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Both authors have studied the perversions in "an attempt to respond from within the classical Freudian paradigm to the questions raised for psychoanalysis by the Sexual Revolution, Feminism and Gay Liberation." However, their conclusions differ greatly. Chasseguet-Smirgel maintains that the "bedrock of reality" is "the double difference between the sexes and the generations." Perversion in the male results when a little boy disavows these differences in order to avoid the psychic pain of giving up his double wish to return to a fusional intrauterine state and to possess his mother incestuously. The disavowal is accomplished by regression to the anal stage. Consequently, perverse acts are inherently sadistic and the creativity of people who engage in them must ultimately be limited.
McDougall, on the other hand, maintains that the disavowal in perversions, which she calls "neosexualities," involves the sense of reality. Perversions are counterphobic enactments designed to master primal scene trauma. The individual disavows the difference between the sexes and reinforces this "illusion" by his or her acts. The