Viviane Dubol : prostitution, between bodily orifices and words, an experience of subjectivation ?

This article attempts a clinical reflection about the act of prostitution and the psychical stakes it puts into play. A review of the history of research hypotheses and important moments allows us to stress to what extent knowledge of the anamnesis and traumas is insufficient for understanding the destiny of prostitution. Listening to clinical cases led me to take into account the force of words that have the value of an injunction, such as the “ You’re just a prostitute ” or the “ I’m a prostitute ” constructed by the subject. It is within this context of sensitivity to words that the function of the “ fourth character ” was deployed, as a figure of the social female Other to whom the act of prostitution is addressed and what is at stake in it for the subject. In fact, and this is our working hypothesis, the erotology of some of the prostitute’s tricks would contribute to the construction of oneself through the auto-erotic experiences involving the bodily orifices and what psychoanalysis calls the little a object. What we describe of the “ symbolic trick ” suggests that love is not absent from such a process of subjectivation.