Perversion the Social Relation

Perversion 6$31 Consider, in the following exchange (from SE X, 17), the way in which his mothertries to prevent him from having a desire for a woman other than herself by guilttrippinghim when he manifests such a desire:Hans: "Oh, then I'll just go downstairs and sleep with Mariedl."Mother: u You really want to go away from Mummy and sleep downstairs?"Hans: "Oh, I'll come up again in the morning to have breakfast and do numberone."Mother: "Well, if you really want to go away from Daddy and Mummy, then takeyour coat and knickers and—good-bye!"31 Indeed, as Freud tells us, the pleasure principle would have us achieve the lowestpossible level of tension or excitation.33 In this book, my comments on the two operations Lacan terms "alienation" and"separation" are fairly basic, as I have discussed them at length in chapters 5 and 6of my The Lacanian Subject. Note here that while the subject comes into being inlanguage through alienation, s/he comes into being as a mere place-holder or lack{manque-à-être). It is separation that provides something more along the lines ofbeing.34 The father fails here to provide the "phallic signifier"—to "unscrew," for example,Hans's imaginary phallus (in one of the boy's dreams, the faucet in the bathtub, asymbol for his penis, is to be replaced by the plumber) and replace it with a symbolicone.35 A subject position, like a symptom, is fundamentally a solution to a problem. Theschema I have provided in Figure 1 of the pervert's solution bears a certain affinity tothe hysteric's solution (though in the former the subject side is altogether missing).There is, nevertheless, an important difference in register between the two: whereasthe hysteric tries to be the object that causes the Other's desire (symbolic), the pervertbecomes the object that causes the Other's jouissance (real), that is, the objectby means of which the Other obtains satisfaction. The hysteric refuses to be the real,physical object by means of which the Other obtains satisfaction.3e The analyst occupies the place of the analysand's question or lack of satisfaction:when there is no question—whether it involves one's reason for being or one's confusionover what gives one sexual satisfaction—or lack, the analyst cannot play hisor her role. As Jacques-Alain Miller says, "You need a certain void or deficit in theplace of sexual enjoyment for the subject supposed to know to arise" ("On Perversion,"310).37 Here, the first libidinal object (that is, the object that provides the child jouissance)is the mother.38 Lacan brings up the question of the lack of lack in a somewhat different context: Itis most commonly believed that a child becomes anxious when its mother is absent,when she is not there with the child; Lacan suggests, on the other hand, that anxietyactually arises owing to a lack of lack, when the mOther is present all the time. "Whatprovokes anxiety? Contrary to what people say, it is neither the rhythm nor the alternationof the mother's presence-absence. What proves this is that the child indulges