Enjoyment and sexual disorientation

This paper considers and contrasts the different principles which may guide psychical life: technical, pleasure, jouissance, in relation to Kant’s categorical imperative and ethical status. Fierens argues that the unconscious does not judge or calculate (technical principle) but restricts itself to transforming and inventing independently of judgement and thus in line with Kantian law. However, since the Kantian law is never fulfilled, to remain in the pleasure principle is to remain in a circuit of wish fulfilment and guilt. Thus the place of the analyst must be to hold the place of the radical nothing which disorients, holding to the jouissance principle and inventiveness of the unconscious and to sexuation as questioning.