A.L.I.

Western society has certainly come to achieve a remarkable degree of comfort.  And yet with the loss of sexual inhibition – despite such an eminently favorable context – we observe a rise in the number of sexual deviances flooding our courtrooms.  What is going on?  The Symbolic order which had, until present, governed male/female relationships seems henceforth incapable of impeding such a trend. 

If we are to take a closer look at criminal nature and transgressive deviances in our clinic, it is first and foremost to evaluate the structural dimension of human desire in its pathological forms and their meaning.  The increase in laws outlining consequences for sexual relations seems to be in contradiction with the permissiveness of our culture.  However, certain aspects of transgressions within the family unit reveal that these laws correspond to a decline in social interaction, in the sense that this interaction no longer serves to regulate our behavior, and has lost its symbolic value.  Such social isolation coupled with an unbarred desire, striving to liberate desire from the laws which govern it and provoke a hedonistic reaction, thus underlines a loss of reference point and boundaries, all the more so when the modern family no longer defines itself as anything but an association of individuals without any restrictions.

Driven by immediacy (one action, one law), the current build-up of the punitive arsenal spurring from this degradation of the Symbolic order must not, however, allow us to forget that when sex is accounted for in the law, it is not only meant to suppress exorbitance, but can also show us that sex and law have always been intimately associated in so much as the law ensures the humanization of the Real order (lack of relation between the sexes), and perpetuates the expression of it’s importance.

We wish to consecrate these two days to the various aspects of the relationship between sex and law, the causes of the transformation – both collective and individual – which has taken place, as well as their respective consequences.

- In charge of symposium : G. Amiel, J.-P. Hiltenbrand, J. Lebaud.
- Schedule : Saturday 9th of October and Sunday October 10th ; from 9.30AM to 12.30PM AM and from 2.30PM to 5.30 PM.
- Location : Auditorium of "Musée de Grenoble", 5 Place Lavalette 38000, France