Perversion

Perversion - one of the three psychic structures within the Lacanian system. Perversion is based on the mechanism of "Disavowal", while the other two structures, "Neurosis" and "Psychosis", are based on the mechanisms of "Repression" and "Foreclosure" (Neurosis - repression, Psychosis - foreclosure). Three structures are based on their relation to the master signifier "Phallus", a first unit of signification, which operates as a third term, a separator of the unity between the two (Mother and the Child), intervention of the phallic signifier propels the child's existence as a separate entity with a future reference of "belonging within the symbolic order in the place of the father". If the basis of neurotic structure is built on the mechanism of repression, which signifies "something being repressed". The structure of psychosis is based on the mechanism of "foreclosure" of the master signifier, which signifies the "blockage for the possibility of the signifier to enter the being of the little human". The perverse structure is based on a partial blockage in psychoanalysis called "Disavowal", where the matter of fact was acknowledged, but, not repressed. This could be conceptually encompassed in the phrase " I certainly know, but...". The perverse structure is a structure which relates to knowledge, but, not fully, there is still negation left, which produces the "but..." in the phrase "I certainly know, but...", "but" is the part of negation.

Let's examine the literature that extrapolates perverse structures to understand it further. In his book "A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis Theory and Technique" Bruce Fink starts the chapter on Perversion thus:

"Most clinicians do not see many patients who can accurately be qualified as perverts, psychoanalytically speaking. A number of contemporary American analysts seem to believe that perverts in therapy are a dime a dozen, but when evaluated in terms of the Lacanian criteria I have been presenting in this book, the vast majority of the people commonly referred to as perverts in fact turn out to be neurotics or psychotics. Modern psychiatry, for its part, has not in any way expanded our understanding of perversion. Doing what Freud tells us it does best, giving new names to different behaviours but saying nothing further about them, psychiatry has simply provided a panoply of new terms to describe the particular objects that turn people on: pedophilia, frotteurism, toucherism, transvestic fetishism, and so on" (Fink, 1997, p. 165).

The latest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-5 includes the category of "Paraphilic Disorders" which includes:

Non-consenting partners (e.g., voyeuristic, exhibitionistic, or frotteuristic behaviours).
Causing harm or suffering (e.g., sexual sadism or masochism).
Inappropriate objects or situations (e.g., fetishistic behaviour, pedophilia).

To meet the criteria for a diagnosis, the individual must experience:

Significant distress related to their sexual interests.
Impairment in important areas of life functioning.
Behaviour that involves non-consenting individuals or that violates their rights.

The Lacanian picture of perversion is slightly different, Bruce writes further thus:

"Lacan, in contrast, is able to help us better understand the nature of perversion with his crucial distinctions between the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real, and between desire and jouissance. If neurosis can be understood as a set of strategies by which people protest against a "definitive" sacrifice of jouissance - castration - imposed upon them by their parents (attempting to recover some modicum of jouissance in a disguised manner) and come to desire in relation to the law, perversion involves the attempt to prop up the law so that limits can be set to jouissance (to what Lacan calls "the will to jouissance"). Whereas we see an utter and complete absence of the law in psychosis, and a definitive instatement of the law in neurosis (overcome only in fantasy), in perversion the subject struggles to bring the law into being - in a word, to make the Other exist. As usual, Lacan's work here grows out of Freud's, and thus I shall begin my discussion of perversion here by taking up some of Freud's distinctions" (Fink, 1997, p. 165).

The Core of Human Sexuality

Fink begins this chapter with the Freudian proposition that any sexual activity engaged in for a purpose other than that of reproduction is perverse. But if this proposition is accepted, then the following proposition has to be accepted also, that the vast majority of human sexual behaviour is perverse because we mostly engage in sexual activities not for the purposes of reproduction, but for the purpose of pure pleasure. Even our colleagues from the sea, dolphins, indulge in sexual activities just for the sake of pure pleasure, intellectual realm and the endocrinological realm within us turns us into sexual machines who seek pleasure. Further Fink writes thus "Indeed, perversion lies at the very core of human sexuality, as we all begin life "polymorphously perverse" - that is, as pleasure-seeking beings that know nothing of higher purposes or appropriate objects of orifices - and continue throughout our lives to seek pleasure for its own sake in forms other than those required for the reproduction of the species" (Fink, 1997, p. 165). Further Fink suggest to acknowledge the fact that if "normal" human sexual activity is directed toward a "total person", let's say "a partner who is desired for him or herself", and not for any particular attribute he or she may embody, the we would have to presupose that the vast majority of human sexual behavior is perverse because we are attracted to others because of some sort of object in them (either a body part, let's say highly developed glute muscles, or lips, or eyes) or whatever the attritube it is, we are attracted to others because of some sort of attribute in them firstly and only then can develop some sort of closeness which is based on the fact that you love the person "for who they are as the person", if this is ever possible at all.

As it is written in the chapter on Neurosis, the obsessive reduces his partner to (object a) and through that reduction neutralises the partner's Otherness. The hysteric does not so much desire her partner but desires "via her partner" and wishes to be the object he is lacking (to be the phallus that he or she is lacking), becoming the phallus of the partner, to fill the place of the lacking object within his or her partner. Psychoanalytic (Freudian idea) was related to the penis and biology, Freud meant that a man can embody the mode of "being" and enjoyment through "having it", because he has a penis, so, he cannot "be it" because he has it, while a woman can "be it" because she does not have the biological penis. If we follow this logic, then the hysterical position structurally is very feminine because the hysteric embodies the "phallus" within her partner, a lacking object within her partner that she becomes.

