The perversion of language in the analyst's activity: Navigating the rhythms of embodiment and symbolization

Abstract

In this short text, the problem of how “the talking cure” itself can become a perverse relation is considered and illustrated with a brief clinical vignette. Contributions coming from the work of Stern in infant research and Lacan in post-Freudian thought illuminate the potential for experience to be split off through the use of language itself. These perspectives are brought to bear on thinking about representation, splitting, and perversion as a basis for considering a clinical instance in which patient and analyst enact a perverse relation constituted by the way in which the patient uses the analyst's language to construct a sado-masochistic perversion of the treatment process. Within the clinical episode, Stein's reformulation of perversion, informed by Ogden's observations and expanding Stoller's earlier contribution, provides a basis for considering how the analyst was able to use attention to the body-based countertransferential experience to repair a sense of “erasure” that was being accomplished for both analyst and analysand through the enactment.     

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR! THE SURRENDER OF GENDER

Close examination of Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905a) reveals an ambiguity in Freud's language as he simultaneously tries to escape 19th‐century psychiatric paradigms concerning sexuality and perversion while also retaining a normative approach to adult sexuality that created new categories of pathology. The result is an ambivalent legacy that has both hampered and helped contemporary clinicians as they deal with a diverse array of presentations of gender and sexual orientation in today's world.     

The Internet and Its Discontents—or Diamonds are a Girl’s BFF: Commentary on Danielle Knafo’s Paper “Guys and Dolls: Relational Life in the Technological Era”

In this discussion, I contrast Knafo’s worry about online inhumanity with a perspective informed by Katherine Hayles’s humanistic work on cybernetics, the posthuman, and the technological unconscious. Drawing upon my own writing about cyberobjects and reality, I argue that Knafo’s claim that “technology has invaded our intimate lives” is wildly overstated and that it hinges upon a curious manipulation of a false active/passive binary that is then used as a litmus test for perversion. I challenge Knafo’s “evolutionary” and materialist claims with reference to the intercourse of perversion and neoliberalism.     

Saying and Doing: Speech Actions,Speech Acts and Related Events

The question which this paper examines is that of the correct scope of the claim that extra‐linguistic factors (such as gender and social status) can block the proper workings of natural language. The claim that this is possible has been put forward under the apt label of silencing in the context of Austinian speech act theory. The ‘silencing’ label is apt insofar as when one's ability to exploit the inherent dynamic of language is ‘blocked’ by one's gender or social status then one might justly be said to be silenced. The notion that factors independent of any person's linguistic competence might block her ability to exploit the inherent dynamic of language is of considerable social as well as theoretical significance. I shall defend the claim that factors independent of a person's linguistic competence can indeed block her ability to do things with words but I will show that the cases that have been previously considered to be cases of illocutionary failure are instances of rhetic or locutionary act failure instead. I shall refine the silencing claim as previously advanced in the debate in at least one fundamental respect. I also show that considering the metaphysics of speech acts clarifies many of the issues previously appearing as thorny bones of contention between those who hold that the only notion of silencing that is coherent is that of physically preventing someone from speaking or writing and those who hold the opposite sort of claim sketched above.     

The Strange New World in the Church:

Hauerwas's refusal to translate the argument displayed in With the Grain of the Universe (his recent Gifford Lectures) into language that “anyone” can understand is itself part of the argument. Consequently, readers will not understand what Hauerwas is up to until they have attained fluency in the peculiar language that has epitomized three decades of Hauerwas's scholarship. Such fluency is not easily gained. Nevertheless, in this review essay, I situate Hauerwas's baffling language against the backdrop of his corpus to show at least this much: With the Grain of the Universe transforms natural theology into “witness.” In the end, my essay may demonstrate what many have feared, that Hauerwas is, in fact, a Christian apologist—though of a very ancient sort.     

THE WIDENING SCOPE OF INDICATIONS FOR PERVERSION

Much has changed in clinical practice and theory that bears on the diagnosis and treatment of perversion since Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905). Definitions of perversion have been freed from assumptions of a heterosexual normality and from moralistic interpretations. The authors endorse the current emphasis on aggression and early narcissistic problems and include the notion of splitting and sexualized scenarios in their definition of perversion. They present several vignettes of male and female patients to demonstrate the debts owed to Freud's theories and the way in which their thinking differs. They emphasize the understanding of the transference‐countertransference picture and the patient's management and control of excitement.     

WHOSE RIGHTS,AND WHAT's THE DIFFERENCE? A CRITIQUE OF BETH SINGER'S “HUMAN RIGHTS: SOME CURRENT ISSUES”

Abstract: In this article I argue against the rights‐based framework defining the abortion debate, and do so by considering the views of Beth Singer, a philosopher whose work conveys a broadly pragmatist formulation of traditional rights‐based language. Although Singer's schema presents a fruitful vantage point from which to consider the abortion question through the discourse of rights, even Singer's use of the language of rights ultimately fails adequately to address the subject. I challenge Singer's view by taking up John Dewey's concept of reflective morality, elucidated in his 1932 Ethics.     

