Perversion the Social Relation

46 Bruce Finkdissatisfied with their husbands and look for satisfaction in their livesfrom their relationships with their children. It is also clinically attestedthat mothers are more inclined to take a male child as their allencompassingcomplement in life than a female child, and we can onlyassume that that is due to the child's sex (and its social meanings, ofcourse). 23 Now a mother's interest in her son's penis always contributesto the localization of jouissance in the male sexual organ; and in cases inwhich a mother places great value on her son's penis, he may become extremelyattached to it, narcissistically speaking, his whole erotic relationto his mother revolving around it. Such a son is likely to energeticallyresist any kind of perceived demand that he stay away from his mother,and the struggle is likely to center around his penis, even if no directthreat is made to it (though such direct threats still are made more oftenthan many think). 24Insofar as mothers do not often take their daughters as their complementto the same extent, look to them for such intense satisfaction inlife, or take such great interest in their genitals, the mother-daughterrelationship is rarely eroticized to the same degree, 25 jouissance is notusually symbolically localized for females in the same way, and thestruggle with the father over separation from the mother generally doesnot come to a head in the same way or focus on a specific organ. 26 Thefather often has an easier time separating his daughter from her mother(though he may not find it as important to do so, not feeling that he isin competition with his daughter as he is with his son); nevertheless, theresult is likely to be either hysteria with traits of perversion when thefather is not forceful, or psychosis when the father refuses to interveneat all.This explains, in part, my use of masculine pronouns alone here whentalking about perverts. In psychoanalytic terms, perversion is virtuallyan exclusively male diagnosis. Indeed, Lacan goes so far as to say that"female masochism is a male fantasy," 27 and qualifies lesbianism, not asa perversion, but as "foterosexuality": love for the Other sex, that is,women ("homosexuality"—hommosexualité, which includes the two m'sfrom homme, "man"—being love for men [Seminar XX, 78~79]). 28 Thefact that males are "the weaker sex with respect to perversion" (Écrits,823; 320) should certainly give us pause for thought, and warrants moreexplanation than I can provide here. 29