Abstract

We are witnessing sociocultural changes characterised both by the theme of fluidity and by the arrival of the biotechnologies, and in which the construction of identity goes beyond reference to a given binary system, as much in terms of the gender question as of sexual orientations. The article addresses the topic of how to think psychoanalytically about these phenomena. A reflection is offered on the formation of the representation of one’s own body. The construction of the feeling of one’s own bodily Self involves the other in the early phases of development, to be a starting point for the possible paths of subjectivation to which it may give rise. The processes of assignment and recognition that designate the infant’s gender do not correspond to an objective knowledge according to anatomical sexual signs, but are conditioned by the parent-child interactions, by unconscious fantasies, and by the internal world of the caregivers, and requires us to distinguish between the anatomical, subjective, and fantasy body. In this scenario the primary identifications, supported by perceptions and sensory states, play a specific role in forming the bodily Ego which will later have to deal with the secondary identifications: we can speculate that the transitions from the former to the latter represent the perimeter within which the game is played out between the body of the ideal Ego and the comparison with the given body, the discovery of sexuality and the recognition of gender difference in relation to one’s anatomical body.