AMERICAN IMAGO最新文献

Abstract:

Some patients tediously describe depictions of their sexual perversions. These can bring the analyst to feel intense boredom and frustration. This "almost unavoidable monotony" can be interpreted in various ways. It can be seen as an expression of the patient's compulsion to repeat, whether one considers it a product of the death drive, or the need to give meaning to the traumatic experience that caused the perversion itself. On the other hand, it may be seen as an aspect of the unconscious emotional function that binds the couple together in the analysis. Monotony, then, is no longer intrinsic to "the patient's" perversion, but becomes the search for "mono-tony" or "at-one-ment" in the here and now of the session. At the root of this may be the fear of the tensions that arise from confrontation and difference, which may cause the pair to stay rigidly on the same wave. Then, analyst and patient maintain an adhesive identification with each other to prevent separation, and they pay the price of boredom and immobility. The field theory point of view is distinguished by two important aspects. As the analyst listens from the perspective of a "narrative We," this protects the pair from a judgmental attitude and, consequently, from a form of perversion of the analytic relationship. Second, it detects precise and distinct signs of how the process of mutual recognition unfolds on the level of the third, intersubjective or "common," unconscious. The fundamental postulate is that psychic suffering, including that which is expressed in sadomasochism, stems from important deficits in this same process in the primal relationship to the object. Consequently, it is important to privilege the level of being-with rather than that of knowing-about.

Abstract:

The chapter compares and critiques two versions of one story: the original novel and its cinematic treatment over 50 years later. It briefly reviews changes in clinical and social ideas about gender and sexuality, especially homosexuality, during the 20th and 21st centuries. Then it addresses theoretical differences between the genres of text and film, and the idea of the "male gaze." Through close readings of the novel and the film, it demonstrates energies and tensions between concepts of male and female, gay and straight.

Abstract:

This article discusses the perverse characteristics of government oppression (as compared to the perverse characteristics of relations) and focuses on the main characteristic of two-dimensional perception of humans and humanity. Diverse forms of revolting against it will be discussed, including the example of the social protest in Israel, as well as testimony from the Israeli organization Breaking the Silence, which will be analyzed through the prism of Didi-Huberman's firefly phenomenon as the only living form of resistance.

Abstract:

This article focuses on the notion of perversion in early sexual life, coined by Freud as a polymorphous perversity, in offering a rereading of the three prefaces to Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. From there I comment on Lacan's study of Sade in order to highlight the tragic melancholia that underlies perversion, using sexual drives to compensate for the lack and the loss of objectal satisfaction. The study of the psychosexual dynamic of perversion leads us to the key role of sublimation as the reverse of perversion. This review of the notion of perversion, as an agieren out of depression and out of the lack of satisfactory sublimation, thus provides a conceptual frame to reflect on the paradoxes of the contemporary sexual landscape, sexually liberated but diseroticized.

Abstract:

In this article I distinguish sexual perversion from other forms of pathological interpersonal relationships, as I did in my book The Sadomasochistic Perversion: The Entity and the Theories. In fact, it is one thing to talk about sadomasochistic interpersonal dynamics, and another to distinguish the character of sexual perversion. I will start from Freud's work "A Child is Being Beaten," which examines seven cases of children who all have masochistic fantasies that lead to sexual pleasure. I will discuss the reasons why the sadomasochistic perversion appears so early and often is maintained throughout life, preventing the development of an integral love relationship. In particular, I consider the masochistic perversion in patients who have had emotionally traumatizing experiences, who attack the vital self and have eroticized submission.