What is it about?
This essay explores acts as erotic and transformative forces, with attention to how intersectional feminist activism has shaped psychoanalysis in Latin America over the past decade. Traditionally, psychoanalysis has often viewed action with suspicion, interpreting it as acting out or as a failure of symbolization. This essay proposes another view: to see acts as openings, charged with erotic energy, that emerge from the sexual unconscious. Drawing on ethnographic research in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, and engaging with Lacan’s idea of the analytic act and Laplanche’s concept of the enigma, the essay argues that acts work through a process of unbinding. That is, they loosen or undo established ties, breaking with patriarchal and colonial norms, and creating the conditions for new ways of translating the sexual unconscious. In this sense, the essay offers a framework for understanding acts as sites of erotic invention, interruption, and transformation.
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Why is it important?
This article is important because it rethinks how psychoanalysis understands action. Instead of seeing acts only as problems or failures, it shows how they can be sources of energy, creativity, and change. By drawing on feminist activism in Latin America, it demonstrates how acts can “unbind” old structures of patriarchy and colonialism, opening space for new ways of understanding desire and sexuality. In doing so, the article connects psychoanalysis to broader struggles for social transformation, making it relevant both inside and outside the clinic.
Perspectives
This contribution also matters in today’s political climate, marked by the rise of fascism and far-right movements worldwide. These forces often push back against hard-won human rights, especially the right to freely express and translate one’s own sexuality and gender. By highlighting how acts can “unbind” the grip of patriarchal and colonial norms, the article offers tools to think and act against these authoritarian rollbacks. In this sense, it not only reimagines psychoanalysis, but also affirms the value of acts as openings for freedom, resistance, and the invention of new social and intimate possibilities.
Carolina Besoain
Colectivo Trenza
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Erotics of the act: Psychoanalysis and feminist activism in Latin America., Psychoanalytic Psychology, October 2025, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/pap0000546.
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