ABSTRACT
At the exhilarating birth of psychoanalysis, Freud responds to a suggestion from Fliess: “I avail myself of the bisexuality of all human beings” (Freud, 1950 [1892–99], p. 211). In the closing pages of his gloomy, valedictory work of 1937, “Analysis Terminable and Interminable”, Freud speculates that it is the “repudiation of femininity” in both sexes that causes analysis to stagnate. These two thoughts – bisexuality is a given of human subjectivity, the rejection of femininity is a given of human subjectivity – the alpha and omega of Freud’s thinking about psychic sexuality, still have live currency in our clinical thinking. 2 So how are we to make sense of the apparent conflict between these two givens of psychic life?
