Psychoanalytic perspectives on paraphilias and perversions

Since Freud’s exposition of the nature of perversion in his seminal work, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality there has been a multitude of rich and varied explorations of human sexual fantasies and behaviours that are considered as perversions within the psychoanalytic literature. However, with more recent societal shifts towards the acceptance of sexual orientations and practices which would previously been categorized as deviant, perversion has become a pejorative term seen as stigmatizing and debasing those whose sexual preferences do not conform to the traditional norm. In this paper I argue that certain psychoanalytic concepts of perversion retain utility in how we might think about and help individuals whose sexual desires and practices cause distress to themselves and/or others, particularly in the realm of intimate relationships. Historical and contemporary theories about the nature and origins of perverse fantasies and behaviour are presented and explored, focusing on how perversion may be conceptualized as a defence against early anxieties and disturbances in the mother–infant relationship. Such ideas inform a psychoanalytic approach to the treatment of perversions, particularly in consideration of transference and countertransference dynamics. The ideas in this paper are based on my work at the Portman Clinic in London, UK.     

Psychoanalytic perspectives on the treatment of early adolescent girls

Psychotherapy of girls between the ages of 10and 14 years presents specific difficulties which originate in the rapid physiological changes and intrapsychic demands for psychological differentiation, causing considerable anxiety and inner turmoil. The introduction of therapeutic intervention at this juncture is discussed along with its risks, benefits, limitations, possibilities, and implications for psychoanalytic theory.     

Psychoanalytic perspectives on music: an intersection on the oral and aural road

This paper is organized around two ideas. The first invites the reader to consider the importance of music in emotional life, suggesting that for some people, music can have profound, deep, and transformative effects, both in loosening defenses and in deepening the psychoanalytic experience. The second idea is that analysis of the formal properties of music have both specific and overdetermined meanings that share elements with psychoanalytic principles. I suggest that, if the verbal analysis of dreams paves a royal road to the unconscious, the formal properties of music provide an aural road to the same destination. Two clinical vignettes and scenes from Verdi's opera Otello are used to illustrate these interrelated ideas.     

Psychoanalytic and musical perspectives on shame in Donizetti's Lucia Di Lammermoor

Two disciplines, psychoanalysis and music, are synthesized here with an eye to the origins and vicissitudes of shame and guilt as seen in the emotional disintegration of the eponymous heroine of Donizetti's opera Lucia di Lammermoor. Lucia's affects and her intrapsychic and interpersonal dynamics are heard in the music itself. A psychoanalytic and musical analysis of the opera, taking Lucia's dynamics as a quasi-substitute for clinical material, illuminates the intersections between certain theoretical aspects of the two disciplines. Both manifest and latent themes are expressed through the music of Donizetti's score.     

An experimental contribution to the problem of apparent reality

Certain two-dimensional figures acquire a character of relief and reality when oriented obliquely to the observer and viewed monocularly. The experiments were made with two types of figure—a simple straight line, and more complex patterns of lines. The results indicate that the character of reality gradually increases as the experimental conditions become more favourable. The conditions found to be most favourable are dissimilarities of size, brightness, microstructure, shape, perspective clues, between figure and ground.

When the segregating factors are operating, the figure becomes independent of the paper and takes up its own orientation in space. In the case of the simple line, this orientation may be frontal, but more usually the orientation of the background is taken into account, the resulting structural organization being that of a “needle” projecting from the background. The reality is greatest when the orientation of the background is such that the “needle” appears to be perpendicular to the ground. The complex figures used in the experiments were perspective designs of parallelepipeds. Again, the oblique position of the design associated Tvith the greatest degree of reality of the tridimensional object is that which permits the figure to be seen as projecting perpendicularly from its background.     

Psychoanalytic observations on musical creativity

The author applies concepts of creativity, developed in regard to literature and graphic arts, to the field of music. He refers to Sterba's concept of "regressive self passage" as an explanation of musical creativity. Modern theories of narcissism as well as composers' personal accounts are incorporated into the argument.