Trans-Subjectivities: The Analyst's Attempts to Classify and Their Effects on Countertransference.

Abstract

The author focuses on trans-identities within the broader field of trans-subjectivities while arguing that subjectivity should be considered within the conceptual framework of a heterogeneous and plural subject. The analyst's eagerness to classify gender and sex or typify pathology in a Manichean manner is an inevitable consequence of binary thought. This provokes undesired countertransference effects and creates obstacles to listening in the analytic session. The following contribution reexamines several notions to offer a renewed perspective on the concept of the subject, the Oedipus complex, the desire for a child, the categories of difference and diversity, and the blind spots of binary logic, among others. This reconsideration may in turn elucidate our comprehension of gender and sexual diversities. In this context, the author stresses the need to approach trans-identities and trans-subjectivities with a nonbinary logic based on a rhizomatous way of thinking.