Perversion
Perversion is a form of
History of concept
One view is that the concept of perversion is subjective,[1] and its application varies depending on the individual. Another view considers that perversion is a degradation of an objectively true morality. Originating in the 1660s, a pervert was originally defined as "one who has forsaken a doctrine or system regarded as true, apostate."[3] The sense of a pervert as a sexual term was derived in 1896, and applied originally to variants of sexualities or sexual behavior believed harmful by the individual or group using the term.
Non-sexual usages
The verb pervert is less narrow in reference than the related nouns, and can be used without any sexual connotations.[4] It is used in English law for the crime of perverting the course of justice which is a common law offence.[5] There is a transition to the sexual in 'the technique of purposeful perversion' of conversational remarks: "Purposeful perversion of what a woman has said ... is a long step closer to a direct attempt at seduction or rape."[6]
The noun sometimes occurs in abbreviated slang form as "perv" and used as a verb meaning "to act like a pervert", and the adjective "pervy" also occurs. All are often, but not exclusively, used non-seriously.
In economics, the term "perverse incentive" means a policy that results in an effect contrary to the policymakers' intention.
Sexual usages
Freud on the role of perversion
A few years later, in "A Child is Being Beaten" (1919), Freud laid greater stress on the fact that perversions "go through a process of development, that they represent an end-product and not an initial manifestation ... that the sexual aberrations of childhood, as well as those of mature life, are ramifications of the same complex"[11]—the Oedipus complex. Otto Fenichel took up the point about the defensive function of perversions—of "experiences of sexual satisfactions which simultaneously gave a feeling of security by denying or contradicting some fear";[12] adding that while "some people think that perverts are enjoying some kind of more intense sexual pleasure than normal people. This is not true ... [though] neurotics, who have repressed perverse longings, may envy the perverts who express the perverse longings openly".[13] Of course, this is just one of many opinions.
Arlene Richards on the role of perversion in women
Freud wrote extensively on perversion in men. However, he and his successors paid scant attention to perversion in women. In 2003, psychologist, psychoanalyst and feminist Arlene Kramer Richards published a seminal paper on female perversion, "A Fresh look at Perversion", in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association.[14] In 2015, psychoanalyst Lynn Friedman, in a review of The Complete Works of Arlene Richards in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, noted prior to that time, "virtually no analysts were writing about female perversion. This pioneering work undoubtedly paved the way for others, including Louise Kaplan (1991), to explore this relatively uncharted territory."[15]
The permissive society
With the
Where internal controversy did arise in the liberal consensus was about the exact relation of variations to normal development—some considering in the wake of Freud that "these different sexual orientations can best be explained and understood by comparison with normal development",[17] and highlighting the fear of intimacy in perversion as "a kind of sex ... which is hedged about with special conditions ... puts a vast distance between the partners".[18] From such a standpoint, "whatever the deviant impulse or fantasy may be, that's where the real, true, loving sexuality is hidden"[19]—a point of transition perhaps to some of the bleaker post-permissive visions of perversion.
Critical views
For some participants, "Liberation, at least in its sexual form, was a new kind of imposed morality, quite as restricting" as what had gone before—one that "took very little account of the complexity of human emotional connections".[20] New, more sceptical currents of disenchantment with perversion emerged as a result (alongside more traditional condemnations) in both the French-speaking and English-speaking worlds.
Lacan had early highlighted "the ambivalence proper to the 'partial drives' of scoptophilia, sadomasochism ... the often very little 'realised' aspect of the apprehension of others in the practice of certain of these perversions".[21] In his wake, others would stress how "there is always, in any perverse act, an aspect of rape, in the sense that the Other must find himself drawn into the experience despite himself ... a loss or abandonment of subjectivity."[22]
Similarly, object relations theory would point to the way "in perversion there is the refusal, the terror of strangeness"; to the way "the 'pervert' ... attacks imaginative elaboration through compulsive action with an accomplice; and this is done to mask psychic pain".[23] Empirical studies would find "in the perverse relationships described...an absolute absence of any shared pleasures";[24] while at the theoretical level "perversions involve—the theory tells us—an attempted denial of the difference between the sexes and the generations", and include "the wish to damage and dehumanize ... the misery of the driven, damaging life".[25]
See also
- David Morgan (psychologist)
- Fixed fantasy
- Hentai
- Kink (sexual)
- Lascivious behavior
- Richard von Krafft-Ebing
- Robert J. Stoller
- Voyeurism
References
- ^ a b Martins, Maria C.; co-author Ceccarelli, Paulo. The So-called "Deviant" Sexualities: perversion or right to difference? Archived 2006-03-03 at the Wayback Machine Presented in the 16th World Congress. "Sexuality and Human Development: From Discourse to Action." 10–14 March 2003 Havana, Cuba.
- ^ Robin Skynner/John Cleese, Families and How to Survive them (London 1994) p. 285
- ^ "Pervert". Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 6 January 2014.
- ^ "Pervert". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 6 January 2014.
- ^ "Perverting the course of justice". The Crown Prosecution Service. 1 July 2011. Archived from the original on 6 January 2014. Retrieved 6 January 2014.
- ^ G. Legman, Rationale of the Dirty Joke Vol I (Panther 1973) p. 238–9)
- ^ Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for our Time (London 1988) p. 145–6
- ^ Gay, p. 148
- ^ Adam Phillips, On Fliratation (London 1994) p. 101
- ^ Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (PFL 1) p. 365
- ^ Sigmund Freud, On Psychopathology (PFL 10) p. 169 and p. 193
- ^ Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (London 1946) p. 327
- ^ Fenichel, p. 328
- ^ Arlene K. Richards (2003)
- ^ Lynn Friedman (2015)
- ^ Eric Berne, Sex in Human Loving (Penguin 1970) p. 115
- ^ Skynner/Cleese, p. 285
- ^ Skynner/Cleese, p. 290–1
- ^ Skynner/Cleese, p. 293
- ^ Jenny Diski, The Sixties (London 2009) p. 62
- ^ Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection (London 1960 p. 25
- ^ Jean Clavreul, "The Perverse Couple", in Stuart Schneiderman ed., Returning to Freud (New York 1980) p. 227–8
- ^ Adam Phillips, On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored (London 1994) p. 64
- ^ Phillips, On Flirtation p. 104
- ^ Phillips, On Flirtation p. 108, Raymond Harris, III The Pervert.
Further reading
- Robert J. Stoller, Sweet Dreams, Erotic Plots (2009)
- Morgan, David and Ruszczynski, Stan, Lectures on Violence, Perversion and Delinquency. The Portman Papers Series (2007)