How lesbian parenting leads to reassess bisexuality and thirdness

Using data from a clinical psychoanalytic study of lesbian couples undertaking Artificial Insemination by Donor (AID), the conference explores how female same sex parenting is related to the notion of the third and to the concept of bisexuality by focusing on two specific themes: the position attributed to the donor, who is unknown to the lesbian parents, as well as the process of evolution and attribution of the place of each mother in the lesbian couple.
Our aim is to highlight the complexity of the issue of the third in same-sex parenting by analysing fantasised constructions surrounding the image of the anonymous donor, the impact of the medical act of insemination on the women’s psychic economy and the search for other promising bases for triangulation. We would also like to demonstrate the complexity of the issue of bisexuality: although the project of having a child mobilizes a wide range of identifications for both parental imagos, the whole procedure leading to AID shakes up omnipotent sexual fantasies, mobilizes the fantasy of the heterosexual primal scene and makes necessary further elaboration of the feminine side of bisexuality in the context of gender differences.