Perversion the Social Relation

Perversion 61in their detailed discussions of the paraphilias—for example, "The imagery in a Paraphilia...may be relatively harmless** (279); "Normal sexual activity includes sexualexcitement from touching or fondling one's sexual partner** (283, emphasis added);and so on.3 See Écrits, 610; 248, where Lacan speaks of the "fundamental fetish of every perversionqua object glimpsed in the signifier's cut,** implying thereby that the object asfetish is crucial in every perversion. The object as isolated by the signifier (as "cut out**of an undifferentiated ground, simultaneously creating both foreground and background)will be discussed later in this chapter.4 See the fine discussion of Verleugnung in J. Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, The Languageof Psychoanalysis, trans. D. Nicholson-Smith (New York: Norton, 1973),indispensable book that provides encyclopedic analysis of Freud's most central andcomplex concepts. Note that, in translating Verleugnung, the French also sometimesuse the term démenti—from démentir, meaning "to belie** or "to give the lie (to something).**5 SE X, 11; see also SE XXIII, 27*.6 See Freud*s reference to this term in SE XXI, 153.7 See the discussions of this tcnn in Bruce Fink, The Lacanian Subject: Between Languageand Jouissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). It should be understoodin relation to Freud's related term, Triebreprasentanz—the representative, atthe level of thought, of a drive (for example, the thought "I want to sleep with mysister-in-law**).8 Or "representative of the drive** (Triebreprasentanz)—that is, the drive's representativeat the level of thought. Strachey translates Triebreprasentanz as "instinctual representative.**9 Freud sometimes seems to suggest that it is castration itself that is repudiated—inother words, the idea that the mother's penis was cut off and that one's own peniscould thus be cut off. In this case it would seem that one idea remains in consciousness—"Everyhuman being has a penis**—while a diametrically opposed idea is putout of mind, and this is tantamount to Freud's own definition of repression.10 As Lacan says, "By definition, the Real is full** (Seminar IV, La relation d'objet, 1956-I9S7, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, Paris: Seuil, 1994, 218)—that is; nothing is lackingin the Real. See also Seminar VI, April 29,1959 {Le désir et son interprétation, 1958-1959, privately published by and for the members of L'Association freudienne internationale,Paris: I.S.I., 1994, 364), where Lacan says "The Real as such is defined asalways full.** The same general idea is repeated again and again in Lacan's work. InSeminar X (L'Angoisse, 1962-196$, unpublished) Lacan suggests that what he meansby this is not so much that there are no holes or rips in the Real, but rather that thereis nothing missing in the Real, nothing absent or lacking.Subsequent references to each seminar in the text and notes will appear as Seminarfollowed by volume number and page number.11 Indeed, as the hysteric teaches us, perception itself is not an "innocent" or scientificallyobjective process, giving us a "true view** of the "real external world.** Each3n