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It is a pleasure to recommend this important book both to readers with special interests in perversion and to those more broadly interested in the psychoanalytic understanding of development and disorder. Socarides sets out to write a textbook on perversions. He comes to the task with an admirable background in 30 years of intensive focus on their treatment and repeated formulation and reformulation of his understanding in papers and previous books. The outcome is no collection of papers, rewarding though that might be. Its first half is a systematic and lucid exposition of theoretical issues, the second a series of case presentations that illuminate his conceptions in the context of such various forms of perversion as fetishism, transvestism, pedophilia, and exhibitionism.
Socarides begins with clear distinctions between variations in sexual behavior and perversions proper. It is not the sexual behaviors per se that distinguish the two, but the function of the sexual actions in individuals' lives. The former that is sexual behaviour, may be aspects of life styles, flexibly at individuals' disposal to enhance pleasure or cope with particular