Unsexed and Ungendered Bodies The Violated Self
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4577764 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sue Grand (0000-0001-6212-7806, New York University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2003 |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 313-341 |
| Publication date | 2003-10-10 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Studies in Gender and Sexuality (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1524-0657 • E-ISSN: 1940-9206 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/15240650409349231 |
| OpenAlex | W2089893066 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
I propose that rape/incest potentiates a dual rendering of its history. There is a narrative cast in gendered and sexual states and enactments. And there is a thing narrative told by an unsexed and ungendered self (or “thing-self”). This splitting of trauma narratives ensues because the perpetrator is engaged simply not in humanized malignance, but also in an it-it encounter devoid of all desire. In the wake of sexual violation, there are traumatized sexed and gendered human selves. And there are traumatized unsexed, ungendered thing selves. The former seek an audience with a human recipient. But the latter are in search of a form of disembodied witnessing located in the thing dimension of the analyst's consciousness. My speculation about the thing-self originated with a female patient who had endured childhood incest. I begin with an extensive clinical presentation of that treatment, with an emphasis on a persecuted disembodied thing-self. That self was revealed through a peculiar form of analytic theater and an attendant hallucinatory process in the countertransference
Aesthetics · Art · Consciousness · Epistemology · Literature · Narrative · Poison control · Psychoanalysis · Self · Sexual abuse · Suicide prevention · Medicine · Narrative Theory and Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.32 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2007 - 2025 (19) |
| Highly cited | No |