Translator: Manuel Cuesta

Recalcati asks, in the wake of Jacques Lacan, whether the sexual relationship really exists, since this is, in the first place, the relationship of each one with his own ghost.

Unlike the animal world, regulated by the efficacy of instinct, human sexuality is organized around other, much more elusive factors: desire, love, drives. As in a kind of cubist collage, the compass of instinct does not work here and human beings see that it is not easy to successfully combine these dimensions. In addition, in every sexual encounter the desire is structured unconsciously – even before finding a partner – through a singular ghost that dictates the rules of the relationship: ecstasy, seduction, jealousy, possession, inhibition, hatred.

Massimo Recalcati, renowned psychoanalyst and sharp essayist, focuses on the Freudian idea that every sexual act involves at least four people, because not only are lovers present, but each of them is accompanied, in the unconscious, by its corresponding ghost. And it also draws on one of Jacques Lacan's main teachings – "sexual intercourse does not exist"; which is, in turn, a splendid boutade—, dissects it and turns it, at last, into a question that produces new meanings.