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This book deals with the theory of perversion. The author is a disciple of Lacan. To make what follows intelligible, I shall first have to discuss his usage of some words. The word "structure" is used by French psychoanalysts to refer to the psychodynamics or the metapsychology of a specific psychopathological state. For instance, they refer to a hysterical structure, an obsessional structure, etc. The word "désir" used by the author also requires some comments. Strachey translates Freud's "Wunshch" by "wish," the French by "désir." One might think that there is not much difference between "wish" and "desire" but the latter has somewhat more of a libidinal connotation. Try substituting "wish" for "desire" in the title of Tennessee William's play, A Streetcar Named Desire, and you will see what I mean.
The author's first point is that psychoanalysts should not diagnose according to the outward manifestations of a patient's behavior but according to the patient's structure. He provides a clinical example of a patient with self-mutilating behavior whom he labels hysteric.
He asks the question whether there is such a thing as a perverse structure and answers in the affirmative. He quotes from several of Freud's papers, but primarily from "The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis" (1924) and from "Fetishism" (1927). The latter is the main fountainhead for the author's theoretical formulations.
According to Dor, the metapsychological mechanism which underlies the perverse process is "pregenital identification." He describes it as follows: "Pregenital identification is, first and foremost, a phallic identification to the extent that it is identification with the maternal phallus… The dynamics of the child's desire lead him to regard himself as the only possible object of the mother's desire" (p. 133). The child therefore disavows that there is someone else (i.e., the father) who is the object of desire on the part of the mother.
The author accepts Lacan's t