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La clinique révèle la fréquente absence de honte chez les auteurs de violences sexuelles comme un négatif de la honte éprouvée par les victimes. Nous avons cherché à comprendre ce paradoxe en analysant les dynamiques de l'introjection de la honte dans l'identification à l'agresseur chez la victime et l'injection de la honte dans l'identification projective de l'agresseur sur sa victime. Nous nous sommes intéressés à Louis, un prêtre destitué, condamné pour comportements pédocriminels. Cette étude fait partie d'une recherche doctorale qualitative menée auprès d'une population de sujets incarcérés à partir d'entretiens de recherche structurés autour du récit de vie. Nous observons chez Louis, comme souvent chez nos sujets de recherche auteurs de violences sexuelles, que derrière l'apparente absence de honte, se dessine une grande honte inconsciente, tout d'abord introjectée dans les abus subis, puis retournée et injectée dans la relation intersubjective et dans les abus commis, comme moyen de décharge d'une honte insupportable. L'introjection de la honte de l'agresseur par sa victime dans la dynamique de l'identification à l'agresseur décrite par Ferenczi apparaît comme la réciproque de l'injection de la honte par l'agresseur à sa victime dans la dynamique de l'identification projective : une identification projective ordinaire sous la forme d'un retournement projectif de la honte et une identification projective opératoire sous la forme de comportements violents et pervers. Le mécanisme des vases communicants psychiques de la honte chez les auteurs et victimes de violences sexuelles, entre injection et introjection, permet de mieux comprendre le caractère contagieux de cet affect dans l'étiologie des violences sexuelles. Forensic clinical investigation frequently reveals the absence of shame in perpetrators of sexual violence while simultaneously victims seem overwhelmed by shame. We sought to understand this paradox by analyzing the dynamics of the introjection of shame in victims' identification with the aggressor and of the injection of shame in the aggressor's projective identification with his victim. We focused on the case of Louis, a dismissed priest, sentenced for pedocriminal behavior. This case is part of a qualitative research project conducted on a population of 14 inmates of a Parisian prison and based on interviews structured around the individual's life story and analyzed with the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) methodology. We observe that behind Louis's apparent absence of shame, as with many of our research subjects guilty of sexual violence, there is, in fact, a great deal of unconscious shame, first introjected by the victim in the abuse suffered, and later injected in the victim in the abuse committed as a means to unload an unbearable shame. The introjection of the shame of the aggressor by his victim in the dynamic of Ferenczi's identification with the aggressor appears as a complement to the injection of shame by the aggressor into his victim through the dynamic of projective identification: both an ordinary projective identification in the form of a projective reversal of shame, and an operative projective identification in the form of perverse behaviors. The communicating vessels of shame among perpetrators and victims of sexual violence, between injection and introjection, help us better understand the contagious characteristics of shame in the etiology of sexual violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In my essay, I offer an interpretation of Giorgio Agamben's political thought as a case of philosophical perversion. According to Lacan, perverse practice is based on a structural non-personal enjoyment, in which a pervert assumes the role of an executioner, meticulously executing his task. My analysis will focus on Agamben's perverse use of the messianic discourse, the aim of which is to explode it from within: while applying all elements of the messianic idiom, Agamben assumes a mission the goal of which is to deactivate all mission and revoke all vocations. As he states in reference to Bartleby the Scrivener as the possible figure of the Messiah, to fulfill the Torah, i.e. the religious law, is to "destroy it from top to bottom." I will thus claim that Agamben's strategy of deactivation – a vocation to end all vocation – can be interpreted as a deliberate methodical use of perversion, that is, a position which simultaneously obeys and destroys the law. Although critical of Agamben's method, I will not use the Lacanian frame of perversion in a value-charged manner. I want to present it as one of the late-modern philosophical modes of thinking, which became so widely seductive precisely of its powerful perverse component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article first resumes up-to-date conceptualisations of the superego in psychoanalytic theory, stretching from the superegoic sense of guilt (Freud) up to the superego as an "imperative od jouissance" (Lacan), and at the same time as an imperative of transgression insofar as enjoyment is by definition based upon transgression of the law. Against this background, the article develops another conceptualisation of the superego, which consist in the completion of the superegoic dialectics of "dirty and necessary" in perversion. This conception is based upon perverse self-instrumentalisation of the subject, which transforms the "dirtiness" of subjective enjoyment and transgression into their necessity. The article then moves toward the analysis of how especially this new