Abstract

MURIBECA, Mercês. The differences which constitute us and the perversions which differentiate us. Estud. psicanal. [online]. 2009, n.32, pp. 117-128. ISSN 0100-3437.

This article covers the concept of perversion through various Freudian texts. It pays particular attention to the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) where Freud tries to develop an understanding of the etiology of the perversions, as opposed to popular opinion about sexuality, in three basic points: the time of onset of sexual drive, the necessarily heterosexual nature of the object, and the limitation of the sexual object to copulate. At this point Freud tries to define the perversion in reference to a negativity process, based on the axiom of the neurosis as the negative of the perversion. Thereafter he inserts the perversions, such as the neuroses, as the core of the Oedipus complex. In 1927 he defines, in the article The Fetishism, the refusal of castration as a key mechanism of perversion, the concept of cleavage of the ego in a process of defense, and the construction of the fetish as a substitute for the maternal penis. Finally, the perversion is a circumstance of the human species, and the arrangement that was possible to the subject, and his struggle for mental survival.

Keywords : Psychoanalysis; Sexual perversions; Paraphilia; Normality versus abnormality.