Perversion I: Perverse Traits

Perversion is without any doubt one of the most difficult clinical categories, both as regards its study and the possibility of treatment. If we want to say something useful about it, we need to clear up a number of obstacles beforehand, in order to be able to study perversion as such. There are at least three difficulties: first of all the habitual moral reaction; secondly, the difficulty in differentiating typical human polymorphous sexuality with its perverse traits on the one hand from the perverse structure on the other hand, as one of the three possible structures of the subject; thirdly, we have to be aware of the omnipresence of the male gaze, which amounts to a phallic magnifying glass.…