Homosexual conjugal desire and conjugal love. An old accusation and what can pro-vocate

Reflections by Luigi Testa*, first part

The accusation of promiscuity that is moved to homosexual people is now so worn out and worn that no one is outraged anymore.

Perhaps, precisely this dilling of the tones can make that accusation, instead of shaking us, pro-vochi Some lucid and detached reflection on our reality, to which these pages want to be a very personal contribution, perhaps still in the making, and therefore free from any claim of absolute or universal sharing.

L’unica richiesta per la franchezza del dialogo è che si abbia la serenità di abbandonare ogni difesa ideologica e di constatare con semplicità l’esistenza – in noi e in chi ci è intorno – di desideri a volte disordinati, di relazioni spesso intermittenti, di ricerche affannose e talvolta bulimiche. 

Mano a mano che la realtà si va svelando, emergono sempre di più esperienze di amore coniugale tra persone omosessuali che vivono la scommessa della relazione “per sempre” – il recente libro di Gianni Geraci, Nella buona e nella cattiva sorte, è prezioso da questo punto di vista. Ma ciascuno di noi fa esperienza quotidiana anche di altra parte della realtà – e la fa anzitutto nella sua carne, guardando se stesso e il mondo che lo abita.

Non si tratta evidentemente di qualcosa che appartiene solo al mondo omosessuale, da cui il mondo eterosessuale è immune: bisogna guardarsi bene dalla tentazione manichea di contrapporre questo mondo a quell’altro, come forse anche alcuni residui di omofobia interiorizzata possono inclinarci a fare. 

Ma è probabilmente vero – e si tenterà a breve qualche abbozzo di motivo – che le persone omosessuali hanno un’esperienza forse più viva di quella che è in realtà una cifra costitutiva, essenziale, dell’essere umano, su cui la psicanalisi dell’ultimo secolo ha riflettuto diffusamente.

La legge del «non tutto» e il desiderio di essere desiderati. 

Already Freudian reflection has highlighted the tension between the expansive and predatory ability of the spirit of man and the limited nature of the human being.

This is the dramatic tension between the desire of everything of the human heart and the "castration law" which is registered in its very nature, and which on the symbolic level developed by Freud is figured by the ban on incest: You can't have your mother - you can't everything. It is, of course, of a law that is not condemned - although it can sometimes be so perceived - but of salvation, because only it - and its acceptance - guarantees existence. It is clear, perhaps, if we consider that on a political level, the aspiration to overcome this law is represented by the experience of totalitarianism, which leads to the annihilation of man.

The law of "not everything" is therefore the essential figure of human experience, of which we continuously experience, and its failure to accept - already figured in the story of original sin: "You can eat of all trees, but not" - flows into attitudes of delirium sometimes even properly clinical.

We are structurally a lack, therefore, and we must to Lacan's reflection the idea that, in ordinarity, the symptom of this structural lack is our desire.

This is not the seat for a more widespread examination of the Lacanian thesis: it can be referred, as well as to the original texts, to the reading that Massimo Recalcati makes today, in his numerous writings.

With brutal approximation, it can be at least said that Lacan disappears the desire to grasp its own object, and it comes on this path to argue that the object of desire is nothing more than the desire of the other. Basically: I want to be desired. In other words: I want the other you want me.

Even better: I want the other to answer the "question of recognition" that puts me into the world, which puts me to life, so much so that on a symbolic level it is the question whose answer would expect from the father. This "question of recognition" is, for Lacan, "can you miss me?", Can you do without me? Are they replaceable? 

For Lacan desire, in its radical essentiality, wants there to be someone (Because the fundamental desire is a desire for relationship) that tells me: «I cannot lose you. You are irreplaceable for me ».

On the other hand, the tragic experience of the end of love has in this its most painful implication: in the discovery, suddenly, that the other can live even without me. This disturbs us: realizing that the other goes on even without feeling, without seeing us, without being with us. We are not irreplaceable for him.

It is perhaps appropriate to specify, moreover, that the same dynamic constitutes the essential figure also of the so -called sexual desire, which is always a desire for relationship, so much so that it would be more corresponding to reality to speak of desire outright, without other labels.

Even if I do not look for a relationship in the current sense of the term, in reality, I am looking for one who at that moment tells me "you are irreplaceable"; And, at that moment, they really are, because the physical enjoyment I am contributing would not be if I were not there: that enjoyment cannot do without me, at that moment. Once again: I wanted to be irreplaceable for the other lover.

Probably, this desire for the other's desire - which is the essential figure of every human being, regardless of sexual orientation - is more vivid in the experience of homosexual people. Perhaps because of the non -institutionalization (or at least of non -complete institutionalization) that accompanies, at least in our society, their emotional experiences. Or perhaps, more convincingly, because of the particular strength - often of particular violence - with which the "question of recognition" presents itself in the tiring experience of those who discover homosexual.

*Luigi Testa è autore di testi a carattere giuridico e scrive su alcuni quotidiani nazionali. “Via crucis of a gay boy"(Castelvecchi, 2024) is his first spiritual book, his other reflections are also published onGionata.org