How to Do Things with Emotional Expressions: The Theory of Affective Pragmatics

It is widely accepted that emotional expressions can be rich communicative devices. We can learn much from the tears of a grieving friend, the smiles of an affable stranger, or the slamming of a door by a disgruntled lover. So far, a systematic analysis of what can be communicated by emotional expressions of different kinds and of exactly how such communication takes place has been missing. The aim of this article is to introduce a new framework for the study of emotional expressions that I call the theory of affective pragmatics (TAP). As linguistic pragmatics focuses on what utterances mean in a context, affective pragmatics focuses on what emotional expressions mean in a context. TAP develops and connects two principal insights. The first is the insight that emotional expressions do much more than simply expressing emotions. As proponents of the Behavioral Ecology View of facial movements have long emphasized, bodily displays are sophisticated social tools that can communicate the signaler's intentions and requests. Proponents of the Basic Emotion View of emotional expressions have acknowledged this fact, but they have failed to emphasize its importance, in part because they have been in the grip of a mistaken theory of emotional expressions as involuntary readouts of emotions. The second insight that TAP aims to articulate and apply to emotional expressions is that it is possible to engage in analogs of speech acts without using language at all. I argue that there are important and so far largely unexplored similarities between what we can “do” with words and what we can “do” with emotional expressions. In particular, the core tenet of TAP is that emotional expressions are a means not only of expressing what's inside but also of directing other people's behavior, of representing what the world is like and of committing to future courses of action. Because these are some of the main things we can do with language, the take home message of my analysis is that, from a communicative point of view, much of what we can do with language we can also do with non-verbal emotional expressions. I conclude by exploring some reasons why, despite the analogies I have highlighted, emotional expressions are much less powerful communicative tools than speech acts.     

An Aesthetics of the Ordinary: Wittgenstein and John Cage

Comparisons of Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Cage typically focus on the “later Wittgenstein” of the Philosophical Investigations. However, in this article I focus on the deep intellectual sympathy between the “early Wittgenstein” of the Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus—with its evocative and controversial invocation of silence at the end, the famous proposition 7: “Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent”—and Cage's equally evocative and controversial work on the same theme—his “silent piece,” 4′33″. This sympathy expresses itself not only in the common aim of the two works (a mystical appreciation for the ordinary, everyday world that surrounds us) but also in a shared methodology for bringing about this aim (tracing the limits of language from within in order to transcend those very limits). In this sense, I argue that Cage's work gives a concrete, performative reality to Wittgenstein's early conception of language as well as the mystical revelation that lies behind it.     

Mission Impossible and Wittgenstein's Standard Metre

In this paper, I argue that context sensitivity is crucial for a proper exegesis of Wittgenstein's remark that one can say of the standard metre rod neither that it is one metre long nor that it is not one metre long. I discuss cases in which we can meaningfully assert that the rod in question is one metre long and explain why these cases do not conflict with Wittgenstein's insight. I analyse Pollock's recent defence of Wittgenstein's remark, as well as Kripke's objections to it, and show that, while their commentaries are helpful, blindness to context renders them unsatisfactory.     

On Making Reparation to the Analyst's Idolized Countertransference: Commentary on Paper by Dana Amir

Dana Amir's paper, “The Chameleon Language of Perversion,” provides an opportunity to consider the discourse of perversion on two fronts: as a stalled mode of representation in the articulation of desire (Freud, 1905 Freud, S. 1905. Three essays on the theory of sexuality. Standard Edition, 7: 136–248.  [Google Scholar]) and as an elusive harbinger of normative discourse in the psychoanalyst's countertransference. By drawing us into the intricacies of perverse communication, her paper invites us to elaborate a relational perspective on perversion that accounts for both qualities of discourse. I use clinical vignettes to argue that by holding the double meaning of countertransference, as discourse that aims for affect to be contained and represented and as a way of knowing endowed by the analyst's occupation of normative discourse, the relational analyst may coax perversion from inert scene into the domain of object representation, making reparation to the idolized countertransference (Khan, 1989) so as to vest chameleon language with intersubjective capacity for recognition and meaning.     

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.     

THE IMAGO DEI AS THE MIND OF JESUS CHRIST

In this essay I examine David Clough's interpretation of the imago Dei and his use of “creaturely” language in his book On Animals: Volume 1, Systematic Theology. Contrary to Clough, I argue that the imago Dei should be interpreted as being uniquely human. Using a neuroscientific approach, I elaborate on my claim that while Jesus is the image of God perfected, the imago Dei is best understood as having the mind of Christ. In regards to language, I make the case that using terms such as “creature” when referring to nonhuman animals is problematic in that it can serve to alienate human beings from their capacity to image God. In addition I argue that “creaturely” language raises concerns for the African American community given Western Christianity's history as it relates to their valuation of black bodies and human enslavement.     

