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ISBN: 978-989-99864-1-1 © 2017

SEXUALITY AS DIALECTICS SYNTHESIS: AN ANALYSIS FROM


SOCIAL-HISTORICAL PSYCHOLOGY

Jeferson Montreozol1, Edna Kahhale2, & Inara Leão3


1
Coordenação de Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação, Faculdade Unigran Capital (Brazil)
2
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia Clínica, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo
(Brazil)
3
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul (Brazil)

Abstract

While recent science, psychology brings with it theories that cast efforts to understand and explain
phenomena and processes arising from the human and social sciences, and biological sciences and health.
Meanwhile, the constitution of the human aspect shown urgencial for this science that has split the subject
in body and mind, objectivity and subjectivity. Then bring the need to protect the materiality the reference
for structuring a sexuality ruled on biological sex, and consider historicity and dialectics in an eminently
social and historical understanding of the sexual basis. In view of the Psychology Historical-Cultural
understand that sexuality is the synthesis of a dialectical process that brings in organic base (body),
from which the subject develops a psychological structure initiated by socialization in their social group.
Therefore, we consider the continued development of sexual identity, and not the fixity of that structure;
the non-exclusive ownership of attitudes and behaviors male or female; developing a sexual identity that
embraces both the social and historical aspects as well as the elements of consciousness and the
unconscious subject (Higher Psychological Functions and mediators); the revalidation of the sphere of
pleasure, as a possibility for directing the emotional aspects or even the emotional tone; and landmarks
imposed by capitalist society to the development of sexual identity. This framework allows to understand
the dialectical assumptions of contradiction and dynamism possible to work with the existence of a
contradictory, multiple and pluridetermined reality, evidenced in the relationship between subject and
object in the psychic and sexual development.

Keywords: Sexuality, Synthesis, Dialectical, Social-Historical Psychology.

1. Introduction

In order to understand sexuality as a dialectical synthesis, we take as an indicator the


consideration of Garcia (2001, p.57), when he writes that “the sexual identity of each human being is
constructed in the history of their relations, not being a mere biological determination, in some cases,
faults that produce aberrations”. We understand sexuality as the result of a complex process of
development, which has in society the basic elements for the construction of a psychological
identification of the sexual sphere.
This consideration is necessary because we understand that the construction of any sexual
identity is permeated also by the ethical and moral values of a given society, which are apprehended by
the subject and permeate its development. Thus, we highlight one of the essential characteristics for the
understanding of the human being, which is its historical character (VIGOTSKI, 2004; LANE and
SAWAIA, 1995), which implies in its development occurring under the determination of a series of
factors, such as social, cultural and economic context in which he lives, and these factors suffer the
conditions of the historical period in which they are circumscribed.
Therefore, it is as a result of this process that we visualize the construction of sexuality, where
the biological organism is qualitatively overcome by the appropriation of social constructions. Ergo, it is a
social relation, and specifically in education, that we find the references not only to the structuring of a
sexuality based on biological sex, but also to a construction that advances in an eminently social and
historical understanding of the sexual base: a dialectical synthesis.

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2. The Sexuality as a human and social condition

