Perversion the Social Relation

6oBruce Finkthe child will set about trying to understand what the mother says inthe context of the construction: "She won't let go of me because shemisses my father"; "She complains of his abandoning us because she islonely." The contradictions do not uproot the construction or anchor thetherapist has provided, but rather serve as the point from which everythingelse is interpreted. So although the mother's behavior and presencehave not necessarily changed a whit, the therapist has enabled the childto read them differently. The child's experience of his mother has beenradically transformed by the construction.Later in life, the child may come to reject virtually all facets of thetherapist's construction, coming to believe instead that the mother'smotives were mostly malicious and self-serving, but he will reject theconstruction from the standpoint of the construction. In other words, hewill have a point on which to stand that remains unshakable, a vantagepoint from which to cast doubt upon the accuracy of the construction.Prior to the construction, there was no place to stand, no ground, andthus no possibility of questioning or wondering. After the construction,the child can call everything into question without ever cutting out theground from beneath his feet. He may, at the extreme, come to wish hehad never been born, but at least there will be a place from which hecan formulate that wish! That place is the subject, the Lacanian subject.NotesThis essay originally appeared in A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis byBruce Fink (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), 165-202, copyright 1997by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. It is reprinted here in abridged formwith the permission of Harvard University Press.1 Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works ofSigmundFreud, ed. and trans. James Strachey et al. (London: The Hogarth Press and The Instituteof Psycho-Analysis, 1961). Subsequent references to The Standard Edition bothin the text and in the notes will use the abbreviation SE followed by volume numberand page number or lecture number.2 These "fine" diagnostic distinctions are included under the general category of the"paraphilias" in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM-III-R] (Washington: American Psychiatric Association, 1987). The psychiatric authorsof this all-too-widely used manual seem to adopt the more scientific sounding term"paraphilias** in order to avoid the seemingly less politically correct term "perversions.**However, they go on to use the most crassly political and moralistic language