Meetings of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York

DISCUSSION: Dr. Ludwig Eidelberg stated that, if perversions were the negative of neurosis, there would be no point in analyzing these patients for their total personalities would have accepted the wishes of the id. The perversion is the result of a complicated defense mechanism. Fenichel spoke of a partial breakthrough of the id. Is it not more correct to say that what appears to be the infantile wish is a defense against another unacceptable infantile wish? He contrasted the fetishist with the transvestite. The former is looking for something magical that the chosen object possesses. The transvestite makes a change in his own self, in his dress. The child wishes to have and to be at the same time. Each infantile wish is characterized by the idea, 'I am the subject and the object'. Dr. Eidelberg doubted that there is a lack of rigidity in the ego and superego of the transvestite. Further, he asked, what was the specific infantile wish which was warded off? Was it phallic, derived from the primal scene, or from an earlier stage?

Dr. Charles Sarnoff addressed himself to the questions, 'When and where is transvestite activity encountered in children? Are these perversions? What predictions can we make about the development of transvestism in adults from its appearance in childhood?' Such activity may appear transiently in excited play, or it may be continuous covert behavior with mother's conscious opposition but unconscious support. Ejaculation cannot be considered the criterion for defining perversion. When, however, transvestite activity in the child is accompanied by excitement and orgastic sensations, or by release of tension and soothing feelings, we may designate the activity as perverse. Such activity points to a bisexual unconscious core fantasy which will appear in the adult neurosis. It provides instinctual gratification and pleases the mother by fulfilling her fantasy of two sexes in one. This diminishes the mother's rejection of the chi