‘What's left of sex’

Abstract

This paper proposes a deconstruction of the concepts of psychosexuality and sexual energy as postulates of the Freudian meta-psychological theory. Focusing on the professedly ‘fictional’ feature of the psychic apparatus in the psychoanalytical theory, through a linguistic analysis of Freudian texts it is possible to identify procedures for modal logics and metaphysical statements which give evidence of an interpretation of psychoanalytic hypotheses in terms of ‘fictionalism’ and ‘ersaztism’, the two connected philosophical approaches. The former affirms that in the discourse what is said is not the truth but fictions of it and that instead of a real and unique world there are a series of alternative and fictional worlds. The latter, similarly to fictionalism, denies that possible worlds are real, but regards them rather as substitute ideas of the real world. The psychoanalytical theory, as a metaphysical response to the epistemological question about the working principles of the psychic apparatus, is based on a fictional but not real world. It may then be considered as a kind of secession from the methods and paths of medical and neurobiological sciences. These considerations support the inconsistency between the concepts of Freudian psychosexuality and the advancements of neurobiological sciences and affective neurosciences about animal and human sexuality.