To discuss human sexuality is to search for the most intimate and private aspects of man since
his genesis. It is always possible to make a new analysis of the social, cultural and subjective dimensions
that exist within the understanding of what is sexuality and, in this way, understand it as a dialectical
synthesis.
It should be noted that in explaining sexual identity some issues need to be retaken. The first, and
perhaps most significant of this article, is the understanding of sexuality through a larger aspect than is
proposed by common sense when it links this human expression only to the sexual act itself. This is
because sexuality is not only the relationship between two individuals, much less can be defined only by
the sexual organs, the biology of human bodies.
Sexuality is a symbolic and historical process, which expresses to the constitution of the subject,
how he lives and sees it, his intimacy, his meanings before social norms, moral, ethics, that is, his
sexuality belonging to and coming from the social environment in which he lives (Kahhale, 2001). Nunes
(2002) clarifies that the exclusive level of human sexuality is the psychosocial, since sexuality occurs
through existing relationships in society.
According to the authors, we understand that social phenomena are directly linked to a culture,
that is, they are correlated in the idealizations of what it is to be man or woman, and thus, in performing
external activities, man attributes an interpretation through of the cultural meanings of the society in
which it lives.
When we talk about meanings we must understand that there are social codes (signs), which are
defined by Aguiar (2000) as conventional instruments of a social nature, the means of contact with the
outside world and also with man himself and with his own conscience. Bakhtin (1992) clarifies that signs
have an important role, because the word, as well as being the key to the understanding of consciousness
and subjectivity, is also a privileged space of ideological creation, that is, the author differs from the
token of the sign, since this second is changeable, alive and never neutral. Then, as Vygotsky (1996)
points out the sign cannot be taken only as a tool because it is seen as a means of internal activity.
We understand that in interpreting the meanings of these signs already established historically,
man constitutes senses and gives his own senses through his existences and experiences. In this way, we
construct our mental understanding of what constitutes man or woman, using all these elements cited
because they are the signifiers of this mental representation.
It is evident that in discussing human sexuality, we also understand that the historicity
surrounding man as a social being is directly linked to his constitution. And, therefore, we consider that to
construct a discussion about two important aspects that are imbued with the genesis of sexuality: sex and
gender.
In the Portuguese language the word sex means "the set of characteristics that distinguish living
beings in relation to their reproductive function, physical, organic, cellular, particular conformation that
allows distinguishing male sex from female sex" (Ferreira, 2014, p. 698). Fundamentally, the biological
factors are those that control human sexual development, from conception to birth, and also that enable
reproduction after puberty. These are the main differences between male and female sex, and are mainly
determined by the hormonal difference, having their maturation at puberty and reaching total functioning
of the sexual and reproductive apparatus, besides contributing fundamentally to the development of
sexual behaviors.
According to Canella (2004), sex should be considered in several aspects: the genetic, which is
the biological difference that separates individuals by XX or XY and is determined by the presence of
ovaries or testes respectively in female or male sex; later, the somatic sex, which shows the biological
differences of both through internal (female) and external (male) genitals; legal sex, recognized at birth,
validated in civil registry and legal documents. The author still emphasizes that secondary characters
invigorate the identity acquired by creation, that is, cultural elements present in the environment in which
the individual is inserted permeate and mediate their constitution, and contribute to the formatting of their
identity. Or, in certain cases, such elements may generate conflicts of identity and non-acceptance of the
biological sex present in the body, as occurs, for example, in transsexuality.
Another point to consider is the signifier of what the word sex represents to us. About this prism
Montreozol (2011) clarifies that sex is a name given to what people learn and recognize as sexual things,
for example, the medical-physiological descriptions of the genital apparatus, descriptions of bodily
sensations, description of affective and loving feelings, It is all linguistic reality that cannot be shown and
body support is the sole criterion of expression of these terms.

