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Jouissance: Sexuality, Suffering and Satisfaction
Although the term 'jouissance' is common currency in psychoanalysis today, how much does it really tell us? While often taken to designate a fusion of sexuality, suffering and satisfaction, the term has fallen into a purely descriptive use that closes down more questions than it opens up. Although assumed to explain the coalescence of pleasure and pain, it tends to cover a range of quite different issues that should be distinguished rather than conflated. By returning to some of the sources of the concept in Freud, and their elaborations in Lacan, this book hopes to stimulate a debate around the relations of pleasure to pain, autoerotism, the links of satisfaction to arousal, the effects of repression, and the place of the body in psychoanalytic theory. Leader aims to provide context for Lacan's work and encourage dialogue with other analytic traditions.
138 pages, Hardcover
Published September 14, 2021
21 people are currently reading
279 people want to read
About the author
Darian Leader
50 books160 followersDarian Leader is a British psychoanalyst and author. He is a founding member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research (CFAR).
Darian Leader is President of the College of Psychoanalysts, a Trustee of the Freud Museum, and Honorary Visiting Professor in Psychoanalysis at Roehampton University.
From Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darian_L...
Darian Leader is President of the College of Psychoanalysts, a Trustee of the Freud Museum, and Honorary Visiting Professor in Psychoanalysis at Roehampton University.
From Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darian_L...
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 16, 2022
This is a really well thought-out and fascinating essay, but it seems to have arrived onto the scene rather silently. Despite its relative accessibility and its well-established author, I haven't really heard much discussion around this book at all. I wonder why, because this text really does seem worth discussing and pondering on.
The concept of jouissance has always remained somewhat of a riddle to me, it is used in various different ways, for various different contexts, refering to various different things. It is a flexible word, but in its flexibility it remains a bit of a mystery. So, I was excited to read this book, hoping it will clear up the blurred and abstract ideas I had of what jouissance is, but it turns out, as Darian Leader writes, that the concept really is just blurry and abstract.
I think this what makes the essay rather admirable. For a Lacanian to step up and really question a term so central to Lacanian theory, to strip it down and expose its inconsistencies and inadequacies, is a brave move.
Unfortunately, I'm left with more questions than answers, as this book definitely asks more questions than answers, and I'm excited to see what's next. I'm excited too see how this undoing of jouissance will affect the analysts' approach to the symptom, how future texts will use jouissance, and how useful will old, forgotten psychoanalytic texts will become in light of this reconfiguration of jouissance.
Very interesting, very anti-dogmatic, and very thorough.
The concept of jouissance has always remained somewhat of a riddle to me, it is used in various different ways, for various different contexts, refering to various different things. It is a flexible word, but in its flexibility it remains a bit of a mystery. So, I was excited to read this book, hoping it will clear up the blurred and abstract ideas I had of what jouissance is, but it turns out, as Darian Leader writes, that the concept really is just blurry and abstract.
I think this what makes the essay rather admirable. For a Lacanian to step up and really question a term so central to Lacanian theory, to strip it down and expose its inconsistencies and inadequacies, is a brave move.
Unfortunately, I'm left with more questions than answers, as this book definitely asks more questions than answers, and I'm excited to see what's next. I'm excited too see how this undoing of jouissance will affect the analysts' approach to the symptom, how future texts will use jouissance, and how useful will old, forgotten psychoanalytic texts will become in light of this reconfiguration of jouissance.
Very interesting, very anti-dogmatic, and very thorough.
April 15, 2022
This book is so well done. Opening the history of psychoanalysis onto this essential contemporary concept, and opening this essential contemporary concept onto the history of psychoanalysis.
The early sections, dealing with earlier post-Freudians, are particularly enlightening. One brilliant point is made with reference to Karin Stephen, whose work should after this work should be read for the first time again, who shows that jouissance is already dialectical--between pleasure and pain--even during this supposed primordial One. The passage Leader cites is this: ‘In this way, aggression, rage and suffering become themselves tinged with sexual feeling or pleasure-craving. Moments of suffocation at the breast, for example, may produce a terror and desperation that then become part of the impulse of hunger, so that we are ultimately attracted and repelled by the same thing. Desire for the nipple, likewise, is fused with the experience of disappointment and refusal, so that longing and hatred become enabled.’
Magnificent book.
