the Lateral Axis

One of the first claims of Siblings (2003, 4) is that “the sibling, I believe,
is the figure which underlies such nearly forgotten concepts as the ego-
ideal—the older sibling is idealised as someone the subject would like
to be.” Freud introduced the concept of the ego-ideal in On Narcissism.
There he suggested that, as the child grows up, he has to leave behind any
ideal of perfection he had sustained in infancy: “he is disturbed by the
admonitions of others and by the awakening of his own critical judge-
ment, so that he can no longer retain that perfection, he seeks to recover
it in the new form of an ego ideal,” an image of who the subject should
be ([1914] 2001, 94). Freud conjectures that there is some “psychical
agency which performs the task of seeing that narcissistic satisfaction
from the ego ideal is ensured and which, with this end in view, constantly
watches the actual ego and measures it by that ideal . . . recognition of
this agency enables us to understand the so-called ‘delusions of being
noticed’ or more correctly, of being watched . . . A power of this kind,
watching, discovering and criticising all our intentions, does really exist.
Indeed, it exists in every one of us in normal life” ([1914] 2001, 95).
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell describes Britain in a dystopian future
in which the ideology of the state is Ingsoc, a contraction of “English
Socialism.” Under this system, “in the eyes of the Party there was no
distinction between the thought and the deed.” With this distinction
suspended, the intrasubjective dynamic between ego and ideal and per-
secutory agency can be elaborated for the reader, to the extent that one
is captured by the novel and subjected to the party, as a form of social
organization.
 D I A L E C T I C A N D DY S T O P I A 121

In the opening pages of the book, Winston Smith describes how “you
had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assump-
tion that every sound you made was overheard,” and in which, always
and inexorably for any member of the party, “Big Brother is watching
you” (Orwell 1949, 6). Panoptical surveillance works to ensure not only
outward conformity, but inward and unthinking allegiance. Any inter-
nal dynamism—whether triggered by contradiction between reality and
perception, or between desires and social injunctions—is potentially dan-
gerous since “any nervous mannerism that could possibly be the symp-
tom of an inner struggle is certain to be detected” (1949, 168). With the
generative tension of conflict with reality or the id foreclosed, the ego is
at the mercy of its ideal. Big Brother as “an invincible, fearless protector”
is opposed in Ingsoc ideology to Goldstein, “the commander of a vast
shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the
overthrow of the State. The Brotherhood, its name was supposed to be”;
it is the responsibility of every member of the party to feel, confronted
with an image of Goldstein, “a hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness,
a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in” (1949, 14–5).
Over the course of the book, Winston has two visions, which begin
at the same time and progressively develop over the book. The first is
a sequence of “memory, which he could not pin down, but which was
powerful and troubling” (1949, 100). The first hint is the undue reso-
nance he finds in a media image of a mother and small child, from a
convoy of ships to England which had been bombed (an image also with
resonance to Mitchell’s biography). The vision then appears to Winston
more sharply as a dream in which “his mother was sitting in some place
deep down beneath him, with his young sister in her arms. He did not
remember his sister at all, except as a tiny, feeble baby, always silent, with
large, watchful eyes . . . they were being sucked down to death, and they
were down there because he was up here. He knew it and they knew
it” (Orwell 1949, 27). The sequence of memories gradually comes into
focus. He remembers, from late childhood, “the fierce sordid battles at
meal-times. He would ask his mother naggingly, over and over again,
why there was no more food . . . His mother was quite ready to give him
more than his share. She took it for granted that he, ‘the boy’, should
have the biggest portion; but however much she gave him he invariably
demanded more. At every meal she would beseech him not to be selfish
and to remember that his little sister was sick and also needed food . . . He
knew that he was starving the other two, but he could not help it; he even
felt that he had a right to do it” (194, 132). The big brother’s sovereign
egoism at the expense of his younger sister is consciously felt as entitle-
ment; and this entitlement is enacted as Winston’s mother gives him
122 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y

more because he is “the boy” and because the family’s intense poverty
and his mother’s depression undermines her capacity to firmly establish
any frame for recognition between the siblings. Even though he gets the
food he desires, Winston is aware that he is starving his mother and sister
with his demands, though the associated guilt is sufficiently unconscious
as to allow his behaviour to continue.
After stealing her share of a chocolate ration, “his sister, conscious of
having been robbed of something, had set up a feeble wail. His mother
drew her arm around the child and pressed its face against her breast.
Something in the gesture told him that his sister was dying. He turned
and fled down the stairs, with the chocolate growing sticky in his hand.
He never saw his mother again” (1949, 133). Winston tells his lover
Julia that because he had not had access to this memory until now,
“until this moment I believed I had murdered my mother” (1949, 131).
What is curious, and which has not been picked up by commentators on
Orwell, is that Winston’s guilt is organized by a confusion of the vertical
and lateral axes through the link between the two. Klein ([1928] 1998,
190) observes that “the tendencies to steal and destroy are concerned
with the organs of conception, pregnancy and partuition,” and she
associates these tendencies with a desire to “appropriate” the mother’s
existing children into oneself and by “jealousy of the future brothers
and sisters whose appearance is expected.” As a result, “the boy fears
punishment for his destruction of the mother’s body . . . he fears that his
body will be mutilated and dismembered, and this dread also means
castration.” Winston did not murder his mother, but rather drove her
away because his selfishness was killing or speeding up the death of
his younger sister. Like Klein, he presumes that stealing and appropria-
tion are ultimately directed toward the mother, rather than identifying
the relationship between big brother and little sister as capable of its
own psychical dynamics and consequences, its own processes of love
and guilt. In his society, there are no symbolic resources usable to make
sense of lateral complexity and ambivalence: only love for Big Brother,
and hate for the Brotherhood. In another context in the novel, Winston
dismisses the working-class Proles because instead of having political
vision they only “remembered a million useless things, a quarrel with a
workmate, a hunt for a lost bicycle pump, the expression on a long-dead
sister’s face” (1949, 78).
As the book closes Winston has a further memory from his childhood:

His mother was sitting opposite him and also laughing. It must have
been about a month before she disappeared. It was a moment of rec-
onciliation, when the nagging hunger in his belly was forgotten . . . the
 D I A L E C T I C A N D DY S T O P I A 123

tiddlywinks climbed hopefully up the ladders and then came slithering

down the snakes again, almost to the starting point. They played eight
games, winning four each. His tiny sister, too young to understand
what the game was about, had sat propped up against a bolster, laugh-
ing because the others were laughing. For a whole afternoon they had
all been happy together, as in his earlier childhood. He pushed the
picture out of his mind. It was a false memory. (1949, 238)

In identifying this memory as false, Winston circumvents mourning.

The relationship with reality is given up, as the ego ideal succeeds in
winning the ego’s love away from lost objects and towards itself: “the
final, indispensable, healing change had never happened, until this
moment . . . the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over him-
self. He loved Big Brother” (ibid. 239). These are interesting lines for
Orwell to write, bedridden and dying of tuberculosis and cared for in a
remote farmhouse on Jura by his younger sister Avril, choosing to finish
the book rather than receive treatment at a sanatorium (Ingle 1993).
At the same point in the novel that this sequence of memories first
begins to return to him, Winston also has a second vision. This second
vision, written about in his diary, is of a time in the past or the future
“when men are different from one another and do not live alone” (1949,
26). These two elements are in counterpoint to the psychical economy of
Big Brother’s Ingsoc, in which each human is isolated and homogenized
with respect to a lateral ideal, separating each individual in the form
of their equality. For the Panopticon to exist, Foucault ([1975] 1977,
219) observes, “it must neutralise the effects of counter-power that spring
from . . . anything that may establish horizontal conjunctions.” Winston’s
vision of a time when humans are different from one another and do not
live alone has been understood as praise of the capitalist ideologies of
individualism and familialism (Goldstein 2000), but this is to ignore that
liberty and fraternity are being rethought against the dominating back-
ground of a false equality, and as an attempt to revise it. Orwell’s atten-
tion to the false equality and dystopian dimensions of the lateral axis is
not an attempt to collapse it into sovereign egoism: “every line of serious
work that I have written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectly
against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it”
(Orwell 1947 [2002], 1083; see Williams 1982).
The themes of liberty, fraternity, and equality come into focus in the
form of the tract “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism,”
which is described to Winston by its coauthor O’Brien, a member of
the Inner Party, as true “as description.” It can therefore by degrees
be trusted as an explanation of what Ingsoc believes it is doing. The
124 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y

tract explains that the idea of brotherhood, of political relations mod-

elled on sexed sibling relations, “had haunted the human imagination
for thousands of years” (1949, 164). Ingsoc was not a direct outgrowth
of English Socialism, but a new political programme that subsumed it
and wears its cadaver—because “wealth and privilege are most easily
defended when they are possessed jointly” in the name of “fraternity”
(1949, 164). Ingsoc “systematically undermines the solidarity of the
family, and it calls its leader by a name which is a direct appeal to the
sentiment of family loyalty . . . these contradictions are not accidental,
nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises
in doublethink. For it is only by reconciling contradictions that power can
be retained indefinitely” (1949, 172). The difficulties in lateral relations
experienced by Winston in his past and in dealing with his memories in
the course of the novel are not distinct from the political system within
which he lives. These difficulties are a concerted consequence of Ingsoc,
in which actual horizontal ties are systematically isolated and displaced
in order to purify the relationship between ego and lateral ideal of any
dialectic, and capacity for change.
Freud’s “Rat Man” had a Zwangsneurose (obsessional neurosis—but,
literally, a neurosis of coercion) in which he was tormented by the image
of rats gnawing into the anus of his father and fiancé-cousin. When dis-
cussing this torture with Captain Novak, the “Rat Man” has a compul-
sive need to prevent discussion of his beloved cousin, but in fact ends up
interjecting her name into the conversation. In his case-notes, Freud sug-
gests that this rat phantasy was shaped by a matrix of desire and aggres-
sive relations “derived from his several sisters,” in relation to whom his
erotic life had first been kindled (Freud [1909] 2001, 273). Winston,
left by his mother as a child, too has an “unendurable” phobia of “car-
nivorous” rats; the phobia is localized around the idea that rats are so
insatiable that “a woman dare not leave her baby alone . . . the rats are
certain to attack it” (Orwell 1949, 229). A key difference lies in the fact
that the “Rat Man” has an obsessional neurosis with an anal erotogenic
organization: if he does not satisfy the demands of the super-ego, then
the rat torture will happen to others. By contrast, Winston’s phobia is
oriented by a concern with “incorporating or devouring—a type of love
which is consistent with abolishing the object’s separate existence”: an
oral erotogenic organization, in which the very constitution of the self
is at stake (Freud [1915] 2001, 139). During his torture in Room 101,
Winston finally gives up his opposition to Big Brother when confronted
with his deepest fear: a cage is attached to his face so that the rats within
are constrained to gnaw away at his mouth and devour his tongue. He
interjects “Do it to Julia! Not me!” believing “there was one and only
 D I A L E C T I C A N D DY S T O P I A 125

one way to save himself. He must interpose another human being, the
body of another human being, between himself and the rats” (1949,
230). Political resistance to the coercive state is given up by Winston
at the moment at which he is forced to repeat interposing a particular
body between himself and an image of his sordid hunger. This body is
that of Julia, a “young girl” who loved him and who “stirred up some
memory which he could not pin down” when she shared chocolate with
him (1949, 100).
In describing this ultimate betrayal of Julia with images that reso-
nate with Winston’s earlier relations with his younger sister, Orwell dra-
matizes the psychical effect of a society in which lateral relations have
been systematically undermined and warped. A socialist, Orwell ([1946]
2002, 1005) argues, “is not obliged to believe that human society can
actually be made perfect, but almost any socialist does believe that it
could be a great deal better than it is at present, and that most of the evil
that men do results from the warping effects of injustice and i nequality.”
Commenting on dystopian writing as socialist meditation, Williams
(1980, 206) observed, “it is within a complex of contemporary tenden-
cies—of efficient and affluent capitalism set against an earlier capitalist
poverty and disorder; of socialism against capitalism in either phase; and
of the deep divisions within socialism itself . . . that we have to consider
the mode of dystopia” as a genre of modernist fiction generally, and
Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four specifically. In this way, Winston’s dream
of a time when humans are different from one another and do not live
alone dramatizes the possibility, explored in Mitchell’s work, of change
in the social and psychological configuration of liberty and solidarity as
the condition of advance toward meaningful equality.

Concluding Remarks
Mitchell has described that “I find the question of ‘othering’ as an
abstract concept vertiginous, and my contribution here is consequently
prosaic, down-to-earth” (2006, 35). In contrast to such vertiginous ana-
lytical tools for examining social and psychological forces which disrupt
the practice of meaningful equality, Mitchell explores “the minimal dif-
ference that needs to be set up between sisters and brothers for replication
to turn into seriality” (2003, 151–2). She deploys sibling relationships as
a lens on the dialectic that must organize lateral relations if they are to
escape twin dangers: collapse into the callous sovereign egoism lauded by
capitalist ideology; or warping into dystopian isolation and homogeniza-
tion. In contrast to post-structuralist thinking in which difference and
multiplicity are held up as a counter to capitalist and socialist totalities,
126 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y

Mitchell’s critical theory is animated by a commitment to socialism with-

out totality since she believes that “difference doesn’t oppose the One,
dialectic does” (Mitchell 2008). This position opened both her relation-
ship with socialism into a productive contradiction with feminism and
psychoanalysis, on the basis that they each have their differences but they
also have a certain axis of continuity and potential equality:

My own background had been in Marxist-Feminism; dialectically the

thesis and antithesis move into a position of synthesis—war becomes
peace and this new unity in which each has changed into the other,
becomes a new point of antithesis or thesis. The theory implicates
movement and change; the practice was one of polemic and argument
between those with the same concerns. There has to be some common
ground to start with; a giraffe and a stone can never form any part of
a dialectical relationship. (Mitchell 2007, 203)

Socialism, feminism, and psychoanalysis are not giraffes and stones to

Mitchell. Rather, as she suggests in an interview with Angela McRobbie,
psychoanalysis and feminism can be regarded as “twin births” of the
nineteenth century (Mitchell 1988, 80); socialism, in that case, would
be a somewhat older sibling. As ever eschewing any “separation of
methodology from content,” her work engages the three movements in
a way which models the Law of the Mother, facilitating a manageable
and productive organization of lateral relations and their conflicts. She
argues against any tendency toward reciprocal annihilation between the
three movements, manifest in “inapposite polemic, however mordant
or caustic” when weighing up the value of their theoretical positions
(Mitchell and Rey 1975, 80). Such annihilatory polemics do not benefit
even the position being argued for, since without interplay or mediation
our thought risks losing opportunities to “give and receive one another
back from each other” and the production of “lifeless” positions (Hegel
[1807] 1977, 114). As Feuerbach ([1843] 1986, §62) also emphasises,
“the true dialectic is not a monologue of a solitary thinker with himself;
it is a dialogue between ‘I’ and ‘Thou.’ ” Yet dialogue within recognition
(rather than annihilation of the other) along the lateral axis is not at all
perceived by Mitchell as implying a pacified end to conflict or anger.
Rather, it implies the productive containment of conflict and dialectic.
Mitchell models this in making space for “one, two, three . . . room for
you as well as me” between socialism, feminism. and psychoanalytic
thinking—and between liberty, fraternity, and equality. “There is a place
for oppositional perspectives that respect each other but also can con-
front each other,” Mitchell (2007, 204) argues, since “to transcend these
 D I A L E C T I C A N D DY S T O P I A 127

loses the dynamic of historical change which only comes about through
their confrontation.” Over her career Mitchell has sustained a dialectic
between the three siblings—socialist, feminist, and psychoanalysis—in
using their ideas to interrogate oppression, contradictions, and possibili-
ties in society. This analysis both enacts in itself and critically considers
relations of lateral recognition, presenting an advance in conceptualizing
the conditions for meaningful equality.

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Wandschneider, D. 2010. “Dialectic as the “Self-Fulfilment” of Logic.” In
The Dimensions of Hegel’s Dialectic, edited by Nectarious G. Limnatis.
New York: Continuum.
Williams, R. 1973. “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory.”
New Left Review 82: 3–16.
Williams, R. 1980. Problems in Materialism and Culture. New York: Verso.
Williams, R. 1982. “George Orwell.” In Culture and Society, 285–294.
London: Hograth Press.
 Chapter 6

Marked by Freud, Mitchell, and

the Freudian Project

Daru Huppert

Juliet Mitchell is considered to belong to the Independent School of

British Psychoanalysis, in which she was trained. Such claims necessarily
involve simplifications and soon require amending. One qualification of
is that, while psychoanalysts of the Independent School of Psychoanalysis
often have a loose, even sometimes a cavalier relationship to Freud, this
is not at all the case with Mitchell. Among the prominent figures of the
Independent School she is arguably the most deeply immersed in Freud.
Indeed within British psychoanalysis her relationship with him is one of
the distinctive features of her work.
While Mitchell has desisted from raising her relationship to Freud into
a doctrinal position, we cannot escape noticing the deep and constant
concern with his work that runs through all her psychoanalytic writings.
Since Psychoanalysis and Feminism she has attended to his texts, with a
fertile sense of their unsettling, but unarticulated implications. Over the
course of her work Mitchell has brought him to bear in a fundamental
way on two different issues, which he did not envisage or would have
necessarily endorsed: feminism and siblings. Indeed, what is compel-
ling about Mitchell’s work is that is has been innovative, while retaining
an allegiance to and living sense of Freud’s conceptions. In this she is
an exception. We find that the majority of the innovative work done
in Britain and elsewhere, such as the deeper exploration of pre-Oedipal
relationships by Kleinian psychoanalysts and attachment theory, was
advanced by ignoring central tenets of Freudian theory. While the impor-
tance of this later work is beyond question, the price has been excessive.
Giving up Freudian tenets has contributed to a loss of conceptual cohe-
sion within psychoanalysis (Green 2005; Turnheim 2007). To give two
132 DARU HUPPERT

examples that shall be of concern later on: if Freud’s conceptions of the

unconscious or of sexuality are overly diluted, psychoanalysis becomes
unintelligible, insipid, or both.
This neglect of Freud has led to a series of responses that seek to
reclaim the central meaning and actuality of his work—I am think-
ing, among others, of authors as diverse as Glover (1947), Lacan
(1966/2006), Matte-Blanco (1975), Laplanche (1979), or Green
(2000). While these responses claim his centrality for different and in
part conflicting reasons, they nevertheless coalesce around certain gen-
eral points that are worth outlining and that allow us to emphasize
their “family resemblance” (Wittgenstein 1984), rather than the nar-
cissism of small differences. What these authors would agree on is the
unique power of the Freudian corpus. Freud not only established the
fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis; these notions make psycho-
analysis possible, so that neglecting them inevitably leads to conceptual
disarray. The above authors would further agree on that contemporary
work within psychoanalysis should satisfy the conceptual and proce-
dural requirements that are found in Freud’s texts. What I mean by the
conceptual requirements can illustrated by the basic example of plea-
sure. Freud (1920g) proposes a notion of pleasure that is experienced as
unpleasurable by the subject who has it. This idea is deeply incoherent
from a phenomenological perspective, in which pleasure is considered
to be an irreducible phenomenon, which can refer to only to what is
experienced as such. Freud’s notion becomes intelligible, though still
unsettling, if we assume, among other things, that the pleasure he refers
to, issues from the satisfaction of a repressed wish that, due to the effects
of repression, now produces not pleasure, but aversion, pain, or an anes-
thetized sensation, etc. This account becomes particularly unsettling
if we assume, as Freud does, that the pleasure involved is of a sexual
kind, but which, for reasons akin to the above, is experienced without
the sexual charge becoming conscious. A procedural requirement that
psychoanalysts would have to satisfy is to show how these notions play
out in a specific psychic phenomenon, such as a dream, a symptom, or
a slip of tongue. This effort will only carry conviction, if the analysis is
born out in detail (a requirement I discuss later), and also, if it addresses
the points that are urgent to the person, that is, if it takes up those issues
that are deeply invested in terms of ideas and affects and lastly in terms
of the drives, which the ideas and affects represent. We find then that
the conceptual requirements of Freud’s thought are both disturbing and
original, while the procedures he developed are painstaking; it would
seem that the powerful effect of his writings depends on these, among
other qualities.
 F R EU D, M I T C H E L L , A N D T H E F R EU D I A N P R O J E C T 133

Accepting this does not entail an idolatry of Freud’s texts; the very
same requirements have been critically applied to Freud (Laplanche
1979). Yet it is also true that his writings fulfill these requirements to a
degree that have rarely, if at all, been reached again. That is one reason
why his texts are exemplary. Their unique status within psychoanalysis,
however, depends on something more basic: most of the central concepts
found in this discipline derive from Freud. Those who seek to reclaim
the central meaning of his work for psychoanalysis are keenly aware that
their work takes place within his concepts. In the view I wish to propose
here psychoanalysis is a development of his thought; in other words, it
is a Freudian project; the authors named above offer different and partly
conflicting versions thereof. Although this outline of the Freudian pro-
ject may seem overly abstract and will only gain in detail as we proceed,
it can nevertheless serve as a foil to the dominant view of Freud within
psychoanalysis, expressed with particular clarity by someone like Ferro
(1999, p. 1–19), though shared by many, perhaps the majority of psycho-
analysts. In this view Freud is treated (if at all) with a deference due to a
great figure of the past, who points to the progress that has been made
since him and, to a large degree, independently of his work. Such a view
unwittingly turns Freud into an antiquarian figure, whom we must “go
beyond.” In contrast, within the Freudian project, his writings remain of
acute and immediate importance. One reason for proposing this project
is, precisely, that efforts to go beyond Freud, in general, fall far behind
him. The challenge, rather, becomes to develop the strange and unsettling
originality of his thought and to extend it onto new areas.
In this chapter, I will discuss Mitchell’s work as a successful version of
the Freudian project, though not without some critique. Given her long-
standing engagement with Freud, any attempt to show how she thinks
with him and within his conceptions will necessarily be selective. Three
points will be taken up. I will first address her initial encounter with
his writings, then her allegiance to his concepts in her later texts, and
finally I will compare Mitchell’s and Freud’s analysis in more detail with
reference to a sadomasochistic fantasy. Throughout the purpose of this
chapter is twofold: to describe what is distinctive about Mitchell’s work
and to flesh out the demands of the Freudian project.

Marked by Freud
Mitchell’s entry into psychoanalysis was through Freud and she is still
probably best known for introducing him as a crucial thinker for femi-
nism within the English language. Yet this was not the intention she
initially pursued. In her introduction written for the 25th anniversary
134 DARU HUPPERT

edition for Psychoanalysis and Feminism Mitchell (2000, xv) remarks that
she had actually planned to write a book on the family:

For my book on the family I had intended to read a few articles of

Freud’s on “femininity” and, with this in mind, had entered the
British Museum reading room at the start of a university long vaca-
tion. I emerged at the end of the summer having read all twenty
three volumes of the standard edition of Freud’s complete works. The
projected work had changed and something in me had also. I had
been deeply marked by my reading Freud, and probably it is this that
carries the book, twenty-five years later, I am no less impressed by
Freud, although somewhat more independent from him. (Mitchell
2000 [1974], xv)

This passage, which may seem anecdotal, reveals some of the features
that have made Mitchell’s relationship with Freud compelling. Moreover,
it will serve to show what is required from us, if we wish to engage with
Freud. Since my focus here is on her relationship to Freud, I will not
enter into the other theme of her engagement: feminism. It is important
to note that Mitchell’s encounter with Freud was unexpected. With this
I do not mean primarily that she was planning to read only a few articles
of his, instead of writing a book in which he was to become the main
protagonist. I mean rather, that she was seized by Freud in a manner that
nothing could have prepared her for. One of the reasons for this captiva-
tion is that Freud’s object and mode of inquiry takes up the most pressing
matters of infancy. More precisely, his thought takes up the repressed
investigation of sexual questions in childhood.1 That is why, while read-
ing his texts, we are overcome by an uncanny sense, of following a line of
exploration that is deeply familiar, but which we have become estranged
from, due to the repression (never total) it has suffered. Freud’s writ-
ings affect us deeply, because they provide developed forms of thought
that take up our inchoate explorations of sexual questions in infancy, of
issues, such as sexual difference, that continue to confuse and excite us.
A main virtue of Psychoanalysis and Feminism is that Mitchells does not
try to asphyxiate what Freud has stirred up in her, instead she uses this
effect to give a stirring, lucid, and committed account of his thought.
What is required by such an account is shown by Mitchell reading the
twenty-three volumes of Freud’s complete works. A point that she repeats
throughout Psychoanalysis and Feminism is that Freud is not reducible to
any of his assertions, whether considered scandalous and absurd, by detrac-
tors, or essential, by some of his followers. For Mitchell his assertions can
only be comprehended by assessing their position within his thought.
That is why Psychoanalysis and Feminism does not begin with Freud’s
 F R EU D, M I T C H E L L , A N D T H E F R EU D I A N P R O J E C T 135

conceptions of the feminine, but with his ideas about the unconscious,
which, he considered the “true psychic reality” (Freud 1900a, 617), from
which the strange originality of his conceptions derive. Implicitly she
argues that if we wish to comprehend the particulars of Freud’s thought,
we need to engage with all of it—he is not to be had for less. A reason for
this, which is often overlooked, is that throughout his work, Freud main-
tains a holism of our psychic lives. He is more commonly associated with
dividing the psyche into different systems (for example, into the uncon-
scious, the preconscious, and into consciousness) and with emphasizing
that, to a considerable degree, they function independently of one another.
Yet when discussing a particular psychic phenomenon, such as the dream,
he does so by examining the interaction of these systems. Thus, while the
entirety of the psychic forces at work within a dream is never available to
the dreamer or to the analyst—too many features are unconscious—these
forces are nevertheless present structurally in the dream. This holism of
Freud’s theory, albeit a complex holism, has a deep influence on his writ-
ings, so that his discussion of sexuality only take on their full meaning if
we relate it to his ideas of the unconscious, etc. I would argue that this
has nonintuitive implications for how we should read Freud: while it is, of
course, important to read his theories in terms of their historical develop-
ment, they should also be read as if they existed all-at-once. This may be
something that we can only strive for, yet Mitchell reading all his works
represents an exemplary approximation.
What can sustain this kind of commitment? In the passage quoted
above Mitchell writes that she has been deeply marked, indeed changed
by Freud. This is a distinctive feature of his writings, which is not given
due consideration in most academic discussions of him. I would argue
that unless Freud changes us, our encounter with his writings is merely
incidental. This is due to the impetus that sustain his texts that is perhaps
best expressed in the epigram by Vergil that Freud (1900a, ix) chose
for The Interpretation of Dreams, “Flectere si nequeo superos, acheronta
movobo,” which might be translated as, “If I cannot move the heavens,
I will stir up the underworld.” We may take the “underworld” here to
mean the repressed wishes that stir up the unconscious. In other words,
wishes that are indestructible, imperative, and constantly active, but that
we can neither become conscious of, nor satisfy. Freud’s writings are sus-
tained by an overriding desire to analyze and change this state of affairs.
I would suggest that Mitchell’s ability to translate this impetus onto
another field—a feminist discussion of sexual difference—and to do so
with such impact stems from her having been deeply marked by Freud.
This is, perhaps, the primary subjective feature that all proponents of the
Freudian project share, though, evidently, to differing degrees.
136 DARU HUPPERT

Still Marked by Freud?

While Psychoanalysis and Feminism could have been called “Freud and
Feminism,” this cannot be said about her later writings. As quoted ear-
lier, Mitchell (2000, xv) writes “. . . twenty-five years later, I am no less
impressed by Freud, although somewhat more independent from him.”
There are, of course, many differences between Mitchell’s early and later
engagements with Freud. Here I will take up only the most significant
one: she has developed a theory that emphasizes the central importance
of siblings. This position arose partly out her criticism of the neglect of
siblings within psychoanalysis, a neglect that began with Freud. Yet her
critique develops from an allegiance to his thought, implying that, given
his claims and mode of thought, he should have given siblings a central
position within his theory. In Freud we frequently find passages about
the Oedipus complex such as the following:

It is the complex which comprises the child’s earliest impulses, alike

tender and hostile, towards its parents and brothers and sisters, after
its curiosity has been awakened—usually by the arrival of a new baby
brother or sister. (1909d, 207)

I will only comment on the first part of the sentence, in which he

makes no distinction between “tender and hostile” wishes to parents
and to siblings, which suggests that the Oedipus complex would seem to
encompass both. But while Freud provides a painstaking account of the
passions involving the parents, siblings receive a downgraded treatment.
This is where Mitchell’s work sets in. As we shall see, her writings on
siblings arose within the context of her commitment to his concepts.

Fundamental Concepts
It is a difficult task to specify Freud’s influence on Mitchell’s later texts,
since, in some sense, he pervades all of it. An anecdote, however, may
provide a more specific orientation. About a decade ago I attended a
postgraduate seminar in Cambridge, in which Mitchell asked the stu-
dents to write down three concepts that they considered to be the most
important within psychoanalysis. She participated in this exercise and
her choice fell on sexuality, the death drive, and the unconscious. I shall
briefly discuss the role these concepts play in Mad Men and Medusas,
the book in which introduces both her theory of hysteria and of siblings.
This will allow me to point to commitments that distinguish her from
the majority of British analysts.
 F R EU D, M I T C H E L L , A N D T H E F R EU D I A N P R O J E C T 137

Sexuality
One of the themes Mitchell inherited from Freud is her insistence on the
central importance of sexuality, in the extended and unsettling meaning
of the term that he first articulated. This notion, to name but some of its
aspects, entails that sexuality aims at pleasure (rather than at reproduc-
tion); this pleasure is derived from diverse and therefore perverse objects
and activities, with the excitement arising from specific erogenous zones
(such as the eyes) and impelled by component drives (such as the visual
component drive). To refer to a programmatic sentence in regard to this
view, Mitchell (2000b, 140) writes, “Insofar sexuality seeks satisfaction
rather than an object . . . it is in a sense necessarily perverse.” This posi-
tion also entails seeing sexuality as central to psychic conditions, which is
attested to by another sentence, “Masturbation, auto-eroticism and nar-
cissism are core states of hysteria” (Mitchell 2000b, 157). (To compre-
hend the full meaning of this last statement, we need to remember that
in psychoanalysis narcissism means the libidinal investment of the ego.)
Mitchell’s stance on this issue contrasts with the reticence often found
among the proponents of the Independent School of Psychoanalysis,
who concede importance to sexuality, only to emphasize something else
as more fundamental, such as maternal care (Phillips 1998). It also con-
trasts with another view of sexuality found among many Kleinians, the
other dominant stream of psychoanalysis in Britain, in which libido is
relegated to the function of a defense against primary destruction or
against psychosis; what interests in sexuality is then not sex, but aggres-
sive or reparative fantasies (Spillius 1989). The issues raised by these two
schools are significant in their own right, but they entail a movement
away from Freud’s insight into the irreducible importance of sexuality
in shaping who we are. Tellingly, both positions also revert to a more
conventional understanding of what sexuality is (Green 2000). One of
the many advantages of retaining the Freudian understanding of libido is
that it enables us to see more clearly the continuity between ordinary and
perverse sexuality. This, for example, allows Mitchell (2000b, 134–158)
a critical but nonmoralistic view of the perversions. It was one of Freud’s
great accomplishments to have established such a perspective, which,
within psychoanalysis, is becoming rare.

The Death Drive

Another point of convergence with Freud is that Mitchell maintains the
category of the death drive as analytically distinct from aggression or a
destructive drive. For Freud (1920g) the death drive aims at turning the
138 DARU HUPPERT

organic into the inorganic and finds expression in the repetition com-
pulsion as well as in the search for anesthetized states and the disinvest-
ment of objects (Green 2001). This concept has been the bête noire of
psychoanalytic theory, rejected by the vast majority of analysts, British or
otherwise, with the notorious exception of the Kleinians, who, however,
conflate the death drive with an urge to destruction, which Mitchell does
not. She writes, “The death drive is a ‘drive’ precisely, because it drives
an organism into a state of inanimacy, or inertia, to stasis or even literally
death” (Mitchell, 2000b, 140). The role this concept plays in her analysis
of hysteria is discrete, but fundamental. We find that hysteria has been
abandoned by psychiatry and partly neglected by psychoanalysis, due to
the advent of the so-called personality disorders. What was considered to
be hysteria has been largely absorbed into the categories of the histrionic
and the borderline personality disorder. This development was facilitated
by a view of hysteria, in which it is considered to be a relatively benign
condition and therefore of lesser relevance. Using the concept of the
death drive, or having it as a background, allowed Mitchell to emphasize
the repetition compulsion (2000a, 136–7, 146–7), states of emptiness
(ibid. 203–232), and feelings of annihilation (ibid. p. 298–315) in this
condition. Thereby she alerted us to the severity of hysteria and argued
against it vanishing into other categories. Insisting on hysteria also
enabled Mitchell to emphasize another concept that has been brushed
aside by the triumph of the personality disorders: the unconscious.

The Unconscious and Hysteria

Freud (1926e) defined psychoanalysis as the science of the unconscious,
even after his introduction of the structural theory (ego, super-ego, id)
and it may seem unnecessary to emphasize this issue. Yet his concept
of the unconscious has been sidelined—some have even claimed that it
has suffered repression (Blanco 1975). One reason for this is that much
of the progress in psychoanalysis has been made in relationship to early
development, in which the distinction between the unconscious, the
preconscious, and consciousness is being formed. According to Mitchell
(2000a, xxiii) this has led to these crucial distinctions being blurred
even in texts that refer mainly to adults. In general, we find that Freud’s
(1915e) notion of the unconscious—as the system with particular laws
that are entirely different and partly oppose those of consciousness—has
over time become sidelined by the vaguer and descriptive term “uncon-
scious processes” (Huppert 2014). The central importance that Mitchell
gives to hysteria in Mad Men and Medusas takes on a particular signifi-
cance within this context. Of all psychical conditions it is hysteria that
 F R EU D, M I T C H E L L , A N D T H E F R EU D I A N P R O J E C T 139

was most closely associated with Freud’s discovery and articulation of

the unconscious. By reminding us of hysteria’s centrality, Mitchell was
insisting that the unconscious remains the distinctive and fundamental
perspective of psychoanalysis.
This list of positions that Mitchell has taken up from Freud is certainly
not exhaustive. Yet it shows clearly that she has prioritized concepts that
are indispensable to the Freudian project and that have suffered neglect
by the majority of British analysts. Her allegiance to Freud’s notions also
leads to a similar set of preoccupations (with psychoanalysis as the dis-
cipline concerned with the unconscious) and a shared sensibility (a non-
moralistic sense of the perversions). What is particular about Mitchell’s
adherence to Freud is her lack of polemic against other positions; indeed
she is rare among the proponents of the Freudian project in that she has
not used him as a weapon against differing views. It seems that she is
more concerned with what Freud enables her to do. Her conceptual com-
mitment to Freud in Mad Men and Medusas is important, because in this
text she proposes one of the more significant shifts in the development of
psychoanalysis, by urging us to make siblings central to our thinking. We
may conclude that allegiance to the Freudian project need not, as is often
implied, issue in conservatism and inhibit psychoanalytic development,
but, rather, can enhance it.

A Child Is Being Beaten

Yet Freud not only serves to a stir further development; his texts also
offer a critical measure for the newer work. Emphasizing this aspect of
his role within the Freudian project entails a certain reversal of Mitchell’s
claims. While she has maintained that Freud has left siblings out of his
theory, my emphasis, will be on what she has, so far, left out of Freud
in her analysis of siblings. The aim of this critique is to point toward
areas that require further attention and development in her writings. To
do this end I shall compare Freud’s interpretation in A Child is Being
Beaten with Mitchell’s (2003, 83–110) account thereof. Since the fantasy
discussed therein is very intricate, I will consider it only as it occurs in
women. My emphasis will be on the procedural aspect of the Freudian
project, that is, on how Freud and Mitchell develop their claims rather
than on the claims themselves.

The Fantasy
A Child is Being Beaten is Freud’s most sustained analysis of a sadomas-
ochistic fantasy, which is found very frequently in both women and men.
140 DARU HUPPERT

Its manifest content is of a child or several children being beaten by a

teacher or some person of authority. The fantasy, which is first imag-
ined before the age of six, has been reproduced countless times; initially
it takes place voluntarily, but later in spite of the fantasist, acquiring a
compulsive character. It is accompanied by masturbatory activity and
culminates in orgasm. During psychoanalytic treatment this fantasy is
confessed only with great hesitation and this confession is accompanied
by a powerful sense of shame and guilt. Through interpretation Freud
reveals the Oedipal structure of the imagined beating scenes. As the fan-
tasy is very common and is entertained not only by neurotic patients,
his analysis marks a significant step in establishing the Oedipus complex
not only as the core of the neuroses, but also as the central structure
organizing our psychic formation and functioning. Mitchell’s interest in
this essay seems to arise from a similar set of concerns: if she can show
that siblings play a crucial role therein, this supports her claim about the
general significance of her sibling theory (for a discussion of this theory,
see my chapter 2 in this volume).

Phases
Freud stipulates that the fantasy undergoes three transformations or
developments, before it is experienced in the manner confessed to dur-
ing analysis. Of the first phase, which occurs in infancy, he writes, “The
child being beaten is never the one producing the phantasy, but is invari-
ably another child, most often a brother or a sister if there is any” (Freud
1919e, 183). Freud wavers whether to call this a fantasy or a recollection;
he is tempted to call it sadistic, but he cautions us to note that it is not
the child who does the beating. In each case, analysis reveals that it is the
father who performs this act. So the first phase of the fantasy could be
stated as: “My father is beating the child” (Freud 1919e, 185). We are led
to understand what motivates this scene, if we add that the child being
beaten is a hated child. The scene can be rendered as: “My father is beat-
ing the child whom I hate.” In the second phase the person who is doing
the beating is still the father, but the child being beaten has changed: it
is now the fantasist herself. The corresponding sentence would be: “I am
being beaten by my father.” The fantasy is now unmistakably masochistic.
For Freud this second stage is the core of the beating scenarios, it is
the scene that elicits the greatest pleasure, yet it is irretrievable to con-
sciousness, even in psychoanalytic treatment. This scene is what he calls
a “construction,” that is, a necessary assumption. We find that the third
phase, which is the one confessed to during psychoanalytic treatment, is
again nearer to the first. In it the person beating is not the father, but
 F R EU D, M I T C H E L L , A N D T H E F R EU D I A N P R O J E C T 141

a substitute of some form, such as a teacher, and instead of the fantasist

there are several children being beaten. This last stage can be embel-
lished and varied, but its sadistic character remains in all variations.

Transformations
Let us now look in greater at detail the three transformations that the
fantasy undergoes. As Freud (1919e, 187) notes, the mother is not the
only rival of the child in regard to the Oedipal love of the father; sib-
lings must also be contended with and they are hated with the “wild
energy characteristic of the emotional life of those years.” If the sibling
is younger, it is despised as well hated, yet it nevertheless attracts a share
of the affection from the parents. In this context the beating signifies a
“deprivation of love and a humiliation” (ibid) and it means, “My father
does not love this other child, he loves only me.” The term “love” here is
meant genitally, that is, it expresses an incestuous fantasy. However, this
fantasy succumbs to repression, in the wake of which arises a sense of
guilt. For Freud the second phase of the fantasy, in which the fantasist
is being beaten, is a direct expression of the girl’s guilt (the beating act-
ing as punishment). But guilt alone cannot explain the masochistic, that
is, the sexual character of the second phase. He notes that the genital
impulse of the first phase not only suffers repression, it also undergoes
regression to an anal sadistic stage. That is why the beating expresses a
distorted version of a coital fantasy. As Freud (ibid, 189) summarizes,
“This being beaten is now a convergence of the sense of guilt and sexual
love. It is not only the punishment for the forbidden genital relation, but
also the regressive substitute for that relation . . . ” The third phase of the
fantasy primarily serves to substitute the second, deeply repressed phase.
Now the child appears as spectator and is represented by the several chil-
dren, while the father takes shape as a teacher or some authority figure.
The fantasy has become sadistic and can once again be rendered by the
sentence: “My father is beating the child, he loves only me.” Yet the stress
is now only on the first part of the sentence, while the latter part has
undergone repression (Freud ibid, 190).
Before turning to Mitchell’s work, I would like to underline the den-
sity of Freud’s psychological analysis. He not only describes the trans-
formation that the beating fantasy undergoes, but also specifies the
mechanisms by which these changes are accomplished. This ability to
explain the minutiae of psychic life is one of the characteristics of Freud’s
thinking; his penetration of detail remains a measure for any attempt
to develop or even to transform his thought. Psychoanalytic insight is
always an insight into a particular constellation.
142 DARU HUPPERT

Siblings and the Beating Fantasy

While Mitchell (2003a, 89) is deeply appreciative of Freud’s essay and
maintains its structure, she criticizes what could be called his Oedipal-
monism, “I believe that this interpretation . . . occludes the siblings in
favour of the exclusive desire for parents.” To amend this she provides
a complementary account from the perspective of her sibling theory. 2
Before entering into the detail of her dense and suggestive interpretation
it is worth noting that she chose to analyze a sexual fantasy, whose fun-
damental meaning is deeply unconscious. The issue of the death drive is
more complicated, as Freud had not yet articulated it when writing this
essay; in Mitchell’s work on siblings the presence of this drive is, as we
shall, see, primarily discrete.
Mitchell (ibid) writes, “The first stage [of the beating fantasy] involves
an eradication of the other.” This suggests that the fantasy satisfies the
wish to annihilate the sibling whose existence is first felt to eradicate the
subject. As with Freud the attack on the sibling is experienced sexually
and has a sadistic quality. Yet the objective of the aggression has changed:
it is no longer the aim-inhibited beating scene, but the kill-or-be-killed of
sibling survival (ibid, p. 94). We also find that the scene also is no longer
primarily about the father’s love; he seems to have been downgraded to
the executor of the child’s destructive wishes. What makes my comments
tentative is that these issues are not explicitly addressed by Mitchell, what
is also left implicit, is how the scene of eradication is turned into or trans-
ferred onto the beating scene.
Of the next and decisive phase Mitchell (ibid) writes: “The middle
stage is an eradication of the ego as a prelude to autoerotic orgasm.” An
assumption that runs through Mitchell’s interpretation is that the initial
excitement at having the sibling beaten—or obliterated—persists in the
second stage. It would seem that what facilitates this transfer is an identifi-
cation with the other sibling; an identification which is more encompass-
ing than with the parent, because of the greater similarities between the
siblings and, more deeply, because the siblings is first invested narcissisti-
cally, as an extension of the subject. However, my interpretation remains
tentative, for the reason named above. At this point we also come upon
an ambiguity in the term “eradication.” While in the first stage of the
beating fantasy, this term denotes an imagined destructive attack on
the sibling, now it seems to mean something else. I would suggest that
the eradication of the ego implies an activity of the death drive, which
here acts to disinvest the ego, just as it may, in other contexts, disinvest an
object. If this line of interpretation is correct, if only approximately, we
are nevertheless, left with the question of how the eradication of the ego
 F R EU D, M I T C H E L L , A N D T H E F R EU D I A N P R O J E C T 143

relates to the unconscious—among Freud’s female patients this second

phase remains deeply repressed. Addressing this matter would require
more speculation than warranted here. Mitchell’s (ibid) characterization
of the third stage of the beating fantasies broadly coincides with Freud’s,
“The third stage sees to the diffusion of the first stage of one ‘other’ into
a number of others.” This allows for the satisfaction of both sadistic and
masochistic trends of the fantasy.
We find then that Mitchell’s interpretation does more than merely
complement Freud’s, by placing the emphasis on the sibling rather than
on the Oedipal axis; her essay shifts the focus from a genital interpreta-
tion of the fantasy onto a more archaic scene of killing and being killed,
which is experienced both sadistically and masochistically. Thereby the
first phase of the fantasy becomes greatly valorized, and even more so
the archaic stage that is hypothesized to precede it. I would suggest that
in the context of the beating fantasy, this more archaic scene is deeply
repressed.3 Yet such ascriptions of defense mechanisms must remain ten-
tative, as they are left largely implicit Mitchell’s account. Indeed, though
highly suggestive, her interpretation of the beating fantasy involves less
psychological detail than Freud’s analysis. I would suggest that her rela-
tive lack of emphasis on defense mechanisms is also found in her general
sibling theory, with the effect that this theory, although very persuasive,
does not yet carry the convincing force that would make it an undis-
putable part of psychoanalytic theory. As stated earlier, the aim of this
critique is to point out areas in which work is necessary, particularly if
Mitchell (2000a, x) is to bear out her claim that siblings are “half of
the picture” that Freud leaves out in his account of the psyche. Such a
project, of course, requires time. Freud took twenty-four years from his
introduction of the Oedipus complex in the Interpretation of Dreams
(Freud 1990a) to his comprehensive statement thereof (Freud 1924d)—
and psychoanalysts have been working on this insight ever since. There is
little reason to believe that it would be different in the case of siblings.
What the comparison between Mitchell’s and Freud’s interpretation
of the beating fantasy has shown at the level of procedure, is that his work
remains not only a template, but also a challenge to any new theory in
psychoanalysis. In this view Freud is not only the past, but also the future
of psychoanalysis.

