Sexuation, desire and jouissance: between neurosis and perversion

Abstract

This article takes up Freud's three questions proposed in his exceptional text from 1927 entitled “Fetishism”, to rethink them from the point of view of Lacan's teaching during the 1970s, known as the field of jouissance. The article makes use of the quantic formulas of sexuation to verify the logical evidence “there is no sexual relation” through the sexual position which individuals can occupy with their partners in the neurotic and perverse structures. We have questioned some variants of the subject with it's partner in relation to jouissance and desire. The article discusses the three types of jouissance checked by Lacan in the subject's relation to the sexual partner, the feminine jouissance - also called supplementary and Other jouissance -, the mystical jouissance and the perverse jouissance. Cases worked by Lacan are revisited to question what distinguishes the neurotic and the perverse, resuming the issues introduced by Freud.