Chapter 15. The Origins of the Fetishistic Plaything of Sexual Perversions*

As with the differentiation between “depressive” as an adjective denoting a quality of mental pain (depressive anxieties) and as a term denoting an organisation of mental pathology (depressive illness), so we must distinguish the uses of the term “perverse” in regard to sexuality. I wish to use it to indicate those erotic phantasies or activities in which the inflicting of mental or physical suffering or injury is central to the excitement—perverse sexuality. But I also wish to indicate an organisation of such tendencies into a structural category of clinical psychopathological symptoms, sexual perversion. It is doubtful whether one would wish to use the term to describe a person as a “pervert” except as a shorthand notation.

In the use of the term to denote a type of sexuality we are emphasising the impulses and its consequent phantasy and activity, neglecting the other metapsychological areas which contribute to the final manifestation. But in speaking of “perversion”, as a type of symptom, we are including all four metapsychological areas. The complexity of the problem was acknowledged by Freud in “A Child is Being Beaten” and “The Economic Problem of Masochism” in relation to structure (the role of identification) and economics. But the category of object choice was not specifically modified beyond the statement of the “Three Essays”. I now wish to examine the possibility that the categories of narcissism versus object-relations do not adequately account for the nature of the object of excitement in perversions nor for the peculiar quality of the excitement and socialisation observed in these symptoms.

What appears below makes an approach that has a fundamental resemblance to that made by Donald Winnicott in his formulations of “transitional objects” and the use made of this concept by Masud Khan in his study of perversion. Those familiar with this work will immediately recognise that what we have formulated here raises questions regarding the differentiation good