Beautiful: do not touch

Abstract

“Beautiful – do not touch” – this phrase, appearing in a seminar on the ethics of psychoanalysis, is one of the ways in which Jacques Lacan describes the operation in the human psyche of the phantasm principle. It is a construct that I will try to introduce the reader to in this article, describing the direct impact of beauty and the transgression of its principle through the lens of clinical experience. My goal in taking up this “beautiful – do not touch” formula is to show how a concept usually associated with aesthetics has non-obvious but important clinical implications, and even defines a certain ethic of the subject towards sexuality. Another important aspect of this study is the juxtaposition of the problem of beauty with the question of femininity. And not only the one played out through the image, but especially the one that goes beyond representation in the feminine modality of pleasure.