ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on sexuality as it manifests in the consulting room, making a distinction between 'silent sexuality' and 'noisy sexuality'. It argues that sexuality dominates the psychoanalytic encounter. The chapter underlies the analysis at all times but manifests itself in many different ways. It is the driving force of the analysis, the 'life drive' necessary to both parties within the psychoanalytic pair, but it can also paralyse the analysis and thus requires different handling at different times. The classical notion of sublimation derives from a model relying on instinct theory, and therefore is a manifestation of sexuality but has much in common with notions arising from other models such as the capacity to symbolise, the capacity to repair the object, the capacity to play, the development of a transitional space, the development of an internal space. French psychoanalysts tend to retain the centrality of sexuality, some putting an emphasis on the early view, others on the late view.
