PubMed Health⌕ Search

SEARCH · PubMed Health

Results for “PERVERSITY”

Explore indexed PubMed citations for clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health research. Read source abstracts and follow each citation to its original PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Perverse dreams and dreams of perversion.

This paper (1) posits the occurrence of perverse dreams as a type of mental phenomenon in the constellation of perverse processes; (2) considers manifest dreams of frank perversion as a type of perverse dream within the class of perverse dreams as a whole; (3) relates the subtype of perverse dreams without manifest perversions to the occurrence of perverse defenses and the development of a perverse transference; and (4) suggests that consideration to perverse dreams in the psychoanalytic process finds application in identifying and differentiating perverse defenses from neurotic and other characterologic patterns; in identifying and tracing the vicissitudes of difficult perverse transference-countertransference constellations; and in furthering perverse patients' recognition and understanding of particularly troublesome and seemingly intractable issues in their psychic makeup. Clinical material illustrates perverse dreams and their usefulness in the often arduous process of analyzing perverse defenses.

Countertransference↗
PubMed2005

Why perversion?: 'False love' and the perverse pact.

In this paper, the author works with the awareness that perversion is a socially, historically and theologically loaded term, at the same time as it may be the latest frontier in psychoanalysis, both clinically, and in relation to contemporary art and culture which emphasize the perverse. Positioning itself against tendencies to deny the existence of a category of 'perversion' or, inversely, to abuse it for the power that accrues from the act of diagnosing, she also points to other liabilities in the history of the treatment of this term, such as the narrowing down of perversion to the exclusively sexual domain, or, alternatively, the overextension of it to polymorphously erotic practices that enhance sexual excitement. The paradoxes of perversion and the difficulties of distinguishing the perverse from the non-perverse are addressed. The case is also made that, in order to understand perversion, one must unlink it from the narrow notion of sexual practice and see what is involved on a deeper level--an approach initiated when psychoanalysis turned to perversion as a defense against psychotic anxieties, and began considering the necessary place of perversion in the transference--countertransference. Two features common to both sexual and non-sexual perverse relations are the seductive and bribing aspects of perversion, and its means-ends reversal. Perversion is a haven for the disguising of hatred and suspicion as excitement and (false) love. Displaced child and beating father, entitled child and seductive mother, are both prototypes of psychoanalytic reflection on parents who excite, deceive and corrupt their children and establish perverse pacts with them. The notion of the perverse pact is foregrounded in Alice's analysis, where first the resurrection and then the dismantling of such a pact were effected through various analytic means.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

The analyst's excitement in the analysis of perversion.

The author believes that unconscious sexual excitement in the transference and countertransference is an especially problematic aspect of the analysis of perverse character pathology and that perverse sexual gratification deserves a more prominent position in the clinical theory of analyzing perversion than that which has been assigned tacitly through analysts' routine focus on the defensive and destructive dynamics of perversion. He presents clinical material from the analysis of a perverse patient that illustrates the role of excitement in the transference perversion established in this analysis; and he asserts that gratifying perverse enactments occurring in the transference perversion can appear not only as conscious or unconscious excitement in the transference but also, at times most clearly, as the analyst's excitement. The author suggests that using a clinical theory that supports the analyst in understanding his excited responses as perverse countertransferences--i.e. evoked excitement complementary to the sexual component of a perverse transference--will assist him in locating and thinking about gratifying, perverse excitement in the transference where it is most usefully analyzed. Finally, he discusses some of the reasons why analysts might deny, suppress or otherwise avoid perverse countertransferences and in so doing contribute to sustaining perverse resistances.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Perverse defenses in neurotic patients.

Distinguishing perverse defenses from the concept of obligatory perversion allows perverse defenses to be examined in neurotic patients. Perverse defenses against reality, one's conflicts, and relationships with others are connected with affect intolerance, difficulty with analytic collaboration, and analytic impasse. Perverse defenses, including the cultivation of states of distraction, excitement, and pomposity, as well as perverse sadomasochistic relations with others, protect against the unbearable: intense affects, painful ideas, and loving, committed need of a valued, distinct person. Patients' perverse, vindictive refusal to be reasonable provokes perverse countertransference reactions whereby the analyst stands in judgmentally and critically for the seemingly absent demands of reason, morality, and analytic progress.

Countertransference↗
PubMed1999

The secret: study of a perverse transference.

