Perversion the Social Relation

50 Bruce Finkand esteem, through social, symbolic channels). If he is the phallus forhis mother, he will never accede to a symbolic position—that associatedwith symbolic castration. Rather than becoming someone the mothercan be proud of, he remains someone she cuddles with, strokes, and perhapseven reaches sexual climax with. He cannot go off to "make a namefor himself" in the world, for it is not symbolic stature that he is ableto seek. 34 He remains stuck at the level of serving as his mother's be-alland end-all.Primal repression allows the subject to come into being, but the childis then left to ask, "What am I? What am I to my parents?" The pervertconstitutes himself as what is lacking in the mOther; making himselfinto the object of her desire, he constitutes himself as her object a. Hebecomes what she is missing (her penis/phallus) and what she wants. Heplugs up her lack with himself. The Other's desire/lack is anxiety producing,insofar as it is not named; the pervert's solution to this anxietyis to become the object that can stop up the desire by providing theOther with jouissance, with the kind of satisfaction that squelches desire(albeit temporarily). 35This explains why it is so difficult to do analytic work with perverts:the pervert casts himself in the role of object a, expecting to play thepart of the object that can satisfy (plug up) the analyst's desire. The analystmay be hard pressed to maneuver the transference in such a way asto become the cause of the perverse analysand's desire, when the latterworks so hard to occupy the position of cause of desire. The pervertwould rather serve as the cause of the analyst's anxiety and desire thanlet the analyst become the cause of his own musings. It is thus quite difficultto do genuinely analytic work with perverts, to get them intriguedby unconscious formations and by what the analyst underscores in them,and to get their desire in motion. As Lacan says, object a must be situatedby the subject in the Other, the Other as analyst here, in order fortransference to be possible (Seminar X, July 3,1965)} 6In order to articulate the pervert's position more rigorously, however,it must be emphasized that the pervert deals not so much with themOther's desire as with her demand. As long as the desire/lack a child'smOther "has" is not named, the child is confronted with her demandalone. Strictly speaking, we cannot even say that he is confronted withher lack or desire since lack does not exist outside of a symbolic sys-