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In his introduction to the Panel, Grinberg centred the history and development of psychoanalysis on sexuality, alluding to Freud's thoughts on the biology and psychology of sexual development in the Three Essays and to more recently changing views on infantile sexuality and gender differences. He suggested that the polymorphous and perverse features of sexuality are of the most clinical interest.
Grinberg described the role of the mother and father in the development of infantile sexuality, commenting that the mother's unconscious projections on to the baby (projections also influenced by the father through his place in the mother's mind) colour the child's sexual development. Sexuality is subject to modification in accordance with a host of internal processes, not least the child's identifications with each parent in the resolution of sexual desire.
Addressing the specific topic of the panel, Grinberg emphasised that the analytic situation plays a fundamental role in the protection of the study of sexual functioning. On the other hand, he recognised that clinical approaches to sexuality vary widely in psychoanalysis today and that some of these variations would appear in the two presentations by the panellists—Bollas's paper on words ‘that alone give corporeality to the sexual fantasies’ and Meyers' paper on different aspects of perversion in everyday clinical practice.
Meyers' presentation came first. I shall summarise it briefly to make the ensuing discussion comprehensible. Her theme was a dual one—erotic transference and perversion—and she utilised a clinical example in which the two were interwoven and successfully worked through. Her context was the recognition that current theory would allow for the place of sexuality as a primary oedipal feature but also as a mode of stabilising self structure, maintaining early object ties, and, altogether, concretising a wide array of intrapsychic issues through sexual desire, fantasy and action—in and out of the trans