When an MP announced she was pansexual I didn’t know what she meant. Indeed I didn’t know what she could mean. Was everything the object of her sexual desires? So I asked my husband.
‘Oh, that’s what they used to call Freud’s ideas,’ he said patiently. I was surprised to find he was right. Pansexual has been around for a century, starting as a translation of the German Pansexualismus.
In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), Sigmund Freud recognised that ‘educated’ people were hostile towards psychoanalysis because it dealt in ‘sexual’ instincts, a nomenclature they regarded ‘as an insult, and have taken their revenge by retorting upon psychoanalysis with the reproach of pan-sexualism’.
Freud derived the love of family, country, God, the arts, and even the sciences from this pansexualism. The MP’s sexual love seems focused currently on another woman.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in