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Thus, the role of language becomes important when discussing sex in its most different
possibilities. And Social-Historical Psychology allows us this critical view on the construction of man,
which brings us to the need to evaluate how the introduction of the signs present in our society make
possible and mediate the constitution of a future sexual identity. In this discussion, it is possible to
identify how we can approach and, at the same time, understand the feminine and masculine, and their
social significations. To do so, we will resort to a second point within the constitution of human sexuality:
the gender.
Nunes (2002) points out that we must consider the existence of this second dimension of
sexuality: gender, being something exclusively human and deriving from man be a social subject, that is,
that comes from deep social relations that influence the entire process of development of the species.
Born in the intense political and scientific debate of the 1960’s and 1970’s, the concept of gender
accompanied the struggle of the feminist movement and gradually came to accompany social discourses
and the humanities. Gender has come to be conceived not as an innate characteristic, but as the result of
social and cultural forces, a social construction of the subject as male or female, not the natural male or
female condition expressed in the genitals. And this implies that affective, loving, and sexual
relationships do not constitute themselves as natural realities, but are constructed and developed through
cultural processes.
Another understanding of gender is that of social sex or social gender, which represents one of
the structuring and situational relationships of the individual in the world, and determines, throughout life,
opportunities, choices, trajectories, experiences, places, interests (Nunes, 2002). Therefore, to understand
that the historicity in which the subject is located goes beyond the biological characteristics and that these
characteristics are not only related to the physiology of the sexual organs, it is to identify that throughout
the social development the man assumes some peculiarities through the existing relations in his means.
And these make possible its constitution, be it in the family nucleus, in the school, in the religion, in the
interpersonal relationships, that is, in the historical culture inserted in this environment (Guedes, 2004).
Therefore, what becomes essential is not only the physiology present in the masculine or
feminine body, but the symbolic representation that this physiology represents in a social environment;
the representativeness of this sign, the meanings present within this cultural context and the human
behaviors correlated to these signifiers.
It is interesting to note how there are still few productions on subjective issues related to gender
within Social-Historical Psychology. This demonstrates the need to point out that an aspect initially seen
as one of the basic functions of human beings and their survival - sexuality - has become part of a
complex mechanism of expression of the social and symbolic relations of man. This has become one of
the most powerful guides in the distribution of social roles, in the division of labor, in the inequality of
relations and access to the resources and opportunities available in society (Barbosa, 1996).
The concept of gender, involving the social construction and historicity of sexuality, allows a
breakthrough in the discussions about sexuality, since it shows the plurality of possible sexual identities
and the understanding of these as well as narrow and purely biological visions, linked only to physical
sex, thus promoting the overcoming of stigmatized and prejudiced conceptions that characterized the
discussions about sexuality until the 1970’s. Guedes (2004) points out that by abandoning the exclusively
physiological precepts of the identity of the feminine and masculine genres, we have the possibility of
understanding the diversity of sexual identities and the formation of this human sexuality without
preconceptions or immediate judgments.

3. Sexuality: dialectical synthesis

We have argued that by studying sexuality from a social-historical perspective, we understand


sexual development within a given society and social group. And we must remember that in the course of
historical development, sexuality began to incorporate different possibilities of identification. However,
psychological theories have presented difficulties in understanding and explaining these sexual identities,
as well as psychic structure, with their correlated processes of identification and development; as well as
in their social role, since social-anthropological definitions indicate an identity built on the social gender,
not just sex. This is because as much as discussions have advanced in the understanding of sexuality,
they end up restricted only to the concept of gender, and fail to encompass the whole range of continuous
configurations that the process of sexual identity has in the human psyche.
Towards the knowledge generated by social-historical psychology, we understand identity as a
process in continuous development, represented by the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity,
that is, individual contents are constituted throughout the life of the subject, always guarding the relations
that it maintains with the members of the social groups that it belongs, its presuppositions and, in front of
this, its construction as subject.