conceptualisation of the superego manifests itself in the popular crime series Chicago Police Department (CPD), and in some logically and structurally similar phenomena, which occurred during Donald Trump's presidency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a discussion of Sigmund Freud's note on 'The Perversions in General' from the 1905 edition of his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. To summarise its argument, the article proposes that what Freud calls 'perversion' is itself to be properly understood as a form of sexual generalisation. It goes on to contend that Freudian perversion thus has larger implications for our understanding of the new sciences of sexual generalisation (sexology, psychoanalysis, structuralism, genealogy) that are beginning to emerge from the end of the nineteenth century onwards. If perverse sexuality is arguably the defining libidinal object of Krafft-Ebing's sexual taxonomy, for example, the article argues that perversion is already in itself a form of perverse sexual taxonomy. In conclusion, the article argues that Freud's perversion is consequently a form of structural 'dis-content' that cannot be contained within the modern sciences of sex which extend from Krafft-Ebing's sexology to Foucault's history of sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychose, névrose et perversion ont structuré la clinique à l'âge d'or de la psychanalyse. Si la psychose et la névrose font toujours partie intégrante de notre vocabulaire médical, la perversion s'avère au contraire être devenue un concept peu évoqué voire quelque peu oublié de notre nosographie classique. Pourtant, les processus d'interactions de certains patients et plus particulièrement certains passages à l'acte suicidaires semblent s'y rapporter grandement. Dans cet article, à partir des questions suscitées par le cas clinique abordé, nous soulignerons l'importance de nous ré-intéresser à ce concept. L'objet de cet article consistera en l'étude de certains mécanismes de la perversion dans la clinique du passage à l'acte suicidaire et tentera d'en établir une définition non exhaustive, historique et actuelle afin de répondre au questionnement suivant : « le passage à l'acte suicidaire peut-il être pensé comme un acte pervers dans son adresse au thérapeute ? » Les apports théoriques seront soutenus par une illustration clinique préalable portant sur le suivi hospitalier et ambulatoire d'un jeune patient. Lorsque le passage à l'acte revêt, dans la clinique du suicide, une symbolique particulière adressée au thérapeute et confère au sujet une prise de pouvoir dans la relation thérapeutique, nous pouvons y lire les caractéristiques de la perversion. Il convient de faire preuve de prudence concernant cette proposition et de ne pas associer sans nuance tout acte suicidaire à la clinique de la perversion. De même, il revient au thérapeute de prendre conscience des mécanismes développés par le patient au sein de la relation thérapeutique et d'en faire un objet de travail commun. L'article suivant propose au lecteur une approche théorique et clinique du passage à l'acte suicidaire dans la clinique de la perversion. Il permet d'envisager la distinction entre la clinique du suicide adressée et non adressée, de détacher le passage à l'acte d'une éventuelle pathologie, de prendre connaissance des difficultés cliniques qui en découlent et de dégager des pistes de réflexions concernant le suivi post-passage à l'acte. The notions of psychosis, neurosis, and perversion structured clinical thought during the golden age of psychoanalysis. But, even if psychosis and neurosis are still an integral part of our medical vocabulary, perversion, on the other hand, has become a forgotten or even obsolete concept. However, some mechanisms of interaction between patients and more precisely some suicide attempts seem to be significantly related to it. In this article, we offer the reader a second look at this clinical perversion. This article aims to study some perverse mechanisms that are present in clinical work with suicidal patients and to establish a current, historical, and non-exhaustive definition that will answer the following question: "can a suicide attempt be thought of as a perverse act in its address to the therapist?" The theoretical input will be supported by a preliminary clinical illustration about the hospital and ambulatory monitoring of a young patient. When suicidal acting out takes on a special meaning addressed to the therapist and allows the patient to seize power in the therapeutic relationship, we can clearly see the characteristics of perversion. A cautious approach should be adopted about this proposition: not all suicidal acts are to be associated without nuance with perversion. Similarly, it is up to the therapist to understand the mechanisms developed by the patient in the therapeutic relationship and to make them the object of shared therapeutic work. This article offers the reader a theoretical and clinical approach to the suicidal act in patients whose psychic structure can be considered perverse. It allows us to: differentiate between addressed and un-addressed suicidal acts, acknowledge the resulting clinical difficulties, and explore avenues about the monitoring of patients after a suicide attempt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between perversion and power in contemporary politics, philosophy, and culture. It argues that perversion is not simply a personal pathology, but a structural phenomenon that is based on a strictly non-personal enjoyment. The article suggests that power is not only abused by political leaders for personal pleasure, but that there is a systemic violence and enjoyment inherent in the functioning of power itself. The authors aim to examine this relationship from various theoretical perspectives and cultural materials, including genealogy, libidinal economy, and psychoanalysis. [Extracted from the article]