The early sections, dealing with earlier post-Freudians, are particularly enlightening. One brilliant point is made with reference to Karin Stephen, whose work should after this work should be read for the first time again, who shows that jouissance is already dialectical--between pleasure and pain--even during this supposed primordial One. The passage Leader cites is this: ‘In this way, aggression, rage and suffering become themselves tinged with sexual feeling or pleasure-craving. Moments of suffocation at the breast, for example, may produce a terror and desperation that then become part of the impulse of hunger, so that we are ultimately attracted and repelled by the same thing. Desire for the nipple, likewise, is fused with the experience of disappointment and refusal, so that longing and hatred become enabled.’
Magnificent book.
September 6, 2021
Something of a polemic to encourage Lacanian psychoanalysts (Leader himself included) to expand the theoretical complexity of the term jouissance, not to reduce it to a catch-all term for resistance to signification or excess but to differentiate its sources and effects. Leader runs through all the phases of Lacan's use of the term chronologically, all the while branching out to discussions of Freud and early post-Freudian psychoanalysts and making links with other schools and theories of psychoanalysis. The wealth of clinical examples is especially interesting.
February 4, 2026
Não espere um passeio elucidativo ou didático pelo conceito lacaniano
Eis um livro que tentei deslanchar a leitura umas três vezes. Em um cenário prosaico, isto já teria sido um sinal para abandonar completamente a obra; mas tratando-se de psicanálise lacaniana, espera-se que mesmo os comentários possam se mostrar difíceis a uma primeira vista. No caso de Leader, suas perlaborações iniciais, prolixas e num ziguezague vertiginoso entre passagens de Freud, Lacan e outros psicanalistas pode ser a um leitor despreocupado, no mínimo, intimidatiório. Mas eu consegui vencer a obra afinal e posso dizer de maneira confortável: não se trata de uma leitura agradável nem recomendada a quem busca clareza e didatismo no entendimento desse conceito hermético.
Mais ou menos na metade do livro, Leader parece abandonar a centralidade de suas indagações sobre o gozo para perseguir questionamentos e pesquisas pessoais: sobre libido, narcisismo, supereu, comparações científicas datadas sobre o desenvolvimento psicológico e pedagógico das crianças com o estádio do espelho e as repercussões do conceito de pulsão no recém nascido - acrescidos de outros comentários tangenciais sobre o uso das mãos durante a satisfação oral. Bom, para começar, nada disso ajuda o leitor a seguir interessado no "Gozo": ele aparenta tergiversar tanto o tema que passamos a nos perguntar se a explicação ou elucidação dessa palavra no Lacanês é realmente tão complexa como imaginávamos para que o autor precise empreender um giro tão obsceno no seu passeio. Somado a isso, percebe-se a quantidade de referências extremamente antigas - não psicanalíticas, no caso - a textos científicos que o autor tenta se fazer valer para sustentar seu ponto de vista - ponto preocupante. Já que está tocando temas científicos, o que custa fazer uma breve pesquisa em portais de periódicos recentes? PubMed, Elsevier, Science? Nessa aspecto, é a mesma estrutura curiosa de "Alguma vez é sobre sexo?".
É exatamente na porção final do livro que podemos dizer que o autor oferece vestígios de sua capacidade de domínio do prumo da narrativa, nos deixando sem saber ao certo por que ele fez todo esse desvio. Leader se volta a uma pormenorizada leitura de fragmentos dos Seminários examinando de que forma o conceito de Gozo foi se alterando e comparando com algumas outras passagens ou comentários que ele fizera antes. Ele já havia se perguntado se o Gozo, tal como a libido, pode ser representado ou esquematizado na ordem da quantidade, da carga elétrica, de localização espacial, algo que se possui como na escola das relações objetais ou até uma espécie de substância gelatinosa que surge de dentro do sujeito e irrompe em certos momentos. Aqui, ele vai apontando o uso sofismático e nada rigoroso que muitos psicanalistas lacanianos -e o próprio Lacan! - empregam a expressão gozo, desmontando tais construções explicativas. Essa é a parte que gosto.
Quantas vezes escutei colegas (e mesmo eu!) e supervisores que usam cheios de pompa a palavra Gozo aludindo a uma espécie de conceito intransponível e só realizavel aos inciados na obra? Tendo uma "meia certeza" da coordenada precisa de sua funcionalidade? Mas será mesmo que essas pessoas tem dimensão da vagueza e da amplitude que o termo tomou ao longo dos Seminários? E assim mesmo, colocando a real importância ou aplicabilidade além de um encadeamento descritivo datado na obra? Aqui eu tiro o chapéu a Leader por ele escancarar a forma como um conceito pode ser tão esvaziado a ponto de se tornar só uma palavra-valise, onde cabe qualquer coisa, e mais um adereço retórico que psicanalistas vestem, exibidos.
