Current trans events should be connected with aspects of the societal evolution of western civilization’s models; this reveals their political dimension. Adolescents, as figures of modernity, are particularly apt to embody trans identity questionings. By bringing these into conflict with the subjectivation process proper to this time of life, they lead us to rethink our way of reading gendered identities, along with the binary logic on which sexual differentiation is based.
Masochism is studied here in its identity-forming, and thus sexually-differentiated, aim. Viewed as other ways of being a man or a woman, the masculin(izing) masochism of the woman and the femin(izing) masochism of the man emerge from paradox and stand out clearly at crucial times of life: thus in adolescence, masochism is often a mandatory passage on the way to sexual differentiation, sometimes taking the form of initiation, savage or cultural.
Revue semestrielle de psychanalyse, psychopathologie et sciences humaines, indexée AERES au listing PsycINFO publiée avec le concours du Centre National du Livre et de l’Université de Paris Diderot Paris 7