Impacts of social discourse on today's sexualities: a case study

This paper focuses on the impact of 'society' on sexuality as represented in the speech of analysands. Despite the fact that western societies are supposedly liberated from taboos and moralistic restriction, there is a paradox in that we often hear young patients speak of the constraints imposed on their sexuality. If the language that surrounds this topic seems to have been, to a great extent, liberated, the intimate expression of desires and individual fantasies often seems hesitant or constrained, we might even say impeded. It is as though there is a need to review intimacy in the light of a collective dictate to liberate oneself, to act, to define or to speak of oneself through sex. Based on the psychoanalytic cure of a young man who suddenly became inhibited in his sexuality, I will demonstrate how additional work may be required around issues of transference and countertransference. This can be most noticeable when the psychoanalyst encounters, or comes up against, a social discourse, when they are in fact desperately seeking a patient's singular narrative, the route of their childhood history and psychosexuality.