ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysts are often accused of being ignorant of biology. Perhaps this is true, but those who make the accusation hardly ever ask themselves this question: what could psychoanalysis learn from biology about its proper domain—psycho-sexuality? It is not the results of animal experimentation that will be useful in any way whatsoever here. A separation of sexuality from reproduction can be observed in the apes. Sexual chemistry, in which Sigmund Freud never ceased to believe, harbours many mysteries. The father of psychoanalysis has been criticised for his phallocentrism. Psychoanalysts know that in a great number of states experienced by subjects with very weak tolerance of frustration, there is apparently no observable psychical reaction produced in the analytic relation. At intervals of a few days, the experiment is repeated; affective habituation results in the dog’s impassivity towards new electric currents.