Um último destaque positivo para Leader é quando ele fala sobre o Gozo no campo dos registros, especialmente o Gozo feminino, ou Gozo Outro, do Seminário "Mais, ainda". Leader critica lindamente a atitude machista e obscurantista de Lacan, que repercute Freud em seu "continente negro", escolhendo vendar-se à multidão de pesquisas científicas modernas que apontam a forma que o erotismo feminino se manifesta e como ele se constitui. Ele expõe as aporias e incoerências da época que talvez digam muito de uma certa primazia do "gozo fálico" sobre outros tipos dentro dos círculos lacanianos.
☆☆½/5
Eis um livro que tentei deslanchar a leitura umas três vezes. Em um cenário prosaico, isto já teria sido um sinal para abandonar completamente a obra; mas tratando-se de psicanálise lacaniana, espera-se que mesmo os comentários possam se mostrar difíceis a uma primeira vista. No caso de Leader, suas perlaborações iniciais, prolixas e num ziguezague vertiginoso entre passagens de Freud, Lacan e outros psicanalistas pode ser a um leitor despreocupado, no mínimo, intimidatiório. Mas eu consegui vencer a obra afinal e posso dizer de maneira confortável: não se trata de uma leitura agradável nem recomendada a quem busca clareza e didatismo no entendimento desse conceito hermético.
Mais ou menos na metade do livro, Leader parece abandonar a centralidade de suas indagações sobre o gozo para perseguir questionamentos e pesquisas pessoais: sobre libido, narcisismo, supereu, comparações científicas datadas sobre o desenvolvimento psicológico e pedagógico das crianças com o estádio do espelho e as repercussões do conceito de pulsão no recém nascido - acrescidos de outros comentários tangenciais sobre o uso das mãos durante a satisfação oral. Bom, para começar, nada disso ajuda o leitor a seguir interessado no "Gozo": ele aparenta tergiversar tanto o tema que passamos a nos perguntar se a explicação ou elucidação dessa palavra no Lacanês é realmente tão complexa como imaginávamos para que o autor precise empreender um giro tão obsceno no seu passeio. Somado a isso, percebe-se a quantidade de referências extremamente antigas - não psicanalíticas, no caso - a textos científicos que o autor tenta se fazer valer para sustentar seu ponto de vista - ponto preocupante. Já que está tocando temas científicos, o que custa fazer uma breve pesquisa em portais de periódicos recentes? PubMed, Elsevier, Science? Nessa aspecto, é a mesma estrutura curiosa de "Alguma vez é sobre sexo?".
É exatamente na porção final do livro que podemos dizer que o autor oferece vestígios de sua capacidade de domínio do prumo da narrativa, nos deixando sem saber ao certo por que ele fez todo esse desvio. Leader se volta a uma pormenorizada leitura de fragmentos dos Seminários examinando de que forma o conceito de Gozo foi se alterando e comparando com algumas outras passagens ou comentários que ele fizera antes. Ele já havia se perguntado se o Gozo, tal como a libido, pode ser representado ou esquematizado na ordem da quantidade, da carga elétrica, de localização espacial, algo que se possui como na escola das relações objetais ou até uma espécie de substância gelatinosa que surge de dentro do sujeito e irrompe em certos momentos. Aqui, ele vai apontando o uso sofismático e nada rigoroso que muitos psicanalistas lacanianos -e o próprio Lacan! - empregam a expressão gozo, desmontando tais construções explicativas. Essa é a parte que gosto.
Quantas vezes escutei colegas (e mesmo eu!) e supervisores que usam cheios de pompa a palavra Gozo aludindo a uma espécie de conceito intransponível e só realizavel aos inciados na obra? Tendo uma "meia certeza" da coordenada precisa de sua funcionalidade? Mas será mesmo que essas pessoas tem dimensão da vagueza e da amplitude que o termo tomou ao longo dos Seminários? E assim mesmo, colocando a real importância ou aplicabilidade além de um encadeamento descritivo datado na obra? Aqui eu tiro o chapéu a Leader por ele escancarar a forma como um conceito pode ser tão esvaziado a ponto de se tornar só uma palavra-valise, onde cabe qualquer coisa, e mais um adereço retórico que psicanalistas vestem, exibidos.