This clinical communication describes the analysis of a perverse transference in an overtly bisexual man. An intricate interplay between heterosexual and homosexual relations enabled him to maintain some heterosexual functioning and to counteract or evacuate intolerable affects and vengeful impulses--originating from early traumas--through perverse acting out with sexual partners. Building on the notion that patients with sexual perversions recreate aspects of their perversion in the transference/countertransference relationship, where it must be analysed, the author illustrates through detailed clinical material how she was drawn into the fabric of her patient's perversion and how this was worked through. She offers an object-relational understanding of his perversion as a complex erotised defensive/reparative/vengeful manoeuvre permitting the disavowal and magical reversal into triumph and sexual pleasure of perceived threats to his personal or sexual identity. Engaging or changing in analysis evoked fears of losing his identity by surrendering to the analyst, rooted in the patient's early experience of serving as his mother's fetish-object. The author suggests that the patient needed to turn the analyst into a perverse partner (disavowing her other-ness) in order to reverse and triumph over this core trauma. She attributes the good treatment outcome to the detection and working through of the perverse transference and monitoring of her countertransference.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Pentheus rather than Oedipus: on perversion, survival and analytic 'presencing'.

Following an introductory review of the main developments in the psychoanalytic thinking on perversion, the author focuses on her own understanding of perversion and its treatment, based on the psychoanalytic treatment of patients with severe sexual perversions. This paper uses the term 'autotomy' (borrowed from the field of biology) to describe perversion formation as an 'autotomous' defence solution involving massive dissociative splitting in the service of psychic survival within a violent, traumatic early childhood situation; thus, a compulsively enacted 'desire for ritualised trauma' ensues. The specific nature of the perverse scenario embodies the specific experiential core quality of the traumatic situation. It is an actual repetition in the present of the imprint of a past destructive experience which is pre-arranged and stage-managed; it thus encounters haunting scenes of dread or psychic annihilation while, at the same time, controlling, sanitising and disavowing them. Hence, the world of severe perversion is no longer oedipal, but rather the world of Pentheus, Euripides's most tragic hero--a world dominated by a mixture of a mother's madness, devourment, destruction and rituals of desire. According to this view, the (difficult) psychoanalytic treatment of perversion focuses on patient-analyst interconnectedness--brought about by the analyst's 'givenness to being present' or 'presencing'--at a deep, primary level of contact and impact (the emphasis being on the ontological dimension of experience). This evolving therapeutic entity creates and actualises a new, alternative experiential-emotional reality within the pervert's alienated world, eventually generating a change in the perverse essence. The author illustrate this approach with three clinical vignettes.

Adult↗
PubMed1980

Proust and perversion: some clinical and theoretical considerations.

Relationships may be perserve without"normal" sexuality being replaced by deviant acts and fantasies. The link between perversion and genital sexuality can be loosened without the term becoming inapplicable. Moreover perversions manifest themselves in almost any idiosyncratic form, just like defences. Next to a seemingly not for perverse aim and object, split-off fantasies and acts exist, which form the condition for the "normal" genital sexual relationship. Such a fantasy may be the idea that one's partner has a secret homosexual adventure like in Proust's novel. It can be the need to be unfaithful, or the fantasy of having two lovers instead of one husband, as in the examples given. Perversions can be understood as regulators of self-esteem, and defence against (pre)oedipal conflict. Proust, an expert on perversion and the pre-oedipal, gives us insight into its development, and manifestations: in the mother-child relationship, in love life, in social life and as a sexual perversion in the strict sense of the term. We go into some detail regarding what he tells us about the sado-masochistic fantasies in a love relationship, where paradox seems to be another word for perversion. This is followed by three clinical examples of perverted relationships between partners, with safeguarding of genital aim and object. Perversion seems still more pervasive, more enigmatic and difficult to delineate than in Freud's time.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

The perverse subject of analysis.

In this paper I suggest that the analysis of perversion necessarily involves the elaboration and analysis of a perverse transference-countertransference. Both analyst and analysand contribute to and participate in the perverse transference-countertransference which intersubjective construction is powerfully shaped by the perverse structure of the patient's unconscious internal object world. In the fragment of an analysis that is presented, I illustrate the way in which the analyst makes use of his experience in (of) the transference-countertransference in gaining understanding of the perverse scenario that the patient is utilizing as a form of psychic organization, defense, communication, and object relatedness. I discuss the analyst's use of his own unobtrusive, mundane thoughts, feelings, fantasies, ruminations, sensations, and so on, in the service of understanding the perverse transference-countertransference, which understanding is utilized in the formulation of transference interpretations. The perversity of the transference-countertransference is viewed as deriving from the patient's defensive use of particular forms of sexualization as a way of protecting himself or herself against the experience of psychological deadness. Compulsive erotization is understood as representing a method of creating an illusory sense of vitality. The subversion of the recognition of the experience of psychological deadness is achieved in part through compulsively enlisting others in the enactment of exciting, erotized, and often dangerous substitutes for the experience of being alive.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Gender and perversion--what constitutes a "bad mother".

BACKGROUND: There is a need for reconsidering the conceptualisations of female perverse behavior, especially in connection with motherhood. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Based on case material obtained through psychoanalytic psychotherapy with female patients from a psychosomatic gynecological outpatient clinic, the characteristics of the psychic structure of these patients who presented symptoms of deliberate self harm and of misusing and mistreating their children, are outlined. Another common trait is the embeddedness of their perverse behavior in a generational chain of transmission. Female patients who mistreat their children had been victims of traumatising experiences in their own biography, inflicted by their mothers and directed towards their bodies. DISCUSSION: Female perverse behavior, therefore, is fundamentally different from male perversion: the perverse act in women is aimed against themselves and/or their children. Currently used diagnostic statistical manuals lack categories to describe this symptomatology adequately. Further research is requested to understand a mother's perverse actions and thus develop treatment strategies, without marginalizing these patients.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Perverse thought.