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Thus, sexuality also becomes a process in successive development, which is not considered by
the main literatures on gender identity, since they treat the gender as responsible for the entire identity
process. From this perspective, we must consider that the movement of the construction of sexuality by
men in society finds greater resistance when they begin to seek sexual fulfillment not only by the
authoritarianism of procreation and mainly aim at obtaining a pleasurable experience, a factor that has
already been discussed since classical philosophy, but analyzed in depth since Freud (1927), when he
affirmed that the determinant for our object choices was in the driving force of eroticism, not in our
anatomical conformation.
This unprecedented revolution in the science of sexuality and western sexual ethics has
contributed to our understanding that sexual identity, whatever it may be, is constructed through a psychic
process, not confined exclusively to the biological aspect. Therefore, the sexual object is considered as
contingent, because it is not necessary or essential, but depends on the circumstances, is not given by the
biological nature, but by the psyche that is constituted by interpsychological and social relations.
We understand then that the various differentiations in sexuality cease to be pathological formations to be
accepted as resulting from a social-historical process, that is, there is no normal and natural
heterosexuality and a sick and deviant homosexuality, but both are psychosocial constructions produced
in each subject in their life history. "One cannot even speak of heterosexuality or homosexuality, but of
singular sexual identities of singular individuals" (GARCIA, 2001, p. 68).
Sexuality is brought on the biological basis, specifically in the body, and from this the subject
develops a process of identification, which, also, in the sexual aspect, is initiated by socialization in its
social group. In this, the subject identifies, or not, with certain characteristics referenced socially for their
anatomical sex. This process protects some reservations: (a) continuity, that is, the continuous
development of a sexual identity, and not the fixity of this structure; (b) the non-exclusive appropriation
of male and female attitudes and behavior; (c) the development of a gendered identity, a sexual identity
that encompasses both social and historical aspects, as well as the constituent elements of the subject's
consciousness; (d) the revalidation of the sphere of pleasure, as a possibility for directing the emotional
aspects; and (e) denial by capitalist society itself to the development of some possibilities of sexual
identification.
And this understanding is based on the epistemological principles of Dialectical Historical
Materialism, particularly on the basis of Social-historical Psychological Theory. In this light, the social
character is natural to man, and as much as we consider certain needs as biological, they are also
mediated by society, ruled by social rules and conventions. Human existence itself becomes a social
activity, determined by the context in which it occurs: "what I do for myself, I do for society and with the
awareness of myself as a social being" (MARX 1993, 176).
However, much these social constructions are embodied, assimilated and come to be regarded as
natural, eternal, immutable, they are not. All necessity, and the consequent satisfaction of it, are based on
historical and social determinations. We have in the dialectic the possibility of understanding this reality
as processual, and thus seeking truth in the internal movement of contradiction.
We understand then that contradiction underlies all existing relations in society: a process in
which these relations (what is) contain in themselves the antithesis (the negation of what is), and that, in a
qualitative leap, the synthesis is constructed. However, as much as it contains the elements of the two
previous faces, the synthesis is not the mere sum of these; it is the new, not as the destruction of the two
poles, but as an element with qualities distinct from those that originated it.
By maintaining the character of procedurality, the synthesis is readily configured as a new thesis
which, in turn, will also bring in itself the negation (antithesis), restarting the process of constructing the
new by incorporating / modifying the old one, always starting from the elements present in materiality.
Based on this principle, we can understand that the development of sexuality contains within
itself the possibility of acceptance / negation of the exclusively biological character. Sexuality thus
appears as a synthesis, a possibility of material representation of the negation of social-sexual
constructions, and the subject only finds this possibility and the way of realizing it because society allows
it. Such permission occurs because we then have the subject with a particular biological apparatus, but
that develops an identity process that may or may not socially match with it. And this identity process is
made possible because the cultural productions related to sexuality are ideal constructions, that is, we
should fit into the conceptions of what it is to be a woman and what it is to be a man for society.
However, the idealistic constructions from which we appropriate ourselves are not what society
regards as the correct ones, and consequently the synthesis cannot equal neither pole nor pole. The fact
that one has characteristics that are not socially valued as feminine or masculine makes explicit the
contradiction between the material base and the ideal constructions that the subject carries.
The formulated synthesis is fundamentally different among all forms of sexual identity, since the material
basis functions as a thesis, and the social sphere as antithesis.

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In this way, we understand that any subject is born with a body, which is its material base, and
by its activity it will appropriate the cultural constructions that will make it a human being. In this
dialectical process, it surpasses its biological materiality, even though it does not cease to exist,
constituting its own characteristics even in the face of social reality. Sexuality, moreover, is developed
not as a copy of reality, but as a subjective synthesis: the sexual identity.

4. Conclusions

In the light of some final considerations, we consider it important to note some observations.
The first, related to the character itself, gives us final considerations, since we do not understand this
work as the end point of the discussions on sexuality in a Social-Historical perspective, on the contrary,
here are some guiding elements for discussions that in the future need to be deepened and unfolded.
The second, refers to the specificity of our theoretical approach, since any others could generate different
thoughts and results.
By the dialectical understanding of reality, we take the subjects as representatives of aspects
related to the social and psychological processes present in society, and which are crystallized in their
characteristics due to the specificity of their insertion in the external reality or in the development of a
determined process of identification.
This form of understanding of reality allowed us to apprehend sexuality as a social construction
that maintains a dialectic relationship with consciousness, and is therefore not insurmountable. It is not
phylogenetically determined, but constructed through the internalization that the subject makes of the
sexual socialization and, therefore, depends on its activity. The central question that arises is the social
and cultural character of sexuality; we visualize that sexuality is, like the individual consciousness,
depending on the relation of the subject to the external world, without losing the social character, since it
contains components related to the social-historical determinations in which this individual acts in groups
which participates, which provide content for their development, and for, in addition, the development of
their sexuality.

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