Um último destaque positivo para Leader é quando ele fala sobre o Gozo no campo dos registros, especialmente o Gozo feminino, ou Gozo Outro, do Seminário "Mais, ainda". Leader critica lindamente a atitude machista e obscurantista de Lacan, que repercute Freud em seu "continente negro", escolhendo vendar-se à multidão de pesquisas científicas modernas que apontam a forma que o erotismo feminino se manifesta e como ele se constitui. Ele expõe as aporias e incoerências da época que talvez digam muito de uma certa primazia do "gozo fálico" sobre outros tipos dentro dos círculos lacanianos.
☆☆½/5
December 13, 2023
Simply wonderful. Out of the works by Leader I have read thus far, Jouissance has been the most difficult. I will have to come back to it. But even at a cursory level, it has been most fun to see Darian's thought-processes in action.
Leader's polemic here is in the term of Jouissance, its etymology, and the historical use of the term since its inception, particularly by analysts themselves. The conclusions he draws are pretty indicting, and touch on not just the lacking growth in understanding sexuality beyond a localized "jelly" model or a Freudian economic model, with Jouissance being a "different name for the same thing," but also that plenty of sexology research in the postwar period remains unused in psychoanalysis.
As a reader with a background in the humanities, this is a very cathartic experience. People throw around terms all the time when approaching a work of fiction with the various literary theories, and to see how the confusion with terms "goes straight to the top" so to speak, is something I wish more graduate students would know going in.
Darian Leader is one of those rare thinkers in the laymen non-fiction field who is unafraid to do the work and retrace the steps, which is such a delight when done clearly and rigorously.
Despite the fact that this is the most jargon-filled, the most "insider baseball" of his work, I still enjoyed it.
Leader's polemic here is in the term of Jouissance, its etymology, and the historical use of the term since its inception, particularly by analysts themselves. The conclusions he draws are pretty indicting, and touch on not just the lacking growth in understanding sexuality beyond a localized "jelly" model or a Freudian economic model, with Jouissance being a "different name for the same thing," but also that plenty of sexology research in the postwar period remains unused in psychoanalysis.
As a reader with a background in the humanities, this is a very cathartic experience. People throw around terms all the time when approaching a work of fiction with the various literary theories, and to see how the confusion with terms "goes straight to the top" so to speak, is something I wish more graduate students would know going in.
Darian Leader is one of those rare thinkers in the laymen non-fiction field who is unafraid to do the work and retrace the steps, which is such a delight when done clearly and rigorously.
Despite the fact that this is the most jargon-filled, the most "insider baseball" of his work, I still enjoyed it.
April 17, 2023
A definite must-read for therapists operating from a psychodynamic or psychoanalytic perspective. Jouissance as a concept is an incredibly complex and difficult topic and this book is likewise complex and requiring of significant attention. It took somewhat longer to read than I had expected given its relatively short length and I believe that it may require more than one reading to grasp the full depth of the work
Want to read
March 21, 2023I love Darian Leader
August 18, 2025
Gagged me tbh but I think I need to read it again that shit was dense
September 19, 2025
The sexual tension between me and objet a❤️nerdesin ya!!!!
April 6, 2023
Unbearable writing style for the first quarter of the book. Constantly calls out all these ops… who are they?? Who are you choosing? Seems like he’s being cagey and doesn’t want to name names. He literally makes fun of [op] for justifying their position on material by quoting Aristotle on transubstantiation.
Other than that, and I hate to say it, but he’s very smart and obviously right about the uselessness of the term jouissance. He delivers on his promise and provides much more clinical use value to the term, explodes it with context, and it’s very easy to follow. So he’s a god structural writer or whatever
Other than that, and I hate to say it, but he’s very smart and obviously right about the uselessness of the term jouissance. He delivers on his promise and provides much more clinical use value to the term, explodes it with context, and it’s very easy to follow. So he’s a god structural writer or whatever
August 27, 2023
I can't say I have any greater understanding of what jouissance is. Though the writing jumps around from topic to topic it is on the whole quite clear. My lack of comprehension is down to 'jouissance' existing within a network of specialist psychoanalytic terminology that is a bit beyond me and also that it is in fact a nebulous concept that struggles to find a real world point of reference. Spoiler: The book concludes with a nod towards scrapping the term altogether. I know life is about the journey and all, but had I known the conclusion in advance would I still have read it? This might be a book where if one were to read only the end first they would not be any less off.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews