Psychoanalysis and Queer Theory: Towards an Ethics of Otherness

Abstract

ABSTRACTI assess the responses to Clinical Encounters in Sexuality in terms of their impact as “encounter” and how they approach otherness, with otherness being what is not reducible to the same or the already known. In particular, I implicate historically othering practices to nonnormative sexuality by certain schools of psychoanalysis in ongoing tensions between the two disciplines that requires working through. There is much to be gained for both disciplines of psychoanalysis and queer theory by continued and future encounters between them. This will be aided by psychoanalysts taking responsibility for any part they played in normativizing practices, a practice that is “unpsychoanalytic,” and a recognition by queer theorists that psychoanalysis gives an account of sexuality that is radically different from that of queer theory.