Relevance. Considering the broad influence of generative artificial intelligence, in particular ChatGPT, in society, this article explores an insufficiently studied topic – ethics of artificial intelligence based on psychoanalysis. As artificial intelligence begins to shape the structure of human relationships, the study emphasizes the need to understand the ethical essence of emerging relationships mediated by artificial intelligence. Aim. To examine the interaction of a subject with artificial intelligence, which holds the potential for perverse dynamics of the subject. This is obvious in the context of positioning ChatGPT as «another», spared from the «name of the Father», which gives the chatbot an access to a non-normative sphere of the symbolic. Thus, allowing the subject to enjoy the mistakes of artificial intelligence as if they were made by the subject himself. This leads to a situation of "excluded inclusion", characteristic of the perversion structure. Methods. The psychoanalytic theory of Z. Freud and J. Lacan, presenting a new perspective on how artificial intelligence, viewed as the «another», can change a person's subjectivity; general philosophical methods, in particular, hermeneutical. Results. The study asserts that the subject enters into a «double» perversion relationship when interacting with ChatGPT – on the one hand, due to the proximity of artificial intelligence and the Lacanian concept of «undead», freed from the interaction of symbolic-real relationships, on the other hand, due to the subject receiving pleasure from the mistakes of artificial intelligence. An important result of the study is the articulation of an argument regarding the negative impact of these perverted encounters on the creative potential of the subject, which requires further research on the influence of artificial intelligence on the human psyche and creativity. Conclusions. The study recognizes the irreplaceable value of ChatGPT as a tool for selection, compilation and processing of data in modern society. Nevertheless, the scientific community, especially researchers in the humanities, should pay special attention to psychoanalytic perspectives of artificial intelligence research outlined by S. Zizek, N. Chomsky, D. Rouselle and M. Murphy in their 2023 discussion. This highlights the importance of analyzing the ethical implications of artificial intelligence in relation to the unconscious work and the psyche of the subject. Thus, this article is a significant addition to the discourse on artificial intelligence in the light of psychoanalytic theory, especially in the context of understanding the consequences of the emerging relationship between artificial intelligence and humans.

Exploring the relationship between humans and AI chatbots, as well as the ethical concerns surrounding their use, this paper argues that our relations with chatbots are not solely based on their function as a source of knowledge, but, rather, on the desire for the subject not to know. It is argued that, outside of the very fears and anxieties that underscore our adoption of AI, the desire not to know reveals the potential to embrace the very loss AI avers. Consequently, rather than proposing a knowledge that seeks to disavow loss, we can instead recognize the potential in loss itself: an opportunity to assert and define the gap inherent to both the subject and AI we create. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roman Polanski's films are noted for their subversive psychological style that explores themes of sexuality, desire, alienation, and violence. His narratives often reflect a dark sense of humour through which the director perceives the absurdity of the human condition in relation to his own cultural dislocations and artistic eccentricity. This article investigates how different connotations of transgression play a major role in defining Roman Polanski as a filmmaker. It specifically explores how the polysemy of transgression structures Polanski as an artist whose real and cinematic negotiations are often intertwined. Through the constant subversion of moral, cultural, and social discourses, his visual style and narrative ideology maintain a notorious affinity that disturbs the notion of reality and manipulates it with new narrative texts. It is the idea of transgression that changes the way Polanski's auteur status is perceived, appreciated, and rejected for his actions and creations in the past and their repercussions in the present. Polanski's works use historical, social, and personal realities to renegotiate his transgressive image in real life by incorporating his contested victim status and persecuted selfhood in narratives that manipulate both the past and present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The novels of Jean Rhys (1890-1979), published in the 1900s, championed a new corpus of feminist writing, with emphasis laid on the trials and tribulations of twentieth-century women. The psychological trauma experienced by women because of contemporary social codes, forms the prime concern of Rhys, presenting a unique way of tackling gender issues. This article explores the masochistic tendencies that constantly overshadow Rhys' works in the context of female characters' relishing their bleak, morbid life. Through a detailed analysis