About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

21 Colum. J. Gender & L. 3 (2011-2012)
Sexual Consent: Some Thoughts on Psychoanalysis and Law

handle is hein.journals/coljgl21 and id is 427 raw text is: COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF GENDER AND LAW SEXUAL CONSENT: SOME THOUGHTS ON PSYCHOANALYSIS AND LAW JUDITH BUTLER* Sexual consent is a complex issue and there are various fields that have seized upon it to decide when it happens, what form it takes, and who is in a position to know. I will be focusing here on how one knows one has consented, but also on some of the ways that psychoanalysis and law may have to work together, despite some persistent tensions between them. Part I of this article reflects on consent through the lens of relational psychoanalysis. Since I am not trained as an analyst, my approach would hardly be called clinical in any accepted way. However, I do try from the position of a cultural critic to shed light on some of the ways that consent functions both inside and outside of psychoanalysis. This is a difficult task, since if one were to consider consent clinically, one would have to start with the clinic, that is, the fact that someone comes to an analytic session consensually, and that the same someone may well have abiding ambivalence or anxiety about the very fact that they are there. They have consented, but do not like that they have. In other words, since someone may have issues with consent that become material within an analytic session, that person has also set up the problem of transference by consenting to walk through the door into the analyst's office. When they do enter the door, they consent to psychoanalysis itself, which is not to say that they know precisely to what they have consented in advance. When the analyst opens the door, there is not only some operation of consent involved as the client moves forward through the doorway for that first meeting, but an issue of consent may well remain at play for years to come, even if one drags oneself there even one no longer precisely knows why one goes. The scene is one in which law and psychoanalysis *Maxine Elliot Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley. 21.2 C

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most