Implicações psíquicas relacionadas a manipulações irreversíveis do corpo em transexuais

Abstract

Irreversible interventions on the body have become phenomena that grow rapidly every day. Returning to the elaborations of Freud and Lacan, psychoanalyst Paola Mieli argues that every irreversible bodily manipulation has particular motivations that must be studied in the universe of the uniqueness of each person’ s subjective history. In this context, Mieli calls punctum the place of the body which is perceived by the subject as something that presents itself as a source of discomfort, generating an attempt to get rid of it. Thus, the need for an irreversible intervention on the body may aim to transform what is perceived as a punctum into what Mieli calls landmark, through an inscription as an erasure or mark on the body surface. In the scenario of issues related to the body and the possibilities of its manipulation, the demand for hormonal and/or surgical interventions by transsexuals stands out. This demand progressively acquires more repercussions in the encounter with science, which allows such subjects to have access to the process of gender affirmation through the use of technology. In this context, there was an interest in conducting research in psychoanalysis, which general objective consisted in the articulation between the search for physical changes desired by transsexual subjects and psychoanalytic propositions about irreversible interventions in the body. As specific objectives, we intend to: a) present the definitions and theoretical-clinical bases about the concepts of punctum and landmark; b) discuss the statutes of the body, psychic bisexuality, the Oedipus complex, sexuation and transsexuality; c) articulate the issue of bodily points that cause discomfort in transsexual subjects with the logic of the punctum; d) articulate the irreversible bodily interventions demanded by transsexual subjects with the inscription of the landmark. The methodology was based on the bibliographic mapping of psychoanalytic literature, having as mainstay the works of Freud and Lacan, as well as theoretical productions of contemporary psychoanalysts with a Lacanian orientation. We also worked on fragments of cases from our clinical experience that made possible theorizing about situations of subjects who, suffering the blows of their image instability, can present bodily characters that behave like punctums, being relegated to a state of embarrassment and immobility. We also inferred that, in some clinical situations, certain bodily features were constituted as traits associated with the male and female instances of the family lineage, in such a way that the request for body modification can present itself as an appeal to a furrow in the generational transmission. We also observed that some interventions on the body, often flanked by its tracks, could exert the effect of a landmark, coining, through a symbolic inscription, the stabilization of the body image. Finally, we delimit that our research is not intended to assume an inflexible stance, neither of defense nor of veto, regarding bodily changes, but to support the idea of proposing a time of speaking and listening, so that the transsexuals feel minimally advised to make their choice and to take ownership of their decisions. In this sense, psychoanalysis can make a pertinent contribution, as it deals with the uniqueness of each subject.