Further Fink suggests that we are led to believe, if following the logic provided above, that all human sexuality is perverse because we indulge into business, not in order to reproduce, but, to satisfy our sexual desires. Then, Bruce writes thus "Given the way in which the terms "pervert", "perverse", and "perversion" are used by certain people to stigmatize those whose sexuality seems different from their own, it will no doubt seem politically expedient to certain readers to simply affirm that all human sexuality is essentially perverse in nature, and leave it at that. Indeed, Lacanian psychoanalysts view the perverse nature of sexuality as a given, as something to be taken for granted - in other words, as "normal" (Fink, 1997, p. 165). We see that the psychoanalytic Freudian/Lacanian perspective takes perversion as a given, it agrees with the fact that all human desires are essentially perverse. But, if human beings as a whole have a perverse sexual stance naturally, why would it be interesting to discuss perversion at all, you might ask? This is the question which allows us to reach the main most important thing which makes the structure of perversion interesting, it is the mechanism of "Disavowal". Disavowal is one of the three mechanisms that determine a subjective psychic structure, the other two mechanisms being "Repression" operating as the basis of neurosis and "Foreclosure" as the operational basis of psychosis. It is interesting to think that a tripod structure could be someone's perspective on life, only three types of mechanisms that are possible rulers of our subjective ideology, a tripod structure providing three positions of subjectivity (Neurosis, Psychosis and Perversion) as if it is the word of God, but, it is the word of the psychoanalytic God. Most importantly, with enough of an in-depth explanation of Lacanian psychoanalytic ideas, the psychoanalytic episteme of reality becomes quite accessible and at the same time beneficial for all humans.

Fink writes further thus "What Lacanian analysts are concerned with, however, is a specific mechanism of negation - "disavowal" (Freud's Verleugang) - characteristic of very few of the people considered in the popular mind and by most contemporary psychologists to be perverse, a mechanism that can be clearly distinguished from repression (at least, that is what I hope to show in this chapter). It is evidence of the functioning of this mechanism - not this or that sexual behaviour in and of itself - which leads the analyst to diagnose someone as perverse. Thus, in psychoanalysis "perversion" is not a derogatory term, used to stigmatize people for engaging in sexual behaviours different from the "norm". Rather, it designates a highly specific clinical structure, with features that sharply distinguish it from neurosis and psychosis. The analyst can agree that all human desire is essentially perverse or fetishistic in nature, but nevertheless maintain an important theoretical and clinical distinction between neurotic structure, say, and perverse structure. In psychoanalysis, perversion is not to be viewed as a stigma but rather as a structural category" (Fink, 1997, p. 165). Let's get into the trenches of perversion via the understanding of how the mechanism of "Disavowal" works and how does it affect the subjectivity of the individual which is structured perversely.

The Mechanism

Disavowal

Freudian term "Verleugnung" has been rendered in English as "disavowal", while in many ways the English term "denial" is closer to the German "Verleugnung". Fink writes "Freud develops the notion to account for a curious attitude he detects in certain young boys who, when confronted with a girl's genitals, deny that the girl does not have a penis and claim that they in fact see one. Little Hans, for example, watching his seven-day-old sister being given a bath, says "Her widdler's still quite small. When she grows up it'll get bigger all right" (Fink, 1997, p. 167). What we can see here is the fact of the boy's ideological view of the world through his own sexuality, phallus is expected to be there. The main idea is the mechanism of thought process in this particular case, Fink writes thus "Freud formulates this by saying that, in such cases, the perception or sight of the female genitals is disavowed. He notes that in certain older male patients, one finds a twofold attitude regarding the fact that women do not have penises: they disavow the perception, maintaining a belief in what Freud terms the "maternal phallus", but develop symptoms which seem to indicate that this perception has nevertheless been registered at some level. It is not as if the memory of a specific perception has simply been "scotomized" or in some way excised from the men's minds (as we might very loosely think of foreclosure); we know it is still there because it has effects - it generates symptoms - but it is nevertheless denied. In his article "Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence", Freud mentions two examples of such symptoms: a man's fear that his father will punish him (for continued masturbation), and "an anxious susceptibility against either of his little toes being touched" (Fink, 1997, p. 167). "I certainly know "but"..." would be the perfect description of the scotomization process, a relation to knowledge based on a certain type of rejection. Where knowledge of the law was completely rejected within psychosis, in perversion, the knowledge is known, but, rejected anyway. Bruce thus writes "Described in this way, disavowal seems very similar to repression: the pushing of a memory out of consciousness, and the return of this memory in the form of symptoms. Indeed, Freud at first tries to devise a clearer distinction between repression and disavowal by proposing that what is repressed is affect, whereas the idea or thought related to it is disavowed. Yet this first attempt contradicts Freud's more rigorous and oft-repeated assertion that only an idea or thought can be repressed. In neurosis, an affect and the thought related to it (its "ideational representative", as Strachey translates Freud's term Vorstellungsreprasentanz) become dissociated; for example, the thought representing a sexual impulse that the ego or superego considers incompatible or unacceptable or repressed, while the affect associated with it is set free to be displaced. In the description Freud provides in "Splitting of the Ego", disavowal and repression seem to collapse into one and the same process (Fink, 1997, p. 167).

To be continued...