Sexuality as failure: Psychoanalytic concepts, cultural perspectives

This lecture will examine the ways in which the so-called scandal of the sexual (Oberlehner 2005) is negotiated today. In Western societies a removal of the old sexual moral is predicated: there is talk, for example, of negotiating morals accompanied by the “demand for an agreed-upon, ratified sexual behavior” (Schmidt 1998). While there is of course much to be said for communicative consent, something nevertheless seems to escape consideration here. From a psychoanalytic perspective one might ask: what about sexuality in its potential dis-integrating quality? Shown in view of selected cultural productions, this lecture will confront the question as to what is missing in today’s cultural concepts of sexuality.