of her novels Quartet (1928) and Good Morning, Midnight (1939), the article argues that Rhys' use of masochism is a literary device meant to emphasize the magnanimity of the female personae, as opposed to the sexually pervasive masochism identified by twentieth-century psychoanalytic theorists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the link between nostalgia and neo-Victorian interest in the nineteenth century has been much discussed and largely acknowledged in neo-Victorian scholarship, the precise nature of this association, its ideological implications, and, most of all, critical interpretations of individual instances of these nostalgic revisitations remain multifaceted, complex, and often contentious. Readings of neo-Victorian texts as cultural memory artefacts or instances of Svetlana Boym's reflective nostalgia are certainly valid, yet these approaches do not account for a specific brand of neo-Victorian narratives which Marie-Louise Kohlke describes as "reading for defilement": a clear insistence on imagining the Victorian age as a den of depravity, rife with shocking obscenities and even more shocking crime, as the Victorian past is posited as a fetishised playground for deviance and voyeurism, often relying on Gothic tropes. This fascination with imagined Victorian filth is particularly interesting when considered in light of the global sway towards conservative politics. The neo-Victorian setting has also been approached through the theoretical lens of John Urry's "tourist gaze", as an environment offering "out-of-the-ordinary" experiences for nostalgic consumption. This paper will therefore seek to contribute to this ongoing critical debate by exploring the various facets of nostalgia in this subset of neo-Victorian narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Masochism has often been categorised among the endless list of perversions developed by psychiatry since the late nineteenth century. Similarly, an almost fixed link between masochism, perversion and femininity persists within psychoanalysis. By asserting that female masochism is a male fantasy, Lacan opens a radically different perspective. This article unfolds this idea by drawing on philosophy, and courtly and masochistic literature. I argue that masochism is a male fantasy and try to open a way for a rigorous separation from perversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the authors explore the depiction of perversion and the associated interplay of life and death drives in Roman Polanski's 1992 film Bitter Moon. To begin with, a theoretical discussion is presented regarding perverse organizations of mastery and sadomasochism. Perversion is viewed as an expression of the death drive under erotic disguise, in which the destructive fingerprint of the death drive is revealed at every stage, having as its ultimate purpose the destruction of the other. Based on these theoretical insights a dialogue is developed with Polanski's film, which brings to life the theory of sadomasochistic relations through the multidimensional aesthetic medium of cinema. It is shown how Polanski's cinematic oeuvre conveys the essence of the difficult and complex experience of perverse relations, where the life and death drives and their transformations are manifested. The portrayal of the sadomasochistic relations in this film contributes to the experiential knowledge with which the authors promote insight that would potentially enrich the clinical work with patients with perverse organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With its suspenseful atmosphere, mysterious and murderous male protagonist, and magical objects, it is hardly surprising that Charles Perrault's conte bleu 'La Barbe bleue' (1697) was the inspiration for numerous Gothic tales in the nineteenth century. Some of these adaptations placed Gothic devices such as the representation of the terror experienced by Bluebeard's latest wife within the broader nineteenth-century cultural discourse on female deviance, and its relations with masculine authority and dominance. By removing from the tale Perrault's warning against female curiosity and imprudence and focusing on the wife's feelings of fear and terror, these adaptations amplify the intrinsic Gothicism of the Bluebeard story, thus providing the female protagonist with a psychological depth that includes, as I demonstrate in this study, a display of a variety of abnormal behaviours. In these Gothic adaptations, the terror experienced by Bluebeard's wife serves as a springboard for the representation of psychological and nervous disorders commonly diagnosed in the nineteenth century such as hysteria, monomania, female depravity, and masochism. Showing the interculturality and intermediality of these themes, this essay analyses rewritings of Perrault's 'Bluebeard' from nineteenth-century Britain, France, and the United States, including Gothic bluebooks, poems, dramas, and short stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Baudelaire and Freud (1977), Leo Bersani posits that psychoanalysis offers a way of understanding sexuality as characterized by the mobility of fantasy, rather than by the content of fetishes or sexual identities, and that this mobility offers the "potential for explosive displacements." This short meditation explores how mobility as a concept, understood in Bersani's sense, helps us think beyond some of the paradoxes, redundancies, and aporias in both psy science and queer theoretical models of sexuality. The essay closes by showing how Bersani returned to "mobility" in Homos (1995) and argues that, via this concept, he suggests ways that queer theory itself can avoid becoming a "new normativity." