André Green
The Chain of Eros Publication date : February 1, 1997
Sexuality is no longer what it was when Freud elaborated his theory of its psychic functioning. His successors have either given it less importance or a completely different status. It is high time to reflect again about the problematics of sexuality in the perspective of contemporary psychoanalysis, especially since sexuality remains an essential element of psychic construction. André Green has undertaken in this book a real re-founding. Sexuality, seen from a psychoanalistic point of view, is what he calls "an erotic chain", organized according to different steps (impulse, desire, fantasies, erotic language, etc.). For him, the importance it is not so much to consider each of these steps separately but to specify at which link of the chain the analyst himself stands. He can thus follow the dynamics of erotic process in his patient. Other theorical aspects are also explored, above all, in relation to sexuality, the confrontation of psychoanalytic interpretation with anthropological and biological facts. André Green, who is a psychoanalyst and a psychiatrist, has published numerous books, among which La causalité psychique, at Editions Odile Jacob.