"When Trump became president, much of the country was repelled by what they saw as the vulgar spectacle of his ascent, the perversion of the highest office in the land. In his bold, groundbreaking book Political Perversion, rhetorician Joshua Gunn argues that this "mean-spirited turn" in American politics (of which Trump is the paragon) is best understood as a structural perversion enhanced primarily by the speed of communication technologies. Drawing on insights from critical theory, media ecology, and psychoanalysis, Gunn argues that perverse rhetorics dominate not only the political sphere but also our daily interactions with others, in person and online. From sexting to campaign rhetoric, Gunn shows how technology has changed our ways of relating (and not relating) to others and has engendered infantile and sadistic forms of provocation and enjoyment. In this book, Trump is only the tip of a sinister, rapidly growing iceberg, one to which we ourselves unwittingly contribute on a daily basis"--

This book focuses on the subject of the development of masculinity and femininity. It shows that the perverse scene aims not only at denying castration, but also at securing a more solid basis for a jeopardized sexual identity.

'Perversion is a challenge for theory and psychoanalytic practice that Juan Pablo Jimenez and Rodolfo Moguillansky, American psychoanalysts known for the originality of their contributions, have managed successfully. In this book they offer us vivid and detailed clinical material of patients of analysis who presented various kinds of perversions, which they accompany by a comprehensive and accurate review of major psychoanalytic contributions on the subject, and their own contributions to it.' The reader will find not only scholarship, but also he will find himself trapped in a thriller where the analyst is continually asked to leave his role as analyst to enter a game that fascinates and rejects. In a masterful way the authors describe their own internal vicissitudes in the treatment of these patients, the counter-transferential difficulties and how perversion becomes a source of inevitable collusions in the mind of the analyst.

The author brings together a generous selection derived from her many literary gems, in which she illustrates her groundbreaking-and sometimes explosive-studies of female sexuality and perversions, perverse transference, malignant bonding, perverse motherhood, and the impact upon children of viewing domestic violence. Along with these are vivid descriptions of group analytic psychotherapy with forensic patients and, uniquely, of the joint group treatment of incest survivors and perpetrators. She also outlines the development of forensic psychotherapy as a new field of clinical and academic endeavour and her involvement in this. In a series of interviews with Brett Kahr she describes her professional journey, from being trained by Horacio Etchegoyen in her native Argentina, followed by an eye-opening period at the Menninger Clinic, then eventually to London and a distinguished career at the Portman Clinic.

The masochist, the voyeur, the sadist, the sodomite, the fetishist, the pedophile, and the necrophiliac all expose hidden but essential elements of the social relation. Arguing that the concept of perversion, usually stigmatized, ought rather to be understood as a necessary stage in the development of all non-psychotic subjects, the essays in Perversion and the Social Relation consider the usefulness of the category of the perverse for exploring how social relations are formed, maintained, and transformed. By focusing on perversion as a psychic structure rather than as aberrant behavior, the contributors provide an alternative to models of social interpretation based on classical Oedipal models of maturation and desire. At the same time, they critique claims that the perverse is necessarily subversive or liberating. In their lucid introduction, the editors explain that while fixation at the stage of the perverse can result in considerable suffering for the individual and others, perversion motivates social relations by providing pleasure and fulfilling the psychological need to put something in the place of the Father. The contributors draw on a variety of psychoanalytic perspectives—Freudian and Lacanian—as well as anthropology, history, literature, and film. From Slavoj Žižek's meditation on “the politics of masochism” in David Fincher's movie Fight Club through readings of works including William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner, Don DeLillo’s White Noise, and William Burroughs's Cities of the Red Night, the essays collected here illuminate perversion's necessary role in social relations. Contributors. Michael P. Bibler, Dennis A. Foster, Bruce Fink, Octave Mannoni, E. L. McCallum, James Penney, Molly Anne Rothenberg, Nina Schwartz, Slavoj Žižek

