Editor's Note

As psychoanalytic theory and practice have evolved, the centrality of sexual conflict as the force driving neurotic symptoms has been continuously challenged and defended. The groundwork for change was laid in Freud's own work, first when he introduced the revised dual-instinct theory (elevating aggression to a place equal to libido in the psychic economy), then when he created the tripartite structural model to house and to regulate the drives (Freud 1920, 1923). Although he never published clinical material that illustrated his own use of the new theory, subsequent developments in both the Kleinian and ego psychological traditions (not to mention other traditions not avowedly tied to their Freudian origins) clearly depend upon the shift.

Since Freud, developments in many different psychoanalytic communities move the theory away from the focus on repressed perverse sexual wishes and, in fact, away from conflicted desire of any sort. Moreover, our thinking about sexuality, sex, and gender has evolved along with—perhaps sometimes leading, perhaps sometimes following—the sensibilities of the broader society. This might appear to detach contemporary thinking and clinical work from the origins of psychoanalysis as a discipline. And yet, none of us would deny the extraordinary poignancy of sexuality in the fabric of our lives or the need to engage our analysands in an intricate and probing exploration of their sexual experience. There is a tension between theory and practice that invites exploration.

In light of this tension, I have invited four authors to discuss the place that the sexual aberrations (using Freud's term from Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905) have in their own thinking and in their analytic work. The “aberrations” were chosen as a focus both because Freud uses them to develop the central ideas of the Three Essays and because he defined neurotic symptoms as the expression of repressed perverse wishes. Our project was developed in conversation w