This cut off—which is at the origin of the word sex—has always been uncomfortable. It was supposed to separate plants and other living beings into two, males and females. Two places result from this cutting off. For the speaking-being, the division is not symmetrical. Not so metrical, therefore immeasurable, not of common measure.

Various belief systems have long served to bind these two partners. As its name suggests, religion sanctioned this binding. It had a relatively appeasing effect on the subject, by containing the gap between them—without, however, sparing them the violence of a poorly tolerated otherness.

Today, believing himself to be emancipated from God – another form of belief – the Western subject thinks he can apprehend his object, his other, without mediation.

Evading all forms of civil, moral, or religious authority, our young patients (and not so young too!) talk about consuming, using similar apps, a recreational drug, a partner for the evening, or a pizza. In the quiet anonymity of screens, now in our children’s pockets, pornography is just the appetizer – it seems it fills other pockets too, which makes it impossible to control…

Have we gone from believing to a state of crudity?

 And in this setting, so banal as to be heartbreaking, as Piaf sang[1], we see our two cherubs, in need of direction, arrive in our offices and institutions.

Does psychoanalysis have answers that aren’t reactionary or traditional? Less idiotic than others? Its ethical stance will provide, during our study days in June, a wonderful opportunity to articulate this issue in a somewhat new and, hopefully, discernable way. Have you got your ticket?

Omar Guerrero

Translated by Lorena Strunk 

[1] From the song Les Amants D’un Jour, Edith Piaf.