Perversion the Social Relation

6 4 Bruce Finkcretory functions). It is the mOther's interest in and demands related to the pervert'spenis that are responsible for the intensity of the pervert's drives.25 Though in cases of psychosis, this might well be the case.26 Fetishism, which holds an important theoretical place among the perversions, involvesthe localization of a great deal of libido on a kind of substitute sexual organ(as we shall see in the case study discussed below), and this occurs to a much lesserextent in girls than in boys.27 Similarly, Lacan defines Don Juan as a feminine dream, a dream of a man who islacking nothing ("qui ne manque rien"; Seminar X, March 20,1963); he also refersto Don Juan as a feminine myth (Seminar XX, Encore. On feminine sexuality: Thelimits of love and knowledge, 1972-187$, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Bruce Fink[New York and London: W. W. Norton 6c Company, 1998], 10). It should be notedthat Lacan is not necessarily saying that there is absolutely no such thing as femalemasochism, but rather that men tend to see it in women because they want to see itin them, and that it is thus certainly far rarer than men would like to believe.28 "Let us, by definition, call 'heterosexual' those who, regardless of their sex, lovewomen" (Lacan, "L'Étourdit," Scilicet 4 [1973]: 23).29 Jacques Lacan, Écrits, 823; 320. Subsequent references to Écrits appear parentheticallyand include the page number of the original edition followed by the page numberof the English translation.See Jacques-Alain Miller, "On Perversion," in Reading Seminars I and II: Lacan'sReturn to Freud, ed. Bruce Fink, Richard Feldstein, and Maire Jaanus (Albany: SUNYPress, 1996). On page 319, Miller says of female perversion:You have to look for female perversion where it is invisible. Female narcissism maybe taken as a perversion, as an extension of the concept. It is because Woman isOtherness as such or the Other that she spends so much time in front of the mirror—justto recognize herself, or perhaps to recognize herself as Other. Even if itis a myth, it is very important. You may find female perversion in narcissism, atthe core of one's own image, or as Freud proposed, in the child—the child used asan object of satisfaction.In the latter case, we have the mother and the imaginary object, the phallus. Themother here is responsible for the perversion of the male child, but at the same timeuses the child as an instrument of jouissance. According to the preceding formula,you could call that perversion. Was the first perverse couple mother and child?Lacan, in the fifties, suggests that it is in the connection between the mother's ownbody and the child that you may find a concealed expression of female perversion.Insofar as female homosexuality eliminates the male organ, there is some difficultyplacing it in the register of perversion proper.It is not clear to me whether or not Lacan would have equated the "perverse" natureof the mother-child relationship with perverse structure, strictly speaking.30 It should be kept in mind that such weak fathers are well documented in literaturedating back at least to the time of ancient Rome, and that the argument that fathershave lost tremendous power since the last century seems a bit under-demonstrated.