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Do not be seduced by the slimness of this volume and by Ricardo Cinalli's beautiful and startling illustrations into thinking that this publication is an ‘introductory’ text. Dr Welldon presents complex ideas that reflect her acclaimed expertise in sexual diversity and pathology, illustrated with clinical case histories from her forensic clinic, as well as from cinema and opera. Welldon's candid and anecdotal style provides the reader with a fascinating insight into her clinical style and practice.
This book is a timely reminder that there is nothing ‘natural’ about sex, sexual practices and sexual enjoyment. Unique to human subjectivity is the fact that sex is not merely a matter of reproduction and that sexual enjoyment has little or nothing to do with the satisfaction of drives. Much contemporary commentary might be interpreted as a disavowal of this, with sex situated within the discourses of health and entitlements. Welldon's clinical observations, case by case, along with the powerful drawings, emphasize that sex is not only about pleasure, but also about ‘pain and ultimately death’ (p. 90). Following Freud (1905), she argues that ‘unusual sexual practices’ [that] ‘evoke confusion … [so] that we respond with anxious or judgmental laughter’ are ‘completely unrelated to morality’ (p. 9). Her clinical vignettes illustrate how sexual practices, however bizarre, disturbing, anti-social or indeed criminal are not a matter of ‘ethics’ (p. 130) (by which she seems to mean morals), rather they function as a ‘mini survival kit’ (p. 131). Take, for example, her account of a man whose sexual satisfaction, from early adolescence, was only obtained by a total sensory deprivation obtained by ‘complicated rubber gear’ (p. 11) and who experienced uncontrollable sexual feelings in response to images of Houdini in a box. Welldon interprets his sexual practice as a need for a ‘second skin […] used as a protection against […] pain […] a container for anguish and anxiety of paramoun