The Feminine Origin of Sexuality

The author, a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst and professor at the University of Paris-7, has for years been grappling with the exploration of questions of femininity. His approach—psychoanalytical, anthropological and sociological—is synthetic, creative and far removed from sterile disputes. The echoes of these studies can be found in this book, which demonstrates how, beneath the official patriarchal, phallocentric theory of sexuality, an underground current of female sexuality is developing. Through examples from the worlds of painting (Delacroix: The Death of Sardanapalus) and the theatre (Racine: Phaedra, Andromache), the reader is given the opportunity to engage with the ‘unofficial’, the ‘silenced’ psychoanalytic theory of sexuality. By highlighting both the expected and the unexpected, the book becomes almost unique in the exploration and synthesis it proposes. This book is part of the Psychoanalytic series edited by Athanasios Alexandridis.