You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Joyce McDougall. PLEA FOR A MEASURE OF ABNORMALITY. New York: Int. Univ. Press, 1980.
Mortimer Ostow, ed. SEXUAL DEVIATION: PSYCHOANALYTIC INSIGHTS. New York: Quadrangle, 1974.
Robert J. Stoller. PERVERSION: THE EROTIC FORM OF HATRED. New York: Pantheon, 1975; SEXUAL EXCITEMENT: DYNAMICS OF EROTIC LIFE. New York: Pantheon, 1979.
THESE VOLUMES, TOGETHER WITH Khan's (1979)Alienation in Perversion, Rosen's (1979) second edition of Sexual Deviation, and Socarides' (1978)Homosexuality, emphasize that perversions can be understood and treated psychoanalytically. McDougall especially, like Khan, emphasizes the positive, reparative aspects of perversion. The intention here, as in contemporary analysts' revisions about narcissistic and borderline psychopathology, is to help other analysts to overcome their countertransference bias against perverts so as to be able to understand and analyze some of them. Besides therapeutic optimism, the most crucial issue in all of these works is the perspective on perversion as a solution to intrapsychic conflict.
Three factors have tended to diminish psychoanalytic appreciation of the central role of conflict resolution in perversion. As we all know, Freud's (1905) original point of perversion as the negative of neurosis has been misused and has contributed to the idea that perversion represents the direct discharge of drive components without modification and conflict within the