Conclusion
During the course of this chapter Mitchell’s version of the Freudian
project has, to an extent, taken on shape, as have some of the general
features entailed by this project. What is distinctive about Mitchell’s
144 DARU HUPPERT

work is the degree to which she has been able to translate the powerful
effect that the Freudian writings have had and continue to have on her
onto the areas in which she engages. Her allegiance to Freud’s concepts
comes with a sense of common concerns and has honed a shared sensi-
bility. At the level of procedure we have seen that the Freudian project
compels us to show our ideas in the minutiae of psychic life. While
Mitchell’s sibling theory requires more detailed working out, it promises
to become deeply important to psychoanalysis. This importance is due,
not least, to her taking the Oedipus complex as the model for what she
seeks to achieve with siblings, a challenge that is formidable and that,
more generally, gives us a sense of the challenge that Freud’s work repre-
sents to anyone thoroughly engaged with him. I began this chapter, by
saying that Mitchell is considered to belong to the Independent School
of Psychoanalysis, but it may be more apt to call her an independent
Freudian—insofar as anyone can be a Freudian and not simply strive to
become one.

Notes
1. See Freud’s (1905d) development of this issue.
2. Mitchell’s chapter dedicated to the fantasy touches on an extraordinary
array of issues—ranging from Madame Bovary, to war and gender—
which I cannot touch on here.
3. Repression should be understood as acting within a particular con-
text, so that a theme, which may be conscious in one context, such
as the relationship of mutual obliteration between siblings, may be
unconscious in another context, such as the beating fantasy.

References
Bion, W. R. 1984. Attention and Interpretation. London: Karnak Books.
Ferro, A. 1999. The Bi-Personal Field. Routledge: London.
Freud, S. 1905d. “Three Essays on a Theory of Sexuality.” In The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Vol. 7, trans-
lated by James Strachey. Hogarth Press, London, S.E. 7.
Freud, S. 1909d. “Notes Upon A Case of Obsessional Neurosis.” S.E. 10.
Freud, S. 1915e. “The Unconscious.” S.E. 14.
Freud, S. 1918a. “The Taboo on Virginity.” S.E. 11.
Freud, S. 1919e. “A Child is Being Beaten.” S.E. 17.
Freud, S. 1920g. “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” S.E. 18.
Freud, S. 1924d. “The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex.” S.E. 19.
Freud, S. 1926e. “The Question of Lay Analysis.” S.E. 20.
Glover, E. 1947. Basic Mental Concepts—Their Clinical and Theoretical
Value. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 16, 482–506.
Green, A. 2000. Chains of Eros. London: Karnack.
Green, A. 2001. Life Narcissism and Death Narcissism. London: Karnak.
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Green, A. 2005b. The Illusion of a Common Ground and Mythical Pluralism.

International Journal of International Psychoanalysis 86, 627–632.
Huppert, D. 2014. Die Eigenschaften des Unbewussten. In Sigmund Freud
Vorlesungen 2014. Vienna: Mandelbaum.
Lacan, J. 1966/2006. Ecrits. New York: Norton.
Laplanche, J. 1976. Life and Death in Psychoanalysis. Baltimore, MD: John
Hopkins.
Matte-Blanco, I. 1975. The Unconscious as Infinite Sets. London: Duckworth.
Mitchell, J. 2000a. Psychoanalysis and Feminism. New York: Basic Books.
Mitchell, J. 2000b. Mad Men and Medusas. London: Penguin Books.
Mitchell, J. 2003. Siblings. Cambridge: Polity.
Phillips, A. 1988. Winnicott. London: Fontana Press.
Spillius, E. 1989. Melanie Klein Today. London: Karnak.
Turnheim, M. 2007. “Über die innere Spaltung der Freudschen Geste und
die Frage der Rückkehr.” In Freudlose Psychoanalyse? Vienna: Turia und
Kant.
Wittgenstein, L. 1984. “Philosophische Untersuchungen.” In Werkausgabe
Band 1. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
 Chapter 7

Hysteria between Big Brother and

Patriarchy

Paul Verhaeghe and Eline Trenson

L ike many others, I (Verhaeghe) discovered Juliet Mitchell via her first
book, Psychoanalysis and Feminism (1974). The way she extended psy-
choanalysis, from the individual to family and society, was an eye-opener
to me. In the two decades that followed, I studied Freud and Lacan, but
just after the new millennium, Anglo-Saxon psychoanalysis was brought
back again under my attention when I attended Juliet Mitchell’s lecture
on siblings in New York, and later, in Vienna, her lecture on gender.
I read Mad Men and Medusas and Siblings, which reminded me of the
necessity to place psychoanalysis in a much broader framework than only
a family frame, and to assign psychoanalysis an explicit political and social
dimension (Verhaeghe, 2014a).
In this chapter we will discuss two interconnected subjects, which
we perceive as the core themes of Juliet’s books: hysteria in relation to
gender, and siblings in relation to contemporary politics. It is not the
intention of this chapter to provide the reader with an exposition of or a
detailed comment on Mitchell’s theory—other chapters in this volume
do this work, and in any case the reader is best informed by study-
ing her books. It is our intention here to present a Freudian–Lacanian
perspective, as we have developed in the Department of Psychoanalysis
in Ghent (www.psychoanalysis.ugent.be). Juliet Mitchell’s theory and
our Freudian–Lacanian framework are not the same. Lacanian psy-
choanalysis is more structural than the empirical clinical approach of
Anglo-Saxon psychoanalysis. Yet our work and Mitchell’s share the
same extension beyond previous psychoanalytic theory, as they take
into account the importance of the Other: siblings, society, and the
symbolic order.
148 PAU L V E R H A E G H E A N D E L I N E T R E N S O N

Hysteria and Femininity?

The conviction that hysteria is essentially a female disease dates back to
ancient times and is etymologically defined by the term itself—hysteros
meaning the uterus or womb. Juliet Mitchell distances herself from this
reductionist perspective and presents us with convincing clinical descrip-
tions of hysteria in men. The original denomination was coined by male
authors, and especially by men whose position as master more often than
not was subject to challenge by women. Lucien Israël, in his description
of hysteria in a medical setting (1984), taught me the following lesson:
it takes two to create hysteria. Lacan’s structural view added an extra
element, and taught that a third party is needed as well. Hysteria does
not exist by itself, it needs an audience, someone who is looking, while a
certain relationship toward a master figure is brought on the scene. As we
will explain later, the hysterical subject demonstrates to the Other both
the master and the failure of the master.
Relationship is not an apt expression to characterize the dynamic
played out in hysteria, as it suggests a concrete interaction and directs
attention away from the significance of the unconscious and fantasy.
Relational structure is a better term because it permits us to take a neces-
sary distance from an all too concrete biological understanding of men
and women in terms of the penis (or the womb) and its absence. For
Lacan, gender differentiation is based on the position that the subject
takes with regard to the signifier of the phallus and the castration com-
plex (Lacan, 1975). In this line of reasoning, a biological male may take
the “feminine” position, and vice versa, a biological female may take the
“masculine” position. The latter will be considered as a phallic woman,
the former as a hysterical man. Hysteria is no longer synonymous with
femininity.
In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the idea of a structural lack is central.
Castration is considered as its phallic reading (see Verhaeghe, 2001).
The symbolic phallus denotes the supposedly final answer to desire, and
hence, the lack of the Other because there is no final answer. The neu-
rotic subject is precisely neurotic because he or she believes in the imagi-
nary phallus. “Hysterical” denotes the subject who believes in the phallic
omnipotence. That is, he or she believes that there is someone who has
or is the phallus, meaning that there actually is a final answer to every
desire. The origin of this belief is the Oedipal complex, with the father
in the position of the master. In contrast to the Freudian solution for the
Oedipal complex, that is, its repression or destruction, the Lacanian solu-
tion is symbolic castration, that is, the acceptance of a structurally deter-
mined lack for everyone of us. In short, acceptance of existential limits
 H Y S T E R I A B E T W E E N B I G B R O T H E R A N D PAT R I A R C H Y 149

(sexuality, birth, death) is a basic human condition. This implies a totally

different stance towards the phallus and the Other, because the not-All is
recognized and considered. In “Encore” Lacan (1975) will identify that
position with femininity.
Yet in his elaboration of the lack of the Other, Lacan remains within a
phallic paternal reasoning and a paternal prohibition. Juliet Mitchell adds
a maternal dimension missed by Lacan. “If the phallus is the upright ‘I’,
the womb is the round ‘me’ ” (Mitchell, 2003, p. 72). Mitchell identifies
the wish of both male and female children to give birth (parthogenesis)
as a wish for the womb, that is, “for a cavity within.” The processing of
this wish as a result of their acceptance of the “law of the mother”: the
mother’s prohibition (“it is I, the mother, not you the child, who gives
birth”) results in the formation of a symbolic space: “an inner space can
be symbolized—a place from which thoughts come and in which rep-
resentation can be held ‘in mind’ ” (Mitchell, 2003, p. 72). What Lacan
conceptualized as symbolic castration is here enlarged: the lack of a penis
in women and the lack of a womb in men are both elevated to a lack in
the symbolic.
According to Lacan, the hysterical subject is quite particular in this
respect. Being convinced that he or she has/is not the phallus, he or
she will put all hope in a phallic master. This is Lacan’s reading of the
Freudian Oedipal complex: the father, as phallic master, is expected to
provide the final answer to the lack. Traditionally, one expects a man in
that master position, but, as we are talking about a signifier, biological
gender is only relevant to the extent that it can be made to signify. As
mentioned above, in Lacanian theory, “feminine” and “masculine” are
replaced by the position someone takes toward the phallus. A phallic
woman elicits hysteria in neurotic men, just like a phallic man, a master,
provokes hysteria in neurotic women. The phallic woman and the mas-
ter man have one thing in common: both of them pretend to possess
the (imaginary) phallus in relation to someone who is looking for final
answers. Let us not forget that desire (Lacan) or wanting (Mitchell) is
a key feature of hysteria. This relational structure works the other way
around as well: a hysterical subject in his or her search for the phallus
promotes a master figure. Consequently, the meeting between a hysteri-
cal subject and a phallic master creates a structural bond, specified by
Lacan (1991[1969–70]) in his theory on the hysterical discourse and the
discourse of the master.
On the surface, this structural bond has to do with power and sexu-
ality. In a patriarchal society, the traditional power distribution assigns
the position of desire and wanting to women and the position of power
and completeness to men. It is this power distribution that explains why
150 PAU L V E R H A E G H E A N D E L I N E T R E N S O N

hysteria is traditionally associated with women, although it is much more

accurate to identify it with the demanding position in that role distribu-
tion. This becomes all the more obvious once we go beyond the surface,
that is, beyond desire and jouissance.1 On a deeper level, the hysteri-
cal structure has everything to do with knowledge and truth. Time and
again, in his or her quest for an answer, the hysterical subject will expose
the fallacy of the master’s knowledge. At the end of the day, the truth is
that every master is a desiring subject as well, subject to symbolic castra-
tion, like everyone else. And more often than not, this exposure takes
place on stage, in front of a third party.2
The most well-known scene in that respect goes back to maître Charcot,
demonstrating during his leçons du mardi (seminars on Tuesday) hysteri-
cal attacks and his power to direct his patients via hypnosis. The hysterical
women seem to be puppets on his string, bowing, stretching, convulsing
on stage before the eyes of a group of bewildered male spectators. The
famous oil painting by Pierre-André Brouillet (Une leçon clinique du
Dr. Charcot, 1887, Musée de Nice) shows the absence of women in the
audience. A number of questions can be asked. Who is performing? The
hysterical subject, showing her convulsions? Or the master, showing off
his knowledge in front of the admiring audience? Secondly, who is demon-
strating whom? Is it the doctor who demonstrates the patient? Or is it the
patient who demonstrates the doctor? And finally, what is actually dem-
onstrated? Does the scene testify to the knowledge and the power of the
master? Or does it add the provocation that his knowledge and power are
not strong enough? Let us not forget that Charcot, in spite of his fame,
did not cure any of his hysterical patients. So where does his fame come
from if he did not cure them?
At this point, we can discover a strange and, as we will argue, an essen-
tial feature of the structural relationship between the hysteric and the
master. Charcot became a master, because his hysterical patients helped
him to demonstrate that the then generally accepted knowledge did not
work. That explains Freud’s reaction, based on his thorough neurological
knowledge, when he assisted to Charcot’s presentations. Freud pointed
out to Charcot that “these attacks are not possible; this does not follow
the book.” To which Charcot replied: “La théorie, c’est bon, mais cela
n’empêche pas d’exister” (Theory is good, but does not keep things from
existing) (Freud, 1893f, p.13). He could not have better articulated the
result of the interaction between mastery and hysteria. The knowledge of
the phallic master does not cover everything, on the contrary even. The
irony of Charcot’s answer to Freud is that it might very well be applied to
Charcot’s theory as well. Or to Freud’s, for that matter, when he wrote
his case study on Dora.
 H Y S T E R I A B E T W E E N B I G B R O T H E R A N D PAT R I A R C H Y 151

Surprising as it may sound, this brings us to the political dimension

of hysteria. That is, to the matter of power and violence. Indeed, the
repression or denial of the truth—that is, the inescapability of lack—
results more often than not in violent power structures. Power is used to
silence those who expose the master by telling the truth. The fact that
Juliet Mitchell addressed this matter in her first book (1974!), combin-
ing her insights with those of Reich, Laing, and Lacan, and the fact
that precisely this political dimension was largely ignored testifies to her
foresight. As we will argue in the conclusion, our contemporary society
has undergone a substantial change, obliging us to reconsider a number
of things. And again, Juliet Mitchell’s ideas correspond to the changes of
our times. This new society is one of siblings run by Big Brother.

Hysteria and Politics

Ever since Michel Foucault’s studies (1972, 1997), we are familiar with
the idea that the history of psychiatry is a history of power and discipline,
erecting reason as an ostensibly serene and neutral judge, while allowing
it to comprise, and at the same time mask, multiple forms of subjuga-
tion. As such, and following Mitchell, we can regard hysteria is a political
matter. As illustrations, we will provide the reader with three examples
exposing a blend of politics and psychiatry.
The first example is almost completely forgotten. Madame Théroigne
de Méricourt was one of the leading women during the French Revolution,
fighting for female rights. After being warned several times by her male
companions and revolutionaries, she was imprisoned in 1793 and the
feminist women’s meetings were banned. Instead of being guillotined,
she was declared insane and remained detained for the rest of her life in
La Salpétrière, where she died in 1817. The famous psychiatrist Esquirol,
one of the founding fathers of French psychiatry, was her doctor. In his
book Des maladies mentales (On Mental Diseases), he describes her as a
monomaniac, meaning that she was beyond cure. After her death, he gave
her body to Dr. Demoutier, his friend and colleague. In the phrenologi-
cal tradition of the time, Demoutier measured her skull and concluded:
“Although the intellectual faculties were clearly developed, they served
only to accomplish deeds based on passion” (Allegaert, 2012, p. 55, 133).
Obviously, passion is opposed to intellectual faculties.
Before introducing the contemporary version of Théroigne, let us
look at a better-known couple: Sigmund Freud and Dora. Freud was a
very ambitious man, and at the start of the previous century, he hoped
to become famous with the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams
(1900). His original intention was to use Dora’s treatment in order to
152 PAU L V E R H A E G H E A N D E L I N E T R E N S O N

demonstrate the validity and the usefulness of his new method. He had
already a title for the book: Dreams and Hysteria. But he had to change
it into the more modest Bruchstück einer Hysterie-Analyse (Fragment of
an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria). The case study shows that he had
every reason to be modest. Dora’s dreams are big question marks, as is
literally mentioned in one of her dreams: “She asked about a hundred
times.” These questions concern her female identity, her sexuality, and
the position assigned to her by the desire of a man (Freud, 1905e, p. 94).
Instead of taking her question seriously, Freud steps into the shoes of the
Oedipal master and produces knowledge. He explains her dreams and
in the same movement, he tells her how she has to behave as a member
of her sex. Instead of accepting his masterly explanations, she stops the
treatment, after having made it clear that his explanations do not mean
that much to her: “Why, has anything so very remarkable come out?”
(Freud, 1905e, 105).
A contemporary version of Théroigne de Mericourt is Pussy Riot, that
is, the women who provoked superphallic master Putin and as a result
were convicted to three years of Siberian gulag.3 What is less well known
is that the judge declared them insane as well. In the verdict, they are
diagnosed as suffering from a mixed-personality disorder, that is: “a con-
dition that includes different combinations of a proactive approach to life,
a drive for self-fulfilment, stubbornly defending their opinion, inflated
self-esteem, inclination to oppositional behaviour, and propensity for
protest reactions.”4 The message is clear: women who dare to challenge
masculine power are insane, and the hysterical subject that challenges the
phallic master has to pay the price.
The examples illustrate how an analogous structure works within, at
first sight, quite different power relations: revolutionary, therapeutic, and
political. Traditionally, this structure is simplified to a man–woman rela-
tion, in terms of sexual repression and resistance. In our opinion, this
simplification has a defensive function, because a more fundamental dis-
cord of human nature is ignored. Lacan mentions this internal discord in
his seminal paper on the mirror stage (1966, p. 96) and explains it later
as the result of a primordial loss at the time of birth (1966, pp. 845–46).
This marks the human being with a fundamental lack and a resulting
desire to regain a lost plenitude. From early days onward, the responsibil-
ity both for the lack and the answer to it are projected on the other. This
is Freud’s reading of the Oedipus complex: the father has the penis, and
he has to give it to me.
Lacan points to the radical nature of the loss and the impossibility
to regain the original plenitude. This is structurally impossible because
the subject tries to regain what is lost via the Symbolic order. As it is
 H Y S T E R I A B E T W E E N B I G B R O T H E R A N D PAT R I A R C H Y 153

precisely the introduction into the Symbolic order that caused the loss,
desire is eternal. The lack felt by the subject is the lack of the Symbolic,
and hence, also a lack in knowledge and control. Based on Mitchell, we
can say that the patriarchal processing of the original loss turns it into
a much-discussed sexual lack for women (the phallus) and a neglected
maternal lack for men (the womb). The result is a power play between
men and women. Somebody must be blamed for the lack; somebody
must have the Phallus. In this way, positions are distributed: the know-
ingly, almighty master, and his (or her) antithesis, the demanding other,
with in between them the phallic signifier. The political world and gen-
der relations are two fields illustrating the externalization of the origi-
nally internal discord.
Consider also the Enlightenment. At first sight, this period brings
light into darkness and frees us from the dominance of religion. During
the reign of religious discourse, male priests were the seat of knowledge.
Women were considered to be the source of all evil, starting with Eve.
Did the Enlightenment change this view? The weight on the spiritual
was replaced by a weight on rationality. Psychiatric patients were con-
sidered as suffering from déraison, lack of reason (Foucault, 1972). The
prohibition on the body was replaced by a prohibition on passion. It does
not take much insight to recognize the same equation: rationality stands
for masculinity, passion for femininity. Théroigne de Méricourt was not
sinful, she was passionate and hence, mad. Today, this division between
rationality and passion sounds obsolete. In the Western world, religion
has lost much of its established significance and even ideologies have
been declared dead. Does this mean that the underlying power struc-
ture has disappeared? Closer scrutiny unmasks the contemporary priests:
they are the new (pseudo)scientists, promising total knowledge, based on
cognitive brain studies. Their belief is that we are just one step away from
total knowledge, the Grand Theory of Everything, thus becoming the
(phallic) masters of the universe, in control of everything and everyone.

Hysterical Discourse and Discourse of the Master

If we study the history of religion, philosophy, and science, time and
again, we can discover the same structure based on the same binary oppo-
sition (Verhaeghe, 2004). Soul versus body. Rationality versus passion.
Cognitive versus affective. Man versus woman. Phallic plenitude versus
not-All. Knowledge versus truth. This originally internal division, one
that no subject can escape, reappears in typical social structures, as made
evident by Lacan’s theory on the hysterical discourse in its relation to the
discourse of the master (see Figures 7.1–7.3 at the end of the chapter).
154 PAU L V E R H A E G H E A N D E L I N E T R E N S O N

One of the advantages of this theory is that it does not start from gender,
reifying hysteria as a feminine tendency and ignoring phenomena that
speak of male hysteria. Another advantage is that it shows the interdepen-
dence of the hysteric and the master (Verhaeghe, 1999).5
Briefly summarized (see Figure 7.2), hysterical discourse stages the
hysterical divided subject (noted as $) in the position of the agent, driven
by its own truth (noted as object a). This truth is simple: every human
being is marked by an ontological lack, based on a loss at birth; ever
since, we are divided and looking for an answer. This is what drives us
beyond knowledge (in matters of gender, life and death drives, there
are no final answers). In order to get reassurance, the hysterical subject
addresses the other as a master (noted as S1, the master signifier), oblig-
ing him to produce knowledge (noted as S2, the reunion of all signifi-
ers). But this knowledge can never bridge (//) the gap toward the truth
(Lacan, 1991).
The other formula shows us the discourse of the master (see Figure 7.3).
The master figure (noted as S1), sitting on top of his own division (noted
as $), projects his knowledge (noted as S2) on the other. The hoped-for
result, that is, the other is satisfied and everything is under control, is
not attained. On the contrary, the product of this discourse is precisely
a renewed confrontation with the remainders, that is, what cannot be
grasped by knowledge (noted as a) (Lacan, 1991).
The confrontation between the hysterical discourse and the discourse
of the master leads inevitably to a spiral that endorses both parties in
their respective positions. The hysterical subject is looking for answers,
and provokes the master figure to demonstrate his power. The mas-
ter tries to reassure the hysterical subject with his knowledge but soon
enough, he will have to face his own failure. Whatever the quality of
this knowledge, it can never adequately tell the truth about what drives
the human subject. On the contrary, this knowledge is based on the
Symbolic and denies its inherent lack, formulated by Lacan as symbolic
castration. Acknowledging this castration would imply acknowledging
le pas-tout, the not-All, and the failure of the master. Most masters are
not willing to accept this failure. Often enough, the result is a violent
reaction against the one, the hysterical subject, who threatens to expose
their failure, their castration. This violence is then enacted in religious,
political, or scientific-therapeutic terms. That is, in terms of their par-
ticular knowledge (S2). The other is characterized as sinful, dangerous,
or disturbed.
A well-known feminist slogan tells us that the personal is the politi-
cal. The internal discord mentioned above is present in every one of us,
meaning that every one of us is marked by an original loss and divided
 H Y S T E R I A B E T W E E N B I G B R O T H E R A N D PAT R I A R C H Y 155

between body and soul, between drive and mastery, between passion
and rationality. This is the personal part. Every one of us tries to come
to terms with this division. Education provides us a conventional way to
handle this division. It provides us with the conventional answers. Here
we find the Freudian Oedipus complex: the law of the father assigns
boys and girls their “legitimate” places, phallic versus castrated. Now,
the political part comes in view. Normally, says Freud, when we grow
up, this complex should be destroyed, but this is never fully the case (see
Verhaeghe, 2009). Religion, ideology, politics, and even science provide
the different stages where this structural imbalance is continued.

Hysterical Structure and the Stage

Time and again, hysteria confronts us with the lack in the Symbolic
order and hence, the lack of knowledge in relationship to the Real and
the drive. The crucial elements are birth, death and sexuality, as they
constitute the human condition. The hysterical demand for an answer
defies conventional knowledge (Lacan, 1975). This defiance cannot be
answered in the Symbolic as such, because it addresses the failure of the
Symbolic order itself. Precisely this failure explains the structural link
between hysteria and the theater. Hysteria needs a stage and every hys-
terical performance is an acting-out addressed to the Other. The divided
subject brings something on stage that exposes the failure of the Master,
while at the same time confirming the master in his position. At the end
of the play, the failure is obvious, and results in the impossibility of full
satisfaction. The impossibility is obvious if you look at the hysterical stage
par excellence, namely Hollywood romantic dramas. At first instance,
the (make-)belief is realized, because there is a male hero (occasionally
a giant ape will do the job as well), who saves the female star. However,
when everything is turning for the good, tragedy enters the scene. The
boat sinks, the ape dies, the plane crashes, the loved one is killed, etcet-
era. The impossibility remains, and the desire is never satisfied.
Hence, hysteria is the term for a particular structure, in which mas-
ter and divided subject play their part. For Lacan, hysterical subject and
divided subject are synonymous (Lacan, 1991). As a structure, it can
be filled by many contents. Therefore another classic hysterical feature
appears: its chameleon-like nature. Mitchell understands this as the
mimetic character of hysteria: if the other changes, the hysteric has a new
model to identify with. The stage and the master change through time:
priests, doctors, analysts, scientists, politicians . . . operating in church,
hospital, consultation room, university, or courtroom. Each new mas-
ter sets a new stage and presents the divided subject with new answers.
156 PAU L V E R H A E G H E A N D E L I N E T R E N S O N

And each time, the hysteric identifies with these answers, thus taking
another color, namely the color of the new master. So, a religious stage
with religious masters produces religious hysteria. A medical stage with
medical masters produces medical hysteria. A political stage with politi-
cal masters produces political hysteria. On every stage, the interaction
ends inevitably with an exposure of the master’s failure. When Charcot’s
patients produced his hysterical attacks, they followed his suggestions,
and hence, his desire. But in following them, they proved at the same
time the failure of his medical approach. Obviously, the psychoanalytic
scene is not free from this structure. For Lacan (2004) acting out is an
appeal addressed to the Other and every hysterical symptom is a demand
for interpretation, that is, a demand for a final answer. If an analyst
believes that his answers are correct and absolute, he will share Freud’s
fate with respect to Dora. His interpretations will be refuted and refused.
In that respect, a traditional analyst is not that different from Charcot as
he might imagine.
This leads us to an important issue. It is said by conventional psy-
chiatry that hysteria has disappeared. Contemporary psychiatry focuses
on personality disorders, with the patient diagnosed with a “borderline
personality disorder” on top of the list. The clinical examples in Juliet
Mitchell’s recent books do not look like the classic hysterical patients.
Why should they? The stage has changed, so must have hysteria. With
a slight exaggeration we can state that the well-behaved hysteric of the
late nineteenth century, who, due to an unresolved Oedipal problem
fantasizes about forbidden sexual acts and who out of sheer feelings of
guilt develops phobic or conversion symptoms within a largely imaginary
mental world, is threatened by extinction. Today we are dealing with
a promiscuous, aggressive, and/or self-mutilating “borderline” patient
with a complex traumatic history, who may nourish an addiction and/or
an eating disorders. What social changes have elicited this symptomatol-
ogy? A Belgian psychiatrist applied the DSM IV-R criteria for borderline
personality disorder to our contemporary society. His conclusion is that
the borderline personality has become the norm, not the exception (De
Wachter, 2012). To be sure: “borderline personality disorder” is not a
Lacanian category. In our opinion, and building from Mitchell’s (2003,
pp. 20–21) account of the relationship between hysteria and borderline
personality, we perceive the latter condition as the actual pathological
position of hysteria, reformed as a response to the contemporary situation
(Verhaeghe, 2014b). No less than their nineteenth-century forebears,
the contemporary hysterical subject is based on a common identifica-
tion with the desire of the contemporary Other. But whose desire are
they identifying with? Who is the master of the contemporary hysterical
 H Y S T E R I A B E T W E E N B I G B R O T H E R A N D PAT R I A R C H Y 157

subject? And what is their stage? The answers to these questions lead us
to the political field and to an unexpected extension of Juliet Mitchell’s
theory on siblings.

Perverse Society and the Postmodern Superego: Enjoy!

Traditional hysteria was embedded in a traditional patriarchal society.
Although the patriarch might take different forms (a religious father is
not the same as a scientific father) the basic Oedipal structure remained
the same. A typical role assignment was installed time and again.
Power and knowledge resided with the man/father, while desire and
lack resided with the woman/mother. Answers were expected from the
father, the main one being a prohibition on Oedipal desire. The conven-
tional Oedipal reading declares that women are castrated, and that men
are phallic heroes. In real life, it is the other way around, as explained
by Lacan in his famous chapter seven on love in seminar XX. Women
escape the phallic reduction, and men are the phallic misfits. Every man
acquires his inscription in the Symbolic through the phallic signifier,
but it is only the primal father (the exception) who is supposed to have
the phallus. A normal man never meets the phallic standard. In contrast,
a woman—not The Woman—may define herself in relationship to the
not-All, instead of alienating herself to the phallic signifier. The hysteri-
cal subject, whether a man or a woman, remains within the phallic logic,
meaning that he or she expects the phallus from the master and in doing
so, demonstrates his failure to deliver.
A patriarchal society is a typically neurotic society. The primal father
is installed based on repression and on the installation of the patriarchal
law. This law installs the phallic principle as the basis for the symbolic
order. Every lack is explained in terms of castration, meaning that in
this imaginary world everything can be fully understood as long as you
address the phallic father, the one who knows. Underneath lies the object
of primary repression, meaning that part of the Real that escapes this
phallic order, something we are not very willing to confront, because it
provokes anxiety. Reducing women to a category of castrated and hence
lesser beings is a reassuring strategy. But time and again, the phallic
patriarch is confronted with the limits of this strategy. This explains
the two forms of neurosis in patriarchal society, with their typical gen-
der distribution: obsessional neurosis for men, hysteria for women. The
obsessional tries desperately to safeguard the Oedipal law and the rules;
the hysteric challenges them by demanding answers. Both of them have
to construct symptoms, in order to cope with their anxiety. If they enter
analysis, they will have to come to terms with what lies beyond this law,
158 PAU L V E R H A E G H E A N D E L I N E T R E N S O N

instead of defending or fighting it. This “beyond” is exactly what can-

not be understood in the Symbolic, hence Lacan’s denominations: the
not-All, the lack of the Other, S (A) with a slash over the A. Traditional
patriarchal society is based on repression and the accompanying return
of the repressed. Primarily, that which is repressed is the failure of the
system, meaning the fact that the symbolic order is not able to cover
fully the Real of the drive. Birth, death and sexuality escape the phallic
order. Via the Oedipal structure, the subject is taught to handle the lack
in phallic terms (big, bigger, biggest). There is no room for femininity
beyond the phallic enjoyment. The cornerstone of this system is primary
repression.
Today, classic hysteria and obsessional neurosis seem to have disap-
peared, in spite of the “obsessive/compulsive” character of the widely
used DSM. This coincides with the decline of patriarchal society in its
traditional form. We got rid of the patriarchs of former times, the pri-
mal fathers who used to run everything. This is in several respects a
cultural progress, and the problems that we are facing in our contempo-
rary society should not be used to plead for a return to the supposedly
good old times. It is much more interesting to ask ourselves how we can
understand this contemporary society from a psychoanalytic perspective
and where hysteria fits in it. Our thesis is that the former patriarchal
society with its neurotic structure has been replaced by a Big Brother
society that has a perverse structure. If this is the case, how can this be
argued, and what are the effects for the hysterical subject and its need
for a stage? The short answer is that the whole world has been turned
into a stage and that the hysteric has exchanged castration anxiety for
invidia, envy.
In our opinion, our contemporary society has become a perverse one,
because it is based on a primary disavowal, not only of castration, but
even a disavowal of lack as such. The prohibiting father and his laws
are discarded. In this respect, we don’t share Mitchell’s idea that the
contemporary annihilation of the father results in a psychotic structure
(Mitchell, 2003, p.175).6 In the world of the perverse Other, nothing is
lacking and total enjoyment is not only a possibility, it is even a moral
obligation. The command of the new superego is simply: “Enjoy!” and
anyone who fails to do so has to be ashamed of himself. In the absence of
the father, enjoyment and perfection have become the new norms. This
is the desire of the perverse Other. The underlying message is that there
is no structural lack and that everything is within reach. Big (Br)Other
preaches his message of obligatory enjoyment 3,000 times a day (the
average number of advertisements an American is exposed to per day).
In the words of Michael Foley (2010): “The Ad drives the Id.”
 H Y S T E R I A B E T W E E N B I G B R O T H E R A N D PAT R I A R C H Y 159

Applied to sexuality, this means that the former prohibition is

replaced by an obligation. Equals, siblings, can agree and sign a con-
tract or even an informed consent. Everything is allowed, as long as
the participants agree. We call this perverse, because as a strategy it
contains the same manipulation as the sexual pervert uses. In the work
by Marquis de Sade, the victim is seduced with the promise of an ulti-
mate enjoyment—ultimate meaning: beyond the always limited phallic
pleasure—but this promise is never held, much the contrary. The only
thing the perverse other is interested in is total control. The contem-
porary advertisements create the impression that they really care, that
they want to provide the public with perfect products leading to full
enjoyment. Obviously, the only thing they really care about is to be in
control of the money.

Depressive Hedonia
Both the neurotic and the perverse society create their own myth in
order to cover up the underlying truth about the lack in the symbolic
order. The neurotic society burdens us with the myth of the perfect
couple and eternal love: find the right (phallic) partner, and you will
be happy forever. The underlying truth is that the perfect partner turns
out to be castrated. The net result is feelings of guilt (“I don’t have the
phallus”) or disappointment (“S/he did not have the phallus, after all”).
The contemporary myth tells us that if we buy the right stuff, do the
right exercises, and work hard enough, we will have a perfect enjoyment.
“Happiness is a choice.” The underlying and disavowed truth is that total
jouissance is impossible. The new myth has a very important side effect
as it is based on the illusion of voluntarism. Everything is stripped down
to a matter of decision and personal effort. This implies that if you do
not take that decision, and do not work hard enough, it is your mistake
and your fault. As a result, Victorian guilt and neurosis are replaced by
postmodern shame and depression: if we do not enjoy, we are losers who
have failed our duty.
This idea of voluntarism is indicative for a new belief, namely total
controllability and manageability, based on our personal effort. As there
is no castration and even no lack, every one of us can and must have a
perfect body, a perfect relationship, perfect sex, perfect children, and
stay young forever. If that is not the case, the sole explanations are that
you did not put enough effort in it or made the wrong choices. Juli
Zeh has depicted this world in her novel Corpus delicti, where, what
she describes as The Method, obliges every one of us to be perfectly
healthy. This reminds me of the perverse command by Marquis de Sade
160 PAU L V E R H A E G H E A N D E L I N E T R E N S O N

in La Philosophie dans le Boudoir: “Français, encore un effort!” (“French

citizens, yet another effort!”). What is less clear in Zeh’s novel is that this
perfect body is obliged to enjoy. The effect of such an obligatory enjoy-
ment is painfully shown in the movie Shame, directed by Steve McQueen,
where the main character is permanently fooling around without actually
enjoying himself, and more recently in Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac.
Mark Fisher (2009, p. 21) has coined an apt phrase for this state: depres-
sive hedonia. Sadly, this is the paradox of a new superego obligation: the
more we have to enjoy, the lesser satisfaction we experience, and the more
we end with what Lacan terms a plus-de-jouir. This Lacanian expression
contains a duplicity that is hard to translate. The ever higher levels of
enjoyment, plus meaning more, lead to a loss of satisfaction (“plus de” is
a negation) that borders with anxiety. It is the same anxiety that Freud
discovered beyond the pleasure principle and that Lacan tried to grasp
with his very last thoughts on jouissance.