The Motif of the Irreparable: Potentiality,Contingency, and Redemption in Agamben's Theology

The work of Giorgio Agamben relies heavily on two rather opaque notions: the messianic and the irreparable. This essay is devoted to an analysis of the latter. After surveying the existing literature, I take my cue from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's prison letters and prepare the way for my own analysis of Agamben's irreparable. In the final part of the essay, I compare the irreparable with Agamben's use of Benjamin's thought of something unforgettable. I understand the role of the irreparable in this light, since, for Agamben, it means the chance of something given up by language, something given up altogether, and as such serves as entry to the paradigmatic.     

Pentheus rather than Oedipus: On perversion,survival and analytic ‘presencing’1

Following an introductory review of the main developments in the psychoanalytic thinking on perversion, the author focuses on her own understanding of perversion and its treatment, based on the psychoanalytic treatment of patients with severe sexual perversions. This paper uses the term ‘autotomy’ (borrowed from the fi eld of biology) to describe perversion formation as an ‘autotomous’ defence solution involving massive dissociative splitting in the service of psychic survival within a violent, traumatic early childhood situation; thus, a compulsively enacted ‘desire for ritualised trauma’ ensues. The specifi c nature of the perverse scenario embodies the specifi c experiential core quality of the traumatic situation. It is an actual repetition in the present of the imprint of a past destructive experience which is pre‐arranged and stage‐managed; it thus encounters haunting scenes of dread or psychic annihilation while, at the same time, controlling, sanitising and disavowing them. Hence, the world of severe perversion is no longer oedipal, but rather the world of Pentheus, Euripides's most tragic hero‐a world dominated by a mixture of a mother's madness, devourment, destruction and rituals of desire. According to this view, the (diffi cult) psychoanalytic treatment of perversion focuses on patient‐analyst interconnectedness‐brought about by the analyst's ‘givenness to being present’ or ‘presencing’‐at a deep, primary level of contact and impact (the emphasis being on the ontological dimension of experience). This evolving therapeutic entity creates and actualises a new, alternative experiential‐emotional reality within the pervert's alienated world, eventually generating a change in the perverse essence. The author illustrate this approach with three clinical vignettes.     

Chrysippus Confronts the Liar: The Case for Stoic Cassationism

The Stoic philosopher Chrysippus wrote extensively on the liar paradox, but unfortunately the extant testimony on his response to the paradox is meager and mainly hostile. Modern scholars, beginning with Alexander Rüstow in the first decade of the twentieth century, have attempted to reconstruct Chrysippus’ solution. Rüstow argued that Chrysippus advanced a cassationist solution, that is, one in which sentences such as ‘I am speaking falsely’ do not express propositions. Two more recent scholars, Walter Cavini and Mario Mignucci, have rejected Rüstow's thesis that Chrysippus used a cassationist approach. Each has proposed his own thesis about Chrysippus’ solution. I argue that Rüstow's view is fundamentally correct, and that the cassationist thesis gains greater plausibility when viewed in light of a passage in Sextus Empiricus’ Adversus mathematicos that the previous commentators have ignored, and when understood within the broader context of Stoic logical theory and philosophy of language. I close with a brief remark on the significance of Chrysippus’ work for the modern debate on the semantic paradoxes.     

Grundlagen,Section 64: Frege's Discussion of Definitions by Abstraction in Historical Context

I offer in this paper a contextual analysis of Frege's Grundlagen, section 64. It is surprising that with so much ink spilled on that section, the sources of Frege's discussion of definitions by abstraction have remained elusive. I hope to have filled this gap by providing textual evidence coming from, among other sources, Grassmann, Schlömilch, and the tradition of textbooks in geometry for secondary schools (including a textbook Frege had used when teaching in a Privatschule in Jena in 1882–1884). In addition, I put Frege's considerations in the context of a widespread debate in Germany on ‘directions’ as a central notion in the theory of parallels.     

THE LOST LEGACY OF ANSELM'S ARGUMENT: RE‐THINKING THE PURPOSE OF PROOFS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

In his Proslogion, Anselm presents a proof for God's existence which has attracted a tremendous amount of scholarly attention. In spite of all that has been said about this proof and proofs for God's existence more generally, scholarly consensus seems to dissipate when it comes to determining whether theistic proofs are persuasive and sound. In this article, I will argue that there is a way to provide compelling proof for the existence of God. To substantiate this claim, I will not attempt to prove that God exists apart from His revelation in any of the ways that have been advocated by various philosophers of religion. Rather, I will endeavor to explain that Anselm's approach to offering evidence for God's existence is quite different from the approach that modern philosophers tend to attribute to him and to elaborate on what that approach involves by reading Anselm's argument in the context of Augustine's De Trinitate and the whole of the Proslogion.