Dominique Scarfone

The Sexual Drive for Power

Abstract: In this work, the author criticizes the sexual drive/destructive drive duality and relies on the fact that one does not encounter any abuse of power that is not connoted by the sexual in the Freudian sense, nor any sexual abuse that is not at the same time an abuse of power, in order to put forward the notion of a “sexual drive of power”. This is proposed not as a new drive, but as the final common trunk of the movements of the sexual death drive (Laplanche) and of narcissistic omnipotence. The junction between these two currents is made through what Freud called a Bemächtigungstrieb, often translated as “drive for mastery” or “drive for control” (in French: pulsion d’emprise), but which it would be more exact to call drive for power – thus highlighting the inherent
violence of its manifestation.

Dominique SCARFONE

Scarfone is honorary professor at the University of Montreal and member emeritus of the Société Psychanalytique de Montréal – from which he recently retired as a training analyst and where he currently directs the seminar “Penser avec Freud” (Thinking with Freud). In 2022 he was elected honorary member of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society.
He has taught psychoanalytic theory for over thirty years at the university, founded and directed the psychoanalytic journal Trans (1992-1999) and was for several years associate editor of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. He has published several books (Jean Laplanche, 1997; Oublier Freud ?, 1999; Les Pulsions, 2004; Quartiers aux rues sans nom, 2012; The Unpast – The actual unconscious, 2015) as well as numerous book chapters and around 70 original articles in many languages in national and international journals.

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