The World as a Stage: Big Brother Is Watching You

The duplicity of the perverse system is that it creates the illusion of
personal freedom while control is literally in the air and omnipresent
(Bauman and Lyon, 2013). Flat screens have replaced the stringent
stare of the Holy Father (remember the old-fashioned paintings with
a holy Eye framed in a triangle). CCTV and other surveillance appara-
tus have their eyes on everyone. From a traditional point of view, one
would expect a central controlling father figure in this contemporary
version of Bentham’s Panopticon. It is exactly the opposite: the tower
is empty; the only thing in there is a powerful computer server, permit-
ting everyone to watch and control everyone else, all the time. In such a
social formation, siblings are running the very show that controls them.
This becomes clear if one considers the most important contemporary
surveillance apparatus, that is, the so-called social media, LinkedIn,
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the like. The postmodern human
being exposes himself constantly to the controlling gaze of what he
or she thinks are peers. What are we controlled for and what is its
effect? The moral obligation is perfection and enjoyment. In absence
of the father, the standard against which we assess ourselves is the mir-
ror stage other who mirrors completeness without lack (e.g., posting
success after success for others to see). For lack of a differentiating cri-
terion, all siblings want to be more equal to their equal’s completeness
than the other. Freud talked jokingly about the “the narcissism of the
minor differences,” while Lacan describes the aggression at the base of
the mirror stage.
 H Y S T E R I A B E T W E E N B I G B R O T H E R A N D PAT R I A R C H Y 161

The obligatory identification with the mirror stage other has seri-
ous effects on the relationship between subject, gender, and author-
ity. Patriarchal society installed a phallic gender differentiation, with
clear-cut gender roles, together with a clear differentiation between
the generations, children versus parents. The perverse society does not
acknowledge the lack and disavows castration; therefore the traditional
gender differentiation becomes blurred. It is our contention that the
contemporary man is quite feminine by Victorian standards, the con-
temporary woman might be quite masculine against the same criteria,
and possibility of a transgender subject illustrates the interstitial spaces
opened by the decline of gender differentiation through repression. At
the same time, the perverse society does not acknowledge the law of the
father; therefore the differentiation between the generations becomes
blurred as well. Mother and daughter are presented as two sisters, and
fathers are competing with their sons, especially as the father has lost his
position of authority. Big Brother has replaced the authoritarian father of
the Victorian era. His most prominent characteristic, besides the fact that
he is watching all the time, is that he is an anonymous peer. It is impos-
sible to get hold of this ghost, which means that it is impossible to knock
him off his pedestal and kill him.
“Big Brother is watching you” might very well become the iconic
formula of our times. George Orwell would be amazed to see how his
expression fits more and more a paradoxical reality. The paradox resides
in the fact that our reality needs endorsement from the virtual world via
the Internet and the social media. The fact that we are dealing with a
virtual world does not make it less real, on the contrary. Life is increas-
ingly experienced as one big reality show where something is only real on
condition that it appears on the screen and is “liked” by others; if not, it
does not exist. As a result, the world is increasingly experienced as one
big stage with an omnipresent, anonymous, and watchful eye, covering
the scene nonstop. Our body has to be perfect, our smile has to be genu-
ine, and our enjoyment has to be total.7
The disavowal of lack leads to a divergence between the texture of
our everyday lives and the conviction that everything is under control
and perfectly manageable. If not, it must be that some individual made a
mistake, because there is no structural lack; someone has to be blamed.
Many documentaries on science suggest that total knowledge is almost
there. In the meantime, this conviction has taken hilarious and painful
proportions. If the weather forecast is wrong, the weatherman has to
apologize. A painful example is the conviction of six Italian scientists,
because they failed to predict the 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila. Here as
well, failure has become a question of personal responsibility.
162 PAU L V E R H A E G H E A N D E L I N E T R E N S O N

Hysteria Facing Big Brother

What are the effects for the hysterical subject? The world has been turned
into one big stage, where everyone is constantly performing. This is good
news; the hysterical subject does not have to look for a theatre any lon-
ger. The bad news is that the master has become invisible, and that it is
very hard to challenge Big Brother. He is hiding behind the screen and
does not pretend to be a master anymore. As a result, the theatre has lost
its traditional function for hysteria. Exposing the failure of the patriar-
chally determined gender roles is almost impossible, because the roles
have become blurred. Defying the sexual prohibition is superfluous, now
that enjoyment is obligatory. And lastly, provoking the master is hard,
because he is invisible.
The only thing left for the hysterical subject is to challenge the idea
of total enjoyment by exposing the real of the body. Self-mutilation in
some borderline personality patients mirrors performance art, thus set-
ting a painful new scene. For example, the performance artist Marina
Abramovic knives her fingers, sits in a heap of bones, and convinces at
least a part of the audience to manipulate her body with a variety of pointy
objects. She is literally the incarnation of the contemporary hysteria,
challenging enjoyment as demanded by the perverse (br)Other. Another
example is performance artist Orlan, developing her Carnal art project.
She undergoes a process of continuous plastic surgery, transforming her-
self into a variety of elements, as seen in famous paintings and sculptures
of women. On the surface, Orlan’s goal, using plastic surgery in order to
achieve it, matches the classic hysterical one, namely the acquirement of
the phallic ideal of female beauty as depicted by male artists. But her own
words tell us something different: “I can observe my own body cut open,
without suffering . . . I see myself all the way down to my entrails; a new
mirror stage . . . I can see to the heart of my lover.”8
In clinical terms, more often than not, this confronts us with the
new form hysteria has taken, that is, the so-called borderline personal-
ity disorder. Borderline patients experience an unstable self-image and
self-direction as a product of labile identifications, and oscillate between
overinvolvement and underinvolvement in relationships conceived of
either as perfect or as devalued. These subjects do not have the luxury of
a patriarchal master against whom they can revolt; they have to defend
themselves against an imposed jouissance as the demand for enjoyment
without lack. One way to revolt is to cut and burn or starve their own
body and expose their wounded or emaciated flesh to the world. At the
same time, they expose the failure of a Big Brother society, just like post-
modern artists do on the art scene.
 H Y S T E R I A B E T W E E N B I G B R O T H E R A N D PAT R I A R C H Y 163

Siblings and Subjectivity

It is our thesis that patriarchal society is shifting toward a society of
siblings, where the horizontal level is far more important than the verti-
cal one. At this point, Juliet Mitchell’s theory might prove to be even
more revolutionary than she thought herself. Her theory is first of all
new because she addresses the importance of siblings in a more or less
traditional society—hence her references to the Freudian case studies.
At the same time, she indicates in her book a more fundamental change,
the one that we interpret as a shift to a Big Brother society. This shift has
changed the traditional question about subjectivity. Instead of the classic
hysterical worry (“Am I a man or a woman in relation to the Other?”),
the contemporary “borderline” subject faces a far more fundamental
question: “Do I or don’t I exist, in relation to the Big (br)Other?” As
Mitchell puts it: “The crucial absence here, then, is not the absent phallus
(the castration complex) but the absent self” (Mitchell, 2003, p. 29).
How to think subjectivity if there is no lack, if castration is disavowed
and the not-All is denied and instead of that completeness is expected from
everyone? Gender implies difference and a symbolic lack; Big Brother sib-
lings imply similarity and imaginary completeness. Under a functioning
Oedipal regime, a child could compete with his siblings for the love of his
mother and father, thus acquiring a unique position instead of unique-
ness. Juliet Mitchell introduces “the law of the mother,” permitting the
child to be different from the other children, while the law of the father
reunites them in one category, based on the incest prohibition. The two
laws are both instrumental in the becoming of a subject; in their neces-
sary combination they provided the foundation of the Oedipal structure.
The irony is that Mitchell corrects both Freud’s (the passive mother) and
Lacan’s (the devouring crocodile mother) theory of the Oedipal complex
at a time when the Oedipal structure is disappearing. In our opinion,
Mitchell’s theory convincingly demonstrates the necessary combination
of the two laws. The implication is that the contemporary disappearance
of the law of the father implies at the same time the loss of the law of the
mother. Our era is already living the results of this disappearance. The
lack of distance makes it hard to have a clear view on these effects. We do
know that we need recognition by the Other. If the Other is the one of
the mirror stage, this need for recognition turns into an endless mirror
fight: either me or the other, with a deadly dimension. What Mitchell
(2003, p.43) described as something temporary—“the realization that
one is not unique, that someone stands exactly in the same place as one-
self and that though one has found a friend, this loss of uniqueness is, at
least temporarily, equivalent to annihilation”—runs the risk of becoming
164 PAU L V E R H A E G H E A N D E L I N E T R E N S O N

something enduring, a loss of a sense of self based upon an existential

anxiety: Who am I?
The inevitable conclusion is that we need to rethink our theory and
our practice. At this time, it is not yet clear in which direction this will
develop. We are convinced that a central focus should be on author-
ity, as essentially different from power. The trouble is not that we have
become a fatherless society—many contemporary fathers are much more
into fatherhood than their own fathers ever were. The trouble is that
authority, as a symbolic function attached to a position, has disappeared.
The challenge is to develop difference and subjectivity on a horizontal
level, as vertical differentiation (based on traditional authority) is disap-
pearing. Instead of focussing on the dangers of a world reduced to the
mirror stage, we should ask ourselves how a leaderless society may func-
tion (Ross, 2012).
And what about our clinical practice? Does a perverse society with an
obligation to enjoy ask for a different analyst compared to a patriarchal
society with a prohibition on desire? If we follow the classic Oedipal solu-
tion, the subject is duped by the primal father. If we enter the postmod-
ern perverse scene, the subject is duped by Big Brother. The net result is
that we are duped anyway, meaning that there is no argument whatso-
ever for a return to patriarchy. The question to be asked is how this shift
will mark the subject, and how analysis might respond to it.
A number of changes have already taken place. Our psychoanalytic
practice is based on transference and especially on the analysis of trans-
ference. A patriarchal neurotic society installs a different transference
compared to a Big Brother perverse society. We experience this with our
“borderline” patients who are not addressing us in a vertical way. The
analyst is losing his traditionally parental transference position, and we
are already reinventing our clinical practice, with a shift toward a group
approach, be it institutional psychotherapy, self-help groups, or mental-
ization-based therapy. We will need to rethink our theories as well—
the Oedipal theory simply does not fit any more. At this point, Juliet
Mitchell’s work might provide an important inspiration. Her early focus
on the political just as her latest work on siblings testifies how she feels
the pulse of the time.

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ej^[h

jhkj^ fheZkYj

Figure 7.1
 H Y S T E R I A B E T W E E N B I G B R O T H E R A N D PAT R I A R C H Y 165

I% I'
a %% I(

Figure 7.2

I' I(
I% %% a

Explanation of symbols:
I' cWij[h
i_]d_\_[h
I( ademb[Z][
 j^[
[l[h
Z_l_Z[Z
ikX`[Yj
W j^Wj
m^Wj
[iYWf[i
[l[ho
\ehc
e\
iocXeb_iWj_ed

Figure 7.3

Notes
1. Jouissance is one of Lacan’s most notoriously difficult concepts, espe-
cially as it evolved during the development of his theory. It indicates the
limit between a pleasure arising from the drive that can be controlled
and one that cannot, thus threatening the subject with death. It is
Lacan’s understanding of Freud’s death drive (see Verhaeghe, 2009).
2. Indeed, the symbolic order requires a threefold structure, otherwise it
is impossible to introduce difference. To give you an idea: indicating
the left- and right-hand side of a room (two elements) requires a third
element (in most cases: our own position), otherwise differentiation is
impossible.
3. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pussy_Riot.
4. See The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs
/newsdesk/2012/08/the-pussy-riot-verdict.html.
5. For a didactic explanation of Lacan’s discourse theory, see Verhaeghe,
P. (1995). Papers by the authors can be downloaded from http://
www.psychoanalysis.ugent.be.
6. The Lacanian structural reading of psychosis is different from the
Anglo-Saxon perspective (see Vanheule, 2011).
7. The circle, as described by Dave Eggers (2013), is more real than we
imagine.
8. Extract from the Carnal art manifesto. See http://orlan.eu/adriensina
/manifeste/carnal.html.

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Mitchell, J. 2003 [1974]. Psychoanalysis and Feminism. New York: Basic
Books.
Mitchell, J. 2003. Siblings: Sex and Violence. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Ross, C. 2012. The Leaderless Revolution: How Ordinary People Will Take
Power and Change Politics in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Blue
Rider Press.
Vanheule, S. 2011. The Subject of Psychosis: A Lacanian Perspective. London
and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Verhaeghe, P. 1995. “From Impossibility to Inability: Lacan’s Theory of the
Four Discourses.” The Letter, 3: 76–100. (Digital version on http://www
.psychoanalysis.ugent.be).
Verhaeghe, P. ([1987] 1999). Does the Woman Exist? From Freud’s Hysteric to
Lacan’s Feminine. New York: The Other Press.
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Verhaeghe, P. 2009. New Studies of Old Villains. A Radical Reconsideration

of the Oedipus Complex. (Foreword by Juliet Mitchell.) New York: Other
Press.
Verhaeghe, P. 2001. “Mind Your Body & Lacan’s Answer to a Classical
Deadlock.” In: Beyond Gender. From Subject to Drive. Edited by P. Verhaeghe,
pp. 99–132, New York: Other Press. (Digital version on http://www
.psychoanalysis.ugent.be).
Verhaeghe, P. 2004. “Phallacies of Binary Reasoning: Drive beyond Gender.”
In: Dialogues on Sexuality, Gender and Psychoanalysis. Edited by I. Matthis,
53–66. London: Karnac (Digital version on http://www.psychoanalysis
.ugent.be).
Verhaeghe, P. 2014a. What about Me? Brunswick: Scribe Publications.
Verhaeghe, P. 2014b Today’s Madness Does Not Make Sense. In Lacan on
Madness: Madness, Yes You Can’t. Edited by P. Gherovici and M. Steinkoler
London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Zeh, J. 2012. The Method. Londen: Harvill Secker.
 Chapter 8

Reframing Obsessional Neurosis:

The Rat Man’s Siblings

Robbie Duschinsky and Rachel Leigh

In Siblings (2003, 19), Mitchell suggests that “the introduction of a

lateral paradigm reframes the classical neuroses.” The truth of this claim
has been well demonstrated by Mitchell’s work on hysteria. However, the
advance represented by the introduction of the lateral axis has yet to be
applied to obsessional neurosis. At the level of the relationship between
the ego and the drive, both hysteria and obsessional neuroses are constel-
lations of defences against the Oedipus complex. Freud ([1896a] 2001,
146) was the first to declare the need to “set alongside of hysteria the
obsessional neurosis as a self-sufficient and independent disorder.” Yet
he also at points treated obsessional neurosis as if it were a branch of
hysteria, and throughout his writings he would observe important par-
allels as well as contrasts between the two disorders. If, indeed, “the
language of an obsessional neurosis—the means by which it expresses its
secret thoughts—is, as it were, only a dialect of the language of hysteria”
([1909a] 2001, 196–7), then insights from Mitchell’s analysis of the lat-
ter neurosis may well help shed light on the former.
The central site in his corpus at which Freud elaborates his theory of
obsessional neurosis is the “Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis,”
which details the case of Ernst Lanzer. Lanzer entered treatment with
Freud in 1907. His personal and professional life had come to an impasse
in the face of inhibitions and compulsive thoughts. Freud called Lanzer
“the Rat Man” in his published “Notes upon a Case of Obsessional
Neurosis,” since many of these compulsions were organized by the theme
of rats. While lateral relations are not highlighted in the published text,
the significance of Lorenz’s siblings to his neurosis is evident in Freud’s
case notes. It was Freud’s practice to make written notes on his cases “on
the evening of the day of treatment” ([1909a] 2001, 159). Usually these
170 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y AND R ACHEL LEIGH

were destroyed. However, the first four months of case notes on the Rat
Man were found among Freud’s papers in London upon his death.
Freud publicly presented the Lanzer case no less than five times to the
Vienna Psychoanalytic Society between October 30, 1907, and April 8,
1908, and also as the opening five-hour presentation at the first Congress
of the International Psychoanalytic Association on April 27, 1908 (Jones
1955, II, 49). Given that Freud was able to report that “the patient’s
mental health was restored to him by the analysis,” this repetition appears
to have been both a mark of confidence in the capacity of the case to
illustrate obsessional neurosis and its analysis ([1909a] 2001, 249). Since
Lanzer had previously been treated without effect by the renowned psy-
chiatrist Wagner-Jauregg, Freud’s success appeared all the more remark-
able. As Beigler (1975, 276) describes, Freud was here “fashioning a cure
for the previously incurable. To have had so brilliant a result with so dif-
ficult a patient in only eleven months was no small achievement.” Perhaps,
however, the repetition in Freud’s presentation of the case together with
the survival of the case notes can also be thought of as the marks of some-
thing left troublingly unresolved and unbound. Describing his feelings
during the composition of the published text in a letter to Jung, Freud
wrote: “It just pours out of me, and even so it’s inadequate” ([1909b]
1979, 116). Even many years later, Freud would suggest that “obsessional
neurosis is unquestionably the most interesting and repaying subject of
analytic research. But as a problem it has not yet been mastered” ([1926]
2001, 113). Anna Freud (1966, 116) reports a remark from her father
that, in the study of obsessional neurosis, perhaps “a group of people may
succeed where the single individual fails.” Turning this remark at a right-
angle, this chapter will explore the possibility that it is precisely attention
to group—lateral—process which can help further advance our under-
standing of the Rat Man case and of obsessional phenomena.
Unlike the Wolf Man case study in which siblings appear clearly in the
manifest content of the published text and therefore have been the sub-
ject of ongoing discussion (e.g., Oliver 2009), the latent status of Freud’s
thoughts on the Rat Man’s sibling relationships has meant that their sig-
nificance has been little discussed. Indeed, it has not been uncommon for
commentators on the case to offer specific repudiations that the sibling
relationships have significance; perhaps the most stark is Veszy-Wagner
(1967, 602), who states that “Rat Man had three sisters who, besides
possible sexual games in childhood, later played no role.” In reframing
the “Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis,” the chapter will shed
new light on the significance of siblings to the Rat Man case study, and
through this lay the groundwork for future reflections on the role of the
lateral axis in obsessional neurosis.
 R EF R A M I N G O B S E S S I O N A L N EU R O S I S 171

The Rat Man’s Father

Two chief symptoms brought Ernst Lanzer, a graduate law student, to
analysis with Freud. First, Lanzer experienced prohibitions regarding
seemingly inconsequential actions. Second, he also experienced inner
voices, which commanded him to behave in ways he found bizarre
and at odds with his conscious desires, such as to kill himself by cut-
ting his throat with a razor or to exhibit his penis to the ghost of his
dead father. Lanzer “had wasted years, he told me, in fighting against
these ideas of his” (Freud [1909a] 2001, 158). Freud’s published study
focuses on an incident early in the analysis. Lanzer was on military
maneuvers when he lost a pair of glasses and ordered a new pair in
the mail. He was told by the Captain that he owed Lieutenant A, who
had advanced the money at the post office for the new pair. This was
a mistake, however, and the money was actually owed to the young
woman at the post office, who had advanced him the money herself.
Lanzer, who knew this, nonetheless found himself making a vow to
pay back Lieutenant A. This motivated him to take a train journey to
Lieutenant A, but which actually brought him to Freud’s door. Freud
interpreted Lanzer’s actions as precipitated by the constellation of rela-
tions from his family history. In finding himself in a “sequel” to his
father’s marriage dilemma, Lanzer experienced obsessive symptoms
relating to the repayment of a military debt—which it would be impos-
sible to repay to Lieutenant A because it was never owed to him, but
to the lady at the post office. Lanzer described fears that if he did not
obey the compulsion, then his beloved and his father would be subject to
an awful torture. The torture, which he had heard about from a mili-
tary colleague, was that a pot [Topf ] containing starving rats would be
placed on the buttocks of the victim; the rats would be tormented with
a hot poker so that, looking for escape, they would bore with teeth
and claws into the anus. Freud was surprised to learn, however, that
Lanzer’s father had died a few years earlier, and that the punishments
would not solely take place “not only to our present life but also to
eternity—to the next world” ([1909a] 2001, 169).
Speaking at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society on April 8, 1908
(Nunberg and Federn 1962: I, 370–1), Freud reported that the obsessive
symptoms were hinged together by three words related to Ratten [rats].
A first related word was Spielratte [an irresponsible gambler], which char-
acterized Lanzer’s father, who gambled away the regiment’s money dur-
ing his time in the army and when helped out by a friend, never repaid
the debt. Rats represented his father, payment, and this unpaid debt.
The second related term was Heiraten [getting married]. Whereas his
172 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y AND R ACHEL LEIGH

mother wanted him to marry a wealthy young woman, Lanzer chose

his infertile cousin, Gisela, as his love-object. This choice stood in con-
trast to his father, who Lanzer perceived as having married his mother
rather than a poorer woman, with whom he was in love. Third, Lanzer
reported to Freud that in his speech he elided the difference between
Ratten and raten [to guess]. Freud interpreted that rats represented the
patient’s experience of powerful doubt in relation to his love objects,
since this love was continually felt to be disrupted and contaminated
by unintegrated rage. Rats thus articulated Lanzer’s relationship with
his father and money, his mother and love, and ambivalence; they also
hinged Lanzer’s life and wishes with the actions of his father.
Freud deciphers the episode of the attempt to pay back the lieutenant
for the glasses as an expression of ambivalence, caused primarily by the
conflict between a conscious love for the father and unconscious feelings
of rage toward him. The obsessional neurosis was understood as a two-
fold defence against these feelings of rage. First, the reproach toward the
paternal object to which it had originally been directed was displaced as
unbound libido onto thought. Thoughts themselves were invested with
the quality of erotic objects, from which the obsessional would expect
pleasure and for which they would experience self-reproach. The result is
obsessive thoughts, obsessive doubts, and anxieties. Second, the rivalry
with the father at the genital level was circumvented by a displacement
onto anal material: in “obsessional neurotics—we can observe the result
of a regressive debasement of the genital organisation. This is expressed
in the fact that every phantasy originally conceived on the genital level is
transposed to the anal level—the penis being replaced by the fecal mass
and the vagina by the rectum” ([1917] 2001, 131). Freud’s interpretation
in the published case study emphasized the significance of the relation-
ship with the father for Lanzer’s symptoms. On Freud’s interpretation,
Lanzer’s conflicts about erotic desire and marriage were redirected via
the father’s history into an anal concern about paying a debt (through
the money=feces equation); the threat of the rat torture to his father and
Gisela if the debt was not paid manifested Lanzer’s ambivalence between
conscious love for his father, and unconscious hate for his father’s refusal
to support his marriage to Gisela.

The Rat Man’s Mother

Yet even while the analysis was still taking place, this interpretation was
subject to criticism. Speaking at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society on
the occasion of one of Freud’s presentations of the “Rat Man” in 1908,
Otto Rank objected that “all factors clearly point to the patient’s love
 R EF R A M I N G O B S E S S I O N A L N EU R O S I S 173

for his mother, even though there has not yet been any direct reference
to this in the analytic material.” Freud replied that “Rank will prob-
ably prove to be right in his assumption that incestuous wishes for the
mother play a role, though the relationship is complicated by the presence
of four sisters” (Nunberg and Federn [1908] 1962: 1, 233). This is an
extraordinary statement: Freud is explaining that his focus on the uncon-
scious hatred of the father in the Rat Man case study is caused by the
fact that too much sibling material obscured his view of the mother! In
the published case study, perhaps responding to Rank’s concern, Freud
justified his focus on the father in the published case study on the basis
that “the theme of the rats has lacked any element directed towards his
mother, evidently because there is very strong resistance in relation to
her” ([1909a] 2001, 293).
Examining the case notes, it does indeed seem to be true that the
figure of the mother is overshadowed by the extensive notes on Lanzer’s
sibling relationships. However, this has not stopped later analysts con-
testing Freud’s account of the case, and arguing—in line with a broader
rise in attention to the mother in psychoanalytic theory in the gen-
eration after Freud—for the significance of the patient’s mother in this
paradigmatic case of obsessional neurosis (Künstlicher 1998; Mahoney
2007). Offering a good example of how attention beyond the father can
help sharpen our understanding of the case, Bass has astutely observed
that Freud’s focus on the father means that he does not consider the psy-
chical meaning of the young lady at the post office. Lanzer incurs a real
debt for the glasses to this woman, and which his obsession with paying
Lieutenant A meant that he was set to exploit her by not reimbursing
her payment.
Arguments for the missed importance of the mother have often drawn
upon a comparison of the published case with the unpublished notes
for deepening our understanding of the Lanzer case, and through it of
obsessional neurosis. For example, commenting on Lanzer’s first analytic
session with Freud, Crockatt (2013) has observed that “Freud published
his initial consultation almost verbatim with one significant omission:
‘After I had told him my terms, he said he must consult his mother.’
The patient, it will be recalled, was 29 years old at that time.” From this
analysis Crockatt is able to deftly draw out the significance of themes of
differentiation and undifferentiation in Lanzer’s symptoms: the issue of
merger or submergence into the mother is managed in part through the
way in which Lanzer dealt with and agonised over money. This conclu-
sion agrees with that of Verhaeghe (2001, 161), who argues that “in
the case of obsessional neurosis, the underlying anxiety is much greater
than in the case of hysteria. Traditionally, Freud ascribes this anxiety to
174 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y AND R ACHEL LEIGH

the father figure, thus making his traditional mistake . . . the fear of the
obsessional concerns the first Other, the mother, whose demanding is
interpreted as an attempt to incorporate the subject.” The December
analytical sessions in the case notes particularly address this threat of
incorporation, framed as a need to avoid relationship with the mother
in order to avoid contamination. “His mother suffered from an abdomi-
nal affection and now has a bad smell from her genitals, which makes
him very angry. She herself says that she stinks unless she has frequent
baths, but that she cannot afford it, and this appals him” ([1909] 2001,
296). Both to escape from the need to engage in a permeable relationship
with his mother and as a reaction formation against his disgust, Lanzer
“hands over all his money to his mother because he does not want to
have anything from her” ([1909a] 2001, 297). Transposed onto an anal
register, the prohibition on desire for the mother becomes disgust for her
genitals and for monetary interaction with her.

Lanzer’s Siblings
In line with such reflections, Freud observes that the patient’s “sexual
desires for his mother and sister and his sister’s premature death were
linked up with the young hero’s chastisement at his father’s hand”
([1909a] 2001, 207). He goes on to clarify that “the death of an elder
sister, which took place when he was between three and four years old,
played a great part in his phantasies, and was brought into intimate
connection with his childish misdemeanours during the same period”
([1909] 2001, 235). However, this “great part” and “intimate connec-
tion” are left unexplored. Besides these remarks, in the rest of Freud’s
published case ambivalence toward the father is shorn of its “link up”
with siblings, and ambivalence toward the father is examined alone as the
central etiological factor in the obsessional neurosis.
Attention to the significance of Lanzer’s mother in Freud’s notes on
the case has also led commentators at points to note the importance
of the patient’s siblings to his history and development. Much of this
analysis, while helpful and perceptive (e.g., Mahoney 1986), has attended
to siblings within a frame that privileges their significance primarily in
terms of the meanings for Lanzer of his mother’s reproductive capabili-
ties. However, two texts stand out as presenting sustained attention to
sibling dynamics in the case notes. One is Billig (1999), who draws atten-
tion to a passage in the case notes which begins: “He is cheerful, untram-
melled and active, and is behaving aggressively to a girl, a dressmaker”
([1909a] 2001, 278). Billig states that “behaving aggressively” means to
sexually pursue, and proposes that this is supported by the fact that the
 R EF R A M I N G O B S E S S I O N A L N EU R O S I S 175

next reference to the dressmaker describes Lanzer’s intercourse with her.

After mention of pursuing the dressmaker:

Confessions followed about his relations to his sisters. He made, so

he said, repeated attacks on his next younger sister, Julie, after his
father’s death [when he is around 20]; and these—he had once actu-
ally assaulted her—must have been the explanation of his pathological
changes. He once had a dream of copulating with Julie. He was over-
come with remorse and fear at having broken his vow to keep away
from her. He woke up and was delighted to find it was only a dream.
He then went into her bedroom and smacked her bottom under the
bedclothes . . . From this we conclude that his being chastised by his
father was related to assaulting his sisters. But how? Purely sadistically
or already in a clearly sexual way? His elder or his younger sisters? Julie
is three years his junior, and as the scenes we are in search of must
have been when he was three or four, she can scarcely be the one.
Katherine, his sister who died? ([1909a] 2001: 278).

Billig draws attention to the fact that Freud here associates Lanzer’s
“pathological changes” with his possible incest with his sister. He reads
Freud’s indefinite description as an obfuscation of definite sibling incest.
“Consequently,” Billig (1999, 152) concludes, “readers of the case history
are not informed that changes in Lorenz’s condition may be connected
with such incest.” In support for his contention, Billig notes Lanzer’s
remark to Julie’s husband that: “If Julie has a baby in 9 months’ time,
you needn’t think I am its father; I am innocent” ([1909a] 2001, 314).
He also compares the case notes with the published version of the fifth
analytic session, observing that they are identical besides the last few
lines: Freud expunged his patient’s statement that his compulsions were
figured by a sense of guilt for memories of having already committed the
most despicable deed.
In contrast to Billig’s perspective stands Zetzel’s 1965 International
Psycho-analytical Congress paper. Since it was Zetzel who first intro-
duced the equalizing concept of “therapeutic alliance” between analyst
and patient into the psychoanalytic lexicon, it is perhaps unsurprising that
she would be an exception to the neglect of Freud’s quite extensive remarks
on lateral dynamics in the Rat Man case notes.1 Zetzel’s analysis, when
considered carefully, can stand as a useful corrective to Billig’s insight-
ful but limited account of the sibling material. Zetzel (1966, 125) uses
the evidence of the case notes to observe that an important scene in
which Lanzer flew into a rage with his father coincided with the death
of his sister: “His famous—but not subjectively remembered—outburst
of rage almost certainly occurred during the course of Katherine’s fatal
176 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y AND R ACHEL LEIGH

illness. In this affective storm the little boy attacked his father.” This
is the only time, Lanzer states, he was beaten by his father. Whereas
the overall arc of Freud’s interpretation had situated Lanzer’s rage with
his father as an effect of a perceived threat of death if he continued to
masturbate and retain Oedipal aspirations, Zetzel emphasizes that the
threat of castration would have been indelibly marked and sharpened the
trauma of his sister’s passing. This ambivalence and confusion regarding
the meaning of his sister’s death in the context of his father’s prohibition
would have predisposed him to the obsessive symptoms which began
from his father’s death, and intensified on the death of his aunt (his
father’s sister).
Zetzel hypothesizes that the traumas of the castration complex and
the sister’s death became confused for the patient. Whereas most inter-
pretations of the “opposition between the two objects of his love, his
father and the ‘lady’ ” ([1909a], 179) following Freud have viewed this
as reflecting Lanzer’s castration complex, Zetzel’s interpretation refines
and redefines this account. Love/hate would not only be tied to sexuality/
prohibition, but also to life/death and vertical/lateral. In support of
Zetzel’s reading of the case notes, there is a footnote to the published
case in which Freud states that “his sexual desires for his mother and sis-
ter and his sister’s premature death were linked up with the young hero’s
chastisement at his father’s hand” ([1909a] 2001, 207). Freud also states
that “I traced a connection with death from his having been threatened
with death at a prehistoric period if he touched himself and brought
about an erection of his penis, and suggested that he attributed his sister’s
death to masturbating” ([1909a] 2001, 309). In further support for the
way that the meanings of sex, sisters, and death are woven together in the
Lanzer household, it can be noted that the patient’s parents had children
every two years until Katherine’s death in 1881—and then it is nearly five
years before Julie was born in 1886 (Mahoney 1986, 65).
Zetzel’s reflections suggest that Lanzer’s unconscious reproach toward
the father would have included and been sustained by an irreducibly sib-
ling component. This component would also have played a determinative
role in his love-interest in his cousin:

This, I believe, also determined his attachment in adult life to a young

woman, Gisela, in whom he found a suitable replacement for his dead
sister. From the published notes and daily record we get a picture of
Gisela as (i) a first cousin; (ii) possibly too old for him (her age is
not mentioned); (iii) almost certainly sterile, a fact which made her
resemble a prepuberty little girl; and (iv) a woman who was subject to
frequent serious and disabling periods of ill health. In addition, the
 R EF R A M I N G O B S E S S I O N A L N EU R O S I S 177

fact that this cousin who was herself highly ambivalent may also have
been abused by her stepfather, and was at least as disturbed in respect
of her psychosexual life as the patient, suggests that her own personal-
ity loaned itself to a relationship characterized by many infantile fea-
tures. There is a wealth of material in the original notes to support
the hypothesis that the Rat Man’s persistent attachment to his ailing
cousin represented an over-determined, necessarily ambivalent effort
to revive his sister as he last recalled her, namely, as an increasingly
tired little girl who was finally carried away to the room in which she
was to die (Zetzel 1966, 126).

As we have seen, Billig’s interest is to downplay the significance of

unconscious reproach toward either the dead older sister or the father, in
favor of preconscious or conscious guilt regarding Lanzer’s actual incest
with his younger sister. By contrast, Zetzel offers the more acute analysis
in connecting Lanzer’s desire for his cousin to his unconscious feelings
toward his older sister Katherine, and Lanzer’s unconscious hatred of
his father to a prohibition on sexuality that had been tangled up with
death. A cousin, as Mitchell (1974, 373) observed in Psychoanalysis and
Feminism, is structurally the nearest person to a sibling. Mitchell sug-
gests that romance with a cousin can serve as a defence against the threat
of sibling incest between brother and sister and an effective sublima-
tion for it. Likewise, marriage with a cousin accepts the authority of the
father to forbid violent competition for the family’s women, while at the
same time supplanting the father at the closest possible remove through
identification with his role. Indeed, Freud notes that Lanzer’s “father
was first cousin of his mother” ([1909a] 2001, 287), making both the
cousins yet closer to siblings and the identification with the father even
more intense.
Furthermore, whereas Billig interprets the patient’s relation to his sister
as solely sexual and references to aggression as mere euphemism, Zetzel’s
remarks encompass the lack of clean differentiation between aggression
and sexuality in the clinical material. This weave between aggression and
sexuality is, as Mitchell (2003) observes, characteristic in particular of
dynamics along the lateral axis. Zetzel’s account agrees with Freud who,
as we have seen in the passage from the case notes cited by Billig, leaves
open two riddles for the interpretation of the patient’s guilt for assaulting
a sister: “Purely sadistically or already in a clearly sexual way? His elder or
his younger sisters?” Her interpretation also agrees with Mitchell (2003),
who sees the extent of a lack of differentiation between sex and violence
as an index of uncontained lateral trauma. Rather than following Billig
in sheering sexuality from aggression, and Lanzer’s behavior as an adult
178 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y AND R ACHEL LEIGH

toward his younger sister from infantile material, it seems more plausible
to follow Zetzel and interpret Lanzer’s behavior toward Julie as occur-
ring on the horizon of the relation with the dead older sister and of his
castration complex.
To demonstrate the value of this approach, let us take the two symp-
toms that dominate Freud’s recounting of the case: the vow to pay back
the money to the lieutenant, and the fear of rat punishment for his
cousin Gisela and (dead) father if he does not. Freud states that the
patient’s compulsions are the product of “oaths that he has forgotten”
([1909a] 2001: 260). Vows and vowing appear in four places in Freud’s
recounting of the case. One is in the text cited by Billig: because of his
sexual/aggressive acts/wishes toward Julie, Lanzer feels “fear at having
broken his vow to keep away from her.” Billig’s interpretation directs us
to the fact that the money Lanzer vowed to give the lieutenant was actu-
ally owed to the nice lady at the post office. The patient travels all over
Austria trying to pay the lieutenant and not pay the lieutenant, until he
arrives at Freud’s door and receives analysis. Then, calmer, he can simply
post the money owed to the lady. Billig’s interpretation would suggest
that the lady could not be repaid because of the “vow to keep away from
her” originally directed at Julie. However three other vows mentioned
in the text can deepen our understanding of what it means to the patient
when he vows. Besides the repayment vow, and the vow to keep away
from Julie, a third vow in the case material is the formula used by the
patient to forbid himself masturbation: “I swear on my blessed soul to
abandon it.” Lanzer had anxiety that if he broke this vow, and mastur-
bated, then “his father would be bound to die” ([1909a] 2001: 165).
When asked about his formula to prevent masturbation, Lanzer made
an association with the words used by his mother to forbid his seeing
Gisela: “On my soul, you will not go” ([1909] 200,: 262). Given the
word-for-word fit in formulation, it is implausible to see the meaning
of the vow not to approach Julie outside of the repeated vows made by
Lanzer to prohibit himself masturbation, in the context of Oedipal and
castration anxieties.
Yet if “I swear on my soul to abandon it” resonates with his mother’s
words, it also echoes with much earlier words heard by the patient.
Lanzer reports three memories of his elder sister Katherine before she
died. A first memory is a love-vow made by Katherine that “On my soul,
if you die I shall kill myself” ([1909] 2001, 264). A second memory is
of Katherine “being carried to bed” and then, sometime later, of “his
asking ‘Where is Katherine?’ and going into the room and finding his
father sitting in an arm-chair and crying.” In light of Zetzel’s interpre-
tation, the act of vowing can be viewed as invested and complicated by
 R EF R A M I N G O B S E S S I O N A L N EU R O S I S 179

confusion and ambivalence over the role of love and of his father in his
sister’s death. Furthermore, Lanzer’s third memory of his older sister
helps make further sense of Lanzer’s vow to repay the lieutenant. The
vow is made because Lanzer feels that if he does not repay the lieuten-
ant then a pot [Topf ] containing starving rats would be placed on the
buttocks of his cousin and (dead) father. This strange fear becomes
rather more explicable in light of Lanzer’s early memory that “he first
noticed the difference between the sexes when he saw his deceased sister
Katherine (five years his senior) sitting on the pot” [Topf ] ([1909] 2001,
276). Indeed, Lanzer himself appears to testify in favor of such an inter-
pretation. He tells Freud that “when his sister asked him what it was that
he liked about his cousin he replied jokingly ‘her behind’ ” ([1909] 2001,
277). Lanzer’s obsessional neurosis can then be regarded as a flight from
a genital sexuality, in which the stakes are reproductive difference and
annihilation, into obsessive thoughts in an anal register. His confusion of
love and hate for his dead sister and father remain unconscious—not only
avoided but forgotten. Yet the conflict between these feelings and those
of his conscious experience in adulthood animate obsessive symptoms
directed toward his beloved cousin, his younger sister Julie, and a wish to
exhibit his penis to the ghost of his dead father.
As well as a metaphor for the ambivalence of Oedipal wishes and anxi-
eties, the rat who threatens to bore with teeth and claws into the anus
of Lanzer’s cousin and (dead) father can also therefore be recognized
as a metonymically displaced signifier for the figure of the younger sib-
ling and of reproductive difference. The patient reported to Freud that
“he used to creep away [verkroch] and hide, filled with terror and indig-
nation, when one of his brothers or sisters was beaten” ([1909] 2001,
206). As Freud ([1897a] 1986,219; [1919] 2001) remarks elsewhere,
there may be pleasure as well as pain in both observing the beating of
a sibling, and in the phantasy that one is receiving pain/love in their
place. Furthermore, the beating of a sibling in the Lanzer household
appears to have been a moment when their genitals were visible. Fear and
indignation toward pain and sadomasochistic pleasure, precisely in the
link-up between the castration and sibling complexes, reappears in the
threat of the rat punishment to his father and cousin. The threat of “rats
creeping into [Hineinkriechen] the rectum” is interpreted by Freud as a
reversal of the theme of creeping out from, which he suggests symbolizes
a wish “that men can have babies just as well as women” ([1909a] 2001,
220). Mitchell (2003) identifies that the wish to have a child through
anal childbirth represents a foreclosure of reproductive difference. For
the hysteric, this fantasy emerges because reproductive difference repre-
sents the threat of a displaced self. By contrast, for Lanzer, reproductive
180 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y AND R ACHEL LEIGH

difference is implicated in the traumatic articulation of Katherine’s death

with punishment by his father ([1909a] 2001, 265).
Support for this conclusion lies in Lanzer’s report to Freud that both
part of his desire for his cousin Gisela, and part of his indecision over
whether to marry her, lay in her infertility. He begrudges his sister her
capacity for reproduction, a rebuke which is folded within an obsessional
prohibition on his own sexual wishes:

The patient had a charming little niece of whom he was very fond.
One day this idea came into his head: “If you indulge in intercourse,
something will happen to Ella” (i.e. she will die). When the omissions
have been made good, we have: “Every time you copulate, even with a
stranger, you will not be able to avoid the reflection that in your mar-
ried life sexual intercourse can never bring you a child (on account of
the lady’s sterility). This will grieve you so much that you will become
envious of your sister on account of little Ella, and you will grudge
her the child. These envious impulses will inevitably lead to the child’s
death” ([1909] 2001, 226–7).

The patient also had several tooth-related dreams in which sisters,

pain, and birth were drawn together. With teeth, we remain firmly in the
orbit of rodents here (rodent, from the Latin rodere: to gnaw). Two such
dreams were related by the patient on January 6 and 7, 1908:

He dreamt that he went to the dentist to have a bad tooth pulled out.
He pulled one out, but it was not the right one, but the one next to it
which only had something slightly wrong with it. When it came out he
was astonished by its size.
He had a carious tooth; it did not ache, however, but was only
slightly tender, sometimes. He went to the dentist once to have it
filled. The dentist, however, said there was nothing to be done except
to extract it. He was not usually a coward, but he was kept back by the
idea that somehow or other his pain would damage his cousin, and he
refused to have it done ([1909a] 2001, 315).

Freud tells Lanzer confidently that these dreams are about castration,
and that the big tooth is his father’s penis, which he wants to cut off in
retaliation for prohibiting his incestuous desires. However in the process
notes he expresses concern and confusion: “what could be the meaning
of its not having been the right tooth?” ([1909a] 2001, 316). Lanzer’s
own interpretation of the dreams is significant: they are about the death
of a relative. It might be wondered whether the incorrect excision of the
big tooth in the series of teeth might relate to a wish/fear that death/
the father had extracted him from the series of siblings and put him into
 R EF R A M I N G O B S E S S I O N A L N EU R O S I S 181

the deathbed, rather than his sister who only had something slightly
wrong with her (castration), which should not warrant death. The pain of
a further extraction in the second dream would hurt his cousin because,
as Freud later realized and added as a footnote to The Interpretation of
Dreams, the extraction of a tooth does not simply represent castration
but also childbirth since “in both cases (castration and birth) what is in
question is the separation of a part of the body from the whole” ([1900]
2001, 387–8). In Lanzer’s mind, his sexual desire is firmly bound up
with the threat of pain to those he loves: the danger of castration posed
by masturbation from the father becomes the same thought as the threat
to his sister if he desires her.

