[Automatic translation from Spanish]:
Dr. Víctor Hernández Ramírez is a psychoanalyst. He holds a doctorate in psychology (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) and studied psychology at the Faculty of Psychology of UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México). He is also a graduate in Theology at the Seminario Teológico Presbiteriano de México (Ciudad de México).
In addition to his clinical practice, he collaborates in teaching at the Institut Universitari de Salut Mental Vidal i Barraquer (Universitat Ramon Llull), in the Master of Transcultural Spirituality and in the Postgraduate of Spiritual accompanying. He is also a teacher at the Faculty SEUT in Madrid.
Over the years, Victor has been interested in the interdisciplinary work of psychoanalysis with respect to religious fact: the phenomenology of beliefs, the relationship between psychoanalysis and spirituality, as well as the study of mystical experiences (in the spring of 2022 he gave a course on «Mistics and psychoanalysis» at the Centre for Studies of Christianity and Justice in Barcelona).
Victor has also dedicated himself for many years to the exercise of the psychoanalytic reading or hermeneutics of biblical accounts, in this marginal tradition that make up other psychoanalysts: the interpretations of the gospel by Françoise Dolto, the reading of the Old Testament by Mary Balmary, and the recent publications of Massimo Recalcati on Cain, Job’s book and the night of the Gethsemane of Jesus (three recent books by Recalcati, not yet translated from Italian). In recent years, he has given a seminar on psychoanalytic interpretation of biblical texts to Christianity and Justice in Barcelona.
With Victor and other colleagues, we have been working, for several years, on a group that was the heir to the last Espai Obert initiative, on aspects relating to the shaping of subjectivity, especially with regard to issues of gender identity such as transsexuality. In these years of work we have been able to share several issues that are already a regular part of the clinic in which all these issues arising from the gender dispute are expressed in very different ways (to put it with the concept of Judith Butler).
In this context of gender-derived issues is the text that we presented here, which was originally a lecture by Victor on seminar entitled «Dialogues between psychoanalysts and other discourses», in April 2021, favored by the master’s degree in psychoanalytic studies of the Faculty of Psychology of the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo (México).
Victor’s work is titled «Psychoanalysis versus a theory of life and gender diversity. Is it possible to live without standardization laws?». This work is based on a controversial situation, arising from the already famous intervention of Paul B. Preciado before a broad public of psychoanalysts at the Seminar of theÉcole de la Cause Freudienne, in Paris, on 17 November 2019. As we know, this intervention shocked everyone because Preciado said that psychoanalysis (and psychoanalysts) is complicit in violence that stems from heteronormative sexual difference. In addition, Preciado did so in a very eloquent way, by using Kafka’s tale titled «A Report for the Academy», and thus positioned himself as “this monster that speaks to you”.
Victor then put forward the various responses that were given by the psychoanalyst guild to Preciado’s sharp criticism: voices against, voices in favour, and some that raised misunderstandings or coincidences that should be explained. But Victor’s approach does not want to join these debates, or at least not from the same place: psychoanalysis vs.. the theories queer. He instead proposes a digression using what he calls a «theory of life», consisting of philosophical reflections on the processes of hominization, following authors such as Wilhelm Plessner, Hans Blumenberg, and Max Weber.
What these authors contribute (from a philosophical anthropology that is already a very interdisciplinary work), following Victor, is a reflection on the role of norms, of the concretions of the law, in the shaping of human sociality, and thus it is presented as an alternative way in debates on gender, where psychoanalysis can be added to a more constructive way of understanding gender and normative issues.
In this regard, Victor Hernández’s work simply wants to point out a path that may be more complex or longer, but which is necessary to join in the political work that is implied in all debates on gender.
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