Tiresias’ propaganda: A discussion of Griffin Hansbury’s "The masculine Vaginal"

Journal title PSICOTERAPIA E SCIENZE UMANE
Author/s Sergio Benvenuto
Publishing Year 2021 Issue 2021/1
Language Italian Pages 10 P. 41-50 File size 274 KB
DOI 10.3280/PU2021-001004
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

Griffin Hansbury’s (2017) theory of a "masculine Vaginal" is seen as pleonastic in the context of psychoanalytic theory in general; for Freud, in fact, male and female are not fundamental charac-ters of human sexuality, but "constructions". Hansbury’s clinical case is discussed in the scope of a general theory of masochism, revisiting the notion of feminine masochism. It is ultimately shown that queer theory’s ideological libertarian intent ends up accepting precisely that very logic of gender that it seeks to transgress and overcome.

Keywords: Sexuality and gender; Erotic mas-ochism; Female masochism; Lacan; Rejection of femininity

  1. Abraham N. & Torok M. (1978). L’écorce et le noyau. Paris: Flammarion (trad. it.: La scorza e il nocciolo. Roma: Borla, 1993).
  2. Benvenuto S. (2005). Perversioni: sessualità, etica, psicoanalisi. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.
  3. Benvenuto S. (2016). What are Perversions? London: Karnac.
  4. Benvenuto S. (2021). Lo psichiatra e il sesso. Sesto San Giovanni (MI): Mimesis.
  5. Fachinelli E. (1983). Claustrofilia. Milano: Adelphi.
  6. Freud S. (1914 [1918]). Dalla storia di una nevrosi infantile (Caso clinico dell’Uomo dei lupi). Opere, 7: 483-593. Torino: Boringhieri, 1975.
  7. Freud S. (1924). Il tramonto del complesso edipico. Opere, 10: 27-33. Torino: Boringhieri, 1978.
  8. Freud S. (1929 [1930]). Il disagio della civiltà. Opere, 10: 555-630. Torino: Boringhieri, 1978.
  9. Hansbury G. (2017). The masculine Vaginal: Working with queer men’s embodiment at the transgender edge. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 65, 6: 1009-1031.
  10. Horney K. (1922-37 [1967]). Feminine Psychology. New York: Norton, 1967 (trad. it.: Psicologia femminile. Roma: Armando, 1973).
  11. Lacan J. (1959-60 [1986]). Le séminaire de Jacques Lacan. Livre VII: L’ethique de la psychanalyse (1959-1960). Paris: Seuil, 1986 (trad. it.: Il Seminario. Libro VII: L’etica della psicoanalisi. Torino: Einaudi, 1994).
  12. Svetonio G.T. (I sec. d.C.). De vita Caesarum. Divus Iulius. Edizione su Internet: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Julius*.html.

Sergio Benvenuto, Interventi sull’articolo di Griffin Hansbury La propaganda di Tiresia in "PSICOTERAPIA E SCIENZE UMANE" 1/2021, pp 41-50, DOI: 10.3280/PU2021-001004