“It is an open secret that sexuality-once the sine qua non of psychoanalysis-is no longer foundational to psychoanalytic theory and practice.33 The three empirical pillars of contemporary psychoanalysis-infant development research, affect regulation, and attachment theory-testify to this growing neglect of sexuality. All three tend to imagine an asexual infant, and a de-libidinized attachment between caretaker and infant.34 By and large, the imperatives for bonding and affect regulation have replaced Oedipal conflicts and pre-Oedipal desires as the principal explanatory tools in psychoanalytic clinical theory..it is now more likely that sexuality will be thought of as a disguise for other, more fundamental, non-sexual dilemmas of self structure and personality.35 It is the traumatized faces of Harlow's monkeys more than the sexual fantasies of little Hans or Fritz that have come to guide contemporary practice” (161)
Why this disarticulation of sexuality from contemporary psychoanalysis?
"Without a substantial engagement with the anti-foundationalism of critical theories of sexuality, soma, and affectivity, neuropsychoanalysis will become another orthodoxy. "
Does anti-foundationalism mean finding an origin story in biology?
