ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the importance of sexuality and gender identity in human life—for they are so important that sex may indeed be said to make the world go round. Human sexuality is always a psychosexuality, a source of abundant riches and of harsh vicissitudes alike. A child’s discovery that there are other human beings who are both like and unlike him- or herself, is a trauma that underlies such manifestations as castration anxiety and penis envy. The differences have indeed often been studied on the basis of the paradigm of man, vir, the male human being. As regards the genital organs, for a long time the female genitals were regarded as nothing but male organs turned inside out like the fingers of a glove. Every individual’s erotic arousal is subject to demands of its own, and the origins of the “lovemaps” are difficult and sometimes impossible to determine.
