The Asexual Subject

Asexuality is defined as the experience of having no sexual attraction for another person. As a recently emerged self-defined sexual orientation it received little or no attention from psychoanalytic research until “Asexuality and Freudian-Lacanian Psychoanalysis – Towards a Theory of an Enigma” was published by Routledge in late 2023. The book approaches the enigma that is asexuality without a presumption of pathology. Based on close readings of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, it attempts to build an aetiological framework using existing psychoanalytic concepts. It also draws on the work of asexual writers and on the findings and clinical data from non-psychoanalytic asexual research.

The book proposes that asexuality rather than being a desire for an unsatisfied desire is a desire for no sexual desire. It supports this view with Freud’s extensive theorizing on the problematic nature of libidinal excitation, particularly at the infantile stage. It also utilizes Lacan’s theory of the child reversing its dependence on the mother thereby refusing to take up the position of the Imaginary phallus as outlined in Seminar IV. Furthermore, the book proposes that the absolute nature of the absence of sexual desire in asexuality suggests a foreclosure of the Imaginary phallus. This foreclosure is not causative of psychosis in the way psychoanalysis classically understands the consequence of foreclosure of the Name of the Father. It is, instead, a foreclosure with implications for the Symbolic phallus as the signifier of sexualised meaning effects. As such, it is fundamental to the formation of the asexual subject.

Kevin Murphy, Ph.D., is a Registered Practitioner member of the Association for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Ireland (APPI). He is a practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist, registered training analyst and registered supervising analyst. In his private practice he works mainly in the area of sexuality. His doctoral research on asexuality was conducted under the supervision of Russell Grigg at Deakin University, Melbourne and was published by Routledge in 2023 as “Asexuality and Freudian Lacanian Psychoanalysis – Towards a Theory of an Enigma”. He has presented papers at conferences and seminars in Ireland and abroad. He has recently retired as a volunteer psychoanalyst in a sex offenders’ facility where he held a weekly clinic for 15 years. His current research is on Freudian and Lacanian theories of perversion in relation to child sexual abuse.