Freud’s/Lanzer’s Siblings
Much of the preceding analysis merely fleshes out, using material from
the case notes, Freud’s terse remark that the patient’s “sexual desires for
his mother and sister and his sister’s premature death were linked up with
the young hero’s chastisement at his father’s hand” ([1909a] 2001, 207).
Why were siblings left to the side in the published case, producing such
disparity between the detailed material on the importance of Lanzer’s
siblings for his symptoms in the unpublished notes, and their relegation to
minor figures in published case? The reason can be found explicitly stated
in Freud’s the case notes. Freud writes that there was material presented
by Lanzer, which he found himself so resistant to include in his interpre-
tations that he had “forgotten owing to complexes of my own” ([1909a]
2001, 264). This material, precisely, was the heart of the link between
the sibling and castration complexes: memories of Katherine’s vow that
“On my soul, if you die I shall kill myself” and of Katherine being taken
to bed to die in the next room and of their father crying. Freud observes
that “in both cases it was a question of his sister’s death,” which was “the
consideration which I had forgotten” ([1909a] 2001, 264).
It seems probable that among the complexes that Freud perceives
blocked attention to Katherine in his interpretations was the death of
his little brother during his childhood. Writing to Fliess, Freud ([1897b]
1986: 268) recalls that “I greeted my one-year-younger brother (who
died after a few months) with adverse wishes and genuine childhood
jealousy; and that his death left the germ of [self-]reproaches in me.”
Considering Freud’s writings specifically and thus the subsequent history
of psychoanalytic theory as a palimpsest on the surface produced by these
writings, Mitchell (2000, 239) has observed that “this unacknowledged
dead brother can be said to have ‘possessed’ the theory of psychoanalysis,
ever present in the accounts but completely unintegrated into the theory
182 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y AND R ACHEL LEIGH

or practice.” In the case of the Rat Man, Stroeken (2007) has identified
several reasons for identification between analyst and analysand, among
them the fact that both Lanzer and Freud came from a family of seven
children: two boys and five girls.
Yet Freud’s remark regarding “complexes of my own” in the plural
suggests that the dead younger brother may not have been the only fac-
tor in play: a second childhood constellation may also have been relevant
in limiting Freud’s attention to siblings in the published case of the Rat
Man. In the same letter to Fliess cited above, Freud relates that, together
with his nephew who was the same age as him, when he was three he had
“behaved cruelly to my niece, who was a year younger.” Highlighting
the significance of his guilt for his brother’s death and his memory of
sadistic collusion with his nephew against his niece, Freud concludes his
recollections by stating that “this nephew and this younger brother have
determined, then, what is neurotic, but also what is intense, in all my
friendships.” The content of the cruel behavior toward the niece is not
identified in the letter to Fliess. It is, however, identified in Freud’s paper
on screen memories: he and his nephew threw his niece down in a meadow
in Freiburg and snatched the dandelions she was holding. Anzieu (1986,
285) has situated this story as a screen memory for Freud’s “sexual play”
as a child with his sisters and niece, undifferentiated between sexuality
and aggression. Certainly in favor of such an interpretation are Freud’s
associations to the memory, which are of “some pictures that I once saw
at a burlesque exhibition” and that “taking flowers from a girl means to
deflower her” ([1899] 2001, 312, 316).
Freud proposes that part of the salience of the meadow memory lies
in the fact that the next time he saw this niece and nephew in Freiburg,
he was 17 and fell in love with a young girl called Gisela Fluss (whose
dress reminded Freud of his niece’s flowers). During this time, however,
Freud notes that his family had the idea for him to “marry my cousin”
([1899] 2001, 314). In the event, neither marriage with the cousin nor
with Gisela Fluss came to anything. Yet her name appears again 35 years
later, followed by three exclamation marks, in Freud’s process notes to
the session with Lanzer of November 18 in which he accidently writes
the name “Gisela Fluss” instead of the name of Lanzer’s fiancé and
cousin ([1909a] 2001, 280). This is evidence for the role of material from
Freud’s past in shaping his attention predominantly to Lanzer’s father
rather than infantile sibling experiences of love, hate, and death in inter-
preting the patient’s ambivalent love for his cousin. The weave between
love/hate would therefore only be tied by Freud to sexuality/prohibition
in the published case—leaving the threads of life/death and vertical/
lateral dangling and unelaborated.2
 R EF R A M I N G O B S E S S I O N A L N EU R O S I S 183

Obsessional Neurosis and Hysteria

Glover (1935, 131) makes the general point that “the real significance of
obsessions cannot be appreciated until the relations of the disease . . . to
hysteria . . . have been established.” Having examined the role of the lat-
eral axis in the Rat Man case study, we now are in a better position to
analyze the relevance of Mitchell’s account of the role of the lateral axis in
hysteria for reconsidering obsessional neurosis. Let us start by consider-
ing the common ground between the two neuroses. For Freud the figure
of Oedipus in Sophocles was such a good paradigm of neurosis because,
as well as revealing the structure of hysteria, “the original Oedipus was
himself a case of obsessional neurosis—the riddle of the sphinx” (Freud
[1907] 1974, 33). For Freud, “the riddle of the sphinx” was “the ques-
tion of where babies come from” (Freud [1924] 2001, 37). Hysteria and
obsessional neurosis are circumventions of the answer to this question,
and of the dissolution of the Oedipus complex in the experience of cas-
tration and/or deferral that it implies. Instead of accepting the loss of
the object, both neuroses retain the object in the form of symptoms,
which serve as “compromises,” supported from both sides by the for-
bidden drive and its censorship ([1916] 2001, 359). Such compromises
permit the subject a sense of themselves that excludes the conflicts raised
by the sphinx’s riddle: “Hysteria and obsessional neurosis are, from this
perspective, pathologies of individuation. The boundaries of the ‘I’ have
been drawn so as to alienate the drives. The cost is that they become
aliens pounding at the gates” (Lear 1990, 176).
In situating both hysteria and obsessional neurosis as defences against
disturbing psychical material, Freud observes that “up to this point the
processes in hysteria, and in phobias and obsessions are the same; from
now on their paths diverge. In hysteria, the incompatible idea is ren-
dered innocuous by its sum of excitation being transformed into some-
thing somatic. For this I should like to propose the name of conversion”
([1894] 2001, 48). Thus in hysteria, the emotion associated with the
object becomes partly separated from the representation to which it is
attached. The emotion is then converted into unfulfillable wants, while
the repressed idea is localized within a particular activity or part of the
body which serves as a symbol, producing conversion symptoms on the
body. This split between emotion and representation is sustained by an
ongoing series of identifications, in which the hysteric attempts to escape
from conflict by blurring his or her own identity with that of the object,
only to be disappointed and move on.
In obsessional neurosis, Freud observes that affect has likewise been
partly separated from a repressed reproach. He identifies that among “the
184 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y AND R ACHEL LEIGH

most important characteristics of obsessional neurosis” is an inexorable

either-or split between love and hate. Freud ([1909a] 2001: 239) identi-
fies that in such cases “love has not succeeded in extinguishing the hatred
but only in driving it down into the unconscious; and in the unconscious
the hatred, safe from the danger of being destroyed by the operations
of consciousness, is able to persist.” Winnicott ([1953] 1965, 19) glosses
the process with characteristic crispness and tenderness: “every attempt
is made to annul one idea by another, but nothing succeeds. Behind the
whole process is a confusion, and no amount of tidying that the patient
can do alters this confusion, because it is maintained; it is unconsciously
maintained in order to hide something very simple; namely, the fact that,
in some specific setting of which the patient is unaware, hate is more
powerful than love.” The affect associated with the reproach is displaced
on to another contiguous but ostensibly unrelated idea, producing a sexual-
ization of thought with anal-erotic content. In short, “thoughts are con-
structed to defend the subject against what he might feel” (de Georges
2009, 55). The result is a super-ego punitively concerned to pin down and
punish the ego for the cascade of associatively linked thoughts through
which the unconscious reproach, in conflict with conscious love, finds
expression ([1916] 2001, 182). Indeed, at a topographical level, it has
been suggested that the unconscious hate is to some degree incorporated
by the super-ego, and reproach toward the object for its imperfections
becomes pervasive accusations of the ego’s unworthiness and guilt by the
super-ego (e.g. Deutsch 1932; Lacan [1958] 2002, Seminar June 4).
Freud observes that “every obsessional neurosis seems to have a sub-
stratum of hysterical symptoms that have been formed at a very early
stage. But it is subsequently shaped along quite different lines” ([1925]
2001, 113). The hysterical core is that both neuroses are attempts to
circumvent the loss of the object which is implied by what Freud calls
“the riddle of the sphinx”: where do babies come from? Their differ-
ence lies in the mechanism of defence: whereas in hysteria repression is
effected through amnesia and the return of the repressed in the form of
conversion symptoms and resentful wanting, in obsessional neurosis the
affect is severed from the particular reproach that elicited it and is instead
transferred along lines of contiguity to associated ideas.
As Mitchell demonstrates, the hysteric fights an emptiness left by the
displacement of their existence by the possibility of the other. “It is,”
she remarks in Mad Men and Medusas (2000, 20), “the catastrophic
awareness that one is not unique which triggers the onset of hysteria.”
Hysterical symptoms form because the question of “where do babies
come from?” produces a traumatic threat of substitutability that threatens
the subject’s sense of self. Yet part of the process through which this
 R EF R A M I N G O B S E S S I O N A L N EU R O S I S 185

trauma is repressed means that the subject mistakes the existential threat
of substitutability for a matter of someone preventing them from getting
what they want. In this context, “the desperate, exuberant protests, the
labile identifications and demonstrative sexualising” of the hysteric “are
a way of asserting an existence that has gone missing” (2000, 107). The
obsessional neurotic also faces the riddle of the sphinx, which raises the
issues of life and of genitality. The riddle is dealt with in a different way
to the hysteric, however.
The hysteric protests the displacement of a singular existence through
a repression that transposes the question into the anxious and exuberant
domain of sexuality, wanting, and embodiment. The obsessional neu-
rotic, by contrast, transposes the riddle to the domain of thought, in an
anal-sadistic register. In this domain, the issue is raised of the relation-
ship between polar opposites. This relationship is framed by doubt and
encroachment—as the displaced affect is transferred between contiguous
ideas in order to maintain a polarized boundary separating it from the
idea or experience to which it belonged. For example, “defence against
the obsessional ideas may be effected by a forcible diversion on to other
thoughts with a content as contrary as possible. This is why obsessional
brooding, if it succeeds, regularly deals with abstract and suprasensual
things; because the ideas that have been repressed are always concerned
with sensuality” ([1896b] 2001, 172). If the Rat Man were to become
aware of the hate for his father, it would contaminate his consciously held
image of love.
Yet the movement of the transfer of the displaced affect between dif-
ferent thoughts produces a labile sense of doubt. This doubt protects
the boundaries that sustain the subject’s sense of self, holding in place
the constellation of defences and anxieties. At the same time, however,
this doubt about what the subject feels and thinks is the product of and
further contributes to an unsteadiness that threatens to topple the self
by contaminating the totalizing experience that organizes and defines
it: of love without encroachment by hate. For instance, in the Rat Man
case, Lanzer reports having been “angry this morning when Constanze
[his eldest sister] had invited him to go to the play with her. He promptly
wished her the rats and then began to have doubts as to whether he
should go or not and as to which of the two decisions would be giving
way to a compulsion. Her invitation had upset a rendezvous with the
dressmaker and a visit to this cousin, who is ill . . . While he was wishing
Constanze the rats he felt a rat gnawing at his own anus and had a visual
image of it” ([1909a] 2001, 308).
The potential contamination of associating thoughts, as this example
shows, produces seemingly irrational anxiety and self-reproaches, and is
186 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y AND R ACHEL LEIGH

fought through two forms of symptoms. On the one hand, there are
prohibitions that keep the subject from actions or topics that have been
invested with the displaced affect. Included here are linguistic prohibi-
tions, in which particular bits of language must be kept separate from
others (Holland 1975). The other symptoms formed in this context, and
a product of the first, are compulsions: “The compulsion on the other
hand is an attempt at a compensation for the doubt and at a correction of
the intolerable conditions of inhibition to which the doubt bears witness.
If the patient, by the help of displacement, succeeds at last in bringing
one of his inhibited intentions to a decision, then the intention must
be carried out. It is true that this intention is not his original one, but
the energy dammed up in the latter cannot let slip the opportunity of
finding an outlet” ([1909a] 2001, 243–4). Yet, as the prohibitions and
compulsions become associated with the transferred affect, they them-
selves become unsettling and potentially contaminating. The subject
feels at once impervious (since the conflict between conscious love and
unconscious reproach has been displaced onto the domain of thought)
and terribly vulnerable (as association continually threatens to undo the
severance of the terms of this conflict).
The importance of the lateral axis for hysteria lies in the fact that
the possibility of siblings necessarily and irreducibly raises the question
of the sphinx in its hysteric form by highlighting substitutability. The
Rat Man case shows us how the vertical and lateral can intersect in
the paradigmatic case of obsessional neurosis, as the loss of the older
sister became fused in thought with the father’s threat of castration.
Reflection on this case suggests that siblings can raise two, related
issues: polarized opposition between self and other, and the threat of
encroachment. These two themes are suggested by Freud’s comment
that the birth of a new sibling is experienced as an “egoistic sense of
injury,” and “gives grounds for receiving the new brothers or sisters
with repugnance” ([1916] 2001, 334). More precisely, as Mitchell has
theorized, the plenitude the subject imagines themselves to have as the
property of their place in the family is necessarily threatened or haunted
by the potential of substitutability. Mitchell argues that the “primary
identifications made with parents are subject to trauma (you think you
are like your parents or one of your parents but you are not – at least, not
yet),” and as such are organized around themes of “negation” (2003,
14, likely following Green 1999). By contrast, Mitchell argues that “the
primary identification with the peer group is positive and subject not
to negation but to differentiation: you are like the others but with dif-
ferences” (2003: 14). Whereas the vertical axis is negotiated in terms of
negation, the child is confronted with the difference of the sibling or
 R EF R A M I N G O B S E S S I O N A L N EU R O S I S 187

potential sibling. One way of avoiding a substantial engagement with

this difference, and in fact foreclosing it, is to reduce the difference
between siblings to that of a polar opposition; within this constellation,
the subject can retain their plenitude in the face of the other, who is
figured as merely a disturbing negative or shadow.
As we have seen in the case of the Rat Man, the ambivalence between
love and hate for the patient’s dead sister became fused with ambiva-
lence toward the father, provoking a retreat of libido onto the domain of
thought. There the sibling or potential peer is, on the register of anal-
erotic relations, reframed in terms of the possibility of contamination. To
some degree this retreat is normative: Siblings often argue over which
one has exclusive possession of particular objects or spaces, for example
experiencing clothes as contaminated if handed down from older sib-
lings. The clothes function here as a symbol of the potential encroach-
ment of the sibling on the existential place the subject is trying to carve
out for themselves, and the uniqueness that they fear may be required in
order to warrant love. However, the threat of the sibling can also produce
more pathological behaviors, as in the case of the Rat Man where lateral
differentiation became confused with vertical negation.
Here, then, we may find a reason for Freud’s ([1896b] 2001) observa-
tion that women are more subject to hysteria because they are inclined
to “passivity” and men to obsessional neurosis because they are inclined
to “activity,” which would later be echoed by later analysts (e.g. Ferenczi
[1908] 1927, 25). While some have alleged that this is yet another case of
Freud’s gender essentialism, Verhaeghe (2004, 386) counterargues that
“the coupling of the neuroses with a specific gender is only indirect and
has to do with historical artefacts . . . patriarchal society almost exclusively
assigns the active position to men, hence the gender associations.” The
association between hysteria and femininity has been deftly situated by
Mitchell (2000, 324–5):

The idea that there are psychical consequences to anatomical differ-

ences, while probably correct, is also unnecessary. It is redundant as
an explanation. It is the kinship displacement of the girl, rather than
her socially inscribed definition of anatomical inferiority that ren-
ders her more subject to the more visible dimensions of hysteria—it
is this which sets up a social relationship between femininity and hys-
teria which is then wrongly read as necessary. There is no difference
between male and female hysteria. However, the girl may be more
often or more seriously displaced.

When Freud ([1914] 2001, 90–1) states that the parent’s investment
in their child is “a revival and reproduction of their own narcissism,
188 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y AND R ACHEL LEIGH

which they have long since overvalued,” the child more likely to receive
this overvaluation is male in our culture. Whilst girls might be enjoined
to the fantasy of being a princess, this discourse is marked by the signs
of play and fantasy, and contains within it full awareness of the dis-
appointments of reality for young female subjects (Walkerdine 1997).
Not so perhaps for boys, for whom masculinity as plenitude is enjoined
without qualifying markers: become the phallus. As a result, the boy
may be more likely to be pinioned by the contradiction between abso-
lutes of presence and negation, rather than grieved and identity made
a matter of differentiation. In the case of the Rat Man, the threat of
childhood castration and the injunction to become the phallus as an
adult had been confused with the process of lateral differentiation, so
that the patient was forced to continually displace into symptoms the
unbearable matrix of affects around sexuality/prohibition, life/death,
and father/sister.
The ego-ideal is the part of the super-ego that soaks up all the cul-
tural and parental expectations felt by the subject, and then holds the
ego to account for distance or proximity to these expectations. Despite
advances made thanks to feminist efforts, this process in our culture
remains differentiated by sex. Her position within cultural and familial
relations of power mean that a girl is, cumulatively and continually,
disillusioned regarding the possibility of plenitude. By contrast, the boy
is not only enjoined to a greater investment in the illusion of perfec-
tion, but this narcissistic investment is one which is tied to his genital
organ by virtue of the way in which his family and society respond to a
subject with a penis. When the contradiction between the disappoint-
ments of reality and inherited, ungrieved-for plenitude becomes too
great, obsessional neurosis becomes more likely. The magnitude of dis-
appointments, pulverizing too severely any taste or dream of plenitude,
may be one reason for the finding that the social class of the subjects
with clinically significant obsessional symptoms is “significantly lower,
74% being in the lower social classes” (Heyman 2001, 327). If it is
the case that “it is not at all rare for both of the two children to fall
ill later on of a defence neurosis—the brother with obsessions and the
sister with hysteria” (Freud [1896b] 2001, 164), an explanation for this
may be proposed in the organization of patriarchal cultural and famil-
ial relations. The same cultural and familial forms that give the sister
no recognized place and thereby predispose her to hysteria encourage
her brother to dream of absolutes opposed in relations of incompatible
negation rather than differentiation, and so predispose him to obses-
sional neurosis.
 R EF R A M I N G O B S E S S I O N A L N EU R O S I S 189

Concluding Reflections
Freud observed that “obsessional neurosis is unquestionably the most
interesting and repaying subject of analytic research. But as a problem it
has not yet been mastered” ([1925] 2001, 113). Drawing on Mitchell’s
work, it has been argued here that sibling relationships or the possibil-
ity of sibling relationships can play a significant role in the predisposi-
tion to obsessional neurosis. Attention to the role of the lateral axis in
obsessional neurosis raises a curious question, which has been strangely
ignored by psychoanalytic theory, and on which this chapter will close.
Freud states clearly that the riddle of the Sphinx is the question: “where
do babies come from?” Yet on the surface he has no historico-textual
support for this statement. In the play by Sophocles, no mention is
made of the content of the Sphinx’s riddle. The conventional inter-
pretation, in a tradition following from Apollodorus (1976, 145), has
the Sphinx ask “which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-
footed and two-footed and three-footed?” to which Oedipus answers
“Man.” This addresses the intersection of human beings and time in
the form of generations, spotlighting Oedipus himself in the weave
of his embodiment as exposed child, as king, and as blinded old man.
Nonetheless it decidedly does not address the issue of where babies
come from. Freud’s citation of the riddle as the question “where do
babies come from?” might then, perhaps, be read as an interpretation,
highlighting the reversibility of generation in the unconscious where
there is no linear time.
Yet there is a less well-known tradition, attributed to Theodectas of
Phaselis by Athenaeus in Book 10 of the Deipnosophistae, which does
provide a textual basis for Freud’s claim regarding the Sphinx’s riddle.
In this tradition, the sphinx ask two, linked riddles. Good evidence for
Freud’s acquaintance with this tradition is provided by a bookplate he
designed in 1910, which describes Oedipus as the one who “knew the
famous riddles,” plural (Armstrong 2005, 54). Athenaeus states that the
second riddle is: “There are two sisters: one gives birth to the other and
she, in turn, gives birth to the first. Who are the two sisters?” (d’Huy
2012). The correct answer, given by Oedipus to the Sphinx, is that the
siblings are “day and night.” Here we do have the question of where
babies come from, a textual basis for Freud’s claim. Moreover, it is a
question that is only likely to be solved by someone like Oedipus who
is, as Freud states, both a hysteric and an obsessional neurotic, disposed
to answer the question of birth with an answer focused on the issues
of singularity and generation (hysteria) and doubt between encroaching
opposites (obsessional neurosis), both raised by the figure of the sibling.
190 ROBBIE DUSCHINSK Y AND R ACHEL LEIGH

Notes
1. Unfortunately, her paper is generally misread as suggesting merely
that the patient’s remarks that evoke his older sister’s death were a
metaphor for or instance in troubled relations with his father and
mother (e.g., Myerson 1966; Solano-Suarez 2009). As Daru Huppert
observes, there has been no place provided by theory to “put” sustained
analysis of sibling relationships.
2. The moments in the Rat Man case study in which Freud identifies
the significance of clinical material relating to death, as a result, are
cut off from their sibling context. In an interpretation made possible
by this severance, Lacan ([1956] 1991: 181) would later join together
these passages into an account of obsessional neurosis in general as an
attempt to grapple with the question “Am I alive or dead?” No mention
is made of the patent’s lost sister.

References
Anzieu, D. 1986. Freud’s Self-Analysis. New York: International Universities
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Apollodorus 1976. Gods and Heroes of the Greeks, translated by Michael
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 Chapter 9

Minimal Difference: On Siblings,

Sex, and Violence

Mignon Nixon

Since Freud, Juliet Mitchell observes, psychoanalysis has been trapped

in an Oedipal paradigm. And if psychoanalysis itself suffers from what
might be deemed an Oedipal obsession, privileging parent–child rela-
tionships to the detriment of sibling dynamics, the humanities are also
dominated by Oedipal thinking. Despite the efforts of psychoanalytic
feminism to expose the patriarchal hierarchies underpinning Oedipal
models of discipleship, influence, legacy, and genealogy, the humanities
still reflexively ascribe generative and destructive power principally to
the passions that cross generations, attending to relationships of descent
and difference while neglecting those of alliance and affinity, to borrow
Mitchell’s terms. In her book Siblings: Sex and Violence, Mitchell reflects
upon this lack.
There is a certain irony here, of course. A cardinal attraction of psycho-
analysis for feminism has been its critique of “vertical paradigms.” The
disavowal of authority and un-mastering of knowledge in Lacan’s reading
of Freud enabled psychoanalytic feminism to contest, precisely, Oedipal
thinking. The insight that descent and difference overshadow alliance
and affinity in the patriarchal cultural hierarchy that psychoanalysis
analyzes, but is also bound up with, is integral to the discourse of psycho-
analytic feminism. Mitchell’s own ground-breaking study Psychoanalysis
and Feminism (1974) established the significance of psychoanalysis for
analyzing the structures of patriarchal oppression, laying the theoretical
ground for efforts to break with an exclusively Oedipal model of the
family. With her work on siblings, Mitchell however intervenes in an
evolving discourse on the family and the group that has turned sharply
away from psychoanalysis. In Siblings: Sex and Violence (2003), she
argues, as she did 30 years earlier in Psychoanalysis and Feminism, that
we abandon psychoanalysis at our peril.
194 M I G N O N N I XO N

Mitchell’s starting point is that psychoanalysis must be held to account

intellectually for its own failure to “think siblings.” For while psycho-
analysis has been trapped in a vertical, Oedipal paradigm, thinking on
alliance and affinity—same-sex relationships and groups—has been for-
mulated as gender theory, a discourse with an increasingly strained alle-
giance to psychoanalysis and feminism. From Mitchell’s perspective, the
divergence of psychoanalysis and gender theory is damaging to both. The
failure to think laterally about the social imaginary has vitiated psycho-
analysis in the humanities at a pivotal moment in the history of gender.
The disavowal of psychoanalysis by gender theory meanwhile estranges
“the social” from “the psychical” at a time of war, when such splitting is
particularly dangerous, and vulnerable to exploitation by militarist cul-
ture. For Mitchell, the obligation of psychoanalysis is not to continue to
coexist with gender theory in awkward political alliance but to grapple
with the failure of psychoanalysis to theorize gender.
“As psychoanalysis stands,” writes Mitchell, “the concept of ‘gender’
cannot properly be made to fit into it”(Mitchell 2003, 111). In Siblings,
Mitchell provides a critical revision of the theory of psychoanalysis such
that gender not only fits in, but finds an “autonomous place.” This
autonomous place is a lateral axis of gender that complements the vertical
line of sexual difference. The preeminence that psychoanalysis has his-
torically accorded the parent–child dynamic and its attendant fantasies,
has, Mitchell argues, led it to conceive of difference only as maximal dif-
ference: generational difference and sexual difference. Gender, she main-
tains, requires a theory of minimal difference. In psychoanalysis, sexual
difference—either/or—overshadows sibling or gender difference—the
same, but different.
Thinking siblings entails a radical revision of psychoanalysis. For if
siblings are only added to the existing theory, Mitchell argues, they will
be subsumed in the same old Oedipal plot. In psychoanalysis, particu-
larly as concerns sexuality, “we no longer have a theory that goes against
the grain of ideology,” Mitchell writes, “and once this happens, its prog-
ress tends to be additive rather than creative, its prescriptions remedial,
rather than radical” (Mitchell 2003, 114). As with Lacan’s re-reading of
Freud, or Klein’s, psychoanalysis renews itself only by returning to its
theoretical roots. Mitchell’s ambition is to extend psychoanalysis, and by
implication, the humanities’ recourse to psychoanalytic theory, to the
nexus of lateral social relationships and intra-generational groups, and to
accord these, in her phrase, “a lateral autonomous place” in theory and
in praxis.
In the humanities, too, psychoanalytic theory suffers from its per-
ceived preoccupation with the individual and the Oedipal family to
 M I N I M A L D I F F E R EN C E 195

the exclusion of the social group. This is partly because psychoanaly-

sis remains in thrall to Oedipal thinking, as Mitchell maintains, but is
also symptomatic of a broader rejection of theories of subjectivity by the
technologized humanities on a war footing (Nixon 2014). Pressured into
conformity with a militarist research culture suspicious of subjectivity,
but also estranged from a left political culture that considers subjectiv-
ity antithetical to politics, psychoanalysis finds itself in the untenable
position of being both an orthodoxy—a theory that does not go against
the grain of ideology—and an orphan—a theory of subjectivity deemed
superfluous by a culture that, like most war cultures, disavows subjectiv-
ity itself.
It may be useful briefly to recollect how we arrived at this place.
I will do so from the perspective of my own field of study, art informed
by feminism. Partly as an effect of Mitchell’s own Psychoanalysis and
Feminism, psychoanalysis was once recognized as an evolving theory
of subjectivity in which the trends of individual and social experience
were closely intertwined. Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document (1973–
1979) exemplifies this position. Conceived in tandem with Mitchell’s
Psychoanalysis and Feminism while both Kelly and Mitchell were partici-
pants in the History Group, a feminist reading group in London, Kelly’s
now-iconic work of Conceptual art charts the relationship of the artist
and her infant son from the child’s birth to the age of six. Confronting
the elision of maternal subjectivity in cultural representation, includ-
ing psychoanalysis (but also sociology, medicine, anthropology, and
linguistics), Kelly documents the maternal–infantile relationship as a
mutual (re-) negotiation of the Oedipal complex. Produced in the same
moment of psychoanalytic feminism that also gave rise to Laura Mulvey
and Peter Wollen’s film Riddles of the Sphinx (1977), Kelly’s Post-
Partum Document and Mitchell’s Psychoanalysis and Feminism attest to
a dynamic relay between feminism, psychoanalysis, and art in which
questions of subjectivity and politics overlapped, and in which psycho-
analytic theory did go against the grain of patriarchal ideology and did
seem to hold a radical potential.
Now, partly as an effect of the failure of psychoanalysis to engage cre-
atively with gender discourse, the individual and the group are increas-
ingly perceived as divergent, if not incompatible, modes of subjectivity.
The psychical, it is often assumed, belongs to individual subjectivity and
the family, while the political is assigned to the social group. Again, there
is a certain irony in this. The work of critical postmodernism, informed
by feminism and psychoanalysis, was to trouble this rigid patriarchal
divide, bringing subjectivity to bear on politics (Owens 1983). At stake in
this was an understanding of subjectivity as social in itself. Hence, Kelly
196 M I G N O N N I XO N

described the Post-Partum Document as “an ongoing process of analysis

and visualization of the mother-child relationship,” refusing the cultural
designation of childbirth and parenting as quintessentially private fam-
ily matters while also claiming authority for the individual subject to
“analyse and visualize” this dynamic (Kelly 1983, xv). Postmodernism
continued to pursue this path, contending, as in the indelible 1980s
montages of Barbara Kruger, that subjectivity was constructed in and
through—but potentially also in resistance to—the coercive social rheto-
ric of the mass-cultural image. For Kruger, we make ourselves up, invent
ourselves as subjects, in a relay of images that psychoanalysis, as a theory
of patriarchy, can help equip us to analyze and to critique, exposing,
for example, the fantasy structures of militarization promulgated at the
height of the Cold War and the ways that war fantasies are underpinned
by the same gender stereotypes advertising persistently repeats. For Kelly
and Kruger among many others working at this time, psychoanalytic
theory was political.
The later gradual rejection of psychoanalysis was also on political
grounds. Two trends of that rejection are most significant for Mitchell’s
Siblings. First, psychoanalysis, or more specifically psychoanalytic femi-
nism, failed to respond to the intellectual and political demand to the-
orize gender and account for its omission as an autonomous problem
in psychoanalysis (Butler 1990). (Psychoanalysis itself, institutional
psychoanalysis, seems not even to have registered this demand.) Where
Psychoanalysis and Feminism countered an earlier feminist repudiation
of psychoanalysis as sexist, if not misogynistic, and complicit with patri-
archy, no such systematic defence or revision of the theory appeared in
response to this subsequent critique of psychoanalysis as “heteronorma-
tive,” conventionalizing, and oppressive. Siblings can be seen as that
belated response.
The second basis for the rejection of psychoanalysis is more recent
and is bound up with a broad renunciation of theoretical feminism in
the politics of war. The crisis mentality of war has militated against theo-
retical reflection on subjectivity, another manifestation of the splitting
of the psychic and the social that our militarist culture encourages and
our left politics mimics. Siblings, published in 2003, anticipates many of
the political implications of this disavowal, in particular our collective
inability to make sense of the abuses of Abu Ghraib, a fresh instance of
the sexualized violence, endemic to all war, that Mitchell calls violence-
perversion.1 And so, the very horrors that precipitated a political climate
of urgency in which psychoanalysis was dismissed also called out for psy-
choanalytically informed responses to a war culture of sexualized, and
strangely subjectivized, atrocity.
 M I N I M A L D I F F E R EN C E 197

It is sometimes overlooked that psychoanalysis is a war discourse,

many of its classic texts having been produced in wartime, by the agents
and victims of war. Writing in 1915, amid the epic destruction of the
First World War, Freud opened this discourse with an observation that
resonates powerfully with the appearance of the first photographs of Abu
Ghraib:

The individual citizen can with horror convince himself in this war
of what would occasionally cross his mind in peace-time—that the
state has forbidden to the individual the practice of wrong-doing, not
because it desires to abolish it, but because it desires to monopolize
it. . . . A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such
act of violence, as would disgrace the individual. (Freud 1915, 279)

For Freud, the subjectivity of the belligerent state—its desire—is all

but unfathomable. He writes on behalf of the citizen left “bewildered”
by total war. For Mitchell, war is, as it was for the Italian psychoana-
lyst Franco Fornari, a social institution (Fornari 1975). It is suscep-
tible to analysis, but that analysis, she maintains, requires siblings.
Psychoanalysis needs siblings to think about war because war is waged
at the sibling level. “We defeat, kill and rape our peers” (Mitchell 2003,
xv). The origins of the destructiveness we bring to bear in war sum-
mons hatred of our first and most intimate enemy. To this extent, war
is a problem of lateral relations and requires a theory specific to that
condition:

In discussions of “otherness,” whether of gender, race, class, or eth-

nicity, hatred of the other is explained by the obvious fact that the
“other” is different. Sibling experience displays the contrary: the posi-
tion that is occupied by the sibling is first experienced as “the same”—
hatred is for one who is the same: it is this hatred for a sameness that
displaces which then generates the category of “other” as a protection.
(Mitchell, 2003, 48)

The timing of the publication of Siblings was fortuitous for any

citizen of the so-called war on terror. Written before the invasion of
Afghanistan and Iraq, Siblings nevertheless anticipated its disturbing
conjunctures of sexuality and violence. Such anticipation was possible,
of course, because the sexual atrocities that rapidly became the hallmark
of the occupation repeated a pattern of wars past, most conspicuously,
in United States history, the American war in Vietnam, in which rape
and torture were routine entries in the lexicon of atrocity. “How do we
account for the rampant sexuality of war”—for the fact that “sexual
198 M I G N O N N I XO N

violence seems to ‘automatically’ accompany war violence?” Mitchell has

asked (Mitchell 2000, 129). These questions were both prescient and
belated.
Forty years earlier, in response to the American war in Vietnam, a
war of apocalyptic, genocidal violence and extravagant atrocity, the art-
ist Nancy Spero had also posed them. Spero’s War Series (1966–1970)
took the form of gouache and ink drawings on thin poster-sized sheets
of paper depicting a phantasmagoria of sexualized violence. “I started
working rapidly on paper,” Spero recalled, producing “angry works,
scatological, manifestos against a senseless obscene war” (Spero, cited
in Nixon 2008, 30). “Male bombs” with cartoon erections, grotesquely
extended, ejaculate in murderous ecstasy. Female bombs rain blood.
Bombs shit infant heads. In one drawing, Fuck (1966), seven silver jets
trace a frenzied spiral in the sky, bearing on their wings the insignia not
of U.S.A. but of F.U.C.K. Tiny, helpless, naked bodies in the throes
of death are the quarry dangling from every fiery mouth—the nose of
every plane transformed to a serpent’s maw—in a gruesome exhibition
of blood lust. Mercilessly entangling sex and violence, Spero’s War Series
portrays the machinery of war as obscene. The destruction wreaked on
the war victim, the death act that haunts the sex act, takes on a distinctly
and disturbingly perverse inflection. Here, sexual violence is a defining
condition of war. Exhibited almost exclusively in antiwar shows, Spero’s
War Series eluded critical responses at the time. This critical silence tes-
tifies to the neglect that attends representations of war sexuality, as if
that annexation of sexuality to war, which formed the focus of Spero’s
response to the American war in Vietnam, could only surface into dis-
course in 2003, with the invasion of Iraq, when the War Series emerged
like a return of the repressed in exhibitions and criticism. Spero’s War
Series is indignant in its condemnation of the obscenities of war, which
renders sexuality so virulently destructive, but it is also insistent in its
demand for the perversities of war violence to be incorporated in the
discourse of war, to be thought.
Mitchell answers this demand by stating that “war is a de-repression.”
In war, she observes, the desire to kill is no longer unconscious but can
be acted upon. Killing may take the form of a “violence perversion, which
is psychically structured like a sexual perversion.” Pointing out that if
“a sexual perversion is a failure of repression” and “we are all considered
sexually polymorphously perverse in infancy,” there is reason to consider
that we are also violently polymorphously perverse, that “as a species
we are at least as violence promiscuous as we are sexual promiscuous”
(Mitchell, 2003, 36). In the de-repression of war, murderousness and
the polymorphous perversity of infancy both come into the ascendant in
 M I N I M A L D I F F E R EN C E 199

a situation of extreme paranoid anxiety. Violence is sexualized, and the

repressed violence of sexuality becomes manifest in rape, torture, and
sexualized killing.
Published in 2003, Siblings coincided with the abuses of Abu Ghraib
and the clandestine horrors of rendition, torture, and secret prisons.
The appearance of photographs of sexual abuse and torture staged and
actively traded by soldiers made it undeniable that the war’s violence had
assumed a perverse form. We were witnessing, in effect, a martial code
of violence perversion. Disturbing as this revelation was, its only innova-
tion may have been the wide dissemination of the images. In Vietnam,
atrocity was rife but was rhetorically controlled, as it would later be in
Afghanistan and Iraq, by a telling term, aberration. Military authorities
declared individual acts of atrocity—displays of “violence perversion,”
conducted in the context of a military strategy so annihilative that it
was itself, in the eyes of many, an atrocity writ large—aberrant. 2 Yet, the
pervasiveness and sexualized brutality of such actions begged a question.
Was the aberrant act enunciative of an individual perversion or a social
one? To understand how individual and social violence are articulated
in perversion requires, as Mitchell would later point out, a theory of sex
and violence at the level of the social. And that theory, for her, finds its
origin in hatred toward the sibling, the intimate stranger who is the
ur-enemy. Sibling violence is common, universal as fantasy, but culturally
deemed aberrant and therefore denied. In war, Mitchell speculates, the
desire to kill the sibling who poses an existential threat to oneself returns
with a vengeance. The act of atrocity, as a display of violence perver-
sity, restages the aberrant act, or fantasy, of torturing or murdering the
sibling.3 To begin to comprehend the perversity of war atrocity, Mitchell
suggests, it is necessary not only to grasp its origins in infantile fantasies
of destructiveness—our violence perversity—but also to take account of
hatred of the original enemy, the sibling.
Hatred toward the other arises, Mitchell contends, through hatred
of the same: “it is this hatred for a sameness that displaces which then
generates the category of ‘other’ as a protection” (Mitchell, 2003, 48).
The arrival of the sibling is traumatic, “the trauma of being annihilated
by one who stands in one’s place” (Mitchell 2003, 10). Displacement by
a sibling, whether actual or only feared in fantasy, arouses hatred and
murderousness, a trend that psychoanalysis subsumes in the castration
complex, or in Mitchell’s terms, verticalizes. Effaced from the case his-
tories of psychoanalysis, siblings and their surrogates come to the fore in
Mitchell’s account as figures that precipitate the trauma of annihilation
but also instigate social subjectivity. Mitchell terms this social subjectiv-
ity seriality.
200 M I G N O N N I XO N

“Representing seriality is crucial,” Mitchell observes, because the

serial subject is able “to turn the sense of the death of itself into a mourn-
ing process for its unique self so that it can be re-created as one among
others—a part of a series” (Mitchell 2003, 29).4 This perception of one-
self as part of a series implies a social subject position that is distinct from
the fantasy of uniqueness on the one hand and of mass unity on the
other. In the situation of war, serial subjectivity enables what Mitchell
calls “lateral authority,” a constraining of violence among peers. War,
Mitchell claims, brings lateral relations to the fore. In war we kill and
rape our peers, she observes, but “ironically, it is in societies based on
the social contract of brotherhood that these activities are not laterally
controlled. Our social imaginary can envisage only vertical authority”
(Mitchell 2003, xv). We kill and rape our peers with our peers, but we
rely on the hierarchical authority of the state, which instigates this vio-
lence, to control it. Looking cross-culturally to kinship and social orders
in which lateral relations are more complexly articulated, Mitchell argues
that our subservience to vertical authority in war is culturally specific,
and potentially subject to change.
In her classic essay “On Violence,” Hannah Arendt argued that “the
first generation to grow up under the shadow of the atom bomb” (Arendt
1970, 116) rebelled against patriarchal (vertical) authority to resist the
war in Vietnam, a development she described as belonging “among
the totally unexpected events of this century” (Arendt 1970, 130). As
evidence of the latent potential of the exercise of what Mitchell would
call lateral control, Arendt cites the example of the People’s Park pro-
test in Berkeley, California, where heavily armed police and the National
Guard were called upon to attack unarmed student protesters. “Some
Guardsmen fraternized openly with their ‘enemies’ and one of them
threw down his arms and shouted: ‘I can’t stand this anymore,’ ” she
relates (Arendt 1970, 131). Such “fraternizing with the enemy” (in the
context of a conflict that was taking on the character of a civil war) brings
home the reality of sameness, of being laterally aligned, and precipitates
a spontaneous refusal to exercise violence on behalf of the state. By con-
trast, in the infamous massacre and maiming of student protesters at
Kent State University in Ohio, members of the National Guard who fired
on unarmed demonstrators displayed their rigid adherence to, and iden-
tification with, vertical authority, in an event that galvanized protests
across the world, including a little-noticed performance by the American
dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker, Yvonne Rainer.
In art, a serial logic emerged in the 1960s, roughly contemporane-
ously with the war in Vietnam and the antiwar movement, in which many
artists associated with Minimalism, including Rainer, took an active part
 M I N I M A L D I F F E R EN C E 201

(see Bryan-Wilson 2009). From the early to the mid-1960s, Rainer cho-
reographed and danced with a contingent of artists—a sibling group, as it
were—loosely affiliated under the name Judson Dance Theatre, derived
from the activist Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, New
York, where they performed. Inspired by John Cage, the kind of move-
ment Judson choreographers pioneered is often described as task-based
performance, subjecting ordinary, pedestrian actions such as walking,
running, or manipulating objects, to the discipline of dance. One aim
of Judson was to subvert the dynamic of mastery in classical dance by
replacing virtuosic movement, solo performance, and the charisma of the
lead dancer, with nonhierarchical, inclusive procedures, incorporating
untrained performers and laying particular emphasis on the contingency
of the event. Judson Dance was not an explicitly political practice, but its
social dynamics were predicated on a rejection of mastery and hierarchy
and an embrace of what has been described as an egalitarian ethos (Bane
1980). To situate this history in Mitchell’s terms, the Judson choreog-
raphers were working on the lateral axis of a cultural form that seemed
“trapped in the vertical.”
Street Action is not a work of Judson Dance Theatre, and is not exactly
a work of art at all. It is a protest work, perhaps, or an artistic response
to a political crisis, namely, the revelation on April 30, 1970, of the
American invasion of Cambodia, followed on May 4 by the attack of the
National Guard on protesting students at Kent State, a massacre in which
four students were shot to death and another nine wounded, including
one who was paralyzed. Timed to coincide with a weekend arts festival
in Lower Manhattan, Street Action brought together some 40 students,
friends, and acquaintances of Rainer, who arranged the group in a three-
column formation, led by herself and two other dancers, Douglas Dunn
and Sara Rudner. Very slowly, the group began to move down the middle
of the street, reproducing a gait, the M-walk, devised by Rainer for a
dance work entitled The Mind is a Muscle, and adapted from the mecha-
nized movement of workers in Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis. Here,
however, the participants linked arms, “transforming the movement,” as
the art historian Carrie Lambert-Beatty has noted, “from drone-like sub-
mission to mournful solidarity” (Lambert-Beatty 2008, 239). The route
traced by the phalanx marked off a single block in a then newly defined
artistic district of SoHo. By Rainer’s recollection, that trip around the
block took an hour, and by the end of it, the group had dwindled to five.
For untrained performers, the physical discipline of the swaying lockstep
motion on straight legs, its slowness, and the requirement that the par-
ticipants keep their eyes lowered and averted, was oppressively difficult
to sustain.
202 M I G N O N N I XO N

Describing the performance as a minimal march, Lambert-Beatty

points to the contrast between the physical restraint of the M-Walk and
the prevailing culture of protest. “The three front figures seem to stand
solidly on their feet, almost as if, rather than leading a forward surge,
they were trying to restrain one,” she remarks (ibid., 238). Street Action
defied the rhetoric of antiwar demonstrations. It did not attempt to draw a
crowd. Bystanders were not encouraged to join the procession. By refusing
to make eye contact with passers-by, the performers, as in Rainer’s dance
work, declined to engage in false unities. Rather than swelling in size, the
procession dwindled as it went, dramatizing the difficulty of collective
action, and perhaps more particularly, the obstacles to the type of action
that would result in an expansion of the social imaginary to encompass a
“lateral control” on violence. The ambition of Street Action is, in the words
of participants and critics, minimal—a minimal march, “a minimal mor-
tification” (ibid., 238). These formulations echo the critical vocabulary
of Minimalism, or course, and invoke Rainer’s own influential writing
on that term as deployed in dance (Rainer 1966). What is notable in the
context of Siblings, however, is that the term minimal seems to encompass
both a sense of minimal difference and minimal affect. The almost uni-
form postures that the participants’ bodies are constrained to adopt and to
maintain construct the body politic as, in Mitchell’s terms, a sibling group,
composed of figures that are “the same but different,” subject to the serial
logic of lateral rather than vertical authority and assimilation. By discour-
aging mass identification and by enacting a ritual of mourning in which
individual actors are engaged as part of a series, Street Action reflects upon
the dynamic of group resistance to war. Its extreme restraint also, crucially,
counters the hystericization of political protest by the state, a maneuvre by
which the state stigmatizes protest as impotent and consolidates its author-
ity over war. Imagining the body politic as a sibling group, Street Action
is composed of peers, individual actors who with deliberate restraint resist
rather than protest the authority of the state.
In Street Action, individuals moved together as a body, intimately
linked, but with evident strain, their eyes turned downward in attitudes
of mournful reflection. What the sibling matrix offers, above all perhaps,
is a mediating term between the restrictive implications of psychic sub-
jectivity, understood as individual, introverted, and fragmentary, and the
totalizing implications of a social economy defined as anti-subjective,
extroverted, and unified. As an enactment of serial subjectivity, Street
Action articulated individual reflection and social responsibility through
a choreographed performance of “same but different” individual agents.
In so doing, it called upon principles of seriality derived not from psycho-
analysis, but from art.
 M I N I M A L D I F F E R EN C E 203

In art, “representing seriality” became crucial in the so-called

Minimalism, or Serial Art, of the 1960s and was bound up with the shift
from an expressive model of subjectivity, centered on the sovereign self
(as in Abstract Expressionism), to a model of social subjectivity predicated
on what Mitchell would later call minimal difference. Psychoanalysis has
rarely been brought to bear on seriality in art.5 For as long as lateral
relations were perceived to fall outside the perspective of psychoanaly-
sis, seriality was construed as anti-subjective. One implication of psy-
choanalysis being “trapped in the vertical” therefore has been that its
exclusions have extended to other discourses in which the social imagi-
nary is also at stake. Critical interpretations of seriality in art, therefore,
have tended to assert its renunciation of subjectivity on the tacit author-
ity of psychoanalysis itself. From this perspective, the psychic structure
of seriality does not exist—in theory. Rather, seriality is emblematic of
a turn away from subjective expression toward anti-subjective sociality
(Krauss 1977). By offering a specifically psychoanalytic account of lateral
social relationships, Mitchell’s theoretical intervention therefore returns
to critical discourse a set of terms she has, albeit unintentionally, adapted
from it. For seriality is a term of art, a term used to disavow subjectiv-
ity in its individualist sense, but also to articulate “lateral relations” in a
social as well as a formal sense. This term appears at a pivotal moment
in the history of gender, on the cusp of the feminist movement and in a
time of war that would expose “siblings, sex, and violence” as a dynamic
“in love and sexuality” and “in hate and war.” In a corollary to the open-
ing up of an autonomous place for gender in psychoanalysis, seriality
“fits into” psychoanalytic theory and is only extra-psychoanalytic to the
extent that psychoanalysis is constrained by its own omissions. Mitchell’s
theory of siblings broaches the possibility of restoring subjectivity to seri-
ality through a rigorous reconsideration of subjectivity itself.
A decade after the publication of Siblings: Sex and Violence, its radical
re-thinking of psychoanalysis reverberates in the humanities, and per-
haps particularly in art, which has embraced “thinking siblings” as a
means of working against the grain of hierarchy and gender ideology. As
generative as the model has proven, its first principle, that we abandon
psychoanalysis at our peril, can sometimes be overlooked. To substitute
the lateral axis of gender for the vertical axis of difference, and particu-
larly to assign destructiveness and oppression exclusively to the line of
descent are critical reflexes to resist. For Mitchell, the sibling, far from
benign, represents an existential threat, one to which we respond with all
the destructiveness that is in us. “Minimal difference” signifies a mitiga-
tion of the catastrophe of psychic annihilation, a return from the dead.
Only with the most painful difficulty do we sublimate hatred of the same
204 M I G N O N N I XO N

into love. In war, Mitchell reminds us, we exploit our hatred of the same
to “generate the category of ‘other.’ ” Thinking siblings is not a refuge
from our badness, only a theory that, like psychoanalysis itself, may help
us to grapple with it. Seriality is hard won.

