Loss of Reality in Perversions—With Special Reference to Fetishism

I have underscored the fundamental role played by idealization in the transmutation of reality with which it is implicitly associated. It is impossible to understand the essential nature of the loss of reality in perversion without taking into account the idealization of anality, the aim of which consists in making it equivalent or superior to the real genital world while, at the same time, raising a slight doubt in this respect. I think that perversions combine two types of split. The first is a horizontal split between genitality and anality that takes place between the ego and the id, as in neurosis (for instance as in obsessional neurosis), with the difference that what is repressed in neurosis does not belong to genitality but essentially to pregenitality (this leads us to the famous formula: neurosis is the negative of perversion). The second split is a vertical one, located in the ego. This split takes

place, on one hand, between the perverse act and the underlying anal dimension which it tries to promote to an absolute reign, and on the other hand, the idealization of anality which expresses a kind of return of the repressed, that is to say, the impetus toward the ego of the repressed genital universe and its values (mainly the genital primal scene and the father's penis).