[A space to construct desire...].

Abstract

It is a matter of being woman or simply of being? Is there actually a feminine way to be? Here, women put psychoanalysis into question. This article suggests a return to the notion of castration and to the developments surrounding the significance of the phallus. The castration experience is presented as being closely likely to the process of sexualization and to the individual's self-realization. The authors advance the woman's point of view, which questions castration. They find that psychoanalysis does not provide an answer, but imposes a limit: that of a symbolic order in which the individual must fit. Within the limiting phenomenon of castration, there remains the need for every man and woman in contemporary Québec society to share a sense of desire.