Despite the fact that the term "jouissance" is today common currency in psychoanalysis, how much does it really tell us? Although it is often taken to designate a fusion of sexuality with suffering and satisfaction, the term has come to have only a descriptive use that obfuscates more questions than it raises. Although it is thought to explain the coalescence of pleasure and pain, it tends to cover a spectrum of very different issues that should be distinguished rather than combined.
By returning to some of the sources of jouissance in Freud and Lacan's elaborations, this book hopes to stimulate debate about the relations between pleasure and pain, autoerotism, the link between satisfaction and arousal, the effects of repression and place of the body in psychoanalytic theory. Leader attempts to provide a vital context for Lacan's work and to encourage a dialogue with other anal...read more
