The Language of Perversion and the Language of Love by Sheldon Bach. Published by  Jason Aronson, 1994;  202 pages; $40.00.

In common with writers such as Chasseguet-Smirgel, McDougall and Meltzer, Sheldon Bach defines perversion not through activity but as a state of mind. Specifically it is ‘the treatment of another person as a thing rather than a human being that I see as a perversion of object relationships’, and this forms the basis of the book. Bach casts his net widely to include a variety of human phenomena in his discussion: ‘Perversion in this sense is a lack of capacity for whole-object love, and while this often includes sexual perversions, it also includes certain character perversions, character disorders, and psychotic conditions’ (pp. xv-xvi). The rest of the book goes on to explore this thesis from various directions including discussion of eating and narcissistic disorders.

The issue is one of how one person can degrade another to the status of a thing. ‘From a certain perspective, one might say that a person has a perversion instead of having a relationship’ (author's italics, p. 5). The author suggests that people with perversions cannot tolerate ambiguity. For example, the sadomasochist feels himself living in two worlds: a fantasy world of omnipotent idealization of self and object, and the real world which is too dangerous to live in. At root is a problem in relating to parents during infancy, such as a failure to integrate the mother of nurturance and pleasure with the mother of frustration and pain. An observation such as this brings Bach close to the Kleinian school, though he cites the work of Winnicott much more than Klein. Bach, in the tradition of Winnicott, goes on to suggest that the sadist is displaying a sort of temper tantrum, playing at destroying the object for pleasure. Since the object is not destroyed this gives perverse meaning: ‘I can do anything I want to you and you'll still always be there’ (p. 17). It must be said that Bach is not very clear