Notes
1. Two compelling responses to the abuses of Abu Ghraib and the psy-
chic dynamics of the war on terror are by contributors to this volume:
Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Live Grievable? (London: Verso,
2009) and Jacqueline Rose, The Last Resistance (London: Verso,
2007).
2. On the extent of atrocities conducted by the American military in
Vietnam, and the deceptive characterization of them as aberrations,
see Nick Turse, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in
Vietnam (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2013).
3. The truism of war, “kill or be killed,” governs the distinction between
so-called legitimate killing and murder. That distinction breaks down
in many forms of modern warfare, not least bombing, but it is a crucial
line for Mitchell’s theory.
4. Seriality is also crucially significant as “the symbolization of the repeti-
tion of trauma.” See Tamar Garb and Mignon Nixon, “A Conversation
with Juliet Mitchell,” October 113 (Summer 2005), p. 20.
5. Important exceptions are Hal Foster, The Return of the Real
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/October Books, 1996) and Briony Fer,
The Infinite Line (New Haven and London: Yale University Press).

References
Arendt, Hannah. 1970. On Violence. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Bane, Sally. 1980/1993. Democracy’s Body: Judson Dance Theatre 1962–1964.
Duke University Press.
Bryan-Wilson, Julia. 2009. Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam
War Era. Berkeley: University of California.
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
New York: Routledge.
Fornari, Franco. 1975. The Psychoanalysis of War. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Freud, S. 1915. “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death,” In Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 14,
translated by James Strachey, London: Hogarth.
Kelly, Mary, 1983. “Preface,” Post-Partum Document, xv. London: Routledge.
Krauss, Rosalind. 1977. Passages in Modern Sculpture. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Lambert-Beatty, Carrie. 2008. Being Watched: Yvonne Rainer and the 1960s
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/October Books.
 M I N I M A L D I F F E R EN C E 205

Mitchell, Juliet. 2000. Mad Men and Medusas: Reclaiming Hysteria and the
Effect of Sibling Relationships on the Human Condition. London: Allen
Lane.
Nixon, M. 2008. “Book of Tongues.” In Nancy Spero: Dissidances, 30.
Barcelona and Madrid: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona and
Museo Nacional Centro de Art Reina Sofia.
Nixon, M. 2014. “Louise Lawler: No Drones,” October 147 (Winter 2014).
Owens, Craig. 1983. “The Discourse of Others: Feminists and
Postmodernism.” In Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and
Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rainer, Yvonne. 1966. “A Quasi Survey of Some ‘Minimalist’ Tendencies
in the Quantitatively Minimal Dance Activity Midst the Plethora, or an
Analysis of Trio A.” In Yvonne Rainer. 1974. Work 1961–73. Halifax:
Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.
 Chapter 10

Crimes of Identity

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

I was honored to have been asked to deliver the 2014 Juliet Mitchell
capstone lecture at Cambridge. I was in awe of Juliet Mitchell before
I met her—I believe in 1993, with Michael Riffaterre at the School of
Criticism and Theory—and have retained that feeling. I taught her iconic
Psychoanalysis and Feminism again and again after the mid-1970s, in the
obligatory feminist theory class that I had begun to teach from the end
of the 1960s.1
In my prepared speech, I had made two points:
One, that having a certain kind of “identity” allows groups with pre-
ferred “identities” to initiate and sustain policy that, although legal, may
be construed as “criminal” by natural law, if it were humane in the col-
loquial sense. In the workshop following the talk, I was asked why these
would not be called “crimes of capital.” The answer was that capital,
the abstract as such, is not susceptible to behavioral diagnosis. As one of
the participants remarked: “whether crimes of capital would have been
possible at all if there wasn’t a certain logic of identity in place. I am
not sure whether crimes of capital would have been possible if it wasn’t
for a certain logic of gendered identity, a certain logic of class identity
that has been inscribed in the bodies of those men who have committed
these suicides.” In terms of conjuncture discourse, managing gender and
class by race-ideology, I was shifting the field of identity from capitalism-
mobilized claims to capitalism-accusing crimes. To invoke “crimes of
capital” is incorrect. To invoke “crimes of capitalism” is banal in Hannah
Arendt’s sense, and plagued by the usual rentier bad faith within aca-
demic leftism, engaged in a perennial small-stakes effort to secure a
place within capitalist globalization, unable to acknowledge complicity. 2
“Capital” or “capitalism” are faceless structural enemies. I wanted to
bring the scenario into the field of identity precisely because it is more
personalized. It inhabits the “human” in the humanities. It profits from
208 G AYAT R I C H A K R AV O R T Y S P I VA K

the equally ambiguous but important contribution of dominant feminism:

“the personal is political.”
The second point is theoretical. Working within the German classical
tradition, we are aware that “origins” of philosophical discourse cannot
be accessed. Kant thought of the synthetic a priori and made it acces-
sible only by transcendental deduction. Derrida rewrote it as the indefi-
nite story of differance, perhaps resonating the Lacanian insight of the
“Discourse of Rome: The Function and Field of Speech and Language
in Psychoanalysis.”3 In the powerful and influential piece “The Force of
Law,” this inaccessible “origin” is described as “the metaphysical origins
of law.”4 In Derrida, there was also the idea of the relationship with-
out relationship between gift and responsibility, justice and law, writing
in the general and narrow senses. Barthes understood this as the rela-
tionship (without relationship) between the writable and the readable.5
And so on.
Within this tradition, that inaccessibility is always given a benign
name—transcendental, differential, metaphysical, “sophistical” in
the positive sense etc. My own thinking of planetarity—and Laurie
Anderson’s—is harsher: ““planetary” is bigger than “geological,” where
random means nothing, which no thought can weigh.” Fiction makes
us experience this impossible by dropping into geology: Mahasweta’s
pterodactyl, Morrison’s request not to pass on her story of a mother’s
child sacrifice as “just weather,” not geography or history, geology.6 This
unsentimentalized thinking of the human in the planet made me sus-
pect that the “human”-izing of the human by way of the synthetic a
priori etc., given that it is inextricably connected with the violence of the
Anthropocene, should perhaps be understood by way of the concept-
metaphor of rape, rather than the Law of the Father, the incest taboo
alone, which seemed to me, after generalized rape, its naturalization.
Later, I connected this to Juliet Mitchell’s statement in the new intro-
duction to the second edition of Psychoanalysis and Feminism: “While it
is true that women may be socialised into assuming the position of the
second sex, this conscious deliberate socialisation is inadequate to explain
the structure of sexual difference and inequalities that always arise from
it. Despite the fact that there is enormous diversity in social practice.”7
I explain this structure as the “human”-izing of the animal/natural:
Rape. We are—male and female—raped into humanity and don’t mind
it: do we put on its knowledge with its power? Nancy Fraser reminded
us in the next day’s workshop of “one standard feminist line that rape is
not an act of sex but an act of power.” Power, force, the force of law may
be though as rape in the general sense. Here we can use Juliet Mitchell’s
sentence: “Rape is not sexuality that is violent but violence that has been
 CRIMES OF ID ENT IT Y 209

sexualized,” and write: “Rape is the coveted agency of that which must
be transcendentally deduced become sexualized. That agency would be
to control inaccessible origins: sperm fantasy.”8
For the moment, let us not resist the counterintuitive by the self-
congratulation of a common sense.
The problem with this is paleonymy: as “rape” proceeded in the
English language from the general sense of “theft” into sexual violence,
there is no way that this word could be understood extra-morally. This
is in fact the problem with all of the words for the inaccessibility of the
origin. “Transcendental” is understood as the supernatural, difference
as antiracist/sexist and so on. They are supposedly unconditional, but
unconditionality is always contaminated by conditions.
I warned about this in the extemporized introduction to my pre-
pared paper: perhaps you should think about rape and the way in which
Foucault talked about power, I said. As a name. But of course many of
us complained about the fact that power was also in the language—and
rape is more than in the language—so that power had a paleonymy and
therefore one was responsible for choosing just that word. Remember
that, so am I. Responsible.
Derrida’s general philosophy may be vulgarized as follows: theory is
a practice. The theorizer does not cling to concept-metaphors and estab-
lish them as master-concepts. Derrida more or less stays with this in his
writings, though not invariably. It is a difficult thing to keep up. And
so, with embracing the violence of rape as the correct description of the
violation of the animal by the making-human, I tried to take on this
challenge and suggest that this concept-metaphor should not be used
again, should be seen as universalizable, not universalized; that it should
not be naturalized. And of course, I failed.9 Can the reader walk with
me on this one? Can humanism itself be understood as the child of rape?
And thus put us in the double bind, since you do not throw the child out
with the possibility of rape.
In response to Nancy’s vigorous reminder of the dangers of my claim,
I wanted to write a piece that was going to act out all the warnings,
knowing, of course, that I should not have ventured up to the perilous
point where it became a necessity.
Time to open the prepared paper and see if it can be revised to be
safe:
The most significant crimes in our world today are committed on the
issue of identity. Identity is defined by and predicated on collective legiti-
mate birth. The great Dalit thinker, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, suggested
in 1916 that caste—and this was unusual for a man who had suffered
severe caste prejudice—as a general rule of group formation could be
210 G AYAT R I C H A K R AV O R T Y S P I VA K

defined by and predicated on the difference in the use of surplus women

and surplus men in every society. This relates to the sentence I quoted
from Juliet Mitchell. Socialization into sex is different for different soci-
eties. But it happens in all societies. The caste system in its wretchedness
is not like any other system of group formation. Nonetheless Ambedkar
says it is a general rule.
Group formation is a way of establishing identity. How shall we think
Babasaheb Ambedkar’s insight?
We needed a reality check: to think the unconditional ethical before
good feelings about sexual preference—as you know, Levinas’s mission-
ary position sex establishes the human as human.10 Good feelings!
In 1990, thinking about identity, I looked up a dictionary and I wrote—
this is a translation from my Bengali

that the source of the word “identity” was given as Latin idem or
Sanskrit idam and both were cited as meaning “same.” Now the
meaning of the Latin word idem is not exactly “same” in the sense
of “one,” but rather “same” in the sense of multitudes or repetitions.
That which is primordial [anadi] and unique [ekamevadvitiam] is not
idem, it is rather that which can be cited through many re-citations.
To make these two meanings one is a clandestine patching up of a
loose part of the text-ile fabric of conceptuality. At least from the
outside it seems that in our solemn recitation of Hindutva [Hindu-
ness, a key word of Hindu nationalism] this clan-destiny or ruse is
at work. The little Sanskrit that I learned under the able guidance of
Miss Nilima Pyne at the Diocesan School in Calcutta allowed me to
suspect that the Sanskrit idam is also not the undiminishing singly
manifest [akshaya ekarupa]. Then I looked at the Sanskrit dictionary.
Idam is not only not the undiminishing selfsame, as a pronoun it does
not have the dignity of a noun, is always enclitic or inclined towards
the noun, always dependent upon the proximity of a particular self,
and must always therefore remain monstrative, indexed. All over the
world today, “identity politics” (that is to say a separation in the name
of the undifferentiated identity of religion, nation, or subnation) is
big news and almost everywhere bad news.11 The unremarkable and
unremarked ruse in the United States students’ dictionary [Merriam-
Webster’s college edition, I think] makes visible the fraud at the heart
of identity politics. As a memorial to that publication I submit this
outlandish deconstructed translation [I submitted on that occasion,
and later I will connect it to my use of “rape” in the current essay] of
“identity,” only for that occasion—not ahamvada [ego-ism as ipse-
ism] but idamvada. If our thinking shakes the stakes of the spirit’s
ahamvada to show idamvada [shaking up autonormativity to show
heteronormativity]—we do not want to know it, and therefore we
protect ourselves in the name of a specific national identity.12
 CRIMES OF ID ENT IT Y 211

Crimes of identity are always collective, although individuals suffer

grotesquely. At the benevolent end, good works become “criminal” in
effect; in effect because the benefactors forget that history is larger than
personal goodwill. Laws are fought for, sometimes passed, litigations are
undertaken and the emphasis remains on enforcement. Thought this way,
“crime” expands, often inhabiting an imaginary natural law—this is how
it was in nature—including but overflowing the boundaries of positive
law. “Rape” is the only word I can use to indicate a certain harsh uncon-
ditionality initiating all human beings before the altogether conditioned
notion of consent and nature. If Babasaheb Ambedkar is right, we are
looking at what German classical philosophy would call transcendental
intuition, where transcendental has nothing to do with the supernatural.
English words, where words fail us; crime, rape, transcendental. Such a
situation is possible in all the languages of the world.
In India, we are currently deeply concerned with rape because it was
brought to public attention by a most grotesquely violent occurrence of it
in the capital city, toward an educated woman and her educated partner.
I want to begin my presentation in that concern.
I have often argued that gender in the general sense is our first instru-
ment of abstraction. It is the tacit collective globalizer long before cartog-
raphers could think the globe, mapping negotiations between the sacred
and the profane and the relationship between the sexes, with sexual dif-
ference unevenly abstracted into gender/gendering as the chief semiotic
instrument of negotiation. Nationalism and religion come into play here.
Yet this unconditional producer of the socius, conditioning the proper,
remains ungeneralizable. It holds the possibility of defining the female
identity as potential surplus object of a pleasure that is in excess of, yet
defining, sexuality. The exemplary instance of this surplus pleasure is
rape as the fruit of victory in war, itself a crime of identity.13
On the occasion of borders, I have discussed Lacan’s invocation of
drives grasping on to borders of the body and related it to the sense of
borders that must be protected as war.14
I want to invoke this here, as Lacan’s imagining of the contaminating
relationship between the unspeculable work of the drives—unspeculable
because you cannot produce its reflection since the subject has not been
started yet—and the normative deviation of fantasy. I do not wish to
write of perversions, Lacan writes in effect, I would rather deal with
fantasy.15 The normative deviation of fantasy sets the norm by mistakenly
establishing the unspeculable as specular and the result of that specula-
tion as a repetition of the same; it is the realm of desire. Of course, the
normative definition which will redress this grounding error, within that
ground, will set in place the asymmetry of the Law of the Father alone.
212 G AYAT R I C H A K R AV O R T Y S P I VA K

In the field of positive law, we are still fighting this one in the question
of gay marriage.
Forgive me for going through this fable so fast. Please keep in mind
the broad outlines: the unspeculable turned into the specular by nor-
mative deviation, the imaginary; the specular turned into the limited
asymmetry of speculation. This asymmetry is only limited because,
although the asymmetry of the Father alone oversees this move, it is
in the interests of guarding the infinitely repeatable as the same: the
absolute symmetry of the Idea; the patronymic; the seamless signifying
system of the symbolic.
I am more interested in Lacan’s narrativization of the unconditional
unspeculable. Lacan describes the presubjective drive falling upon the
“anatomical trace of a margin or border;”—every word here is full of
meaning—“lips, enclosure of the teeth, rim of the anus, penile f issure,
vagina, fissure of eyelid, indeed hollow of the ear. . . . Respiratory
erogeneity . . . comes into play through spasms.” In other words, border-
thinking is an undecided and primary constituent of our perception of
reality itself, where reason is fashioned out of what precedes it. It is of no
interest to me if this account is correct and therefore an instrument of
cure. The literary critic learns from the singular and unverifiable. What
is of interest to me is that here in the place before the speculations of
the subject Lacan places the extra-moral possibility of the infinite exten-
sion of rape; borders, holes in the body. In the narrative itself, classic
psychoanalysis cannot distinguish between seduction and rape and the
distinction between truth and exactitude becomes patriarchially coun-
terproductive. French Freud has not considered this particular problem
significant. Juliet Mitchell’s tremendous intervention in Psychoanalysis
and Feminism does not specifically thematize rape. What I am speaking
of today thematizes her bold parenthesis; the only mention of rape in that
early book (“That rape does indeed occur is only an indirectly related
issue”). This is the relentlessness of the unconditional.16 I am focused on
that indirection, the refraction of the transcendental. Indeed, apart from
Jeffrey Moussaief Masson’s The Assault on Truth, which treats seduction
and rape together and points at the disavowal of real sexual abuse in
Freudian psychoanalysis, rape is not necessarily a concern for those who
wish to bring feminism and psychoanalysis together. Rape in the narrow
sense is neither seduction nor incest. Where incest is supposed to distin-
guish the human from nature and seduction is morally ambiguous after
the law, rape in the narrow sense makes it hard to determine the border
of the human and the upper primates.
If Jacques Lacan, the master imaginer, implies rape as a potential
before subject signifier and ego, I attend to that imagining and suggest
 CRIMES OF ID ENT IT Y 213

that redress for rape cannot be in the sphere of unconditional ethics but
firmly in the field of agency, where the intending subject is accountable
to what Kant would call “mere reason.” There we require an epistemo-
logical performance which cannot always be expected of what we have
now come to designate as “activism.” It is an imaginative training that
rape in the narrow sense, if such a thing can be thought, still extends
all the way from the most public to the most private, from war crime to
domestic violence. But this is “after,” this is in the field of agency, inter-
vention; activism. Sexual violence without consent, coercive. And the
unconditional possibility of rape in the general sense as the unaccount-
able origin of the human should at least be thinkable during the time of
the reading of this chapter.
No modern European thinker of the subject is free of German clas-
sical philosophy. The Cartesian line is more historical, the invocation of
Christianity wittingly or unwittingly reactive. Within the main tradition,
the common element is the break between the transcendental and the
phenomenal. Kant keeps the break alive; Hegel narrativizes it, staging
the break repeatedly, in various ways. Kant keeps the rupture between
(the unconditionality of) pure reason and understanding blank, although
contaminated into a textual blank, with the understanding presumably
philosophizing on the analogy of the sense perceptible manifold. Many
years ago, Rosalind Coward and John Ellis showed that Lacan had read
Hegel.17 And indeed, Lacan speaks of Descartes and Hegel as being
metonymic of psychoanalysis, unearthing part of it and disclosing it as
the whole. Here we can tabulate Lacan’s bond to Kant as well as Hegel,
as he narrativizes the unconditional and programmed material tran-
scendental by way of a manifold—the body’s borders—that will become
sense-perceptible by way of the grounding error of signifier/fantasy—
leading to the subject/ego site of conflict, secured by the specular/
d iscursive access provided for analysis. A complex trajectory, but the
Kantian imprint is determining—the necessary intuition of the drives
remaining unspeculable (though compromised here by narrativization):
rape in the general sense. Kant’s warning to Locke: the necessity of the
synthetic a priori cannot be proved, only demonstrated.
Rape in the general sense is not susceptible to proof. Its demonstra-
bility cannot be argued, although Andrea Dworkin did make a heroic
attempt, creating a clearly excessive binary opposition. At the other
extreme, such a binary opposition is legitimized by reversal because of
the incalculability of gendering—into a straightforward relationship
between desire and violence: “she, or indeed he, asked for it.”
Remaining within psychoanalysis, Mitchell moves from “killing is
raping and raping is killing” to “a suggestion of death and sex drives
214 G AYAT R I C H A K R AV O R T Y S P I VA K

being constituted in the same moment.”18 Perhaps death and sex are
somewhat naturalized here? Freud and Lacan have always found in fic-
tion the experience of the impossible. Reversing the situation and read-
ing the literary in Freud, let me propose that the ripple in the pervasive
ocean of thanatos that is the normative deviation of the emergence of life
(an unbalanced psychic machine) shares a structure with rape, if rape is
understood as generalized “objectlessness” (no individual is the object of
the “planetary” or the synthetic a priori).
The character Lucy in J. M. Coetzee’s novel Disgrace, pregnant after
being raped, gives us a sense of the “objectlessness” of rape by refusing
to be interpellated as victim:

[She] cast[s] aside . . . the affective value system attached to reproduc-

tive heteronormativity as it is accepted as the currency to measure
human dignity. [I was comparing this to Cordelia’s speech in Lear.]
I do not think this is an acceptance of rape, but a refusal to be raped
by instrumentalising reproduction. Coetzee’s Lucy is made to make
clear that the “nothing” is not to be itself measured as the absence of
“everything” by the old epistemico-affective value form; the system of
knowing-loving.19

Let me point out that Coetzee, in his usual manner, is not only mingling
race, class, and gender but also, given contemporary South Africa, the
idea of the new nation as well. Nationalism, starting from group forma-
tions preceding the formation of nation states by far, sanctions crimes of
group identity.
Disgrace’s twist, the situation of the white creole in the postcolonial
nation, could not be imagined by Kant. The best he can do is to make a
gesture toward the colonized:

The country whose inhabitants are citizens of one and the same
Commonwealth (by birth) is called the fatherland; those where they
live without this condition is a foreign country; and these, if they are
part of a wider landownership, are called provinces (in the meaning
given by the Romans), which, while not integrated into an empire as a
place of fellow-citizens, but is only a possession as a subordinate posi-
tion, must respect the ground of the ruling state as a motherland.20

Freud is able to perceive nationalism as part of fetishism, but he, too,

cannot ask that specific question.21 Lacan is altogether less political but,
as I have suggested elsewhere, the transcendental border-perception,
made specular, can also determine the tremendous identitarian pull of
nationalism, legitimizing birth, disavowing rape in general, as if an origin
 CRIMES OF ID ENT IT Y 215

can be accessed. In Nationalism and Imagination I have suggested that

full-blown nationalism conjures with something as private as a simple
comfort in one’s space and is not therefore amenable to the public use
of reason.22
Edward W. Said cited Erich Auerbach citing Hugo of St Victor, the
immensely learned twelfth-century cleric, who was both a rationalist and
a mystic: “The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender begin-
ner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is
perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land.”23 I have elsewhere
written that these impressive words, from an exceptional intellectual with
no family obligations, should be tempered with a thinking of the wife in
exogamy—rather than the agents of the Alexandria codex—as the type
case of the diasporic, as the word is now used.24 I will not revisit that
argument here but rather submit that the cleric’s statement was a dis-
avowal of the discursive potential of rape in general. In order to so do,
I must remind you of the implications of the conviction—that gender is
our first instrument of abstraction—with which I started my remarks.
I repeat, this unconditional producer of the socius, condition proper,
remains ungeneralizable. Exogamous wives outside of the romantic view
of marriage are different in different social formations, capable of desir-
ing violence. The unconditional producer of the socius holds the possi-
bility of defining female identity as potential surplus object of a pleasure
that is in excess of, yet defining, sexuality. The exemplary instance of
this surplus pleasure is rape as the fruit of victory in war, itself a crime
of identity.
Coetzee’s Lucy, a character in fiction, is staged as undoing rape by
perhaps recognizing the access to humanity as rape in the general sense.
In terms of this experience of the impossible, I will spend some time with
rape in the narrow sense.
Open any day’s newspaper and you will see accounts of brutal and
terrifying rape cases, almost invariably of women by men. This morning,
I read of a mullah raping a beautiful minor girl so brutally that the area
between her vagina and anus suffered dreadful wounds and she almost
bled to death. I hear that her family wants to kill her and the mullah will
go scot-free. There is an item also of the brutal gang rape of Thangjam
Manorama, her vagina area bullet-ridden to destroy evidence, because she
was a political radical, fighting for tribal independence.25 Visit a prison,
and you will hear of cases of male rapes just as brutal. The theorizing
about is rape sex or violence goes on, the terrifying work of keeping and
enforcing the law goes on. I take my cues from Farida Akhter, Flavia
Agnes, Catharine MacKinnon; and many other sisters. 26 What I am say-
ing today is that this is the human condition. It is a scandalous thing to
216 G AYAT R I C H A K R AV O R T Y S P I VA K

say because for some reason we have sentimentalized the concept of the
human, with underived universal rights and so on, in the last few centu-
ries. I think, if we can acknowledge that real education de-humanizes so
that we can promote social justice, an endeavor that turns rape around
and makes it productive, as in the fictive example of Disgrace’s Lucy,
we would be better off. I have often connected rape-culture and bribe-
culture—thinking of both as “normal”—rape as the extra in gender and
bribe in the economic. Just as rape does not look like rape if there is sex
in it, so bribe disappears if it is simply capitalist expression of “normal”
human greed, perfectly practicable if you have received institutional edu-
cation, seen today in the resumption of subprime lending in the auto-
mobile industry, no lesson learnt after 2007. My citing these examples
will I hope assure you that I am not interested in speaking in generalized
abstractions; these examples are class marked. Therefore, not only am I
not “turning reality into nothing but abstractions” but, I am asking us
to acknowledge that in many very different kinds of areas, the structure
of a sudden and unaccountable entry into humanity—and indeed the
originary move for every possibility of being-human shares very much
more in common with the structure that I can only call rape. If we accept
this, then we are complicit with rape, we do not try to redress what
can be called rape only by making and enforcing laws in the name of
humanity; but, more practically, we act toward the artificiality of, in the
name of a forever thwarted social justice as a result of a certain kind of
education which effectively de-humanizes, if the human is understood as
not necessarily anodyne and benign as most people of our class and our
education tend to do. This is how I understand MacKinnon’s placing
of the prakrit (natural) before the Sanskrit (repaired): “The analysis is
structured to treat law as first substantive then abstract on the view that,
in this sphere and perhaps others, law is interpreted and practiced on the
basis of substantive experiences and material commitments, from which
doctrinal and formal positions inevitably derive” (p.v). Recently, sitting
at a table with an altogether accomplished art historian who suggested
that most people would like to do good to others, I had to say the entire
world does not resemble you and she later confided to her husband that
I intimidated her. This idea, of a welcome de-humanizing kept up with
difficulty, should not intimidate—but simply allow us not to claim post-
humanism when it is convenient to do so, and become aware that the
anthropocene is not just climate change, not just the bad human; it is the
double bind of the human as such.
In the discussion of gender as our first instrument of abstraction, I have
previously made three further suggestions: that this use of reproductive
heteronormativity includes everything that emerges from the difference
 CRIMES OF ID ENT IT Y 217

between how much we need and how much we can make; that the
autonormativity of the Idea—infinite repeatability of the same—disavows
this; and finally, that in the field of sexual reproduction as the most gener-
alizable clue to heteronormativity, the queer use of its affective and legal
resources is “extra-moral” in the Nietzschean sense, as far as possible.
Now I am ready to take reproductive heteronormativity—provoked by
the passage in Mitchell that I have already quoted—as the social account
of the transcendental and unconditional discursivity of rape in the gen-
eral sense. This indeconstructible unconditionality, like Marx’s realm of
freedom, is not susceptible to social engineering. Therefore the redress of
rape in the narrow sense, as nonconsensual sexual violence, is only pos-
sible through agential work in three ways: (a) interventionist enforcement
of the law, (b) juridico-legal constitutionality in the making of the law;
and (c) undoing class apartheid in education and making room for long-
term imaginative training for epistemological performance—producing
problem solvers rather than enforcing solutions to problems.
I take them up briefly and in sequence.
(a) Interventionist involvement on a worldwide scale, undertaken by
what is now called the International Civil Society, must use the tremen-
dous generalizing resources of the digital. Digital redress cannot recog-
nize the contingent. You can programme for all kinds of mistakes and
compensations etc. but the contingent as such will always escape. You
can even plan for many contingencies that you can imagine but the con-
tingent as such you cannot imagine; it must be neutralized. Not only
can digital redress not recognize the contingent but it must resist all
thought of the unconditional as impractical. It must generalize in order
to redress what it perceives as gender inequality, and believe me I am not
against this. Yet it must also be recognized that the unconditional is in
unavoidable tension with this generalization that produces platforms of
action for international civil society, one size fits all gender toolkits for
field workers from urban to rural. Gendered microcredit sees income
production as such as unquestioned good. We cannot get around this if
we must solve gender problems, ranging from homophobic laws through
domestic violence, pharmaceutical dumping, absence of reproductive
rights, unequal pay, dowry trafficking, HIV-AIDS, war rape, casual rape,
genital mutilation and the like. Yet, this generalized redress produces
problem solving that cannot last, for three reasons at least: the tremen-
dous counterforce of sustainable underdevelopment, the longue durée
of internalized gendering and class apartheid in education. Short-term
problem solving must continue indefinitely, resources must be sought
and deployed. Since, however, the sources are largely corporate, their
ties with the presuppositions and values of sustainable underdevelopment
218 G AYAT R I C H A K R AV O R T Y S P I VA K

are strong. Therefore, even to the generally impatient members of the

Human Rights lobby I would make the hopeless request that internal-
ized gendering be approached through patience and respect and that the
protocols of the epistemological machine of the victims be learned with
critical intimacy. Only then can dominant feminism—with no social
contract—try to rearrange desires; ours as well as theirs. Ignorance of
language and historical detail are the main problems here and this is an
ongoing process of decline.
(b) I began this talk in the memory of Jyoti Singh, gang-raped savagely
in Delhi on December 16, 2012. Apart from protests, the consequences
have been juridico-legal. The extreme limit of the crime of identity—a
crime predicated on the “identity” of the victim—war rape, is susceptible
to international criminal law, with limits to enforceability. By and large,
however, we are still speaking of the juridico-legal nation-state constitu-
tionality. When we think of the enforcers of the law we realize that, in
the paradigm of agential redress, the problem is not confined to gender
but to worldwide class apartheid in education, which allows me to segue
to its undoing.
(c) As long as education below a certain class line remains the mem-
orizing of generally uncomprehended rote answers to set questions,
and teachers (among others) can bribe their way into employment, the
enforcers of the law, the street police and the rural police, assume rape-
culture and bribe-culture to be normal. Here we speak of rape, once
again, as violent and brutal sexual practice as pleasure in excess, which
relates to the generalized rape toward which Ambedkar pointed so long
ago. The redress here is attention to quality—top, bottom, and middle.
Attention to first language education in combination with global lan-
guages. Absence of this is why, the assumption, of even so heroic a figure
as Catharine MacKinnon, that

by providing a critical grasp of the legal tools of the field, [her book
can] aspire to narrow the gap between the law’s promise and perfor-
mance in [the] domain [of “social inequality between and among
women and men, legal sex equality guarantees, and the present and
possible relation between the two”] by promoting change toward
equality goals

will have too restricted a field.27 Massively important work such as hers
must be persistently supplemented by expanding the readership for her
book. (She knows this in her earlier, less legal book, which “engages
sexual politics on the level of epistemology.”) The expansion of episte-
mological training can only happen in the language the student “feels,”
 CRIMES OF ID ENT IT Y 219

even as he or she learns English for the big world. Otherwise, rape/
bribe (kamini/kanchan) will work as normal, rape as bribe will work as
normal.
Attention to first language education in combination with global lan-
guages is called for. The strength of gender education should be interwo-
ven into classroom practice, rather than depend on consciousness raising
at the very start. Things must change as we go up the education ladder,
of course. Here, too, class and the historical longue durée must be learnt
through direct unconditional contact. Learned accounts must be judi-
ciously consulted as secondary, because most learned accounts do not go
below this radar.
Knowledge management—group learning with charts or cards—
and toolkits, cannot cross epistemological divides. Although structured
evaluation is certainly needed for a sense of progress in both participant
and funder, we must learn to rely on the unexpected or on contingent
results.
In this limited but crucial enclosure of redress, this last item—edu-
cation, creating a general will for social justice in all children—is not far
from Freud’s liberal revision of the Kantian sublime into sublimation,
or from Lacan’s straightforward account of the ethics of psychoanalysis,
or yet Derrida’s call for a new Enlightenment. Freud was perhaps only
a European liberal. Yet in this era of leadership talk, role model talk,
empowerment talk, the trashing of democracy as voting bloc politics
talk, self-interested, often gender-compromised culturalisms, disguis-
ing the profound aporia between unconditional liberty understood as
autonomy, and the conditions of equality for others who do not resem-
ble us—we should pay attention again to Freud’s discourse of collective
identification through leader-identification, of the emergence of the ego
ideal rather than the super-ego. Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse (Mass
Psychology and I-analysis), risibly translated as “Group Psychology and
the Analysis of the Ego,” still holds lessons that, in spite of Reich’s smart
and superficial work, remains to be unpacked in the context of what
I am calling rape in the general sense and its agential redress in the
narrow sense.
About creating a general will for social justice I said at the University
of Utrecht on the 300th anniversary of the Peace of Utrecht

Israel is described times without number as “the only democracy in

the Middle East,” although it plays the retaliation game energeti-
cally, basing it on a “faith-based”—the word fills me with horror—
narrative, quite opposed to the promise of democracy. Democracy is
now equated with an operating civil structure, the functioning of a
220 G AYAT R I C H A K R AV O R T Y S P I VA K

hierarchized bureaucracy, and “clean” elections.’ We have plenty of

examples around the world, that unrelenting state violence on the
model of revenge and retaliation can co-exist with so-called democracy.
Revenge is indeed a kind of wild justice that proves that no retribution
is just to the outlines of the tribute. It has nothing, however, to do
with a vision of social justice which builds itself on its own indefinite
continuation.

It is this agential indefinite that we work at for the abridgement of the

culture of rape, after the indeconstructible, unconditionality of rape in
the general sense, which opens the human.
I have been asking for an affirmative sabotage of the Enlightenment
wished upon us by colonialism. I have often used the metaphor of the
children of rape to support this. Today the distinction between metaphor
and concept is undone for me in an intuition of unconditionality. Kant
did indeed inaugurate modernity by binding free will, rewriting fatal-
ism by a rearrangement of the desire for philosophy, which desired the
danger of the entire mistake, declaring free will by determined necessity,
leaving fatalism unguarded in the longue durée of history. That coun-
terintuitive mark of the modern largely misfired. What took its place
was the race-class-determined binary opposition of free will and fatalism
that runs our world today, with the so-called abstract workings of capital
running a deconstruction. For the rest, the task is for the readers of the
future. The Christo-Leninist alternative offered by Badiou-Negri-Zizek
is an historical symptom.
In conclusion, then. The horrors of rape continue unabated and are
on the increase. It is a crime of identity where you are punished because
you are female or feminized. I have suggested all through this chapter
that you cannot redress rape in this narrow sense by an appeal to our
humanity. The imposition of the human upon the animate can itself be
described as rape, absolute contingency. I invoked the synthetic a priori,
but in fact all mythology contains images of divine violence upon the
phenomenal woman. Therefore rape in the narrow sense has to be fought
in the sphere of agency, with something as institutionalized as education,
preparing the subject for connecting with something as institutional as
the law in a mode other than its enforcement alone. We must de-humanize
ourselves to combat rape in the narrow sense, as we must to combat the
Anthropocene. Rape in the narrow sense is indeed power more than sex,
the only unearned and narrow example being the one you earn by being
by identity male or masculized. If I have been able to make any inroads
at all please “read” the items offered below—pointing to crimes of iden-
tity that cannot be punished—according to the suggestions made in the
chapter. I would ask you also please to remember that these are one-time
 CRIMES OF ID ENT IT Y 221

only suggestions, that any attempt to make of rape in the general sense a
universal concept-metaphor of making human will be visited by vigorous
opposition and would undo the difference between the victim and the
perpetrator. That very danger might warn us that this transient argument
might harbor dark truths best kept transcendentalized.
First a crime of national/global identity—European agribusiness,
which has invaded an old rural development organization in the area
where I work, whose members cannot understand that they are being
invaded, as it is done cunningly through Bangladesh, remotely diasporic
Bangladeshi Germans. I wish I had the time to speak of Antonio Gramsci’s
brilliant anticipation of this.
And next, three icons, where we see three women, pictured metonymi-
cally because their appropriable—rapable—general identity can be used
to depict crimes of ostensibly other sorts of politico-economic identity.
That general identity—woman as such—does not need to be investigated
in its gendering.
I had designed the following paragraphs of this chapter as a teaching
moment—asking the readers to “read” three photographs according to
the notions of “identity” and “crime” that I had laid out in the body of
the chapter. Ut pictura poesis. I could not get permission to include the
photographs.
The first one was the picture of an Indian peasant woman being
held up by relatives, screaming with pain because of the suicide of her
husband. This accompanies a sympathetic article by Ellen Barry, “After
Farmers Commit Suicide, Debts Fall on Families in India” (The New
York Times, February 22, 2014) where she correctly describes what I am
calling a “crime of identity,” calling it “global competition” rather than
simply “globalization,” the insertion of small farming into the circuit
of (global) capital, today’s financialized agribusiness of which I speak
above. This and her veering off into examples of local cruelty, visibly hor-
rible, does not make her general sense of things negligible:

India’s small farmers, once the country’s economic backbone and most
reliable vote bank, are increasingly being left behind. With global com-
petition and rising costs cutting into their lean profits, their ranks are
dwindling, as is their contribution to the gross domestic product. If
rural voters once made their plight into front-page news around elec-
tion time, this year the large parties are jockeying for the votes of the
urban middle class, and the farmers’ voices are all but silent.

