Introduction

ABSTRACT This introduction presents the key elements in Laplanche’s theorizing about sexuality. The model focuses on what he has termed “radical alterity,” noting that sexuality is both transactional, arriving from the other and constituting both the unconscious and the lived experience of sexual desire. In this theory, there is space for trauma and normative experiences of forms of desire and excitement arising and arriving from the Other; links to relational theory are suggested and the novelty and importance of considering the clinical, the theoretical, and the cultural from a Laplanchian perspective are introduced.