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The authors of this book are Paris psychoanalysts interested in the subject of perversions and sharing certain ideas. Substantial disagreements between them, including disagreement on whether or not there is a specific dynamic structure in perversions, precluded them from writing a book under joint authorship, so that what we are presented with is in fact a collection of individual papers. Two of these (those by De M'Uzan and by McDougall) have appeared in English in the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis.1
De M'Uzan's papers is based on two extensive interviews with a 65-year-old man who was referred by a radiologist because of evidence of severe past tortures on the patient's body. The right breast had been burned with a red-hot iron, molten lead had been introduced into the navel, the end of the penis had been cut open with a razor to make the orifice larger, and a steel ring had been placed there permanently. He also had numerous tattoos of a humiliating nature. The patient had married a fifteen-year-old cousin when he was 25. She was a masochist like himself. Tortures were inflicted on them by one or two other men who played the sadistic role. For the first three years they had a normal sexual life. A few years after the birth of a daughter, renunciation of intercourse