ABSTRACT
This final chapter considers the mythologizing of female sexuality in psychoanalysis via Lacan’s allusions to ancient mystery cults and the transsexual knowledge of Tiresias. I explore the function of jouissance in Lacan’s work, arguing that, as a tool of intersubjective fantasy, it provides Lacan with a means of taking apart assumptions about gender, identity and the quest of psychoanalysis itself. I consider the influence of Pierre Klossowski’s Ovidian erotica, and Lacan’s identification of the phallus with Bacchic ritual. The mystical orgasm comes to signify the impossible, infinite fulfilment that drives human longing, epistemological as well as sexual.