From my equally general position of tempered sympathy with Barry,

I was asking the reader to ask the question of the use of the elaborately
mourning non-Euro woman as an “illustration” of arguments that must
222 G AYAT R I C H A K R AV O R T Y S P I VA K

be put aside in the interest of human interest. I was not accusing the
author or the photographer of anything. I was asking the reader to imag-
ine the woman, whose name is given: Anitha Amgoth, because women
holding certain identities are easy examples where the actual “crime” is
not analyzed in any depth, only mentioned as human interest. In view of
the inevitable shift into human interest proving the personal corruption
of the global South (as opposed, I suppose to the clean “rule of law”
practices of neoliberal capitalism), I had indeed also asked why Anitha’s
face is used to illustrate this crime, which is not a crime, global capi-
tal destroying primary production in the global South—against people
identified in that specific subalternity—in the name of “development,”
aka insertion into the circuit of capital?28 I am still not quite sure as to
why I was denied access to this. I felt it as the impossibility of imagina-
tive activism under the neoliberal “rule of law” approach. I also felt that
academic freedom was here confronting an absurd version of “intellec-
tual property.” This too is a “crime of identity” in my sense against the
teacherly, if you wish, spelling out the impossibility of teaching.
The second photograph was a beautifully focused image, with the light
falling on the face of a young Afghan girl holding a book, reading. Who
can deny that the very fact of an Afghan girl reading today is a heart-
warming one. In my book Other Asias, I have discussed the attempts by
Amir Abd-ur-Rahman Khan—the “Iron Amir”—to bring Afghanistan
into state civility in the nineteenth century. 29 It is also well known by
left and right alike (see Gregory Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat) that
women in Soviet Afghanistan had access to education and were in pub-
lic life.30 Those were not the facts I was concentrating on as I offered
this picture as a teaching text: I asked the question “does anybody ask
a question (rather than provide a yes-no question for agreement) about
her internalized gendering and is anyone engaged in remotely approach-
ing the quality of education?” I have been for 30 years involved in the
training of subaltern children, and holding a book unfortunately means
nothing in terms of producing a will to social justice.
The last picture was one many of you have seen, which apparently is
no longer being used by Care.org, the picture of a very beautiful African
woman, dressed in cloth, with the caption “I am powerful.” There my
question was “does anyone ask what the word ‘power,’ kernel of the
absurd word ‘empowerment,’ signifies—or, the relationship between any
partner and this woman?” In other words, what do these women consider
normal, can we enter their world, learning how not to construct them as
forgettable items of news for public awareness or human rights work, or
nongovernmental organization (NGO) gendering work, or public inter-
est litigation or constitutional engagement? Professionals busy with these
 CRIMES OF ID ENT IT Y 223

activities cannot, but we teachers of the humanities can, unless contemp-

tuously dismissed, as I was by the pointperson at the photo company.
In addition to the question of permission to cite there was a question
of permission from the individuals photographed. Here we are entering
into the realm of absurdity.
For example, I may still receive permission to show the last photo-
graph. Care.org does not use it any more, although it is still “trade-
marked.” We are inquiring if the requirement for the permission may be
waived, since she is a refugee and cannot be located. She may be adrift in
the world, but her case is still a carapace of “the rule of law” where intel-
lect is property. Her representation demands nonexclusive permission for
this and future editions of the book, in all formats and in all languages
for distribution throughout the world, and to include excerpts from the
book that might appear in advertising, publicity, and promotional mate-
rials for the book, for example Amazon’s Search Inside the Book.
I have recently argued that development is the insertion into the circuit
of capital, without developing the subject of its ethical, or even appropri-
ate social, use. This was hailed as an interesting contribution by my col-
leagues Ann Stoler and Akeel Bilgrami. That piece will be published into
an academic collection edited by them. No pictures, no permissions. But
that particular lesson, valued by my colleagues, is of course completely
ignored by this absurd (for the spirit, not the letter, of the law) request.
I want to cite Kant here—writing about “Cosmopolitan [read “global”]
Right”—because he is always brought forward as the great-grandfather
of questions of “academic freedom.” Global right can be rationally if
not amicably practiced between “all those of the earth’s peoples who
can enter into active relations [he uses the philosophical word Verhältnis
rather than the more colloquial Beziehung] with one another [and it] is
not something philanthropic (ethical), but a rights-related principle.”31
The operative phrase in this passage is “active relations,” wirksam
in the original, which reminds the reader of the more common word
wirklich—real. There is no real continuity between the subjects of the
three photographs and my Cambridge audience, the readership of this
collection, or the people in charge of the “rule of law” in neoliberalism,
from whom I had to tolerate a good deal of bluntness in the last week.
Even as Kant makes clear that European settlers’ rights only work
if it is at a good distance from where pastoral folks lead their lives, he
speaks, as he always does, for commerce. But the old man is conscientious
although, as my exchange proves in a relatively micrological context, his
lessons did not stick. (The macrology is historically, the United States,
and today Israel.) For Kant goes on to write “settlements should . . . be
established . . . only by treaty.” Fair enough, get the permission of the
224 G AYAT R I C H A K R AV O R T Y S P I VA K

person in the image. But he goes on further to write: “there must be no

attempt to exploit the unknowingness of the natives.”
The present case is not exactly similar. No one is establishing settle-
ments on land; the property for settlement is intellectual. But as such,
Kant’s admonition bears on the lack of continuity where the “unknow-
ingness” is a result of class apartheid in education. It is to bring about
such continuity that some of us not only work, but toil. To have this
request for permission from the subjects thrown at me in tones of righ-
teous indignation in terms of fear of litigation, rather than the protection
of the specific subjects, taught me why it is not possible to toil as a glob-
ally activist teacher. It was not my intention simply to criticize everyone,
a pastime of the academic left. I was hoping that there would be some
gain in looking at these faces of women in a different way, so that “the
accumulation of knowledge whose methodological modernity . . . [has
an] allegiance to the age of European world-taking [would not be so]
plain for all to see.”32
But perhaps it’s just as well. After all, I was asking you to forget this
lesson. So, why try to conserve something seen, when the society we live
in proves its decrepitude by gated journalism, gated publishing, protected
by high walls. Absolutely forget, even the lesson that the literary-ethical
suspension in the space of the other is to de-humanize, if humanization
from the animal is by way of rape in general, unless we want to mooch
over being-human in the face of the Anthropocene.

Notes
1. Juliet Mitchell, Psychoanalysis and Feminism. A Radical Reassessesment
of Freudian Psychoanalysis (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
2. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of
Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1963).
3. Jacques Lacan, “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in
Psychoanalysis,” in Ecrits: A Selection, tr. Alan Sheridan (New York
& London: Norton, 1977), pp. 30–113.
4. Jacques Derrida, “Force de loi: le ‘fondement mystique de l’autorité/
Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority,’ ” Cardozo
Law Review 11 (1990), pp. 920–1046.
5. Roland Barthes, S/Z. An Essay, tr. Richard Miller (New York: The
Noonday Press, 1974).
6. Mahasweta Devi, Imaginary Maps: Three Stories, tr. Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak (New York: Routledge, 1995); Toni Morrison, Beloved (New
York: Knopf, 1987).
7. Mitchell, Psychoanalysis, p. xvii.
8. Mitchell, Mad Men and Medusas: Reclaiming Hysteria (New York:
Basic Books, 2000), p. 256. Recently, in an interesting film by
 CRIMES OF ID ENT IT Y 225

Aleksander Motturi of Clandestino, the subaltern chosen, who had

been tortured and jailed and undoubtedly wins our admiration,
speaks his philosophy, because Aleksander wants to give him some-
thing more than just to be the example of refugee dumping: “The
survival of the fittest as exemplified by the sperm managing to climb
to the egg and going upward on the human line while the woman
remains ‘natural’ and has to do nothing but wait for the child to be
born.” Rape can be this will to power sexualized.
9. I had tried this in 1990 with the translation of the word “identity”
into a very strange Bengali, idambad. (I discuss this word in the
text.) The word does not exist. I said there, “I want this word to
exist only for the time that I give this talk.” Indeed, no one has ever
picked it up. I did another such transient translation of catachresis,
which was otikkhoy, and I said that this translation is not going to
survive beyond one hour in this room. That is just what happened.
Can we, for an hour, think the terrible thought that the transcenden-
tal deduction of what we must think as rational subjects is akin to the
contingent violence of rape?
10. For rather a long time, the early work of Emmanuel Levinas contin-
ued to influence many of us, so that we could write innocent sen-
tences such as “to be human is to be born angled toward the other.”
What guaranteed this? A picture of access to humanship built on a
nuclear heterosexual middle-class marriage. For a good comment on
this, see Luce Irigaray,” The Phenomenology of Eros,” in An Ethics of
Sexual Difference, tr. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill (London &
New York: Continuum, 2004), p. 154–179. Levinas moved on to a
more powerful position: “in the relationship in which the other is the
one next to me [le prochain] . . . for reasons not at all transcendental
but purely logical, the object-man must figure at the beginning of all
knowing” (Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being, tr. Alphonso
Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne Univ. Press, 1999, pp. 58–59). But
this too was secured by an embarrassingly inaccurate description of
the woman in gestation and, on quite another front, remained con-
sistent with support for legitimized violence of the state of Israel.
11. I will, later in the paper, disassociate myself from the view that
US multiculturalism is, according to Arthur M. Schlesinger, “The
disuniting of America” (Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Disuniting of
America, New York: Norton, 1992). In the Indian context, how-
ever, I felt that I must speak out against separatism. I am not a situ-
ational relativist. One must take account of situations because one
acts according to situational imperatives.
12. “Pro-pose” takes me back to an earlier discussion in my paper of the
famous line of Nagarjuna: Nasti ca mama kacana pratijna [roughly,
My proposition is not at all there]. Incidentally, my description of
deconstruction work here found a nice bit of vindication. In the last
chapter of Peggy Kamuf tr., Specters of Marx: the State of the Debt, the
226 G AYAT R I C H A K R AV O R T Y S P I VA K

Work of Mourning and the New International (New York: Routledge,

1994), Derrida shook the stakes of ahamvada in Marx to release the
multitudinous iterations of an idamvada. Mechanical Marxists will
not want to know it.
13. The collective rape of women in Tahrir Square as men celebrated the
victory of Mr. Sisi as prime minister of Egypt sees so-called democracy
as a fight.
14. Jacques Lacan, “Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectics of
Desire in the Freudian Unconscious,” in Écrits, tr. Bruce Fink (New
York: Norton, 2007), p. 692; translation modified.
15. Fink, 691.
16. Psychoanalysis, p. 353.
17. Rosalind Coward and John Ellis, Language and Materialism:
Developments in Semiology and the Theory of the Subject (Boston:
Routledge, 1977).
18. Mitchell, Mad Men, p. 139.
19. Spivak, An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization (Cambridge,
MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2012), p. 322.
20. Kant, Political Writings, tr. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991), p. 160; translation modified.
21. Sigmund Freud, “Fetishism,” in Standard Edition of the Psychological
Works, tr. James Strachey et al. (New York: Norton, 1961), vol. XXI,
p. 152.
22. Spivak, Nationalism and the Imagination (Kolkata: Seagull Books,
2010).
23. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), p. 259.
24. Spivak, “Outside in the Metropolis: Diasporics?,” reprinted in
German translation in Isolde Charim and Gertraud Auer Borea, eds.
Lebensmodell Diaspora: über moderne Nomaden (Bielefeld: Transcript,
2012), pp. 65–73.
25. Both items from The New York Times, July 20, 2014.
26. Farida Akhter is to be found at www.ubinig.org. Her real text is
her untiring work for social justice, but one might read her classic
Depopulating Bangladesh: the Politics of Fertility (Dhaka: Narigrantha,
1992); Flavia Agnes is a fierce feminist lawyer. Her group is majlis-
[email protected]. The most recent piece is “The Making of a High
Profile Rape Case” (Economic and Political Weekly 49.xxix; June 19,
2014).
27. MacKinnon, Sex Equality, p. v.
28. MacKinnon makes the connection with rape. “Under law, rape is
a sex crime that is not regarded as a crime when it looks like sex”
(Feminist Theory of the State, p. 172. Under law, crimes toward spe-
cific groups’ livelihood (“crimes of identity”) are not recognized
as crimes when it looks like “development.” MacKinnon is prob-
ably thinking also of Blackstone’s definition of marriage as a unique
contract: “By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in
 CRIMES OF ID ENT IT Y 227

law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is sus-
pended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consoli-
dated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and
cover, she performs everything.”
29. Spivak, “Foucault and Najibullah,” Other Asias (Boston: Wiley
Blackwell, 2007), pp. 132–160.
30. Gregory Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat Moslem Women and
Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919–1929 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1974).
31. Immanuel Kant, Political Writings, p. 172; translation modified. The
next passage quoted is from p. 173. It is important to keep in mind
that, in Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, tr. Pascale-Anne Brault and
Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), the last
book published during his lifetime, Derrida warned that Kant could
not serve as a solution in contemporary globality.
32. Peter Sloterdijk, In the World Interior of Capital: For a Philosophical
Theory of Globalization, tr. Wieland Hoban (Cambridge: Polity, 2013),
p. 28.
 Chapter 11

Sisters at the Gate: Mean Girls and

Other Sibling Phenomena

Gillian Harkins

T he Lot saga is a familiar one. The Lot family of Sodom and Gomorrah
is visited by angels in men’s form; male citizens flock to the door of
the Lot home seeking to “know” the visitors. Lot offers the citizens his
daughters instead, who have not yet “known” man, but ultimately the
angels decide to punish the cities with fire and brimstone. Lot, along
with his wife and daughters, are spared this fate so long as none turns
back to look upon the cities’ destruction while they leave. Lot’s wife
however does glance backward, and as a result turns to salt. Bereft of
both human community and maternal presence, Lot’s daughters seek to
become mothers themselves by lying with their father (after an appropri-
ate plying of wine to induce lethargy and forgetfulness) and reproducing
the line through themselves. Daughters become mothers of their own
siblings, creating a new human community from the crossing of what
Juliet Mitchell calls the lateral and vertical axes of sexuality and repro-
duction (Mitchell 2003).
The parable of Genesis 19 has been much revisited over the centu-
ries, lending itself to anti-homosexual scriptural interpretation as well as
feminist and queer reimaginings of what lies beyond the limits of social
heteropatriarchy.1 A biblical prohibition on male sodomy has often been
attributed to the tale, although both biblical and lay scholars have dis-
puted this interpretation. Some scholars have also drawn attention to
the prohibition on female knowledge exhibited in the punishment of
Lot’s wife, while still others examine the positive and productive role
of father–daughter incest in the parable. Here a divine prohibition on
male–male sexual relations seems to precede the social injunction toward
father–daughter incest. Heterosexual and intergenerational incest is
linked directly to social reproduction, the response to a more sovereign
230 GILLIAN HARKINS

prohibition on a society of male homosexuality. This creates a quan-

dary in the typical order of prohibitions and injunctions, particularly
for psychoanalytic paradigms predicated on the model of Oedipus. To
use Juliet Mitchell’s terms from Siblings, a fundamental prohibition on
lateral homosexual relations produces an injunction for vertical hetero-
sexual relations leading to reproduction.
Much like the parable of Lot, Siblings provides an alternative account
of lateral and vertical relations incipient to sexuality and reproduction.
According to Mitchell, psychoanalysis has historically privileged the “ver-
tical relationship of child-to-parent” (Mitchell 2003, x) over children’s
“lateral” relationships with each other.2 The most familiar psychoana-
lytic model posits an Oedipus complex induced and resolved through
the law of the father; a temporality at once anticipatory and retroac-
tive induces exogamous (hetero)sexuality as a movement toward repro-
normativity. The perversions or wayward reproductions ensuing from
alternative (or failed) resolutions of the Oedipus Complex do not undo
the knot of paternal law so much as testify to its abiding function as the
bedrock of psychoanalysis. For according to Mitchell it is psychoanalysis,
more than the psyche, that depends upon a law of the father combining
prohibition on incestuous reproduction with injunction to exogamous
sexuality. It is psychoanalysis, not the psyche, that ordered all phenom-
ena into the vertical paradigm of sexuality, regardless of the divergent
material presented as primary evidence of lateral sexual relations. Clinical
evidence of the lateral axis of sibling sexuality and hatred was treated
as symptomatic of and subordinate to the protocols of Oedipus and his
parents, until Mitchell suggests recent sociohistorical changes have sepa-
rated sexuality and reproduction to such a degree that lateral formations
of gender and violence have become newly legible in the clinical and case
material. Psychoanalysis is now ready to encounter its forgotten siblings.
By attending to such lateral relations, psychoanalysis is better able to
identify and analyze distinctions between sexuality and reproduction,
and thereby gender and sexual difference, in social and psychic life.
Mitchell’s account shifts what is granted logical and temporal primacy
in the Lot story. To return to Lot via Mitchell, the prohibition on lateral
male sexual relations—the male citizens desire to “know” the angels-
in-male-form—seems to precede the vertical prohibition on witnessing
God’s act of punishment. This secondary prohibition unites the family as
a group—they are all prohibited from turning back to look upon the cit-
ies as they are punished by God—even as it separates out “Lot’s wife” as
its singular transgressor. Once the prohibition on seeing God’s wrath is
broken by the wife, the daughters assert their own position in the nexus
of reproduction—its lateral and vertical coordinates—by recreating the
 S I S T E R S AT T H E G AT E 231

lost human community through sex with the father. In place of a sover-
eign prohibition (against homosexuality) that creates a social injunction
(toward reproduction), we find a lateral prohibition (against homosexu-
ality) that creates a vertical injunction (toward reproduction). The Lot
story provides an admonitory parable through the reification of Lot’s
wife: her effort to see sovereign power creates a crisis in the temporal and
logical order of lateral and vertical regulation. As a result, she is frozen
in the moment of transgression while her daughters are induced toward
intergenerational and heterosexual incest to reproduce the proper order
between lateral (community) and vertical (divine, generational) axes.
This treatment of the Lot parable offers additional revisions to the pri-
mary psychoanalytic model of Oedipus, supplementing the already well-
developed revisionist models articulated through Electra and Antigone.3
If as Mitchell suggests the Antigone play shows us “the three faces of the
sister who both cares for and destroys: the lateral would-be murderer, the
nurse and the lawgiver” (Mitchell 2003, 57), the Lot parable shows us
the two faces of the sister refracted through lateral lens of sexuality and
reproduction. This chapter takes the story of Lot’s wife as an opening,
a way into the complex problematization of “siblings” offered by Juliet
Mitchell. In Pillar of Salt: Gender, Memory, and the Perils of Looking
Back, Janice Haaken suggests that the allegory of Lot’s wife admon-
ishes against female transgression while also opening up a “disturbing
void”—no one knows what she saw before her transformation—that can
generate new symbolic representations of this “void” (Haaken 1998, 5).
This is perhaps why Lot’s wife has spoken so directly to feminist theo-
rizations and queer revisionings of the tangled relation between gender,
sexuality, and prohibition. Haaken goes on to ask how the parable might
be reimagined if the female siblings told it: “And what stories might
Lot’s daughters have to tell?” (Haaken 1998, 267). She ponders how we
might hear the stories of daughters who are sisters of one another but
also sisters of their own daughters, and so on across the generations?
The question implicitly asks not only what stories, but whose stories can
represent the “void” between lateral and vertical sexualities without fall-
ing into its abyss?
In the readings that follow, I ask how Mitchell’s treatment of
the “void” at the heart of psychoanalytic theory opens up alternative
approaches to lateral and vertical prohibitions and injunctions. I begin
with Mitchell’s own treatment of lateral relationships in Siblings, focused
in particular on how representations of history shape her theorization
of the lawgiving mother. I then turn to the cultural emergence of the
“mean girls” phenomena at roughly the same moment when sibling rela-
tions can, according to Mitchell, finally be represented at the heart of
232 GILLIAN HARKINS

psychoanalytic theory. My brief gloss of “mean girl” texts, including

Halley Feiffer’s How to Make Friends and Kill Them (2013), allows me
to explore how gendered lateral relations appear as serial killing in the
absence of a “lawgiving mother.” I next turn to Marilynne Robinson’s
1980 novel Housekeeping and John Cameron Mitchell’s 1998 rock-opera
Hedwig and the Angry Inch to explore how “representing” lateral gender
relations might not inevitably figure them as a drive toward death. These
closing readings allow me to explore the meaning of “gender” in lateral
relations that move beyond the “mean girl” genre and toward alternative
conditions of representational possibility.4

Mother’s Keepers
Mitchell’s Siblings offers a counterhistory of psychoanalytic origin fig-
ures resonant with the parable of Lot. Mitchell implies psychoanalysis is
founded on a “void” very similar to the one encountered and figured by
Lot’s wife: “Psychoanalytic theory is a good illustration of its own thesis:
only what is absent can be represented; what is present cannot be repre-
sented and hence cannot be seen” (Mitchell 2003, 30). Psychoanalysis
represents the void, covering it with catachresis that does not pretend
to manifest the absence as presence but rather to represent it through a
vehicle that has no ground. The figures that emerge to “represent” this
void are always catachrestic, of a different order than the void itself; figures
such as the “law of the father,” the Oedipus complex, or the “primitive
mother” (Mitchell 2003, 51) are ways of representing that which has
been absent. They capture a historical point of exchange, where what
was present disappears and leaves in its trace a figure—such as the Father
of patriarchal order—now available to “represent” the void allegedly cre-
ated by an unrepresentable sovereign power (God in Lot’s case). These
figures appear in the wake of one system of presence, neither capturing
that which was present nor that which remains absent fully in their tenor.
Yet the grounds on which the family stands seem to shift.
Mitchell tracks the movement from God to father to object relations
mother (“primitive mother”) as part of this story of presence and absence,
presentation and representation. Just as Nietzsche figures “God” as the
void that appears in moralism’s wake, Freud figures “patriarchy” at the
site of absence just as patriarchal social relations are waning in power and
authority (are less present); object relations similarly figures “matriar-
chy” or the “primitive mother” in the breach of its social decline. In the
final decades of the twentieth century, adult centrism becomes visible
just as absolute parental power is giving way to more lateral relationships
of power. At this point Foucault can dethrone the king in favor of an
 S I S T E R S AT T H E G AT E 233

account of power as “coming from everywhere,” second wave feminisms

can point beyond patriarchy to a fraternity of homosocial bonds, and psy-
choanalysis can finally notice the siblings always already lurking within
the Oedipus Complex (Foucault 1978; Pateman 1988). Thus Mitchell
suggests that a new awareness of siblings (and eventually a “lawgiving
mother”) is possible because of changing historical conditions: “Perhaps
we can now see a distinction between sexuality (lateral) and reproduction
(vertical) because, in the hegemonic white social groups of the Western
world, reproduction is not the nearly inevitable consequence of sexuality,
and above all because it is sharply on the decline” (Mitchell 2003, 31).5
According to Mitchell distinctions between lateral sexuality and vertical
reproduction can be represented because they are no longer “present”;
what is revealed in this shift is the primacy of lateral relationships previ-
ously occluded by the representation of vertical relationships (between
child and parents, for example, but also other positions in a hierarchical
social order).
The seeming primacy of the vertical relationship stems from psycho-
analysis’ own conditions of existence, from clinical scene to theoretical
principle. Mitchell uses the figure of the “lawgiving mother” to indicate
how shifting conditions of existence shape relations between psycho-
analytic theory and clinical practice: “There is, I suggest, no lawgiving
mother in psychoanalytic theory because within the clinical setting the
analyst herself or himself speaks from the position of the mother as law-
giver” (Mitchell 2003, 50). According to Mitchell, psychoanalytic theory
was previously unable to see lateral relationships as primary precisely
because the clinical material was presented (as presence) from within the
grip of lateral relations. The presence of lateral relationships was seen
to “represent” through displacement (or other figuration) those more
important but unrepresentable vertical relationships governing psychic
life. As historical conditions change, however, psychoanalytic theory can
look back on earlier clinical material and see lateral relations that always
existed, but were perhaps blocked by the very fact that the analyst in the
clinical scene spoke “from the position of the mother as lawgiver.” Thus
only as the clinical analyst ceases to appear as lawgiving mother can they
be represented—in theory—as such. Mitchell’s book therefore returns
to various clinical scenes and research cases to underscore the presence
of lateral relations and their importance to understanding gender, sexual
difference, sexuality, and reproduction.
Mitchell draws several key conclusions from her study of primary lateral
or sibling relations. First, she differentiates between gender and sexual
difference and assigns them to lateral and vertical relations respectively.
Lateral relations are expressed in terms of gender and non-repronormative
234 GILLIAN HARKINS

sexuality. Sexual difference proper, and its organization through the

demand for reproductive intercourse, comes from the vertical axis and
the Oedipus complex. This is a secondary prohibition, one that follows
the regulation of lateral relations and comes to obscure the importance
and proper function of laterality in general. Thus according to Mitchell
“where the castration complex marks the sexual difference ‘required’ by
sexual reproduction, gender difference marks lateral distinctions between
girls and boys which include but exceed sexuality” (Mitchell 2003, 26).
Mitchell implies that recent conflations of gender and sexual difference—
frequently offered in the service of a more social and historical account of
subjection that replaces singular sexual difference with the spectrum of
gender—actually erase some of what we might consider “queer” modalities
of sexuality. What Mitchell refers to as “lateral sexuality” is “anal-phallic
and, at a deep level, gender indifferent” (Mitchell 2003, 41), meaning
that appearance of gendering through a homo- and hetero-distinction
is not significant along this axis. Gendering occurs, as we shall see in a
moment, but not through the reproductive fantasies that install a model
of sexual difference. Mitchell suggests we would do better to return to
distinctions between gender—the effect of a lateral relation—and sexual
difference—the effect of a vertical one. This would open up the potential
to recognize lateral relations in modes of sexuality not organized through
sexual difference.
Second, Mitchell associates lateral gendered and nonreproductive sexu-
ality with fundamental aggression. She suggests that we learn a good deal
about fundamental aggression when we shift focus to lateral relations,
which allows us to see that “the task of the sibling in distinguishing
between the genders is to learn that each is serially diverse and not simply
a replication of the narcissistic self” (Mitchell 2003, 26). Mitchell posits
a fundamental aggressivity that emerges from the crisis of “uniqueness”
or singularity introduced by a sibling (or other lateral figure). If “the
sibling is par excellence someone who threatens the subject’s uniqueness”
(Mitchell 2003, 10), then it is no surprise that lateral relations are marked
by fundamental violence or murderousness. Lateral relations emerge in
relation to an originary trauma associated with “neonatal helplessness”
(Mitchell 2003, 42), which Mitchell characterizes as a “black hole, like
the vortex of a whirlpool,” which “attracts things to it” (Mitchell 2003,
42). Based on this fundamental condition of being “psychically obliter-
ated by a traumatic experience, the first signs of life are fury and hatred”
(Mitchell 2003, 41). In the movement from neonatal to infantile con-
ditions, a secondary trauma comes to represent the first as the threat
of being replaced by another. The encounter with the sibling (or lateral
figure) draws the emerging subject toward this “black hole,” threatening
 S I S T E R S AT T H E G AT E 235

a return to obliteration; murderousness is “a response to the danger of

annihilation” (Mitchell 2003, 43). Thus we find that the “non-reproductive
nature of sibling sexual fantasy is bound up with the importance of mur-
derousness in relation to love” (Mitchell 2003, 41).
But how does serial differentiation—articulated through gender-
ing that is nonreproductive—stave off fundamental murderousness—
articulated as the hatred of that which threatens the singularity of the
subject? How might we theorize the regulation of lateral relations prior
to the Oedipus prohibition and castration complex (with their inaugu-
ration of vertical sexual difference)? This brings us to the third con-
clusion Mitchell draws from lateral relations: that there is “a lateral
sexual taboo” that is “bound up with violence” (Mitchell 2003, 27).
This taboo is figured by Mitchell as a “law of the mother,” that which
regulates serial differentiation to resolve the problem of fundamental
murderousness (Mitchell 2003, 44). Gender becomes a tool for such dif-
ferentiation. Gender figures an “absence” that is the loss of “possibility
of giving birth to replications of themselves—this is the “absence” that
for both must be represented; it does not distinguish them from each
other, but only from their mother” (Mitchell 2003, 26–27). Figuring
this “absence” requires the mother, whose capacity for reproduction dif-
ferentiates her from serial progeny and allows them to establish terms
through which “difference” may be represented. For “both” (or all)
lateral subjects must be represented. The mother becomes that against
which serial representation emerges, that which governs a representa-
tional system prior to the symbolic order that figures “sexual differ-
ence” as the void/vortex. The mother’s law is “a law that differentiates
generationally as to who it is that can have babies and who it is that can-
not. It is also a law that introduces seriality laterally among her children”
(Mitchell 2003, 52).
Mitchell’s account differentiates the lawgiving mother from the “prim-
itive mother and the lawgiving father” (Mitchell 2003, 51) of object-
relations and Freudian psychoanalytic theory respectively. Mitchell’s
reconsideration of gender, violence, and prohibition draws attention to the
differential function of representation along lateral and vertical axes. This
returns to the point with which this section opened: how psychoanalysis
negotiates an alleged void, or “vortex” in Mitchell’s terms, at its heart.
Mitchell names the void/vortex neonatal helplessness, which “attracts
things to it” into formations of violence and love that threaten to extin-
guish the subject unless is can find ways to represent these “things” or to
represent absence as a thing. The subject’s route through murderousness,
serial differentiation, nonreproductive gendering, and ultimately sexual
difference becomes a process of representation. At one key point along
236 GILLIAN HARKINS

this route, “sibling sexuality and murderousness are, then, contiguous”

(Mitchell 2003, 38). This contiguity must resolve through the represen-
tation of seriality. As Mitchell explains, “social groups not constructed
along the apparent binary of reproduction rely on managing the violence
unleashed by the trauma of threatened replication; representing seriality
is crucial” (Mitchell 2003, 31). Representation precludes the eruption of
violence, particularly lateral murderousness, even as it promotes gendered
difference and nonreproductive modes of sexuality. And the “lawgiving
mother” provides the figure for a law of serial representation, that which
precedes symbolic entrance into a system of representation characterized
by sexual difference.

Mean Girls
It is unclear to me whether Mitchell ultimately thinks lateral relations
are fundamental and merely revealed by changes in historical condition,
or whether lateral relations are themselves historically produced and
therefore subject to displacement. In other words, are lateral relations
an ontological a-priori or are they historically contingent and variable
not only in their representation but in their presence? Is the lawgiving
mother produced or revealed by the representability of sibling relations
in the later twentieth century? Should we think of the lawgiving mother
as akin to Lot’s wife, one historical figure reified facing the void/vortex,
frozen into a pillar of salt for her children? Or is she the equivalent of the
sovereign authority Lot’s wife was banned from seeing in action, mak-
ing Lot’s wife into yet another daughter in this scenario (as wife to Lot,
representing a serial reproductivity that includes her own daughters)? Is
the crisis in the story that Lot’s wife faced the void/vortex and failed to
induce serial differentiation in her children, leaving them equivalent to
her in their reproductive fantasies and therefore prone to vertical incest?
How might we situate Mitchell’s account of sibling relations and serial
representation in its historical moment and across other examples?
Mitchell provides some clues about the answer to these questions
in her own reading of Freud’s figuration of the “death drive.” Freud
arrived at his theory of the death drive only in his late writings, begin-
ning in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and Mitchell suggests that even
this late account is flawed due to its suppression of “the importance of
siblings” (Mitchell 2003, 35). Once we focus on “sibling murderous-
ness,” the death drive can be seen as a representation of the “psychic
role of ‘death’ ” rather than as a “drive towards annihilation” (Mitchell
2003, 35). Mitchell suggests that Freud uses “death” to represent the
void/vortex she elsewhere describes as “human neo-natal helplessness”
 S I S T E R S AT T H E G AT E 237

(Mitchell 2003, 42). Where Freud sees a drive toward annihilation that
he labels “death,” Mitchell sees the representation of death as “inorganic”
stasis (Mitchell 2003, 42) over and against representation as a process or
iteration, both in its performance (the subject survives by constituting
itself and others as figures of difference) and its specific figures (trans-
figuring hate into love, organic vulnerability into sustainable life forms).
Thus “loving one’s sibling like oneself is neither exactly narcissism nor
object-love. It is narcissism transmuted by a hatred that has been over-
come” (Mitchell 2003, 36). This re-reading of the death drive as a drive
to represent depends upon the lawgiving mother, whose failure might be
characterized as a “neglect” (Mitchell 2003, 53) that leads to “a failure of
repression” (Mitchell 2003, 36) and a return of lateral violence and sexu-
ality. This leads Mitchell to align her theory with historical observations
such as “sibling abuse in the West occurs in the context of inadequate
parental supervision and concern” (Mitchell 2003, 53), or that “in war,
both peer-group promiscuity and the rape of same-age enemy women
testify to a regression to the prevalence of sexuality between children in
childhood” (Mitchell 2003, 21).
I propose we follow Mitchell’s lead and take Mitchell’s “lawgiving
mother” as another historical figure, a catachresis before the void/vortex,
in order to explore the ramifications of this figure for treating lateral
relations in recent formations. While Mitchell seems to use violence and
aggression as signs of the law of the mother’s failure, she is very care-
ful to say that the actual mother does not bear responsibility for resur-
gent violence and aggression. There is an association in her formulations
between maternal absence and neglect with unregulated murderousness,
but it is not necessarily the absence of the mother’s law that precipitates
the problem. Instead, she asks, how we might understand violence as
a failure of allowing for lateral regulation on its own terms, without a
lawgiving mother? How might we think about a society in which lateral
regulation operated without that vertical axis? Or, as Mitchell queries,
“Is this external operation of rules and regulations necessary because
our cultural conditions do not allow for their internalization? Where
older siblings rather than parents are the main carers of younger chil-
dren, where children are left alone in their peer groups, are prohibitions
accepted and internalized? Can siblings themselves be each other’s law-
giver?” (Mitchell 2003, 53). I take Mitchell’s questions as an opportu-
nity to think about how the lawgiving mother becomes representable in
psychoanalytic theory just as lateral relations may no longer operate in
relation to this figure. Just as Mitchell suggested in relation to earlier
models of vertical regulation, perhaps lateral relations are imminently
self-regulating in ways that psychoanalytic theory has yet to represent.
238 GILLIAN HARKINS

One might say the lawgiving mother once too present in the clinical
scene arrived in theory just when this role is dwindling socially. Evidence
for this claim might be found in the simultaneous co-emergence of the
“mean girls” phenomenon alongside the appearance of the lawgiving
mother in psychoanalysis. In 2002, Rosalind Wiseman published her
bestselling nonfiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your
Daughters Survive Cliques, Gossips, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of
Adolescence.6 The subtitle of this volume makes maternal self-help into
daughter-help. Mothers learn what might be described as daughter-
directed helping tools that yet situate the mother as a peer, like a daugh-
ter within a lateral milieu. The mother assists with navigation of the
lateral world (rather than regulation on a vertical axis). Here we learn
terms such as “relational aggression” and other modes of peer group
gendering and sexuality fundamentally linked to aggressivity. Tina Fey
wrote the screenplay for the 2004 film Mean Girls (dir. Mark Waters)
based on this book, which became part of a broader cultural phenom-
enon in which the phrase “mean girls” came to represent lateral gendered
formations articulated through aggression and nonvertical/nonsexual-
difference-based sexuality.7
“Mean girls” seems to represent the cultural passing of the “lawgiving
mother” precisely when Mitchell can theorize it. The lawgiving mother
suddenly appears in the clinical scene through its representation in theory;
where she disappears is in the nonpsychoanalytic scenes of “self-help” or
serial representations of mothers-turned-friends. “Mean girls” articulates
a lateral relation but does so in ways that dismantle the vertical axis,
such that mothers and daughters may both participate as “mean girls”
(or their targets) in new fields of sexuality and aggression. While this has
become a stock feature of much recent popular culture, here I will use
Halley Feiffer’s 2013 play How to Make Friends and Kill Them as a quick
example of the contemporary “representation” of lateral relations among
girls in the absence of a lawgiving mother. How to Make Friends and Kill
Them focuses on the relations among three characters, Ada, Sam, and
Dorrie, as their lives change (and remain the same) across three tempo-
ral settings: childhood, teenage, and young adulthood. The play begins
in childhood, where sisters Ada and Sam have been “left to their own
devices by their alcoholic mother,” according to the play synopsis offered
by Rattlesnake Theater.8 The mother never appears on stage, although
Ada comes to stand in the place of the mother as she sways drunkenly
through the final young adult sequence of the play. During the opening
“Childhood” sequence, the audience is introduced to Ada and Sam in a
kitchen setting, where Sam repeats the phrase “you’re so pretty” to Ada
while she brushes her hair and asks for hugs. Ada is alternately preening
 S I S T E R S AT T H E G AT E 239

and enraged at the subservient Sam, whom she calls “gay” whenever
Sam expresses longing for physical contact. Eventually Dorrie enters the
scene, a classmate from school whose physical and psychological abjec-
tion triangulates the aggressivity and desire otherwise tightly routed
between Ada and Sam.
The play’s seemingly domestic setting is belied by the heightened styl-
ization of dialogue and performance, which earns How to Make Friends its
description as “surrealist” or “theater of the absurd” in various reviews.
The actors deliver lines with an intensity of affect far in excess of natural-
ist expectations, while their physical movements vacillate between the
outsized and the miniaturized in a tempo not entirely tuned to the dia-
logue. Key phrases and gestures are repeated from childhood to teenage
to young adulthood, and the characters seem to slip in and out of time
as they attempt to represent their relations to themselves and each other.
“It’s never weird with us, is it?” one sister asks the other, while love and
hate ripple across their bodies and voices. Neil Genzlinger’s New York
Times theater review situates the play directly in the “mean-girl genre,”
in which the characters find “ways to fill each other up and to tear each
other down” (New York Times 2013). Ultimately the character’s attempts
to identify with and differentiate from each other drive toward death.
Dorrie enters not as lawgiving mother, but as serial nonsibling through
whom Ada and Sam will represent their difference from and desire for
each other. By the time they have moved from childhood to teenage to
young adulthood, murderous aggressivity will win out over lateral sexu-
ality: Sam will kiss Ada passionately while she is semi-unconscious from
alcohol; Ada will push Sam down the stairs and leave her paralyzed; and
Sam will strangle Dorrie to prove that only she and Ada belong in their
childhood home.
The title of the play reminds us of the drive toward death implied in
lateral relations. Riffing on How to Win Friends and Influence People
(Carnegie1936) and How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (Tressler
2001), the play suggests that the seeming opposites “influence” and
“alienate” are resolved when mean girls kill. To sway or repulse offer
two possible modes of social agency; killing is an antisocial agency that
resolves tensions between love and hate by annihilating those serial
others marked “friends.” This is self-help meets serial killer genre. In the
serial killer genre, the presence of doubles inevitably predicts violence to
come. The doppelganger represents the need for serial violence in order
to restore identity to the one.9 In the play’s encounter between self-help
and serial killing, the childhood refusal to make “vertical” adjustments
over time necessitates the representation of “mean girls.” In this avant-
garde production, the mean girl genre is stylized into representability
240 GILLIAN HARKINS

in ways that reveal the void or vortex of the lawgiving mother. This
representation marks the loss of lawgiving motherhood as an unrec-
ognized presence, representing it as the absence that draws things to it
until self-help becomes serial killing. Thus the play represents Mitchell’s
suggestion that “sibling sexuality ranges from sex with someone whom
one experiences as the same, to sex with someone whose difference
one wants to obliterate” (Mitchell 2003, 39). But here the mean girl
genre reveals as well the specific gendering of lateral sexuality. Citing
Mitchell again: “sibling relations prioritize experiences such as the fear
of annihilation, a fear associated with girls, in contrast to the male fear
of castration” (Mitchell 2003, 3–4). Girls become the representation
of siblings as such; when sisters go unregulated, mean girls will drive
onwards toward death.
The “mean girls” phenomenon provides one way to explore how the
absence of a lawgiving mother leads to the presence of aggressivity and
lateral sexuality. How to Make Friends and Then Kill Them seems to
represent this logic as it unfolds across childhood, teenage, and young
adulthood. But this raises additional questions about how Mitchell’s own
historicization works. It might be said that “mean girl” phenomena has
existed far longer than its early 2000s depiction as itself a kind of regula-
tory principle governing the representation and circulation of lateral gen-
der relations. Certainly North American high school relations had been
depicted as riddled with enmity and aggression since the 1950s, and the
specific genre now associated with “mean girls” was already articulated
in its current form in 1980s teen movies such as Pretty in Pink (Howard
Deutch 1986) or Heathers (Michael Lehmann 1988). Perhaps the emer-
gence of “mean girls” as representation—as recognizable genre—fits
with Mitchell’s own suggestion that what is present cannot be repre-
sented, and what is represented no longer appears as presence. The phe-
nomenon of “mean girls” may not represent the absence of the lawgiving
mother so much as the presence of new mechanisms of lateral regulation.
In other words, perhaps the presence of mean girls has itself become rep-
resentation just as the regulatory principle of gendered cruelty and erotic
violence gives way to other gendered modes and erotic mechanisms orga-
nizing lateral relationship.