Emphasizing the peculiar, the perverse, the clandestine and the scandalous, this volume opens up a critical discourse on sexuality and visual culture in early modern Italy. Contributors consider not just painted (conventional) representations of sexual activities and eroticized bodies, but also images from print media, drawings, sculpted objects and painted ceramic jars. In this way, the volume presents an entirely new picture of Renaissance sexuality, stripping away layers of misconceptions and manipulations to reveal an often-misunderstood world. 'Sex acts' is interpreted broadly, from the acting out, or performing, of one's (or another's) sex to sexual activity, including what might be considered, now or then, peculiar practices and preferences and a variety of possibly scandalous scenarios. While the contributors come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, this collection foregrounds the visual culture of early modern sexuality, from representations of sex and sexualized bodies to material objects associated with sexual activities. The picture presented here nuances our understanding of Renaissance sexuality as well as our own.

This is the first critical anthology to offer extended analysis of the representation of sexual perversion on screen. Interrogating the recent shift towards the mainstream in the cinematic representation of previously marginalised sexual practices, Tainted Love challenges the discourses and debates around sexual taboo, moral panics, degeneracy, deviance and disease, which present those who enact such sexualities as modern folk devils. This timely collection brings together leading scholars who draw on a variety of critical approaches including adaptation, performance, cultural studies, queer theory, feminism and philosophy to examine screen representations of controversial sexualities from the weird and wonderful to the debased and debauched. Chapters explore provocative performances of hysteria and sexual obsession, 'everyday' perversion in neoliberal culture, the radical potential of sadomasochism, adolescent sexuality in the films of Larry Clark, intergenerational sex and incestuous relations in French cinema, sexual obsession in gay cinema, the straightness of necrophilia, the presentation of the paedophile, Swedish Erotica's 'good sex' and re-imagining the Marquis de Sade from film to slash fiction. In order to move past binary distinctions of good and bad, normal and abnormal, moral and immoral, Tainted Love seeks to critically interrogate perverse sexualities and sexual perversion on screen.

In The World of Perversion, James Penney argues that antihomophobic criticism has nothing to lose—and indeed everything to gain—by reclaiming the psychoanalytic concept of perversion as psychic structure. Analyzing the antagonism between psychoanalytic approaches to perversion and those inspired by the work of Michel Foucault, Penney explores how different assumptions about sexuality have determined the development of contemporary queer theory, and how the universalizing approach to homosexuality in psychoanalysis actually leads to more useful political strategies for nonheterosexual subjects. Having established this theoretical context, Penney focuses on works by Georges Bataille, Blaise Pascal, Denis Diderot, and Jacques Lacan, tracing the implications of various sexual and moral understandings of the term perversion, and illustrating how a psychoanalytic approach to the question of perversion enables politicized readings that are foreclosed by a Foucauldian methodology.

Perversion - its ubiquity in infantile life and its persistence in the psychical and sexual lives of some adults - was a central element of Freud's lifelong work. The problem of perversion has since been revisited by many psychoanalytic schools with the result that Freud's original view of perversion has been replaced by numerous - often contradictory - perspectives on its aetiology, development and treatment. The concept of perversion has also been significant for the disciplines of cultural studies and gender and queer theory, which have explored the creative and dissident powers of perversion, while expressing a suspicion of its operation as a pathological category. This bi-partite collection offers a series of perspectives on perversion by a range of psychoanalytic practitioners and theorists (edited by Dany Nobus), and a selection of papers by scholars who work with, or critique, psychoanalytic theories of perversion (edited by Lisa Downing). It stages a serious dialogue between psychoanalysis and its commentators on the controversial issue of non-normative sexuality.

This book examines the terminology used in the analysis of sadomasochism, surveys extensively, and in detail, the theories of other psychoanalysts, and explores the relationship between sadomasochism and depression; its relationship to psychosis, borderline states, and many other conditions.