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Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once wrote that he could not define pornography but that he knew it when he saw it. Psychoanalysis finds itself in a similar quandary when it comes to the topic of perversion. Although everyone knows what perversion is, no one knows how to define it. Thus, Arnold Goldberg begins his recent volume on the subject, The Problem of Perversion, by saying, “perversion is a problem” (p. 1) and, in its final chapter, writes that perversion “is not a coherent category” (p. 178). Although I have many reservations about, if not outright disagreements with, Goldberg's self-psychological account of perverse sexuality, it is precisely his willingness to express his confusions and doubts about this uncomfortable topic that makes me feel comfortable in recommending this book.
Goldberg begins by reviewing selectively the considerable psychoanalytic literature on perversion. Although not discounting the relevance of factors like splitting of the ego, castration anxiety, fantasies of a female phallus, hostility, and anality, he argues that each of these elements is so prevalent that none is a sufficient cause of perverse sexuality. He therefore proposes that three factors are jointly necessary for perversion to occur—sexualization of a structural defect in the self, splitting of the self, and disturbance in psychodynamics relating to grandiosity and idealization. He acknowledges that these considerations depend upon the social context in which the problematic sexual behavior occurs. Sexual conduct that is considered perverse in one culture may be acceptable or even normal in another. Nevertheless, he argues that these three factors constitute the core of perverse sexuality.
Goldberg links these three factors to a model of the self as a psychological structure that comprises three levels of organization: