Toward a Less-Than-Human Psychoanalysis: Coitus Interruptus and the Object

Abstract

This chapter traces the question of anxiety from Freud’s delirious early theory of anxiety as the result of coitus interruptus, the interruption of sexual enjoyment, through Lacan’s reading of this psychoanalytic myth as a truth about one’s relationship to the object and the importance of separation for enjoyment. Lacan provides a rare elucidation through one of his own cases, showing how coitus interruptus and the object coalesce in a vision of female sexuality that gives us a sublime map for a less-than-human psychoanalysis.

This essay is a version of a chapter from Jamieson Webster’s forthcoming book Conversion Disorder (Columbia, 2018). We thank the editors of Jamieson’s book, especially Yi Deng, for allowing us to publish it in our collection.