The Erotic

object relations theory.” As Fairbairn focused his disagreement with Freud on the specific count that libido was not pleasure seeking but object seeking, and the point of libidinal energy was not pleasure, as Freud believed, but rather relations with another, so Lou was likewise inclined towards an object-related theory of the erotic. If we repeat Lou’s assertion and replace libido for love and ego for I, her statement becomes a virtual representation of Fairbairn’s argument. The point of the erotic is not some interior pleasure, but rather the channel for establishing relations, says Lou

like a man or merely on the level with men in a man’s world; she is masculinized. The liberated woman feminizes the world and brings men to discover and mine the feminine sides of themselves, which psychologically run as deep as their masculinity.

Salomé stood for women’s difference rather than an idea of equality given by the men’s world. A woman is not liberated if she becomes