The Perverse Subject of Analysis

Jackson Pollock, Number 1A

In my view, the analysis of perversion necessarily involves the analysis of the perverse transference countertransference as it unfolds in the analytic relationship. (p. 67)[…]

The perverse intersubjective constructions generated in the course of the analysis of perversion are, in my experience, inevitably (to a considerable degree) inaccessible to the analyst’s conscious awareness as they are unfolding. […] The analyst must in a sense come to understand the perverse transference-countertransference “after the fact”, i.e. in the course of his doing the psychological work required to become aware of his own unconscious experience of (and participation in) the perverse transference-countertransference. (p. 68) […]

The perverse subject of analysis is the narrator of the erotized, but ultimately empty drama created on the analytic stage. The drama itself is designed to present the false impression that the narrator is alive in his or her power to excite. The perverse analytic scene and the perverse subject of analysis are jointly constructed by analyst and analysand for the purpose of evading the experience of psychological deadness and the recognition of the emptiness of the analytic discourse/intercourse. In a sense the perverse subject of analysis constitutes a third analytic subject intersubjectively created by, and experienced through, the individual subjectivities of analyst and analysand in the context of their separate but interrelated personality systems. (p.69) […]

Perversity in the transference-countertransference represents a background that presents itself primarily in the form of a well disguised sexual excitement associated with unconscious efforts on the part of the patient to thwart the analysis in fundamental, but difficult to recognize ways (for example, the patient’s unconscious excitement associated with his or her chronic inability/unwillingness to generate a single, original thought in the analysis. (p.70) […]

The perverse individual experiences a sense of inner deadness, a lack of a sense of being alive as a human being (khan 1979, McDougall 1978, 1986); at the same time, there develops a set of concretely symbolized defensive fantasies that life exists in the intercourse (both sexual and non-sexual) between the parents and that the only way to “aquire” life is to enter into that intercourse (the source of life) from which the individual is excluded and left lifeless (Britton, 1989; Klein, 1926, 1928, Meltzer, 1973). Of course, in a literal way, it is the parental intercourse that is the source of the patient’s life, but this biological fact has for the perverse patient failed to become a psychological fact. 

At the same time, the perverse patients fantasize/experience the parental intercourse to be an empty event, and imagine that the lifelessness of the primal scene is the source of his or her own sense of inner deadness. In part, this fantasy is based on the patient’s own envious attack on the parental intercourse. It also reflects the patient’s experience of the emptiness of the bond between the parents […] and leaves these perverse individuals feeling that there is no hope of attaining a sense of vitality of their own internal world and in their relations with external objects. What is particular to perversion of the sort being discussed is the compulsive erotization of the void that is felt at the center of what might have been, and pretends to be, a generative union between the parents. The excitement generated by this erotization is used to substitute for a sense of one’s own human aliveness as well as the recognition of the humanness of other people.  (p.99) […]

There is at the same time a critical act of self-deception that allows the patient to isolate himself from awareness of the reality of the danger to which he is subjecting himself. The individual deludes himself and prides himself in his belief that he is able to “fly closer to the flame” than anybody else without being damaged. He or she believes him or herself to be immune to all danger while at the same time being intensely excited by it. The desperate need to extract life from the empty parenat intercourse that leads the patient to flaunt external reality and unconsciously claim to exist outside of the law  (p.100-101)[..]

The foregoing comments might be briefly stated in the form of the following set of schematic propositions:

• In healthy development a sense of oneself as alive is equated with a generative loving parental intercourse.[…]

• Perversion […] represents an endless, futile effort to extract life form a primal scene that is experienced as dead

• […] These perverse individuals introject a fantasied degraded intercourse and subsequently engage others in a compulsively repeated acting out of this set of internal object relationships.

• A vicious cycle is generated in which the fantasied intercourse of the parents is depicted as loveless, lifeless and non-procreative; the patient attempts in vain to infuse it with pseudo-excitement from which he attempts to extract life. Since the fantasied parental intercourse from which the perverse patient is attempting to extract life is experienced as dead, he or she is attempting to extract life form death, truth form falsehood. Alternatively, the patient may attempt to use the lie as a substitute for truth/life. (Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1984)

• An important method of attempting to infuse the empty primal scene with life is the experience of “flirting with danger” tempting fate by “flying too close to flame”

•  The desire of these perverse individuals is coopted by and confused with the desire of others leading them more deeply into defensive misrecognitions and misnamings of their experience in order to create the illusion of self-generated desire (Ogden, 1998)

• Analysis of perversion […] fundamentally involves recognizing the lie/lifelessness that constitutes the core of transference-countertransference enactment of the perversion. In this way, the patient, perhaps for the first time in his or her life, feels enganged in a discourse that is experience as alive and real.

• The initial feelings of aliveness and realness in the analysis arise form the recognition of the lifelessness/ie of the transference-countertransference and consequently are most often frightening feelings of deadness. (p. 101-103) […]

Ogden, T. H (1999) Reverie and Interpretation; Sensing something human. Karnac: London.