Keeping House
In these final sections I would like to consider what happens if we do
not presume that the absence of a lawgiving mother will reveal a fun-
damental aggressivity of girlhood. What if the representation of “mean
girls” does indicate that some other forms of regulation are currently
 S I S T E R S AT T H E G AT E 241

organizing relations between lateral and vertical axes? What kinds of

traumatic vulnerability might be made visible and allowed to live, rather
than be marked by death, if we read the absence of the lawgiving mother
as yielding alternative arrangements of differentiation and eroticism?
I will refer to two final sample texts, Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping
(1980) and James Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch
(1998), to consider how the absence of the lawgiving mother might lead
to something other than “mean girls” and its gendering toward death.
This takes us back to Lot’s wife and daughters once again, looking back
upon the void whose presence can only be represented as “vortex” draw-
ing toward itself figures of Divine sovereignty, paternal law, maternal
law, and mean girls. But here I will ask how we see the daughters emerge
as sisters (including of their own daughters) just as “Lot’s wife” becomes
a catachrestic figure of the void that lies beyond her. Lot’s wife turned
to a pillar of salt when she faced the void, became reified in place, while
the daughters were set in vertical motion (toward incestuous reproduc-
tion). But in Housekeeping and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the seeming
absence of the mother is presented as a catachresis only in specific modes
of representation. When representation leads to reification, mothers and
daughters find themselves moving along pre-set paths of the lateral and
vertical axis. In place of representation as reification, however, these
two texts propose alternative modes that set subjects moving along
alternate paths.
Housekeeping places us firmly in a world of sisters. In the opening
sentences of the novel we are introduced to the first person narrator,
Ruth, as she is situated in female kinship: “My name is Ruth. I grew
up with my younger sister, Lucille, under the care of my grandmother,
Mrs. Sylvia Foster, and when she died, of her sisters-in-law, Misses Lily
and Nona Foster, and when they fled, of her daughter, Mrs. Sylvia
Fisher” (Robinson 1980, 3). While the vertical axis is represented in
words such as “daughter” and “grandmother,” these positions will sub-
sequently be organized along a lateral axis where all women are “sisters.”
In Housekeeping Mitchell’s questions—“where older siblings rather than
parents are the main carers of younger children, where children are left
alone in their peer groups, are prohibitions accepted and internalized?
Can siblings themselves be each other’s lawgiver?”—are answered in the
affirmative. Housekeeping is not a “mean girls” text but rather a text of
lateral regulation, although like the mean girls phenomenon it trans-
forms the lateral to include what might once have been represented as
vertical relations. But in so doing it goes beyond the lateral/vertical dyad
to represent alternative structures for engendering difference in the late
twentieth century.
242 GILLIAN HARKINS

As the title suggests, the novel is concerned with the historical

demands of housekeeping.10 The walls of the house are more impor-
tant boundaries than any vertical or lateral axis to be represented within
it. The house in Fingerbone is first linked to a vertical, even patriar-
chal, narrative of descent: “Through all these generations of elders we
lived in one house, my grandmother’s house, built for her by her hus-
band, Edmund Foster, an employee of the railroad, who escaped this
world years before I entered it” (Robinson 1980, 3). It is the grand-
mother’s house, her inheritance, from a marriage built through the labor
of Manifest Destiny’s transcontinental railroads. The “husband” who
escaped “this world” labored to build it, establishing a homestead at
Fingerbone where the rails took colonial westward expansion. He moved
from a “house dug out of the ground” in the “Middle West” (Robinson
1980, 3), “with windows just at earth level and just at eye level, so that
from without, the house was a mere mound, no more a human strong-
hold than a grave, and from within, the perfect horizontality of the world
in that place foreshortened the view so severely that the horizon seemed
to circumscribe the sod house and nothing more” (Robinson 1980, 3).
This house that is part of the earth, both and neither stronghold or grave,
provides a “perfect” lateral view that demonstrates the limits of a purely
lateral perspective. The grandfather works on the railroad to fulfill fan-
tasies of exotic voyage spurred by “travel literature” on the mountains of
Africa, the Alps, the Andes, the Himalayas, the Rockies, and Fujiyama
(Robinson 1980, 4). Serial difference here is introduced by moving from
a lateral house incorporated into Mid-Western flats to a vertical movement
to mountain heights.
But this patriarchal lineage of householding seems to give way rather
quickly to the “primitive” and then the “lawgiving” mother. The narra-
tor’s grandfather dies in a train accident without witnesses (“no one saw
it happen”), a death of the father that could be read as the first “void”
as the train disappeared into a lake (Robinson 1980, 6). The lake in this
reading would appear as the “primitive mother,” a body whose “deeps”
can be searched for signs of the lost father but which is itself “smoth-
ered and nameless and altogether black” (Robinson 1980, 9). The actual
mother remains in the Fingerbone house, however, where her daughters
Molly, Helen and Sylvie “pressed her and touched her as if she had just
returned after an absence. Not because they were afraid she would van-
ish as their father had done, but because his sudden vanishing had made
them aware of her” (Robinson 1980, 12). The mother becomes present
to them in the wake of an absence she does not represent. As a result,
she becomes a nearly perfect “lawgiving mother”: “her love for them
was utter and equal, her government of them generous and absolute”
 S I S T E R S AT T H E G AT E 243

(Robinson 1980, 19). She pays attention to how her daughters [or the
“girls” (Robinson 1980, 10)] are differentiated by “customs and habits”:
“Sylvie took her coffee with two lumps of sugar, Helen liked her toast
dark, and Molly took hers without butter” (Robinson 1980, 15). She
represents her own difference from them on “purpose, to be what she
seemed to be so that her children would never be startled or surprised,
and to take on all the postures and vestments of matron, to differentiate
her life from theirs, so that her children would never feel intruded upon”
(Robinson 1980, 19). She represents herself as differentiated mother to
allow her children to self-differentiate and move forward into “respect-
able” (Robinson 1980, 10) lateral and vertical relations.
And yet this perfect lawgiving differentiation yields daughters who
disappear. Molly goes on missionary work in China; Helen (Ruth’s
mother) ultimately kills herself in the same lake that claimed her father;
and Sylvie travels the continent as an itinerant. Helen and Sylvie both
marry, but neither retain their husbands and Helen returns her children
to Fingerbone only to end her own life. Ruth and Lucille are raised by
their grandmother for five years before she dies and leaves them with her
sisters-in-law Nona and Lily, who leave them in turn with their mother’s
sister Sylvie, who returns to Fingerbone to live with in the house with
them. Despite the perfect telos of Housekeeping’s origin story—from
(colonial) patriarchal law to primitive mother to lawgiving mother—
latera l sisterhood does not transition successfully into lateral hetero-
sexual coupling and vertical mothering. Marriages are entered into and
exited without significance. A seemingly new generation of female sib-
lings are returned to their point of generational departure and reconsti-
tuted among existing female sibling relations (the various sisters). And
the house remains.
At this point in the story the house becomes the central regulatory
condition for relationality. “We and the house were Sylvie’s” (Robinson
1980, 59), Ruth remarks. Sylvie’s itinerant lifestyle quickly takes over the
house, which becomes filled with dirt and debris. While “Sylvie talked
a great deal about housekeeping” (Robinson 1980, 85), she “considered
accumulation to be the essence of housekeeping, and because she con-
sidered the hoarding of worthless things to be proof of a particularly
scrupulous thrift” (Robinson 1980, 180). Ruth comes to accept Sylvie’s
unique approach to bourgeois respectability, but Lucille demands more
normative accumulation and “hated everything that had to do with
transience” (Robinson 1980, 103). Lucille takes on the project of self-
improvement as a “tense and passionate campaign to naturalize herself
to” the normal world (Robinson 1980, 95), giving up on household
respectability and focusing instead on creating proper lateral relations
244 GILLIAN HARKINS

with peers. Lucille dresses them up, saying “That’s Sylvie’s house now”
and “We have to improve ourselves!” (Robinson 1980, 123) before she
ultimately gives up on Ruth and leaves to move in with “Miss Royce, the
Home Economics teacher” (Robinson 1980, 140). Ultimately Lucille
leaves the house behind to affirm that her “loyalties were with the other
world” (Robinson 1980, 95), while Sylvie and Ruth end the novel by
burning the house down and taking flight across the bridge (over the
lake that claimed both grandfather and mother).
The house itself, and the demand to make it a home, becomes the
“neonatal trauma” around which the novel is built. But in this instance it
is a trauma of natality. Hannah Arendt (1958) uses “natality” as a figure
for both birth and action, culling the nuances of labor from its conflation
with commodification in the wage. Here “women’s work” is the work
of home making and housekeeping, including the making and keeping
of kin and the management of proper vertical and lateral axes. By this
measurement, the clan is a spectacular failure. But no specific law of the
mother is to blame. Instead, the novel returns to “natality” as its vortex,
its first trauma, and it figures the movement of serial representation from
there. The conflation of labor with the wage—outside the home—is a
“presence” that creates the fundamental trauma of natality. The labor
of birth and work, of “creation,” is what therefore must be represented
in order for serial differentiation to secure possibilities for movement
and change. Here the house represents the function Mitchell attributes
to the “lawgiving mother.” It is the house, its spatial relations of ceiling
and floor, inside and outside, dirt and cleanliness, which inaugurates
serial differentiation and its representation in gendered forms. What was
demanded as “women’s work” becomes a process of serial differentia-
tion represented through various modes of making life. In place of an
aggressive drive toward death, gendering lateral relations takes shape as
a movement toward life.
This is made explicit when Ruth encounters a group of “children” in
the woods. After Lucille leaves their home, Sylvie takes Ruth into the
woods and introduces her to lateral relations very different from those
coveted by Lucille. Sylvie explains that people live in the woods, “and
now and then I’m sure there are children around me” (Robinson 1980,
148). Sylvie disappears for an extended period of time while a cold and
hungry Ruth is left outdoors to “watch for the children” (Robinson
1980, 151). As she waits to see the children, Ruth describes the woods
as follows: “Imagine a Carthage sown with salt, and all the sowers gone,
and the seeds lain however long in the earth, till there rose finally in
vegetable profusion leaves and trees of rime and brine” (Robinson 1980,
152). Here the woods are a “vegetable profusion” grown from seeds
 S I S T E R S AT T H E G AT E 245

of salt long ago sown as the sign of imperial conquest.11 The woods
become in Ruth’s mind a profusion of organic matter growing from
the remains of human civilization, itself the consequence of imperial
conflicts and geographies of expansion. The “rime and brine” of the
present are genealogical; seeds of salt grow icy “trees” that neither sig-
nify families (vehicle) nor potential material (tenor) from which to build
proper houses (ground).
It is this process of representation, the potentiality of the woods to
enable Ruth to imagine “children” outside of either families or houses,
that leads into her lengthy meditation on Lot’s wife in the wilderness:

If there had been snow I would have made a statue, a woman to stand
along the path, among the trees. The children would have come close,
to look at her. Lot’s wife was salt and barren, because she was full
of loss and mourning, and looked back. But here rare flowers would
gleam in her hair, and on her breast, and in her hands, and there would
be children all around her, to love and marvel at her for her beauty, and
to laugh at her extravagant adornments, as if they had set the flowers
in her hair and thrown down all the flowers at her feet, and they would
forgive her, eagerly and lavishly, for turning away, though she never
asked to be forgiven. Though her hands were ice and did not touch
them, she would be more than mother to them, she so calm, so still,
and they such wild and orphan things. (Robinson 1980, 153)

Ruth imagines her own capacity to create outside the confines of the
household. “If there had been snow”: a counterfactual from which is
born Ruth’s natal power. Ruth would have made a statue of a woman
whose grief froze her looking into the past, but who now appears cov-
ered in a mantle of flowers that draw the children to her. Lot’s wife
would have no longer been barren, but would instead have many children
around her to “love and marvel” at her. And the children in turn would
imagine that it was their attention, their own natal power, which made
her blossom. Lot’s wife once turned to salt when she turned away from
her own daughters; here the wild orphan children would forgive her “for
turning away” though she does not ask it, and would welcome her still
icy hands as calming, not indifferent.
Ruth imagines the statue in a place she thinks would draw children,
where the “gleaming water spilled to the tips of branches” and “frost
at the foot of each tree” would make them return “to see it again”
(Robinson 1980, 153). This is not a death drive toward an inorganic
state, but a longing to see figures that would represent an otherwise
“barren” loss. The children’s compulsion to repeat, as Ruth imagines
it, is a desire to create life, from root to branch. So she places a statue of
246 GILLIAN HARKINS

the lawgiving mother where there had been only loss, only a past that
has turned away. This ideal figure is a calm detached mother who asks
for nothing and thereby becomes “more than mother.” Ruth longs to be
that lawgiving mother to the wild orphan children, but she also imagines
them along a lateral plane, as peers who might share her consciousness
(as she once did with Lucille). Thus she imagines the “consciousness”
that she senses in the woods as “persistent and teasing and ungentle, the
way half-wild, lonely children are” (Robinson 1980, 154). This creates
an impossible desire: “I knew that if I turned however quickly to look
behind me the consciousness behind me would not still be there, and
would only come closer when I turned away again” (Robinson 1980,
154). Ruth is both Lot’s wife and the children she left behind. She can-
not look back, to genealogy or the home, nor can she give up the desire
to create figures that represent difference.
“If there had been snow,” Lot’s wife would have become the lawgiving
mother.
But there is not snow. Instead there is salt, where Lot’s wife becomes
part of the growth of salty rime branches from the seeds of a Carthage
past. Ruth joins the children she imagines in this alternative family tree,
where the drive to represent the void constitutes a lateral natality that
leads away from the neonatal trauma of the house. “For need can blos-
som into all the compensation it requires,” we are told. “To crave and to
have are as like as a thing and its shadow” (Robinson 1980, 152). Such a
“blossoming” is distinct from a drive toward death, death as the repre-
sentation of the void/vortex, or the house as a substitute for death. Here
“blossoming” is organic growth from “need” that makes the capacity
to create—to figure and materialize figuration in new grounds—into
its own “compensation.” Craving becomes “like” a “thing”; it fig-
ures “thing” as if a presence even as it makes all “having” into mere
“shadow.” Thus need enables the making of likenesses that masquerade
as things, need “blossoms” into craving and makes “having” into the
mere ghosts of things, into “shadows.” The children in the woods are
such “blossoms” on this salty family tree; neither thing nor shadow,
they are the likenesses through which natal trauma is transfigured into
a livable life.
The imaginary encounter with these children in the woods helps clarify
the lateral relations among the “sisters,” Sylvia, Ruth, and Lucille. Once
the “we” of Lucille and Ruth was “almost as a single consciousness”
(Robinson 1980, 98), but Lucille has decided they need other friends
and shifted her “loyalties [to] the other world” (Robinson 1980, 95).12
After her encounter with the children in the woods, Ruth realizes that
“having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house.
 S I S T E R S AT T H E G AT E 247

Those outside can watch you if they want, but you need not see them”
(Robinson 1980, 154). But without Lucille, she describes herself as
“turned out of house” (ibid.): “Now there was neither threshold nor
sill between me and these cold, solitary children who almost breathed
against my neck and almost touched my hair” (ibid.). At first Ruth feels
herself abandoned, but identifying with the “consciousness” of the serial
children who are not bothered by being cast out, she decides, “it is better
to have nothing” (Robinson 1980, 159). Having “nothing” is however
having Sylvie: Sylvie says Ruth is “like another sister to me” (Robinson
1980, 182); Ruth thinks “Sylvie and I (I think that night we were almost
a single person)” (Robinson 1980, 209). To crave is to make likeness into
things, to have likeness as the shadow that is oneself.
The police and neighbors worry about this blurring of the lateral
and vertical axes, concerned that Sylvie is “making a transient” of Ruth
by riding a freight car (Robinson 1980, 177). “When did I become so
unlike other people?” (Robinson 1980, 214), Ruth wonders after the two
burn down the house and walk across the bridge to leave town. She lists
the trauma of natality—her conception and desertion by her mother—
as normal trauma that should in fact make her like other people. Birth
and abandonment by the mother are normal traumas that make people
into serial replicas of familiar difference. Instead Ruth opines, “I believe
it was the crossing of the bridge that changed me finally” (Robinson
1980, 215). In the novel gender differentiation ultimately takes place
through stasis and movement; there are those who keep house, and
those who move through open space. Ruth and Sylvie become unlike
others by being “cast out to wander, and there was an end to house-
keeping” (Robinson 1980, 209). But the novel also situates this gen-
dering as historically and socially specific. It is not gendering as such,
but late twentieth-century gendering for whiteness as a social formation
attached to the novel’s colonial genealogy of “manifest domesticity”
(Kaplan 2005). The capacity to use imagination to create difference, to
usurp the role of the lawgiving mother and constitute new formations
of likeness, emerges from the particular natal trauma of householding
on the Western front.

All Sewn Up
Hedwig and the Angry Inch completes this meditation with the creative
destruction of “rock-n-roll” as gender performance.13 The show opens
with Yitzhak, one of Hedwig’s doubles/nemeses who is also her husband,
shouting to the audience: “Ladies and Gentlemen, whether you like it or
not . . . Hedwig!”14 In the opening line of the rock opera, Yitzhak invokes
248 GILLIAN HARKINS

one of the most famous hailings of sexual difference to introduce the star
of the show-within-a-show, the transgender performer Hedwig. But here
Lacan’s children are not riding a train that promised to arrive at its sexu-
ally differentiated destinations, “Ladies” and “Gentlemen,” but rather
are departing from those stations to find their way toward a new lateral
platform (Lacan 1957, 146–178). Hedwig’s performance of celebrity is a
constant insistence on singularity, even as the show itself is constituted
on the principle of doublings that are one. From “The Origins of Love,”
a retelling of Plato’s tale of how humans were driven into three types by
Zeus, to the doubling of Yitzhak and Hedwig (crossing and prohibiting
genders and denying room enough for two on the stage), to the erotic
entanglement of Hedwig and Tommy Gnosis, both played by a single
actor on stage but by two different actors in the film adaptation.15 The
stage show unfolds as an on-stage monologue delivered by Hedwig, who
is playing a show in a minor venue while Tommy Gnosis, her former lover
and now wildly successful protégé, performs in a major venue nearby. In
the stage production the same actor, as Hedwig, performs all the roles
save that of Yitzhak and the on-stage band members. In the film produc-
tion, one actor performs adult Hansel/Hedwig while all other existing
roles, and new additional roles, are embodied in separate actors. Thus
the seriality performed in and as “Hedwig” in the stage version is dis-
placed literally onto the screen, as a representation of serial embodied
difference.
This process of representing seriality—as one on stage, as multiple on
screen—problematizes the dynamics of absence/presence embedded in
accounts of the lawgiving mother and “neonatal trauma” thus far. The
allegedly physical borders of sexual difference are here reconstituted as
the spatial imaginaries of serial representability. Early on in the show
Hedwig tells the story of her youth in East Berlin, when she was a young
“girlyboy” called “Hansel” who loved to listen to rock music on the
radio (“Midnight Radio”). When the young adult Hansel is mistaken
for a young girl by US soldier Luther Robinson, whose offer of candy
as seduction implies a vertical relation, Hansel’s mother inaugurates a
new lateral relationship between them by providing Hansel with her own
identity: Hedwig. The mother provides a name, passport, and “sex” by
arranging the operation to make Hansel Hedwig. This will enable Luther
and Hansel to flee East Berlin through marriage once Hansel “becomes”
Hedwig/a woman/the mother. In the film production, this plays out as
a visual transformation in which many characters have a role. Hansel/
Hedwig and Hedwig are two, with a passport and operation promis-
ing to make them like one. In the stage production, however, only one
performer in one costume performs these characters on stage, creating
 S I S T E R S AT T H E G AT E 249

a physical catachresis at the site of the mother: “Hedwig” the mother

is performed—at a distance, as mimicry—by “Hedwig” the performer,
who also performs “Hansel” admitting to once wearing “my mother’s
camisole” as an example of putting on “women’s clothes” before the
sex change (“Sugar Daddy”). The mother not only does not lay down
the law of difference—from herself, from serial others—but becomes the
spectacular site of indifference and identification where vertical and lat-
eral axes meet.
After a “botched” sex change, Hedwig is born with an “angry inch”
and identification not with the mother, but with the Berlin Wall (“Tear
Me Down”). Hedwig moves to Junction City, Kansas with Luther, but
is abandoned by him on the very day the Berlin Wall comes down.
Within the show, the Berlin Wall figures the “neonatal trauma” of
Hedwig’s birth, a void/vortex that sets in motion the seeming collapse
of vertical/lateral relations (“Sugar Daddy”), gendering processes of
agency (migration and movement as entrapment rather than feminist
liberation), and fall into gendered low-wage labor that demands specific
gender performances (expressed in “Wig in a Box”). If a 1980 white
feminist imaginary located the home as neonatal trauma, here the Wall
of geopolitics is written into the body as “natality.” As Hedwig shouts
to her audience in “Tear Me Down”: “Don’t you know me Kansas City?
I’m the new Berlin Wall; try and tear me down.” The song’s inter-
lude features a lengthy speech by Yitzhak, who intones: “We thought
the wall would stand forever. And now that it’s gone, we don’t know
who we are anymore. Ladies and Gentlemen, Hedwig is like that wall,
standing before you in the divide.” Yet “Tear Me Down” also reminds
its audience that “there ain’t much of a difference between a bridge and
a wall.” As bridge, Hedwig builds lateral connections among people
who “don’t know who they are anymore.” But as This Bridge Called
My Back and other women of color feminisms have argued, the labor
of being the connection is different from the labor of building connec-
tions (or that of crossing over them once they exist, as do the escapees
of Housekeeping) (Moraga and Andzaldua 1984). The neonatal trauma
of the Wall is in other words linked to a broader international, racial,
and gendered division of humanity and labor than that treated in
Housekeeping. Hedwig’s bridge connects vertical sexual difference with
intersectional gendered “differences” that expand the visible domain of
lateral or serial relations.
And so we go to Hedwig and Tommy Speck/Gnosis’ love duet
“Wicked Little Town,” performed first by Hedwig to Tommy (although
seemingly addressing herself in a small bar in the Midwest) and sec-
ond as “Reprise,” sung now by Tommy to Hedwig (although seemingly
250 GILLIAN HARKINS

addressing her through a large audience from the position of celeb-

rity). In the stage performance the characters sing “together” to the
degree that they are performed by the same actor, potentially two sides
of the same character (from “The Origins of Love”). The reference
to Lot’s wife comes in the first iteration of the song, performed dur-
ing the period when Hedwig still works as teenager Tommy Speck’s
babysitter: “The fates are vicious and they’re cruel. You learn too late
you’ve used two wishes like a fool; and then you’re someone you are
not, and Junction City ain’t the spot, remember Mrs. Lot and when she
turned around.” In an ironic resignifying of the patriarchal possessive,
“Mrs. Lot” f igures a void in the middle of a song about discovering you
find you are “someone you are not” in a place that is “not the spot.”
Finding oneself in this nonbeing nonplace, the “wicked little town” of
“Junction City,” demands that one recall “Mrs. Lot,” but not necessarily
why or to what end.
What then is “Mrs. Lot” doing here? Why does she stand at the cross-
roads where identity and location are negated? How does the potential
conflation of vertical and lateral relations between Hedwig and Tommy
tempt “fate”? If “the fates are vicious and they’re cruel,” does Lot’s
wife need to be recalled as the lawgiving mother who would give order
back through serial differentiation? Or does she represent the danger
of fighting fate, yet another lateral figure that fails to obey the law and
therefore is reified in one spot, forever? In her discussion of Lot’s wife,
Janice Haaken suggests that “the contemporary challenges to patriar-
chal authority brought about by the women’s movement require com-
plex readings of the legendary past and alternative ways of looking back”
(Haaken 1998, 7). Here I ask how “the women’s movement” relates to
a feminism that cares for genders not merely beyond (or before) sexual
difference, but also genders not serialized in relation to feminine vio-
lence and aggressivity. While Haaken’s book implicitly cautions against
“the perils of looking back,” John Cameron Mitchell’s “Wicked Little
Town” enjoins its addressee to “remember Mrs. Lot and when she turned
around” when confronted with a void in the lateral and vertical axes of
identity and sexuality.
Hedwig’s ironic modernization of “Lot’s wife” into “Mrs. Lot”
emerges from the post-1970s successes of feminist kinship reform; the
effort to liberate women from the patronymic and patriarchal system
of kinship through the universal “Ms.” makes “Mrs.” into a sardonic
remainder of legal coverture in linguistic sexism. To recall “Lot’s wife”
as “Mrs. Lot” renders her simultaneously archaic, residual, and domi-
nant, in Raymond Williams’s famous schema (Williams 1985). She
represents the archaic remnant of “traditional” marital arrangements,
 S I S T E R S AT T H E G AT E 251

the residual form of female self-making still actively chosen by many

women, and a dominant option among kinship terms freely “chosen”
by women across a range of liberal feminist positions. Thus in this con-
text the call to “remember Mrs. Lot and when she turned around”
might not refer primarily to women turned pillar of salt or men smote
(smitten?) in Sodom and Gomorrah. Instead, it might refer more point-
edly to the ways in which post-1970s feminisms remember when con-
strained by the limited “choices” in the present. When feminisms face
the past, what do they see? How do the “choices” of liberal feminism
in particular, of feminism as “choice,” constrain what appears as gender
difference and sexuality in various contexts? As “Wicked Little Town”
continues, “and when you’ve got no other choice, you know you can
follow my voice along the dark turns and noise of this wicked little
town.” It might be that having “no other choice” is what it means to
remember “Mrs. Lot.”
But perhaps “Wicked Little Town,” sung twice by two characters who
may be one, across genders as well as the line of sexual difference, might
move us slightly farther away from the vortex of neonatal trauma and its
archaic, residual and dominant representations. The stage reprise fea-
tures the actor playing Hedwig stripped down to a bare chested torso,
marked with Tommy Gnosis’s trademark ash cross, transforming into
Gnosis (or knowledge, Hedwig’s own sovereign act of naming Tommy’s
transition from “boy” into singularity/celebrity) or perhaps revealing
the sameness of the two in the body of the one (the film presents two
actors who become mirror images in an alternate or unreal space). The
reprise lyrics tell us of a “boy” who encounters serial difference beyond
sexual difference yet also beyond the paradigms of “gender” articulated
through the mean girl genre: “Forgive me, For I did not know. ‘cause
I was just a boy and you were so much more; than any god could ever
plan, more than a woman or a man.” If remembering Mrs. Lot in the
first song becomes a call to “follow my voice” when “choice” seems lim-
ited (remembering “Mrs. Lot” as a feminist choice, indeed), the reprise
suggests that perhaps there is no Sovereign lurking to create either vio-
lence or love: “maybe there’s nothing up in the sky but air.” In place of
the Zeus myth of “The Origins of Love,” or the injunction to remember
Sodom and Gomorrah, the romantic ballads sung by and between the
same person/two people—a “boy” and “so much more”—suggest that
in the right hands the void/house/wall/bridge might become “some-
thing beautiful and new.” As Tommy Gnosis/Hedwig sings: “and now
I understand how much I took from you: That, when everything starts
breaking down, you take the pieces off the ground and show this wicked
town something beautiful and new.”
252 GILLIAN HARKINS

Notes
1. On the story’s relation to twentieth-century spectatorship, see
Martin Harries, Forgetting Lot’s Wife: On Destructive Spectatorship,
New York: Fordham University Press, 2007.
2. Siblings builds upon Mitchell’s earlier study of hysteria and siblings,
Mad Men and Medusas: Reclaiming Hysteria and the Effects of Sibling
Relations on the Human Condition, New York: Basic Books, 2000.
3. See for example Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim: Kinship between
Life and Death, New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
4. A note on my own method: While it troubles me to touch on each
of these texts only in passing, I find myself compelled to offer serial
observations rather than a single sustained reading of one sample
text in order to situate Mitchell’s psychoanalytic theory in relation to
historically specific moments of sibling representation.
5. Mitchell’s account of the social conditions of psychic life is beyond
the scope of this chapter; “social changes take generations to affect
the psychology of the unconscious ego and superego but nevertheless
they do have a place there in the end” (49).
6. On the mean girls phenomena see Jessica Ringrose, “A New Universal
Mean Girl: Examining the Discursive Construction and Social
Regulation of a New Feminine Pathology” Feminism & Psychology,
16.4 (2006): 405–424 and Emily Ryalls, “Demonizing ‘Mean Girls’
in the News: Was Pheobe Prince ‘Bullied to Death’?” Communication,
Culture & Critique, 5.3 (September 2012): 463–481.
7. Mark Water, Dir. Script Tina Fey. Mean Girls (2004). See also
Margert Talbot, “Girls Just Want to Be Mean” The New York Times
(February 22, 2002).
8. Rattlestick Playwrights Theater website: http://www.rattlestick.org
/how-to-make-friends-and-then-kill-them/.
9. The adult genre figures homoerotic desire and the impulse to anni-
hilate and replace as childlike in fixation and frequently seeking
Oedipal triangulation with an erotic other (in which they displace
the doppleganger for themselves); see Lisa Duggan, Sapphic Slashers:
Sex, Violence and American Modernity, Durham: Duke University
Press, 2001; Mark Seltzer, Serial Killers: Death and Life in America’s
Wound Culture, New York: Routledge, 1998.
10. A review of criticism on Housekeeping exceeds the scope of this essay;
relevant articles include W. Burke, “Border Crossings in Marilynne
Robinson’s Housekeeping” MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 37.4
(Winter 1991): 716–724; Christine Caver, “Nothing Left to Lose:
Housekeeping’s Strange Freedoms” American Literature 68.1 (1996):
111–137; G. Handley, “The Metaphysics of Ecology in Marilynne
Robinson’s Housekeeping” MFS: Modern Fiction Studies 55.3 (Fall
2009): 496–521; T. Hedrick, “ ‘The Perimeters of Our Wandering Are
Nowhere’: Breaching the Domestic in Housekeeping” Critique: Studies
 S I S T E R S AT T H E G AT E 253

in Contemporary Fiction 40.2 (Winter 1999): 137–151; S. Lin “Loss

and Desire: Mother–Daughter Relations in Marilynne Robinson’s
Housekeeping” Studies in Language And Literature 9 (June 2000):
203–226; T. Magagna, “Erased by Space, Ignored by History: Place
and Gender in Marilynne Robinson’s West” Western American
Literature 43.4 (Winter 2009): 345–371; J. Smyth, “Sheltered
Vagrancy in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping” Critique: Studies
In Contemporary Fiction 40.3 (Spring 1999): 281–291.
11. On the reference to Carthage see Marilynne Robinson, “My Western
Roots” Old West–New West: Centennial Essays, ed. Barbara Howard
Meldrum, Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1993.
12. Meanwhile Lucille seeks to return to the lateral view of the grandfa-
ther’s Mid-West origins and colonial dreams; “Lucille had begun to
regard other people with the calm, horizontal look of settled purpose
with which, from a slowly sinking boat, she might have regarded a
not-too-distant shore” (92).
13. Relevant criticism on Hedwig and the Angry Inch includes Steve Feffer,
“ ‘Despite all the amputations, you could dance to the rock and roll
station’: Staging Authenticity in Hedwig and the Angry Inch” Journal
of Popular Music Studies 19.3 (September 2007): 239–258; Holly M.
Sypniewski, “The Pursuit of Eros in Plato’s Symposium and Hedwig
and the Angry Inch” International Journal of the Classical Tradition,
15.4 (2008): 558–586; Cowan, Sharon. “ ‘We Walk Among You’:
Trans Identity Politics Goes to the Movies” Canadian Journal of
Women and the Law, 21.1 (2009): 91–117.
14. The stage production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch features music
and lyrics by Steven Trask and book by John Cameron Mitchell, who
also played the title role. It was originally produced in 1998 off-
Broadway at the Jane Street Theater and won Obie and Outer Circle
Critics Awards.
15. The film was written and directed by John Cameron Mitchell, music
and lyrics by Stephen Trask (2001). The cast included John Cameron
Mitchell as Hansel/Hedwig, Ben Mayer-Goodman as young Hansel,
Miriam Shor as Yitzak, and Micheal Pitt as Tommy Speck/Gnosis.
Trask performed the lead vocals of Speck/Gnosis.

References
Arendt, Hannah. 1998. The Human Condition (1958) Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Carnegie, Dale. 1998. How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), New
York: Pocket Books.
Feiffer, Halley. 2013. How to Make Friends and Then Kill Them. Directed by
Kip Fagan. Rattlestick Playwrights Theater.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction, Trans.
Robert Hurley, New York: Vintage, 1978.
254 GILLIAN HARKINS

Haaken, Janice. 1998. Pillar of Salt: Gender, Memory, and the Perils of
Looking Back, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP.
Kaplan, Amy. 2005. The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture,
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Lacan, Jacques. [1957] 1977. “The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious,
or Reason Since Freud.” Écrits: a Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London:
Tavistock, 146–178.
Mitchell, John Cameron. 1998. Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Jane Street
Theater. Film adaptation 2001, Director John Cameron Mitchell.
Mitchell, Juliet. 2003. Siblings: Sex and Violence, Cambridge, UK: Polity
Press.
Morgaga, Cherrie and Anzaldua, Gloria, eds. 1984. This Bridge Called My
Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, New York: Kitchen Table
Press.
Pateman, Carole. 1988. The Sexual Contract, Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
Robinson, Marilynne. 1980. Housekeeping, New York: Picador.
Tressler, Irving Dart. 2011. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (1937).
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Williams, Raymond. 1985. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society,
New York: Oxford University Press.
Wiseman, Rosalind. 2002. Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your
Daughters Survive Cliques, Gossips, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of
Adolescence, New York: Crown.
 Chapter 12

How Can We Live Ourselves?

An Interview with Juliet Mitchell

Preti Taneja

When sibling theory started to take shape in your mind, how far
then, did you sense the implications it could have?
That’s quite a difficult question to answer. It was such a revelation,
it didn’t really occur to me to wonder about its implications as a first
response to that revelation. I was just completely stunned—why is nobody
talking about this? First of all I thought siblings were nowhere. Then
that they are absolutely everywhere. I had re-read all the clinical material
and the historical material and anthropological material and they were
at every turn. A little while later I went to a conference on siblings, in
the European University in Florence with some historians who had been
working on cousins and affinal kinship, including siblings. Everyone was
excellent—Lee Davidoff, David Sabean. They were very welcoming but
dismissive of my naivety, my sense of revelation. Naturally, as they rightly
stressed, they had known about this all along. In a way, indeed they
had, but they hadn’t seen how staggering it was. They had been writing
about siblings and aunts and uncles and the cousinage and all of the rest
of it, the lateral was of course part of the field that they were looking
at. However, my amazement wasn’t diminished by their dismissing it. It
still seemed to me quite staggering. For them, as for most clinicians, of
course siblings were there. For me it was the size of the presence of the
sibling dimension and the size of the absence of this dimension in our
overarching thinking that staggering. So it was a revelation on the spot
of the present time, rather than the future looking how big the impli-
cations were. It was already there, huge—why wasn’t anybody making
anything of the fact that it was so huge?

I want to jump forwards in time to today, and ask you how you have
seen that theory manifest itself in the popular and in the public
256 P R E T I TA N E J A

domain rather than in psychoanalysis itself for example, books that

make a splash in popular culture, films and film theory. For exam-
ple, Andrew Solomon, who was your Ph.D. student used the struc-
ture of the intersecting vertical and horizontal to frame his highly
acclaimed book Far from the Tree.
Yes, Andrew does brilliant interviews. There is also some very interesting
and important work that has used siblings to change the field. If I say
names I am bound to forget the most important. But the type of work
I have in mind—Denis Flannery, Lee Davidoff, Ruth Perry, and already
there in my field of psychoanalysis, René Kaës. But also many others have
joined those earlier pioneers who took siblings for granted. So some are
using siblings to change their field, and others in the present are doing
something similar to what the people I met in Florence did in the past—
which is to say, it is as though they have always known about them. By
showing they have always known about siblings they are revealing that
they never have known about the implications in a way.
In psychoanalysis, siblings have always been portrayed in all the clini-
cal work. Robbie Duschinsky’s chapter on the Rat Man is a case in point.
Freud’s material is all about the Rat Man’s sisters and brothers, his case
history is about the father and the fiancé. Freud does link the fiancé to a
sister but that does not enter into the explanation that is entirely Oedipal.
In one sense this should not surprise us: Freud is demonstrating the
importance of Oedipus and nothing else is of interest. There is plenty of
material for his perspective. But once you wonder about the absence in
the theory and the presence in the practice, then the material somersaults
into view in a different way.
What is staggering again, then is the combined presence of siblings
and also the absence of the implications. That’s why I turned to the
question: ‘What is it that’s making people miss the implications of this at
the same time as working with it?’ It’s as though they still haven’t quite
seen the size of it, or the surprise of it—it becomes a question: Why have
we missed it? I know there have been times when (a) we haven’t missed
it and (b) where people like me have been astounded by it. But each
time people noticed it they were like me, saying, “Good Heavens, why
have we missed this?” And that’s been true in anthropology as well as
psychoanalysis.

In the chapter on “Siblings and Infantile Sexuality,” Daru Huppert

suggests that even though sibling studies do appear, they have little
impact on psychoanalysis as a discipline. Or that the importance of
siblings is noted and carefully described, only to be comprehended
on Oedipal terms. So that is the question really: Why is this—is it
 H O W C A N W E L I V E O U R S E LV E S ? 257

because of phallocentric nature of society? (i.e., the “brotherhood of

men” still holds such a firm grip?)
Daru was my Ph.D. student and gave my sibling lectures wonderfully
when I was on sabbatical in Cambridge. He has now trained and become
a psychoanalyst. He is absolutely right. They don’t make it the Law of
the Mother. At the same time, the Law of the Mother has got a hearing
elsewhere but not been developed with siblings.
What I am actually saying is that there is a Law of the Mother that is
as important as the Law of the Father. We have missed it on two counts.
In the field of psychoanalysis the analyst has enacted the position of the
mother giving laws, and one does not see what one enacts; but we have
also missed it because we don’t think mothers can have laws. Someone
pointed out to me that Lacan used the phrase “Law of the Mother” very
early on – a fascinating little reference which I didn’t know, but actually
what Lacan means is that it still comes under the Law of the Father,
whereas I think it is a separate law. Not what the mother says about her
relationship to the child or the child’s to her, which I emphasized in Mad
Men and Medusas, (2000)—that is there: but the key is her particular
legislation between her children, so it is on the horizontal axis. And her
threat is the threat of separation, just as in the Oedipal story the threat
is the threat of castration if one goes on having incest in one’s mind with
the mother. So there is a different threat in the Law of the Mother, which
is effective (more or less!): the threat of separation. I won’t love you if
you kill this baby. Winnicott noticed this threat of separation but didn’t
relate it to the baby, to the siblings. He calls it a “trauma of separation,”
but he does not link it to what is so deadly that is in his clinical material:
the mother is legislating between children. Her own children. In addition
I think there is an anti-woman thing in it—the mother simply isn’t that
important—she is always making reference to the Father’s Law —but her
threat of a separation from her is her own law. This has huge implications
because it’s pre-Oedipal, and it sets up as an aspect of social life that is
based on a repudiation of the family.

Which is deeply subversive . . .

. . . Yes deeply subversive . . . Both giving the mother a new status and the
children a new task.

. . . subversive of society’s understanding of women and women in

the family, which is what you talked about in Psychoanalysis and
Feminism.
That’s right yes, and before that in Women, the Longest Revolution (1966).
But I was doing something different in Psychoanalysis and Feminism,
258 P R E T I TA N E J A

I was looking at this question of why, despite all the social changes that
we do effect, equal pay, the vote etcetera still there is this extraordinary
inequality. Even when it seems that the economy, the democracy, com-
munism, socialism when, we should be getting closer to equality, we are
often two steps forward and one step backwards, or one step forwards
and two steps backwards—there is always that backwards drift, a sort of
entropy within sexual difference, and that’s what I was looking at 40 years
ago, but on the vertical axis. I wasn’t looking at the horizontal. However,
when I went back because it’s the 40th anniversary of Psychoanalysis and
Feminism and Judith Butler refers to the last chapter, I was amazed to
find how much there is on siblings in my conclusion.
In the general situation of sexism, men dominate over women. In the
specific culture of patriarchy, fathers dominate over brothers. So there is
a suppression of women and an oversight of siblings. There is the domi-
nance of the vertical. Even someone whose work is quite exceptional, and
who includes siblings and a “sibling complex” like René Kaës makes them
only Oedipal. I go back to a very successful book by Carole Pateman—
The Sexual Contract, (1988) in which she argues very effectively about
the importance of the lateral sexual contract between brothers. As indeed
does Freud in Totem and Taboo. But for both of them it is still in terms
of patriarchy, instead of seeing it in terms of fratriarchy. There is an essay
by Cynthia Cockburn saying we don’t use andrarchy and fratriarchy; if
we do they don’t have staying power. Well why don’t they have staying
power? So people are observing it all again, but not picking up on the
peculiarity of it, as a question. I mean the peculiarity of the simultaneous
overwhelming presence of siblings in our observations, and their over-
whelming absence in theory. I would now go further and ask—why don’t
we have them in the theory? That is a question in itself.

That is actually my next question. Let’s get to the silt at the bottom
of the river and disturb it a little bit, and ask why that is the case.
I don’t know that I have gone there yet. I think that it is probably part of
the “undertow,” the entropy. Primarily, the undertow belongs to sexual
difference, which is only a marker but one that falls over reproduction.
Reproduction is the vertical axis where we reproduce, like our mothers
and fathers before us. It is inter-generational, and we have to take over
from them in that they have to die and we have to take over and be life,
as it were, and give life. And I think that’s where the undertow on the
position of women and men is really experienced. Whereas I see gender
as a lateral relationship; siblings are the starting point of the horizontal
axis. The gendered sibling toddler must become a big girl or boy in the
social group it forms and finds. It is still gendered, but there is a gender
 H O W C A N W E L I V E O U R S E LV E S ? 259

distinction between the sexes that is more flexible. So I can understand

Judith Butler’s argument that things will change—they probably will
change for gender in economically privileged circumstances, but they are
not changing somewhere for the sexual difference. And of course we are
also all both. If we don’t have children it doesn’t mean we are not sexu-
ally differentiated in terms of how we live in the world. That question of
how we live in the world is to do with both—a muddle of gender and
sexual difference. It’s how we separate them analytically, and there you
find this stasis of conservatism as I spelled it out in Psychoanalysis and
Feminism, gender is maybe more as Butler is wanting it to be—that it
will change in time—for sure! Gender is more flexible because we are all
always bisexual. But something is nagging me here. Gender also is not
egalitarian between sisters and brothers. Far from it.

But really the idea that we are all bisexual, that gender can be this
much more flexible formation of kinship and formation of families
and different kinds of ways of thinking about social groups and
in time things will change—in its own way that is as frightening
and radical as the idea of what you call “the rock in the stream,”
that is always stopping us from progressing, this entropy pulling us
back—F. Scott Fitzgerald describes us as beating on, boats against
the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. Gender and sexual
difference are two radical and scary ideas for contemporary society.
Exactly. I found it scary because I remembered the conclusion to Women
the Longest Revolution. (I generally try to end my book on an up note
that gets missed because the tenor of the books is so dismal that the fact
that I look for a way out gets missed!) It’s exactly that sense of liberation,
or liberality that ends the 1966 article (the first thing on this question I
published.) In the mid-1960s with the sexual revolution sexuality seemed
the weakest link, where change would come. I looked at my 1966 hopes
in 2000 and thought, well wait a minute, this is exactly where everything
has gone pear-shaped in a terrible way—for example, the sexual exploita-
tion of women is now paramount.
Women the Longest Revolution uses the weakest link to look for the
possibility of change. That was just before, or on the cusp of the Women’s
Movement. Psychoanalysis and Feminism, which was written at the height
of second-wave feminism, argues that we have to address what is intrac-
table, what is important, is what is most intractable—as Jacqueline Rose
points out in her reply to Butler. But you’re asking a question more about
something scarier in the contemplation of the fluidity of gender.
. . . I think that people who look forward to that, they are looking
forward to a nongendered family. There have been all sorts of probably
260 P R E T I TA N E J A

small-scale utopian attempts at that and they probably worked in a way.

