Can the Monster Speak?: Report to an Academy of Psychoanalysts: A Report to an Academy of Psychoanalysts

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In November 2019, Paul Preciado was invited to speak in front of 3,500 psychoanalysts at the École de la Cause Freudienne’s annual conference in Paris. Standing in front of the profession for whom he is a “mentally ill person” suffering from “gender dysphoria,” Preciado draws inspiration in his lecture from Kafka’s “Report to an Academy,” in which a monkey tells an assembly of scientists that human subjectivity is a cage comparable to one made of metal bars. The author questions the concepts of identifying as male and female, and the hostile response the psychoanalyst community has for so long taken against trans people. Still it is seen as a condition, gender dysphoria, something to be solved by a transition of the subject to another constructed gender.

Preciado elegantly summarizes the admittedly brutal history of psychoanalysis and gender. Much of what he documents I first encountered in a paper by Patricia Gherovici, “Psychoanalysis Needs a Sex Change,” which traces the medical and psychiatric development of the idea of transsexuality in Western Europe and the United States. Yet Gherovici’s account differs from Preciado’s. As an analyst and an American Lacanian, Gherovici wants to advance the discipline and expresses sympathy toward its leading figures and their historically limited views. Preciado, meanwhile, wants to shred the discipline, to blow it apart. He writes: Book Genre: Essays, Feminism, Gender, Gender Studies, LGBT, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Queer, Theory, Writing In Can the Monster Speak?, he compares himself to a number of figures, starting with Red Peter, an ape kidnapped from Africa who learns how to speak and gives a lecture to a hall of scientists in a story by Kafka. Preciado, from what he calls over and over again the “cage” of his trans body, also compares himself to Galileo, Freud, Frankenstein’s monster, a migrant, a child, a cow, and the professor in Money Heist. He seems to feel disempowered by his audience and at the same time to wish to elevate himself above them and speak downward. At times this grandiose voice is seductive and the images are elegant. It can also feel a bit clueless. Very clever and articulate. It's hard to argue with a lot of what he says, primarily because a lot of it is already decently established. Preciado's hypothesis or manifesto here is that psychoanalysis is ultimately doomed to fail, being structured so solidly around rigid boundaries of male/female and normal/abnormal (e.g. the Oedipus and Electra complexes) unless it can change with the times and recognise a new paradigm of gender and sexuality which allows for infinite multiplicity. I found his argument mostly compelling and clearly articulated.That said, there is a somewhat dodgy section in which Preciado compares the trans body (including, one presumes, the white trans body) to Africa, saying it has been similarly colonised (Direct quotes: ' The trans body is Africa; its organs, though living, speak in languages unknown to the coloniser [...]', as well as: ' The migrant has lost the nation state. The refugee has lost their house. The trans person loses their body.') Written in a mutant language that owes much to Kafka, the master of metamorphoses, this radical text is a welcome insurrection against the psychoanalyst’s couch.’ Either everyone has an identity. Or there is no identity the author says, and the personal recollections on the process and experiences therein are sometimes harrowing. The speech itself made me think about the concepts, but I must say that even for someone with quite some interest in the topic the book is not necessarily very accessible.

In November 2019, Paul B. Preciado was invited to speak in front of 3,500 psychoanalysts at the École de la Cause Freudienne’s annual conference in Paris. Standing up in front of the profession for whom he is a ‘mentally ill person’ suffering from ‘gender dysphoria’, Preciado draws inspiration in his lecture from Kafka’s ‘Report to an Academy’, in which a monkey tells an assembly of scientists that human subjectivity is a cage comparable to one made of metal bars. Analogously, Preciado calls his state of being a trans man a ‘cage’, too. Because of this, he is framed by European colonial hegemony as a monster in much the same terms as Red Peter. Preciado urges psychoanalysts to evolve, to incorporate variety. What becomes evident, is that our belief systems steeped in binary notions of this or that, stop us from seeing the full spectrum of human experience. If we have a predetermined regime of knowledge and power, then we will always measure everything against it, missing out on what is actually there. In the end, the main question is: “What if genital difference or gender expression were not the criteria for the acceptance of a human body in a social and political collective?”

As a psychologist in training, trans woman, and social justice educator, I sometimes speak to groups of cis mental health practitioners in academic settings about competency providing mental healthcare for trans people. I do this work relying less on tools I learned through studying and debating theory, and more by drawing on what I try to do as an organizer. Instead of attempting to appear impressive or clever, I aim to connect emotionally, with the goal of fomenting meaningful individual and cultural change. November 2019, Paul Preciado was invited to speak in front of 3,500 psychoanalysts at the École de la Cause Freudienne's annual conference in Paris. Standing in front of the profession for whom he is a “mentally ill person” suffering from “gender dysphoria,” Preciado draws inspiration in his lecture from Kafka's “Report to an Academy,” in which a monkey tells an assembly of scientists that human subjectivity is a cage comparable to one made of metal bars. Near the end of the book (ostensibly never spoken aloud during his engagement, due to the aforementioned booing off the stage), Preciado moves toward a statement of purpose: The MIT Press has been a leader in open access book publishing for over two decades, beginning in 1995 with the publication of William Mitchell’s City of Bits, which appeared simultaneously in print and in a dynamic, open web edition.