Perversion the Social Relation

Perversion 39The Core of Human SexualityIf we begin with Freud's early assertion that any sexual activity engagedin for a purpose other than that of reproduction is perverse, then wehave to accept the fact that the vast majority of human sexual behavioris perverse. Indeed, perversion lies at the very core of human sexuality,as we all begin life "polymorphously perverse"—that is, as pleasureseekingbeings who know nothing of higher purposes or appropriate objectsor orifices—and continue throughout our lives to seek pleasure forits own sake in forms other than those required for the reproduction ofthe species.If we begin with the notion that "normal" sexual activity is directedtoward a "total person," a partner who is desired for him- or her-"self,"not for any particular attribute he or she may embody, then we onceagain must accept the fact that the vast majority of human sexual behavioris perverse. The obsessive reduces his partner to object a, neutralizingthe partner's Otherness, and the hysteric does not so much desire herpartner as desire via her partner and wish to be the object he is lacking.The sexual partner is not considered as "an end in himself or herself"—in the Kantian sense of something pursued for its own sake, instead offor some other "selfish" purpose like achieving pleasure, feeling loved,or the like—but is pursued because he or she has something (even if it isbut a lack that engenders desire) that does something for us. Indeed, asLacan says, object a has something inherently fetishistic about it. 3 Theobject that elicits love from us is not necessarily the same as the objectthat elicits desire or that can bring us jouissance.If we begin with either or both of these notions (or notions similarin kind), we are ineiuctabiy led to qualify virtually all human sexualityas perverse. Given the way in which the terms "pervert," "perverse,"and "perversion" are used by certain people to stigmatize those whosesexuality seems different from their own, it will no doubt seem politicallyexpedient to certain readers to simply affirm that all human sexualityis essentially perverse in nature, and leave it at that. Indeed, Lacanianpsychoanalysts view the perverse nature of sexuality as a given, assomething to be taken for granted—in other words, as "normal."What Lacanian analysts are concerned with, however, is a specificmechanism of negation—"disavowal" (Freud's Verleugnung)—characteristicof very few of the people considered in the popular mind and by