Based on Bion's work on the 'psychotic and non-psychotic parts of the personality', the author hypothesises the existence of a special type of thought disorder known as 'perverse thought'. First the author presents an overview of the major contributions to the concept of perversion that have a bearing on 'perverse thought'. These include Freud's splitting and disavowal concepts, Klein's projective identification concept, Bion's -K link and Meltzer's transference perversion. Then, by means of a case study and some vignettes, the author illustrates how this thought disorder is configured within the analytic process. The author focuses on three main aspects of this pathology: the specific modality of projective identification in a perverse scheme, the lie and some important clinical events that reveal an attack against knowledge through the formation of the -K link. Perverse thought is an important resistance mechanism in the analytic process. Its clarification is essential, given that its main objective is to attack the knowledge process, and therefore truth, in order to pervert the analytic relationship.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Perverse relationships: the perspective of the perpetrator.

The author examines the theme of perverse relationships within the couple, focusing on the question of men's maltreatment of their female partners, particularly in the psychological sense. Various aspects of the perpetrator's personality and relational style are described. The author takes as her starting point and discusses in depth the concepts of 'narcissistic perversion' (Racamier, 1992) and 'relational perversion' (Pandolfi, 1999), considered useful for understanding and identifying this type of pathology. She postulates that maltreating behaviour, in fact, originates from the encounter of particularly non-empathic relational styles which are typical of certain personalities (mainly, but not exclusively, of the narcissistic disorder) with 'perversity', that is, perversion, understood as a character trait. The author makes a distinction between 'relational perversion' and 'sado-masochistic relationship', and presents a clinical picture deriving from the analysis of a man who maltreats his companion, in order to shed light on the above-mentioned aspects, touching on some problems arising in the analysis of such patients. In conclusion, she considers some aspects of the experience of victims of maltreatment.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Diagnostic of sexual perversions.

Sexual perversion is a very controversial matter and difficult to define because, instead of being analyzed as a clinical phenomenon, is seen as a social one: society establishes what is perverse and what is not. If we analyzed the evolution of sexuality we would find many sexual practices considered nowadays forbidden. For example, we consider perverse sexual acts replacing the coitus but we accept as normal what were previously considered deviant forms of sexual intercourse that simply accompany the coitus. In reality there is not a definite boundary between "normality" and "perversion" as each one of us shows a certain grade of perversion that can be disclosed sometimes in imperceptible or harmless ways. Contemporary sexology believes that the worst perversions do not have to implicate genitalia but can also consist of behaviors hiding their own sexual nature and acting as sexual surrogates, such as kleptomania and pyromania that only apparently seem to have nothing to do with sex.

Diagnosis, Differential↗
PubMed2004

A psychoanalytical phenomenology of perversion.

After stating that the current tasks of psychoanalytic research should fundamentally include the exploration of the analyst's mental processes in sessions with the patient, the author describes the analytical relation as one having an intersubjective nature. Seen from the outside, the analytical relation evidences two poles: a symmetric structural pole where both analyst and patient share a single world and a single approach to reality, and a functional asymmetric pole that defines the assignment of the respective roles. In the analysis of a perverse patient, the symmetry-asymmetry polarities acquire some very particular characteristics. Seen from the perspective of the analyst's subjectivity, perversion appears in the analyst's mind as a surreptitious and unexpected transgression of the basic agreement that facilitates and structures intersubjective encounters. It may go as far as altering the Aristotelian rules of logic. When coming into contact with the psychic reality of a perverse patient, what happens in the analyst's mind is that a world takes shape. This world is misleadingly coloured by an erotisation that sooner or later will acquire some characteristics of violence. The perverse nucleus, as a false reality, remains dangling in mid-air as an experience that is inaccessible to the analyst's empathy. The only way the analyst can reach it is from the 'periphery' of the patient's psychic reality, by trying in an indirect way to lead him back to his intersubjective roots. At this point, the author's intention is to explain this intersubjective phenomenon in terms of metapsychological and empirical research-based theories. Finally, some ideas on the psychogenesis of perversion are set forth.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

[The perverse personality].

From the clinical point of view, the perverse personality is characterised by constant manipulation of others, transgression of laws and disrespect of limits. Perversity does not refer to the presence of a sexual perversion, whether primary or associated, but to the fact that a same basic principle underlies the organization of the perverse personality and of the perverse sexuality. Both forms could thus be understood as two different manifestations of intolerance to disappointment. This general hypothesis avoid some questionable speculations and ad-hoc hypotheses.

Antisocial Personality Disorder↗