Jordan Osserman: Chemsex on the Couch

Over the past decade, we have seen waves of public concern around ‘chemsex’ or 'party n play', typically understood as sexualised drug use in group settings of gay and queer men, concentrated in cities like London and New York. Media coverage tends towards sensationalism and panic; public health focuses on risk reduction; and the emerging field of 'critical chemsex studies' has pushed back against moralism and pathologization, asserting the right to pleasure and bodily autonomy. Yet despite an abundance of scholarship featuring interviews with men who participate in chemsex, it seems all sides struggle to hear the speaking (chem)sexual subject in his own right. Where public health assumes a rational actor who mismanages risk, critical chemsex studies assumes a desiring body whose pleasures would be unproblematic if the world were kinder. Neither address what the archive everywhere records: people who both suffer from, and remain attached to, forms of enjoyment of which they are not fully conscious. This talk, based on my emerging research, will explore how psychoanalysis can help us listen to testimonies of chemsex, and how such testimonies can shed new light on difficulties of pleasure and sexuality that we all must navigate -- whatever poison we pick.

Jordan Osserman is a psychoanalyst and an assistant professor in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex. He has written in the areas of gender and sexuality studies, the medical humanities, and the politics of the left. His work is available at jordanosserman.com.

CE credits available. Scholarships are available for those unable to cover the full cost of attendance. Please contact events@pulsioninstitute.com to inquire before purchasing a ticket.