A Servant's Bargain: Perversion as Survival

The author views psychological perversion as a ubiquitous adaptation which preserves the person's capacity to apprehend reality while changing its meaning at will, in the service of staving off unbearable emotional pain. This is understood as derivative of the infant's horror of the nameless dread uncontained by the tantalizing environment. Whether perceived or actual, parental abdication of their protective responsibility (the meaning of the generational divide) can threaten the child's capacity to learn to contain his affects, and can bring forth the creation of a fetishistic artificial container as a substitute for a reliable connection. In this way, fantasied instant unison might take the place of genuine intersubjectivity. Using clinical examples from the analysis of Mr. A, and Bion's concept of reversible perspective, the author depicts the challenge presented by the patient's rigid and invisible commitment to turn the possibility of an interpersonal connection into yet another incarnation of the familiar script, in which decency and good will are silently and reflexively deformed. In this approach, perversion is seen not simply as the cynical game it frequently becomes, but as a person's last effort to protect himself from anticipated psychological breakdown, in which excitement serves as a smokescreen hiding the internal terror. The technical difficulties arise from the paradox of the patient's adamant refusal of a healthier relationship, which can be useful to see as an imperative form of survival, rather than merely an intrinsic malignancy.