So is it frightening?

If you look at the way in which marriage has been made legal for
homosexual couples in some places, and yet in other parts of the
world, it is illegal, you would be killed—we have this move forwards
and the move backwards, and sexual difference seems to underpin
that fear.
Yes in the same way we can celebrate all these new reproductive technolo-
gies that liberate sexual reproduction among the rich. Also rich nations
and individuals are moving towards nonreproductive populations, and
having the poor to care for children if they have them, and the poor are
still having children in the old way. So a big divide will be rich and poor
around reproduction. You may get nongendered in the two-career fam-
ily as it used to be called, but you will still get a gender-division in the
people looking after those children. We can’t entirely escape other people
in the world—so even if the rich don’t reproduce, or marginally repro-
duce, and are nongendered, they are going to be surrounded by the rest
of the world that is gendered and in a divisive way, and reproductive in a
sexually differentiated way, and above all, highly sexually exploitative.

You have been challenged on your use of the word “trauma” in sib-
ling theory. Why do you think that resistance to the idea of it being
trauma exists?
Yes, it has been very well challenged in an extremely interesting article by
Claudia Lament; it is very good to have it raised with such intelligence
and sensibility to the whole problem. It was a question I started with
early on because another very good book by psychoanalysts preceded
my own on siblings—Vamik D. Volkan and Gabriele Ast’s Siblings in the
Unconscious and Psychopathology (1997). Sometimes they call the new
baby a “difficulty” and sometimes they call it a “trauma” for the older
child. Then I found Winnicott referring to a “separation trauma” from
the mother but not a sibling trauma, when I was already calling it a sib-
ling trauma. That seemed to legitimate calling this a trauma. The clinical
work indicated that it is traumatic. A pathological outcome will be traced
back to the pre-Oedipal experience but only a footnote will mention that
this was a time of the birth of the new baby.
It first occurred to me as a trauma because I was studying male hys-
teria. The hysteric always produces a trauma. But it’s as though they
have misplaced the trauma, or it got lost. The traumatic experience is
indicated by a crazy fear or phobia. The trauma is always something else
to what it could possibly be. The trauma in male hysteria, goes back to
 H O W C A N W E L I V E O U R S E LV E S ? 261

Charcot and others in the nineteenth century—where there had been an

accident at work, a fight in the street, for men. Psychoanalysis discovered
the accident concealed an earlier trauma that is subsequently linked to
the Oedipal castration complex. But the present trauma, the accident or
whatever, is always stressed in male hysteria, or when male hysteria was
being mooted. Then there is something violent as well as sexual in the
present-day trigger and this suggests something violent as well as sexual
with the intrinsically earlier, actual traumatic experience. The fear of his
father for Little Hans hides the fear of his mother falling pregnant, hides
the birth of his sister Hannah. In Mad Men and Medusas (2000), I spend
some time on Eisler’s tram-man that Lacan reinterpreted—behind a
road accident is a traumatic abortion, and behind that is a sibling birth.
Separation from the mother threatens to leave one as helpless as when
one was a baby. Because one has been replaced by the new baby, this
would signify death. Death may be represented by castration, but it is
experienced as annihilation under the Sibling Trauma and the Law of
the Mother that follows.
Male hysteria is the origins of psychoanalysis because it makes the
pathology generic. So I came to sibling trauma and then had to think—
am I right—is it just a difficulty or is it a trauma? And I wrote a not
entirely successful article about that, but it was my question in 2006.
Now why does it matter that it is a trauma? If it is a difficulty you
can really get over it—it has no structural effect on the psyche. If it is a
trauma it comes back every time you have another trauma. There are the
two aspects of the sibling trauma: you lose your place, your position in
the world, because another person is the baby you were yesterday—that’s
the trauma that underlies the wish that you want to get rid of them, this
person is the same as you and you want to get rid of them: you also love
them because they are yourself. The narcissism could have an incestuous
outcome. It’s a double whammy sort of trauma.
Developmentally there has to be a degree of separation from the walk-
ing, talking child from mother who is no longer completely preoccupied
with the toddler as she was when it was a baby. But Winnicott with his
enormous clinical experience with children recognized that this neces-
sary stage was traumatic. My work was to add the two traumas together
and propose that the mother also threatens a traumatic separation if the
toddler harms the baby. This, joking with a dead Lacan, I call the Law
of the Mother.
In fact, my joke is serious—I think this law stands to the horizontal
axis as the Oedipus does to the vertical axis. It is not subservient to that
law under patriarchy. I don’t know—I would think it would depend on
the social context.
262 P R E T I TA N E J A

I think it’s a law of the mother, it’s a real prohibition: “you will lose
me, I will separate from you if you do this,” and nobody wants to lose
their mother. I mean what do people cry for on the battlefield? They
need their mother, always. They can criticize their mother till the cows
come home; nobody else must do so because it is a real threat, a real
danger. There’s an earthquake—and you want your mother. But that is
not the mother of patriarchy, that’s a mother who threatened to sepa-
rate because you might have murdered, or had incest with your sibling.
After all, she did, in a sense separate, by having a sibling, who took over
your role as the baby. So it’s a threat with a possible meaning to it, just
as castration is a threat with a possible meaning to it, because women
are perceived as “already castrated” because the mother doesn’t have a
penis. Those are threats—you look at reality, and think “Oh My God,
that could happen.” This is all necessary trauma—to grow up we have
to know deep down that there are people other in the world as impor-
tant as us. As with the Oedipus complex, that can come back with any
other trauma.

Yes it’s true that on an empirical level the idea of losing one’s mother
is the great schism, in a way—it contains within it the idea of losing
oneself in the world. I’m not denigrating the idea of losing the father,
because of course that’s awful, but the idea of losing a mother, and
the betrayal that comes with that—
Yes, I think if we look at it Oedipally, the loss of father is probably also
that for the boy, and the loss of mother stays that for the girl. But if we
look just at separation from the mother in terms of the Law of the Mother,
then I think for the girl and boy it’s really terrifying to lose your mother.

Without breaking any psychoanalytic code, would you be able to

illustrate that with any examples from your practice, or more arche-
typal examples even?
Why do we obliterate what happens on the lateral relations? One reason
is psychiatry makes us see the mother ultimately as subordinate to the
father. From the small child’s perspective, the mother is huge. We are not
seeing the mother on an equal plane—a mother whom we could have
lost without anything to do with the father. I am saying that there is a
mother who we could have lost irrespective of the father, and we’re again
submerging that and assuming in the literature, for example, in Twelfth
Night, all is subordinated to the father. But actually we know empirically
that when people are crying for their mother they are not always refer-
ring to their father. What you want is a case history—well—we are all
that case history!
 H O W C A N W E L I V E O U R S E LV E S ? 263

So the resistance to the idea of trauma perhaps exists because to

think about it as trauma is perhaps too traumatic.
Yes, no one wants there to be two traumas. But it is also a rather large
claim that there is one on the vertical Oedipal, and one on the lateral
horizontal. One invokes the Law of the Father, the other produces the
Law of the Mother. So whoops wait a minute, we have two foundational
trauma—trauma that produce psychological defences. More accurately—
the laws and the threatened punishment—separation and castration, pro-
duce psychological defences. I am then going on to say these defences are
different psychological defences in the Oedipal vertical castration complex
and the lateral sibling Mother’s Law. What I am arguing has major impli-
cations, that the vertical gives us repression, in the deep unconscious,
things are repressed; and we don’t know that we ever wanted our mother
sexually, we don’t know penis envy and the castration complex and the
dread of castration, and the mark of neurosis in all of us; they come up in
an analysis. The psychological defences we use against the threat of the
Law of the Mother are different: the desires that she is prohibiting are
ones that are to do with narcissism and psychosis rather than neurosis.
The defences such as splitting, denial, foreclosure, repudiation, dissocia-
tion, and they are why, when we look at social relationships, social groups
formed by peers, and by friends and foe, all the heirs to sibling relations,
the social group that is founded on that repudiation of the family when
the separation from the mother occurs; this social group, a peer group
converts the psychotic into the normative. That’s why these groups so
easily descend into violence and craziness. Everybody has always asked
the question and theorized about why individuals are sane and groups
of the same individuals able to be crazy. I am saying: turn the question
on its head: the same individual if they are a sibling, is able to be crazy,
because still, somewhere, they are the crazy two-year-old.

This book covers a range of subjects yet it overall refrains from inves-
tigating the wider implications of sibling theory that you have articu-
lated in articles such as “The Law of the Mother: Sibling Trauma and
the Brotherhood of War.” Could you outline that thinking here?
I think that because we have seen the family largely as developing into
society, or society grown up out of the family, we haven’t seen this other
aspect of society—the repudiation of the family after the threat of separa-
tion from the mother, where she pushes the child out of the family and
into the social group. In a way this is a very positive thing, I think the
latency child is a very interesting child, a very creative child and those
childhood relationships are marvelous. I heard J. K. Rowling criticized
on a radio program for putting Harry Potter in such an elitist situation as
264 P R E T I TA N E J A

a boarding school and she said, you know, children are only interesting
at that age when they are on their own, and it was a good device to get
them away from the family. She’s absolutely right: children are fascinating
when they are first in those groups, very loving, very creative. But they
also have those first experiences of best friends and enemies, bullying.
Sibling theory effects how we look at war, and how we look at gender-
ing, as dividing between gendered girls who are not warlike, and gen-
dered males who are boys who have to become warlike. And of course
because there is fluidity—men can be pacifists and take a feminine posi-
tion, and women can equally be warlike, and commit sexual abuse and
throw bombs etc.—because there is more flexibility—but actually as
a definition, these lateral boys become warriors and these lateral girls
become nurses.
We need to think differently about society in relation to war and war
in relation to society. Put simply we always think of it as society creates
war, whereas reading through siblings and gender it is war that creates
society. It isn’t just the family and kinship, or class or race or anything
whatever that constructs society: war itself constructs society, as much
but differently from kinship. So you have kinship marriages and kinship
alliances but you also have absolutely built in a situation of war because
that is what society has been created for; war creates it.

Can you give a phenomenology of this?

You’ve got a toddler—it thinks it’s the family’s baby—it loses its position
in the family, so it wants to destroy the new baby; but it also loves that
baby, because it thinks it is its baby self. So those two emotions amount
to the desire to murder and commit incest. The mother prohibits them,
and says—effectively, or the effect of the prohibition is—if you do that
to your baby sister or brother, I won’t love you anymore. At the same
time she wants to look after the new baby, who has to be looked after, so
she says to the toddler you are the big boy now, the big girl, go and play
with your friends. And the toddler does. It gets angry with the mother
for deserting it, and walks away from the family and toddles off, and
forms a social group as a move from siblings to friends. At the same time
as the love that would have led to incest if it hadn’t been forbidden, there
is the hate that would have led to murder if it hadn’t been forbidden. So
if the love goes into friendship and into marriage and its equivalents as
a positive relationship, where does the bad part go? It goes to creating
a foe. You have best friends and you have enemies. So in that juncture
you are making a friend/foe division, which as a division will pertain
forever more. The child plays competitive games to moderate it, but the
underside of it is that it’s war. So at the same time as you are forming
 H O W C A N W E L I V E O U R S E LV E S ? 265

the positive social group, the candidates for war are also a precondition
for that social group. There has to be a social group that is disowned or
attacked, that’s where the murderousness goes. Then we bring in a gen-
der perspective and say, well, this means that gender female goes into the
“life” or positive side of the social group and become future exchange
objects in a kinship group; wives, partners etc. What happens to the boy?
He becomes the soldier.

Can sibling theory be applied to nation-states and how their power

relationships operate—blocks of power that can be seen as siblings
or cousins in a way, and then that has to be worked out against
the “other” that has been decided on—if that’s the case, then what
happens to the Law of the Mother? Does it only work at the baby
toddler level?
No not at all. It is always there. The aim of the Law of the Mother
was to stop the murder and incest between equals. An effect might be
to produce enemies, but the mother didn’t say—go off and fight, she
said—go off and play. I think you find this as a sort of current or red-
thread in the writing of someone like Virginia Woolf, where she notori-
ously said, we have to think back through our mothers. This has always
been taken only on the vertical, and as always, about presence—a line of
mothers. Woolf was abused by an older half-brother; sibling relationships
are central to her work: you think of The Waves, Between the Acts, The
Years—particularly The Years, fantastic novels about siblings and lateral
relations. Woolf’s mother died when she was 13, so I think she was prob-
ably also thinking back through the mother she had lost, that she was
separated from. This could be a factor in why Woolf won’t support war
in The Three Guineas for instance.
The Law of the Mother can be used as a reinforcement of the Law of
the Father, and to endorse boys becoming soldiers, warriors—but the
mother’s law actually says “don’t kill.” One could find some place where
you could put a wedge into it there, and say well OK let’s think about the
Mother’s Law in terms of promoting a sort of a play—it’s a bit idyllic, and
I’m being idealistic, but I think it’s a place to look and I think somewhere
like the work of Woolf is a good place to look. She had the biography
to support thinking about siblings and mothers, and the creative intel-
ligence with which to pioneer these issues.
This may be at a tangent—but why am I thinking suddenly about the
exchange between Einstein and Freud about “Why War?”—and Freud
explained his theory of the death drive as explaining war when he added
something I find very interesting. He suggested that the question we
can address is why some people don’t want war, not why most people do.
266 P R E T I TA N E J A

If we see war as a way of establishing society, then thinking about peace

has to be something we have to work for against our norms. This could
be the through the positive use of the Law of the Mother, which I think
is buried in Woolf’s reference. Freud also had a very interesting idea that
war had to do with aesthetics rather than ethics. There is even the aes-
thetic of military castles, or unfortunately drones that can be beautiful.
Why can beauty be that deadly? Because they are so close together, and
that is where the Law of the Mother could be taken. So it isn’t saying
women are more peaceful, it is saying the position could be a wedge on
the side of peace.

Daru Huppert, in Siblings and Sexuality, also talks about that irrita-
bility which is very interesting, and somehow because the sibling is
so close to oneself, a sort of mimesis almost . . .
Yes, that is very important for what I am interested in now, in my work
on intersubjectivity; that sort of mirroring of the self, as with Viola in
Twelfth Night, that you pointed out to me recently—she just is Sebastian
so who else is she, if he’s dead, where is she? It’s that mirroring which is
different from the Lacanian mirroring where the ego is constructed in
alienation. And that’s what irritability is, it is something on your skin so
to speak. It is about the minimal difference that exists between siblings:
too close is irritation.
War is always with us, so on the horizontal axis and on gender distinc-
tions, we have to struggle for peace. Because of the possibility of gender
flexibility there could be a struggle for peace. War and its gendering
brotherhoods can be horrific but it is not the same as the “undertow”
I wrote about with sexual difference in Psychoanalysis and Feminism.

Is there note of hope—that war in itself is not inevitable?

I always have two aspects to hope, in addition to a base sense of the vol-
untarism of optimism that one has anyway. One strand to hope is that if
we can get the analysis better, we can think better about something—
that is hope to me in itself. For instance, Claudia Lament’s disagreement
with me that what the toddler goes through is a difficulty, not a trauma.
It is very well argued and it forces me to think further. I have almost a
physical sense of a move forward and upward. That is far more satisfy-
ing than squabbling or even saying “Hurrah for you.” If something
is taken creatively forward in thinking, that is always hopeful in itself.
Then the second stage of hope is a more voluntaristic thing that I want
to think there is some way out of this. So I will try and find a way, even
if it is going to be 90 per cent wrong, there might be 10 per cent that
is right.
 H O W C A N W E L I V E O U R S E LV E S ? 267

Returning to Freud’s point about aesthetics, and your own early

scholarly work (you began as a lecturer in English Literature). Do
you think that creative writers have always known about siblings and
how they organize society, how sibling relationships construct how
we are in the world much longer than perhaps any other discipline?
Can you say something about the relationship between creativity and
understanding how we live in the world?
Well we can go straight to Shakespeare, can’t we? We can go straight to
Shakespeare and siblings, which is the book I am working on now, and
say “My God, he knew.” Quite what he knew we still have to discover—
but he certainly knew. It’s like Freud saying—“Gosh, Sophocles knew,”
Freud found the Oedipus complex in his patients and in himself, but
could only give it a formula, a name, through Sophocles.

What is it about creativity that allows us access to that?

The unconscious. Creativity is a shorter path to the unconscious. As
Louise Bourgeois said, it’s such a privilege to have this quicker access, to
be down there working with the unconscious. Louise Bourgeois knew all
about siblings as I wrote in 2011. Mignon Nixon introduced me to the
work of the artist and as she shows in her chapter “Minimal Difference:
On Siblings, Sex and Violence,” art got there first.

Art also lets the creator off in a way, because imagination comes
into play, and to fictionalize or to create sculpture, you don’t have
to show your workings
Absolutely, you just show the final result and you leave it to the other
person to make what they can of it as well. You can’t really direct the
reception, if you are trying too hard to direct the reception, you are try-
ing too much in the conscious field. It is also to do with—how terrible it
was when we bombed the libraries and museums in Baghdad: there was
something if possible—an excess, a supplement to the terrible violence,
a madness beyond the mad. If it is: shall we save this museum or save
this school, of course, you save the school. But there is actually some-
thing horrific about the destructiveness of the good things of civiliza-
tion. Of course if someone gave me that choice I would save the children,
obviously, but what a horrendous choice, because you are going to the
heart of something that is the best about humanity. So that even if you
know it’s a drone that has been put in a museum, it has been put there
for its aesthetic quality, not for its destructive quality.

There is something really exciting about this theory as well as it

being so shocking and dangerous to the status quo. In his chapter
268 P R E T I TA N E J A

“Hysteria between Big Brother and Patriarchy,” Paul Verhaeghe

states that patriarchal society is shifting towards a society of siblings,
where the horizontal level is far more important than the vertical
one, and your theory might prove even more revolutionary than you
yourself thought. What can you say to this? Can sibling theory be
on a par with or even transcend the Oedipal model?
I don’t think I thought my theory was revolutionary—it opened some
revolutionary doors—it’s a different thing from somebody having a revo-
lutionary theory like Einstein or Darwin or Marx—it’s not a revolution-
ary theory—it’s an observation with revolutionary implications. But it
opens doors to look at things in a very radical way, and so in a sense my
amazement at it was exactly about that. The implications of the presence
and absence of it felt huge. We are not of course, talking about having
or not having sisters and brothers, we are talking about looking at the
world differently.

So what about the second part of the question? If society shifts

towards different kinds of family models and we become more—
especially in Western cultures more accepting of others and more
integrated with others, through intermarriage, homosexuality,
bisexuality, and all these different structures of family, is that going
to cause a sea change, an impact on the ways psychoanalysts think
and allow the sibling theory to come into its own?
There are big social changes connected with the economy of late capital-
ism that have to do with the horizontal as opposed to the vertical, no
question about it. That is a fundamental reason why there is such an
interest in siblings I think, and why people like me think about them—
we are of our time. But then you need to think further about them to
understand what the forces were that made you think about them. You
need the theory then to understand why you saw this thing in the first
place. And what you saw isn’t completely unique, there have been other
societies with very different socioeconomic dimensions that have prob-
ably privileged siblings over parents. We now have this extraordinary lon-
gevity for example, well what about societies with very short longevity?
I mean your sister or brother is the longest relationship you have in your
life, or you may not have siblings, but you have substitutes for those sib-
lings if you don’t—you always in a sense have something that is a lateral
relationship of that sort.

But is seems absolutely crucial that psychoanalysts do recognize the

complementarity of the sibling and Oedipal theories—
Terri Apter, author of The Sister Knot (2007), was a discussant when
I gave one of the sibling talks here in Cambridge and she took it as a
 H O W C A N W E L I V E O U R S E LV E S ? 269

triumphant repudiation of Freud’s theory of the castration complex and

it isn’t that at all, not at all. People always see things as either/or when
really it is both/and.

Thinking about it laterally (!), or creatively, the either/or is the

sexual difference and the both/and is the gender. With that in mind,
I want to ask a couple of questions to do with the application of the
theory in contemporary society and contemporary life. What do you
think feminism should be doing to grasp and combat fixed notions
of sexual difference and do you think these ideas can translate to
global contexts?
My personal mantra has always been that feminism puts politics in com-
mand of what is going on. So if there is social change towards the lateral
and the horizontal, then feminism needs to be at the forefront of think-
ing of that in relation to gender, but that it doesn’t mean you discount
sexual difference. We need to be thinking about demographic change,
and thinking about that in terms of wealth and poverty and all the rest
of it . . . by putting politics in command feminism needs to think ahead of
what is going on too.
The global communications revolution is lateral and the hegemonic
social classes and nation-states of the world with their huge demographic
changes and new reproduction technologies are embedded in the vast ter-
ritories of the world where the question is: who would be a woman? Which
is about sexual difference. So we don’t want to just look at ourselves,
we want to contextualize ourselves, and look at what’s happening where
sexual difference is absolutely dominant. And everywhere where gender
distinction prevails as a primary marker falling over war and peace.

Questions of theory are very important but so much of your work is

about how the reality on the ground can be changed using theory.
Formulate the theory, get it working, and then see how it can be
applied.
I think they have to happen together. What is on the ground is the mate-
rial for thinking the theory.

Where next for the theory and for psychoanalysis’ relevance to the
conditions of our times—there is greater hysteria in patriarchy,
trauma from war, ongoing gender violence . . . ?
Well just take the concept of a war on terror. It’s a new concept of war.
There have always been terrorists but no one before has gone to war with
the world. “War on terror” could tell you more about sibling theory, and
sibling theory could tell you more about the war on terror. That seems to
me to be a matter of urgency.
270 P R E T I TA N E J A

Who should be doing that thinking? And how should it be applied?

All of us, all of us.

So that does suggest to me that there is something so groundbreak-

ing about articulating siblings into our consciousness in society—
when you look back over this book, and think about the next stage,
where are you going in your own thinking now? Where can we follow
you next?
I think everybody in a way has to work where they are. So if I was
a novelist I would be working one way, and as I am a psychoanalyst
I am working in another way because that’s what I have to work with.
Although I see my work as interdisciplinary, some of my disciplines are
subsidiary to others. So part of me is working to say look: psychoanalysis
has been very useful for feminist theory generally; understanding the
unconscious has been incredibly important, and still is, and therefore
I do think psychoanalytic theory is very important no matter how small a
minority of people in the world think so. I think the unconscious is part
of the human condition and that’s why it is important to understand it.
So I am interested in working to introduce sibling theory into psycho-
analysis, and in relation to that, using my original discipline of literature.
I do still think through literature, in fact when I started training as a
psychoanalyst many years ago I realized how much literature was part of
my bloodstream. My free associations were very literary. So I see working
on Shakespeare and siblings as contributing something to psychoanalysis
from Shakespeare, and asking Shakespeare what he can tell us. It isn’t
one way—I am not psychoanalyzing Shakespeare’s plays, not at all. I am
a psychoanalyst looking at Shakespeare, but I am looking at what he can
teach me.

Yes the exciting thing about this project is that even though psycho-
analysis might only apply to one-fifth of the world or whatever, for
good or for ill, because of colonialism, Shakespeare does [apply to
the world].
Yes, I hadn’t thought of that, quite right. Many people think Freud is
totally irrelevant, but actually what he is looking at is not irrelevant,
and his way of looking at is isn’t totally irrelevant either. I just want to
make that as a statement. And Freud stays relevant as Darwin stays rel-
evant, even though people say well, this and this wrong, Einstein stays
relevant—even Marx. Freud is of that ilk—I mean he made a majorly
important discovery and found a way of understanding it.
 H O W C A N W E L I V E O U R S E LV E S ? 271

The other task is always the oppression of women—the longest revo-

lution. I wanted to see: if we can understand more about siblings and lat-
eral relations, we can also understand more about gender inequity. After
all it was feminism that created sisterhood with all its difficulties. Anne
Oakley and I wrote in the preface to one of the books we edited how
difficult sisterhood was. I mean it felt marvelous as a women’s movement
but my God it wasn’t easy. We really don’t know much about sisterhood
where we know much more about brotherhood. There are a number of
good books but we haven’t really brought them together, and said, let’s
take this understanding of sisterhood into the politics of feminism.
Can you and I both thank Susan and Robbie for their inspiration
and very hard work in creating this book as an intellectual and political
contribution to our tasks.
JCWM
March 31, 2014
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 Contributors

Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department Comparative

Literature and the founding director of the Program of Critical Theory
at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of influen-
tial texts including Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of
Identity (Routledge, 1990), Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive
Limits of “Sex” (Routledge, 1993), Excitable Speech (Routledge, 1997),
Antigone’s Claim: Kinship between Life and Death (Columbia University
Press, 2000), Precarious Life: Powers of Violence and Mourning (2004);
Undoing Gender (2004), Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (2009).
More recently, she coauthored Is Critique Secular? (2009) and The Power
of Religion in Public Life (2011).
Robbie Duschinsky is Reader in Psychology and Society at Northumbria
University. He is currently the recipient of a Wellcome Trust New
Investigator Award, for research on the role of psychology in clinical and
social welfare interventions. With Leon Rocha, he edited Foucault, The
Family and Politics (Palgrave 2012) and has published in journals such
as the Sociological Review, the Journal of Social Policy, and the European
Journal of Social Work.
Gillian Harkins is Associate Professor of English and Adjunct
Associate Professor of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the
University of Washington, Seattle. Harkins is the author of Everybody’s
Family Romance: Reading Incest in Neoliberal America (University of
Minnesota Press, 2009) and coeditor of Special Issues of Social Text on
“Genres of Neoliberalism” with Jane Elliott (Summer 2013) and Radical
Teacher on “Teaching Inside Carceral Institutions” with Kate Drabinski
(Winter 2012). She has also published articles on twentieth and twenty-
first century literature, film and visual culture, higher education and the
prison industrial complex, and feminist, queer, and critical race studies.
Her new book-in-progress, Screening Pedophilia: Virtuality and Other
284 CONTRIBUTORS

Crimes Against Nature, examines the emergence of the “pedophile” as

virtual image in twentieth and twenty-first century literature, forensics,
and film.
Daru Huppert is a candidate at the Viennese Psychoanalytical Society.
He was head psychologist at a large care in the community centre in
Vienna. His Ph.D. on psychic traumatization of child survivors of Nazi
persecution was supervised by Juliet Mitchell. His research interests
are on Freudian psychoanalysis and the unconscious. He has taught at
Cambridge University and the Sigmund Freud University in Vienna.
Rachel Leigh teaches at the Cambridge Lehrhaus Centre for Jewish
Thought. Her research interests have focused on human psychology and
identity.
Mignon Nixon is Professor of History of Art at the Courtauld Institute
of Art, University of London, and an editor of October magazine (New
York). She has published widely on intersections of art, feminism, and
psychoanalysis. Her current book project is Sperm Bomb: Art, Feminism,
and the American War in Vietnam. In 2011–12, she and Juliet Mitchell
co-taught a seminar on art and psychoanalysis at the Courtauld.
Jacqueline Rose is Professor of English at Queen Mary University,
London. Her research focuses on modern subjectivity at the interface
of literature, psychoanalysis, and politics, as well as on the history and
culture of South Africa and of Israel–Palestine. Her most recent publica-
tions include Proust among the Nations (Chicago University Press, 2012);
The Last Resistance (Verso, 2007) and Conversations with Jacqueline Rose
(Seagull Press, 2010).
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is University Professor at Columbia
University. She is the author of several books including Other Asias
(2005) and An Aesthetic Education in An Era of Globalization (2012); a
new work, Readings, was published in October 2014 by Seagull Books.
In 2012, Spivak was the Kyoto laureate in Art and Philosophy, and in
2013 she was awarded the Padma Bhushan. She is also a Member of
the Council on Values of the World Economic Forum. She is an activ-
ist in rural education and ecological social movements, and is involved
in training teachers and guiding ecological agriculture in the western
Birbum district in West Bengal, India. Additionally, some of her current
projects include consortial initiatives in continental Africa, Himalayan
Studies initiatives in Kathmandu-Kolkata-Kunming, and thinking glo-
bality together in French India and Senegambia. As well as these activi-
ties, she is presently re-translating Derrida’s Of Grammatology, and
 CONTRIBUTORS 285

finishing a book on W. E. B. Du Bois. Daughter of a feminist mother

and gender-neutral father, Spivak is deeply involved in feminism across
the spectrum.
Preti Taneja is Leverhulme Postdoctoral Research Associate to Professor
Juliet Mitchell, working on siblings, Shakespeare, and psychoanalysis. She
is Visiting Lecturer in English Literature, at Royal Holloway, University
of London, UK and Jesus College Cambridge, UK. Prior to academia,
she worked for over a decade as a human rights filmmaker, researcher,
and writer specializing in minority rights. She has published extensively
on the plight of religious, ethnic and linguistic minorities in Iraq since
2003, and on arts and rights in The Guardian, Open Democracy, and
Reuters Alertnet.
Eline Trenson has a Masters in Clinical Pyschology and works as an assis-
tant at the Department for Psychoanalysis and Counselling Psychology.
She also coordinates and organizes the training in psychoanalytical
therapy.
Paul Verhaeghe is Senior Professor at Ghent University and holds the
chair of the Department for Psychoanalysis and Counselling Psychology.
He teaches clinical psychodiagnostics, psychoanalytic therapy, and gen-
der studies. He has published eight books and more than 200 papers.
His two most recent books present a critique of contemporary psycho-
therapy, and address the link between contemporary society and new
forms of mental disorder. His personal website contains material available
to download: http://paulverhaeghe.psychoanalysis.be/
Susan Walker is a Senior Lecturer in Sexual Health, in the Faculty of
Health, Social Care and Education at Anglia Ruskin University, UK. She
originally trained and worked as a GP during which time she developed
an interest in the gendered social and psychological factors underlying
health related behavior. She pursued her interests in gender and psycho-
analytical theory by undertaking a Ph.D. in the University of Cambridge.
Her thesis addressed the effects of gendered body image upon contra-
ceptive outcomes, using psychoanalytical theory, and was supervised
by Professor Juliet Mitchell. Her present research interests focus on the
intersection of gender, sociology, and medicine. She is a co-recipient of
an ESRC Research seminar grant, on the topic of Understanding the
Young Sexual Body.
 Index

Abramovic, Marina, 162 “child is being beaten, a,” 16,

absence, 112–13 139–43
acting out, 6, 156 Chodorow, Nancy, 89
aggression, 8, 118, 137, 142, 160, class, 3, 82, 102–4, 117
177, 182, 234, 238–40 Coetzee, John Maxwell, 214
Agnes, Flavia, 215 colonialism, 214, 220, 242–7
Akhter, Farida, 215 Connell, Raewyn, 1
anatomy, 114 conservatism, 58–63, 84, 102–3
andrarchy, 258 archaism, 66
annihilation, 28, 46 deathly stasis, 83
Antigone, 53–4 recalcitrance, 58, 71
Arendt, Hannah, 200, 244 of sexism, 259
Ast, Gabriele, 260 undertow, 58–63, 71, 72, 258
auto-eroticism, 137 underwater tow, 58
conversion hysteria, 25, 30
Balint, Enid, 2 creativity, 267
Bible, the, 229 Crick, Bernard, 101
Big Brother, 121–5, 158 crime, 60–1
biology, 114
bisexuality, 80 death, 29, 36–9, 176, 181, 201, 243
body-ego, 30–1 death drive, 15, 28, 37–8, 90,
borderline personality disorder, 136, 137–8
16–17, 156 and sexuality, 36–9
Bourgeois, Louise, 267 defence mechanisms, 24, 141, 143
Butler, Judith, 1, 12–13, 258, 259 Derrida, Jacques, 208–9, 219
desire, 33–5, 68–9, 85–9, 90, 149,
Callinicos, Alex, 104 199
capitalism, 4, 66, 95, 117, 123–5, Deutsch, Helene, 50
207, 220, 268 dialectic, 107–17
castration complex, 16, 25, 28, 41, difference, 7–8, 44, 112
60, 71–2, 80–1, 122, 148–9, disavowal, 158
157–61, 180–1 Don Juan, 5–6, 35
catastrophe, 31 Dora, 33–4, 150–2
Charcot, Jean-Martin, 24, 150, 261 drive, 66–8, 87–8
288 INDEX

Duschinsky, Robbie, 14–15, 17–18, Grosz, Elizabeth, 1

256 groups, 263
Dworkin, Andrea, 213 guilt, 122–3

ego, 24 Harkins, Gillian, 20, 229–54

ego-ideal, 46, 120 Harry Potter, 263
ego-psychology, 84 hate, 37, 46, 118, 264
Einstein, Albert, 265 Hedwig and the Angry Inch, 241,
Elizabeth von R., 31 247–51
Emmy von N., 24 heteronormativity, 13, 78
encroachment, 18, 185–7 heterosexuality, 62, 81
enigmatic signifiers, 66, 88 “His Majesty the Baby,” 44, 46
enjoyment, 158–62 Hoare, Quinton, 85
Enlightenment, the, 153 homosexuality, 36, 59, 81
marriage, 260
Feiffer, Halley, 238 parenting, 69–70
female sexuality, 34 see also same sex parenting
femininity, 59, 80, 84, 148 Huppert, Daru, 11–12, 15–16,
problem of, 34 43–56, 131–46, 256–7, 266
repudiation of, 85 hysteria, 3–4, 8, 14–16, 23–4,
feminism, 2, 19, 58, 78, 102, 105, 113–14, 137–8, 149–64,
110, 126, 195, 218, 269 185–9
radical feminism, 107 disappearance of hysteria, 33–4
second wave, 259 etiology of, 10, 23–42
Ferro, Antonino, 133 feminization, 34–6
fetishism, 214 male, 5, 24, 28–9, 34–6, 260–1
Fey, Tina, 238 violence, 28
Firestone, Shulamith, 98 hysterical symptoms, 23
Flax, Jane, 1 abulia, 23
Fliess, 35–6 amnesia, 23
Fluss, Gisela, 182 anaesthesia, 23
Foucault, Michel, 72 anxiety, 2
fratriarchy, 258 breathing difficulties, 23
fratricide, 38 conversion symptoms, 183
Freud, Sigmund, 23–4, 118, 123–4 depression, 23
hallucinations, 23
gender, 77, 12, 14, 18, 20, 36, mutism, 33
57–61, 69–74, 79, 83–4,
90, 105–6, 114, 148, 161, idealism, 108
187, 194–6, 223–37, 250–1, identification, 8–9, 16, 26, 62, 81,
260, 268 142, 161–2, 183, 186, 219
assignment of gender, 74 between analyst and analysand,
inequity, 269, 271 177–82
performance, 7–8 mimetic, 33–5
performativity, 77 ideology, 58, 106
theory, 18 imaginary, 149
 INDEX 289

incest, 12, 38, 85–6, 117, 141, Lot, 20

173–5, 229, 264 Lot’s daughters, 20
prohibition on, 25, 49, 80 Lot’s wife, 20
Independent School of
Psychoanalysis, 131, 137 MacKinnon, Catharine, 215
inequalities, 58, 101, 103, 106–7, Madmen & Medusas, 5–6, 23, 28
111, 117–19 Manorama, Thangjam, 215
infantile sexuality, 43–55 marriage, 53
instinct, 66 Marx, Karl, 79, 110–12, 119, 126
intergenerational transmission of Marxism, 3–4
culture, 78 masculinity, 59, 80, 84, 142, 161
interpellation, 65, 69, 73–4 hypersexual masculinity, 36
intersubjectivity, 83 master, 150–3
irritability between siblings, 51, 266 masturbation, 137, 178
memory, 11, 31–2, 52, 179–82
Johnston, Barbara, 79 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 8–9
Judaism, 110 militarism, 18
mimesis, 33–4, 266
Kaës, Réne, 258 mother, 4–5, 23–6, 33–40, 70,
Kant, Immanuel, 208, 213, 220 92, 98, 118–22, 163, 172–8,
kinship, 27, 36, 58, 62–3, 69–74, 80, 219–20, 232–51, 295, 262–6
92, 95, 187, 241, 250, 255 Law of the Mother, 6, 7, 15, 20,
Klein, Melanie, 2, 20–1, 61, 116, 26–7, 257, 261, 261, 265
122, 137 threat of separation from, 257,
Kleinian school, 137, 138 261, 262
murder, 29, 80, 264
Lacan, Jacques, 2, 16, 69, 84, 98, “mystic writing pad,” 11, 32
113, 147–59
lack, 26 Nachträglichkeit, 32, 39, 49
Lament, Claudia, 1, 260, 266 narcissism, 137, 115, 261
Lanzer, Ernst, 17, 169–86 narcissism of small differences, 45
Laplanche, Jean, 13, 65, 68, 88, 90 narcissistic injury, 45
lateral axis, 2, 8, 14, 17, 24, 27, narcissistic love, 29
43–5, 84, 115, 176, 203, nation-states, 265
232–51, 266 negation, 186–7
cultural effects, 27, 125 neurosis, 25
relationships, 5, 28–30 New Left Review syndrome, 104
theory of, 43–4 new reproductive technologies, 269
law, 60–1, 85, 86 Nietzche, Friedrich, 61
Leigh, Rachel, 17–18, 169–92 Nineteen Eighty-Four, 120–5
Levi-Strauss, Claude, 82 Nixon, Mignon, 18–19, 193–206,
life drive, 37 267
Limentani, Adam, 35
Little Hans, 261 Oakley, Anne, 5, 83
Longest Revolution, The, 2–4, oaths, 52–3
82–5, 105–6 object choice, 46, 81
290 INDEX

obsessional neurosis, 17–18, 24, 52, repression, 24, 31, 51, 134, 141,
124, 158, 169–90 158, 161, 184, 198
Oedipus complex, 25, 29, 46, reproduction, 93, 103, 120
80–1, 136, 140, 128, 152, Robinson, Marilynne, 246–7
155, 234 Rose, Jacqueline, 5, 14, 77, 84, 260
resolution of, 25–6 Rubin, Gayle, 72, 78
only children, 11, 116
Orwell, George, 120–5 sado-masochistic fantasy, 16, 133
same sex parenting, 61–2
parents, 136 Scott, Joan, 83
Parsons, Michael, 5 screen memory, 50, 182
parthenogenesis, 26 secrets between siblings, 51–2
Pateman, Carole, 258 sectarianism, 27
patriarchy, 4, 7, 18, 66, 87, 95, 107, Sedgewick, Eve, 62, 80
113, 164, 196, 229–30, 258 seriality, 6, 7, 45, 119
patricide, 38 sexism, 105, 258
peers, 84, 117, 197, 200, 263 Sexton, Anne, 33
performativity, 72 sexual assault, 24
personality disorders, 138 sexual difference, 13, 46, 58, 59–60,
perversions, 16, 48–9, 198 63, 78–81, 83, 92, 95–6, 237,
phallus, 7, 36, 46, 72, 78, 148–9, 258–9, 267, 269
153, 159, 188 sexual drive, 37
phantasies, 25, 113–15 sexual exploitation, 259, 260
photographs, 197, 199, 221–3 sexuality, 2, 15, 110, 135, 136, 137
plenitude, 112–13 and reproduction, 45–6
political task of emancipation, 92–4 social organization of, 62
polymorphous perversion, 46, 81 Shakespeare, William, 266, 267,
preconscious memories, 50 270
production, 102 siblings, 5, 24, 28–30, 107, 113–20,
prohibition, 17, 25, 38, 49, 80, 121–4, 136, 141–2, 174, 195,
262–4 255, 232, 257
incest, 86 death, 116, 181
murder, 79, 86 incest, 49
sodomy, 229–31 rivalry, 37
see also “Thou Shalt Nots” sexuality, 45–6, 49–50
promises, 51–3 sibling complex, 12, 54, 258
see also oaths sibling trauma, 260
Psychoanalysis and Feminism, 2, 4–5, theory of, 43–4
77–81, 91, 112, 134, 196 Singh, Jyoti, 218
Pussy Riot, 152 sisterhood, 112
social practice, 58
Rainer, Yvonne, 19, 200–2 socialism, 14, 103–8
rape, 6, 14, 19, 104–5 Socialist Workers’ Party, 14, 102–5
Rat Man, the, 17–18, 124, 169–90, Solomon, Andrew, 256
256 Spero, Nancy, 198
recognition, 117–20 Sphinx, 183–5
 INDEX 291

Spivak, Gaytari Chakravorty, 19, unconscious guilt, 60–1

85, 207–28 unconscious ideas, transmission
Stoller, Robert, 83, 97 of, 59, 70
structuralist models of kinship, unconscious memories, 50, 52
69–70 unconscious processes, 97
substitutability, 114 unconscious prohibition, 77
super-ego, 52, 92, 124, 184, 219 uniqueness, 18, 263, 187, 200,
and ideology, 60, 73 234
symbolic, 66, 148–9
“vagina man,” 35
Taneja, Preti, 255–72 Verhaeghe, Paul, 16–17, 147–86,
“Thou Shalt Nots,” 80–1 268
threat, 262 Volkan, Vamik, D., 260
Tram Man, 260
transgender, 74, 161, 248 Walker, Susan, 1–22, 23–42
transgenerational transmission, 81–2 war, 18, 38, 197–202, 215, 263
trauma, 28, 30–3, 24, 116, 260–3 war neurosis, 38–9
sexual trauma, 24 “war on terror,” 269
“trauma of separation,” 257 World War I, 38–9
traumatic neurosis, 38 Winnicott, Donald, 47, 88–9, 97,
Trenson, Eline, 16–17, 147–68 184, 257, 260
Twelfth Night, 262 Wiseman, Rosalind, 238
women, 109, 114, 117
unconscious, 4, 15, 58, 84, 97, 132, oppression, 77–9, 83–4, 90, 113
267, 270, 135–6, 138–9, 143 Woolf, Virginia, 266
unconscious communication,
65–6, 86 Zetzel, Elizabeth, R., 17, 175–6