ABSTRACT
This section explores how clinical experience shows that the ‘sex’ of the subject is a point of real in every subject and is relatively underdetermined. It presents the psychoanalytical invariance of sex by highlighting the effects of the impossibility to give the phallus any concrete representation. It also demonstrates the fundamental differences between psychoanalytical approaches to sexual difference and philosophies of sex and gender. Whereas philosophical approaches start with representations of lack, psychoanalysis starts with nomination as a process of a privation of jouissance. This section also draws upon Freud’s case of Little Hans to develop a psychoanalytic definition of the phallus.
