You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The view that all human motivation arose from somatically anchored pressures and that mental life was encapsulated within the individual subject constituted two important features of early psychoanalytic theorizing. Retrospectively designated as “drive theory” and “one-person psychology,” the duo shaped numerous conceptualizations. Terms such as “oral gratification,” “anal sadism,” “urethral phase,” “penis envy,” “castration anxiety,” “sphincter morality,” “phallic woman,” and “respiratory introjections” codified the primacy of bodily experience in mental functioning. And, the fact that the instinct's “aim” exceeded its “object” (Freud, 1915) in regulating fantasy and behavior underscored that psychic life was essentially self-contained, if not solipsistic. With burgeoning data from psychoanalytically informed child observation, the advent of object relations theory and, more recently, of the relational model of the mind, both the drive theory and one-person psychology became untenable. Moreover, preoedipal development began to receive more attention than the events of the oedipal phase. Replacing the single-mindedness of “object choice” by the built-in reciprocity of “object relationship” softened psychoanalytic puritanism and this, coupled with the emergent cultural forces of feminism and the gay movement, resulted in benevolent and beneficial alterations in the understanding of psychic structuralization especially in the realms of gender and sexuality. An unfortunate and unintended corollary of these salutary paradigm shifts was a progressive desomatization of psychoanalysis. Instead of being central to dynamic formulations, sex got relegated to the ignored periphery and the important concept of perversion was eliminated from consideration.
It is at this curve in the boulevard of ideas that Andrea Celenza's important book, Erotic Revelations: Clinical Applications and Perverse Scenarios, makes its appearance. Aimed at restoring the importance of sexuality in clini