Table Of ContentTranssexuality and the Art
of Transitioning
Transsexuality and the Art of Transitioning: A Lacanian approach presents a
startling new way to consider psychoanalytic dilemmas of sexual difference and
gender through the meeting of arts and the clinic. Informed by a Lacanian perspec-
tive that locates transsexuality in the intermediate space between the clinic and
culture, Oren Gozlan joins current conversations around the question of sexual
difference with the insistence that identity never fully expresses sexuality and, as
such, cannot be replaced by gender.
The book goes beyond the idea of gender as an experience that gives rise to mul-
tiple identities and instead considers identity as split from the outset. This view
transforms transsexuality into a particular psychic position, able to encounter the
paradoxes of transitional experience and the valence of phantasy and affect that
accompany aesthetic conflicts over the nature of beauty and being. Gozlan brings
readers into the enigmatic qualities of representation as desire for completion
and transformation through notions of tension, difference and aesthetics, through
examining the artwork of Anish Kapoor and Louise Bourgeois and the role played
by confusion in the aesthetics of transformation in literature and memoir. Funda-
mentally, this work understands transsexuality as a creative act, rich with desire
and danger, in which thinking of the transsexual body as both an analytic and a
subjective object helps us to reveal the creativity of sexuality.
Ideal for psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers as well
as students of psychoanalysis, cultural studies, literature studies and philosophy,
Transsexuality and the Art of Transitioning offers a unique insight into psychoana-
lytic approaches to transsexuality and the question of assuming a position in gender.
Oren Gozlan, Psy.D. ABPP, is a clinical psychologist and a psychoanalyst in pri-
vate practice and Professor and Director of clinical training at the Adler Graduate
School in Toronto. He is a Diplomate in Psychoanalysis with the American Board
of Professional Psychology and is also the Chair of the Gender and Sexuality
Committee of the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education.
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Transsexuality and the Art
of Transitioning
A Lacanian approach
Oren Gozlan
First published 2015
by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2FA
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 Oren Gozlan
The right of Oren Gozlan to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gozlan, Oren.
Transsexuality and the art of transitioning : a lacanian approach /
Oren Gozlan.
pages cm
1. Transsexualism—Psychological aspects. 2. Transgenderism—
Psychological aspects. 3. Gender identity—Psychological aspects.
I. Title.
HQ77.9.G69 2014
155.3(cid:397)3—dc23
2014009016
ISBN: 978-0-415-85574-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-85575-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-75607-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Times
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
To Agnieszka
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction xi
1 Transsexuality as a state of mind: questions of learning
and indeterminacy 1
Transsexuality of everyday life 3
Embodied apprehension 4
Aesthetic crisis in psychoanalysis 7
2 The aesthetics of transitioning 15
Primal encounters 18
Transsexuality as psychic space 21
Sublimation, perversion and death 23
The art of sublimation 26
3 Narrating transsexuality: transition from memoir to literature 30
Truth or dare: adolescent stories of origin 31
Adolescent belief 37
Reading and writing the body 38
The act of re-writing 40
Phantom writer 43
4 Transsexual surgery: a novel reminder and a navel remainder 47
Identification and the body’s excess 48
Transsexuality as sinthome 49
Identification with the act: a clinical fragment 52
Transsexuality, sexual difference and novel beginning 54
viii Contents
5 The “real” time of gender 58
Cross identification 60
Movement and time in the primary 62
Re-conceptualizing “ femininity ” 65
Hysteria, femininity and jouissance 66
Matricide and creativity: a question of time 68
Psychoanalysis and the feminine position 69
6 Re-writing the screen 73
Absence and temporality 74
Ground zero 76
Fantasmatic art of disappearance 78
Between burial and survival 79
Sexual difference as dream 81
The transsexual dream interpretation 83
A return to art 85
The trans-sexuality of thinking and memory 86
The transsexual future of an illusion 88
Conclusion: afterwordness 90
Scintillation between two deaths 95
References 97
Index 101
Acknowledgements
I could not have written T ranssexuality and the Art of Transitioning without
the help of several individuals. I am greatly indebted to Distinguished Profes-
sor Dr. Deborah Britzman, for her support and sustained interest in my project.
Few contemporary thinkers have done more to elaborate on the strong connection
between sexuality and education and broaden the concept of education to include
its afterwordness. Britzman’s way of treating education as an emotional situation
inspired me to consider concepts such as transsexuality as analytic objects. I am
deeply thankful for her suggestions and careful reading of several chapters and
for presenting me with enigmas when I have reached an impasse in my writing.
I am enormously indebted to Dr. Paola Bohorquez for her gentle, careful and
thoughtful editing, comments and stimulating conversations, which helped in clar-
ifying my ideas. I would like to thank Dr. Clarissa Barton for turning my answers
into questions and for her intellectual and emotional nourishment throughout the
years. I would like to express deep gratitude to Dr. Joshua Levy for helping me
develop a third ear with which to listen to my patients and to myself. The N ew
Directions: Writing and Clinical Thinking from a Psychoanalytic Perspective pro-
gram of the Washington Centre of Psychoanalysis, in which I participated for three
years, has also provided a safe space where I could test my ideas and cultivate
my writing style. I am indebted to my patients who have allowed me into their
lives and challenged my thinking. The cover photograph “Transdifferentiation”
by Osheen Harruthoonyan (www.osheen.ca) was used with the direct permission
of the artist. I would like to thank Osheen for allowing me to use this evocative
image as my book cover.
Most of all, I am indebted to my wife whose love, support, insight and contain-
ing ways brought moments of coherence to the chaos and volatility inherent to
writing.
The author would like to thank Tamar Peleg of New Library for granting per-
mission to reproduce an excerpt from David Grossman’s “Falling out of time”.
