Perversion the Social Relation

66 Bruce Finkin repeating presence-absence games: security of presence is found in the possibilityof absence. What is most anxiety producing for the child is when the relationshipthrough which he comes to be—on the basis of lack which makes him desire—is mostperturbed: when there is no possibility of lack, when his mother is constantly on hisback" (Seminar X, December 5,1961). What this suggests in the case of the pervert isthat, given the overly close mother-child relationship, not only is the mother not perceivedas lacking, seeming to desire nothing beyond her child (whom she "has"), butthe child himself cannot sense a lack in his own life and thus cannot desire, strictlyspeaking—cannot come into being as a desiring subject. Desire, Lacan teaches us, isa cover, but also a remedy for anxiety.39 In perversion, there seems to be both a backward-looking and a forward-lookinggesture: the former involves the attempt to give the Other satisfaction; the latter, aswe shall see below, seeks to prop up or supplement the father's act of naming. Inneurosis, too, there are both backward- and forward-looking gestures: the formerinvolves the attempt to become what the Other desires—in obsession, to perfectlyincarnate the signifier of the Other's desire (0), in hysteria to perfectly incarnate thecause of the Other's desire (a)—while the latter involves the attempt to shake free ofone's fixation on the Other's desire, this being the analysand's path.40 Consider his comments about the advantages of fetishism: "We can now see what thefetish achieves and what it is that maintains it. It remains a token of triumph overthe threat of castration and a protection against it. It also saves the fetishist frombecoming a homosexual, by endowing women with the characteristic which makesthem tolerable as sexual objects. In later life, the fetishist feels that he enjoys yet anotheradvantage from his substitute for a genital. The meaning of the fetish is notknown to other people, so the fetish is not withheld from him: it is easily accessibleand he can readily obtain the sexual satisfaction attached to it. What other men haveto woo and make exertions for can be had by the fetishist with no trouble at all"(SE XXI, 154).41 Binding anxiety is, obviously, something that can also be understood in terms of satisfaction,for it lowers the level of tension as required by the pleasure principle; similarly,the pervert's enactment of separation can be understood in terms of satisfaction,as we shall see.42 If we take le désir de la mère (the mother's desire for the child or the child's desirefor the mother) as a given, the onus very often falls upon the father to bring abouttriangulation and separation.43 A person's concrete actions often give us a far better sense of his or her fundamentalfantasy than the fantasies of which he or she is aware, especially at the beginning ofan analysis.44 In the Old Testament, it is the voice of God that commands. In Judaism, it is the shofarsounded on Yom Kippur that recalls/re-presents the voice of God. Lacan discussesthis at length in Seminar X (May 22,1963).45 Kant, for example, attempts to eradicate desire from a moral law that leaves no roomfor human feelings, attachments, and desires in its pursuit of universality (applicable