Why perversion? 'False love' and the perverse pact

Abstract

In this paper, the author works with the awareness that perversion is a socially, historically and theologically loaded term, at the same time as it may be the latest frontier in psychoanalysis, both clinically, and in relation to contemporary art and culture which emphasize the perverse. Positioning itself against tendencies to deny the existence of a category of 'perversion' or, inversely, to abuse it for the power that accrues from the act of diagnosing, she also points to other liabilities in the history of the treatment of this term, such as the narrowing down of perversion to the exclusively sexual domain, or, alternatively, the overextension of it to polymorphously erotic practices that enhance sexual excitement. The paradoxes of perversion and the difficulties of distinguishing the perverse from the non-perverse are addressed. The case is also made that, in order to understand perversion, one must unlink it from the narrow notion of sexual practice and see what is involved on a deeper level--an approach initiated when psychoanalysis turned to perversion as a defense against psychotic anxieties, and began considering the necessary place of perversion in the transference--countertransference. Two features common to both sexual and non-sexual perverse relations are the seductive and bribing aspects of perversion, and its means-ends reversal. Perversion is a haven for the disguising of hatred and suspicion as excitement and (false) love. Displaced child and beating father, entitled child and seductive mother, are both prototypes of psychoanalytic reflection on parents who excite, deceive and corrupt their children and establish perverse pacts with them. The notion of the perverse pact is foregrounded in Alice's analysis, where first the resurrection and then the dismantling of such a pact were effected through various analytic means.

Technology, Perversion, and Dehumanization: Response to Discussions of My Paper

“…I also agree with Ruth Stein (2005), who argued for the continued attention to perversion in psychoanalysis: Some analysts may want to avoid contending with the thorny issue of the existence of perversion and are ready to abandon the use of this concept, while others may use this diagnosis from positions of power, seeking to protect themselves against the searching self-scrutiny implied by the realization that perversion is to an extent in every one of us. But erasing its history of moralizing, indictment of difference, marginalization and attack on the other will not make the specificity of perversion disappear.…”

“…It seems that analysts now feel the need to tread very cautiously in offering any critique of sexual practices or in using labels that may pathologize the subject. Two of the discussants find the term perversion offensive and perhaps outdated; others, including relational analysts like Ruth Stein (2005) and Avgi Saketopoulou (2014), believe the term remains relevant and should not be discarded. I agree with the latter position and try to explain why.…”

Irrational exuberance: Neoliberal subjectivity and the perversion of truth

“…In these examples, the resistances are mutually constructed by what I have called normative unconscious processes that sustain the very norms that have made us sick (Layton, 2002(Layton, , 2006c. Such collusions create what Ruth Stein (2005) has called a perverse pact: 'a relationship between two accomplices, a mutual agreement y that serves to cover over or turn the common and mutual gaze of the accomplices from the catastrophic biographical events that had befallen each of them y' (p. 787). I am suggesting we add catastrophic social events to our understanding of perversion and to our understanding of what our patients suffer from.…”

The Internet and Its Discontents—or Diamonds are a Girl’s BFF: Commentary on Danielle Knafo’s Paper “Guys and Dolls: Relational Life in the Technological Era”

“…Furthermore, Psychoanalytic Dialogues has historically been a home to papers that critique the classical accounts of perversion on which she relies: Overlooking some of those contributions, Knafo does not wonder if she herself participates in the "chameleon language of perversion" (Amir, 2013), for example, at a disciplinary scale by adopting an anachronistic language about perversion uncritically. Nor does she imagine how her fascination with fuck dolls might be part of a perverse pact (Stein, 2005) that she and her patient enact to disavow the natural excitement and arousal each encounters in the other's curiosity about him or her.…”

“…So be it; nevertheless, confronting a perversion is a process of making reparation to the idolized object (Khan, 1979). The transference can feel pervy because it alerts us to the chameleon use of objects in a perverse pact (Amir, 2013;Stein, 2005). Every analyst has had the experience of wowing himself in the presence of a patient.…”