'Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto'; Terence's words are at the centre of psychoanalysis as a humanist endeavour. Chasseguet-Smirgel's Freud Memorial Lectures, re-presented and published as Creativity and Perversion, are in this tradition. She is concerned, caring, respectful of human differences. Her opening paragraph is a clarion call to tolerate and admire human struggles whatever their form:

Man has always endeavoured to go beyond the narrow limits of his condition. I consider that perversion is one of the essential ways and means he applies in order to push forward the frontiers of what is possible and to unsettle reality (p. 1).

Further, Chasseguet-Smirgel shows how her