CLIMACTERIC AND FEMININITY: IDENTIFICATORY REARRANGEMENTS AND SUBJECTIVE REPOSITIONING

Abstract

Climacteric is an experience that exceeds its organic dimensions, affecting women’s relationship with their bodies, sexuality, ideals of femininity, and forms of self-recognition. This qualitative theoretical study, developed through a non-systematic theoretical-interpretative literature review and the analysis of a clinical vignette, examines the reconfigurations of femininity during the climacteric from a psychoanalytic perspective. The study articulates contributions from Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, particularly their formulations on castration, identifications, sexuation, and the logic of the not-all, drawing on a clinical vignette constructed from recurrent elements in psychological practice, with modified data to preserve anonymity. The research sought to understand how bodily transformations and the cessation of reproductive function may challenge identifications and narcissistic ideals associated with motherhood, caregiving, youth, and body image, as well as to investigate possibilities for identificatory rearrangements and subjective repositioning in response to these transformations. The findings indicate that the effects of the climacteric are neither universal nor directly determined by physiological changes, as they depend on each subject’s singular history and on the signifiers that organize their investments. It is concluded that the climacteric may constitute a time of subjective inflection, fostering libidinal displacements, new forms of relating to desire, the body, and jouissance, and expanding clinical listening beyond exclusively biomedical perspectives.