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Helix structures, which are frequently observed in nature, act as versatile structural templates for complex functionalities with asymmetry and anisotropy. However, atomically thin 2D materials, including graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), and MXenes, do not have inherent chirality in their planar geometry and cannot easily form such a structure. This study presents the macroscopic self‐assembly of 2D materials for helical screws with an Archimedean spiral arrangement. The naturally triggered spontaneous rotation upon the 1D fiber assembly of 2D materials forms helical screws consisting of multiple helices and perversions. For a clear understanding of the morphological evolution of helical screws, variations in the helical pitch and angle are systematically analyzed considering thermodynamic and kinetic conditions. Subsequently, the influence of spontaneous helix formation on the properties of the 2D assembled fibers is investigated in terms of the solvent‐driven actuator performance and electrical and electrothermal properties. The suggested approach provides a new perspective on the directed self‐assembly of inherently achiral 2D materials toward chiral helix formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is a theologico-philosophical meditation on Bruno Schulz, focusing on his “love for the marginal”: a special attention paid to tandeta, in other words all things trashy, located on the eponymous edges of the world, far away from the center. Contrary to the assumed mode of interpretation, which reads Schulz’s fascination with the “dark forces of life” in terms of the depth subversive toward the surface, I propose a different scheme: an opposition of center and edges/margins, deriving from the Kabbalistic metaphysics of Isaac Luria, which constituted the primary matrix of the Hasidic Kabbalah, known to Schulz as the member of the pre-war Drohobycz Jewry. I then juxtapose Schulz’s intuition of a life thriving on the cosmological margins with Freud’s early theory of the drives, especially his concept of perversion as a “libido on the edge.” In both writers we find a similar echo of the spatial Kabbalistic imagining of the relation between the emptied center and the rich diaspora of life, dispersing and multiplying on the fringes of the “cosmic exile.”

Drawing on the contributions of psychoanalysts influenced by Bion as well as on sociopolitical historians, the author examines Trumpism and its destructive leadership through the lens of such concepts as alpha functioning, beta elements, second skin and beta-screen, projection, and containment. The article demonstrates that a vindictive, narcissistic, and toxic masculine leader such as ex-President Trump serves to "pervert" the containing function of healthy leadership to increase authoritarian rule. The author shows that when there is a fit between the group's unconscious phantasies and malevolent, narcissistic leadership, the stage is set for the development of a malignant cult of personality. The cult of Trumpism fosters and exploits paranoia and allegiance to an all-powerful, charismatic figure, contributing to a social milieu at risk for the erosion of democratic principles and the rise of fascism. In contrast, to illustrate healthy containment that neutralizes potentially destructive psychotic anxieties and fantasies, the author closes with sensitive and inspirational leadership oratory from Abraham Lincoln and Robert F. Kennedy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of Hemingway's posthumous fiction engages in dynamic intertextual relations with Lolita. The study identifies some of these protean links but goes further, pointing out the structural and ethical differences between the two authors' work, Nabokov's being rooted in a logic of perversion, while Hemingway's dramatizes what can be called perverse temptation combined with sublimation. The study, which is based on intertextuality but not limited to it, proves helpful for a better understanding of the tension generated between desire and non-normative sexuality, thus engaging in a debate with the perversion-oriented criticism that tends to situate Hemingway's work in perverse clinical categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article attempts to examine Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom, not only as an adaptation of Marquis de Sade’s work, but as a possible response to the problems of modern society, which reanimates fascism, no longer as political ideology, but as a “natural” form of contemporary human sensibility. Relying on his original “semiology of reality,” the expression of which is cinema, Pasolini’s film embodies the non-political logic of fascism as the logic of perversion, hidden behind the facade of political ideology. The article shows that Salo consistently contradicts the key principles of cinematic expressiveness of Pasolini’s theory itself, which focuses on moments in which “reality” reveals itself (acting as life itself). As a result, the film connects the unconnected - the shock of scenes of torture and sexual violence with a cultural allegory that anesthetizes effect of visual violence. For Pasolini, both violence and culture are mechanisms for analyzing the ephemeral substance of power, which inevitably generates some form of fascism and perversion, while de Sade is the discoverer of the basic sensual (plastic) syntagmas of power, embodied in the figure of the libertine. The sadistic libertinage, which combines the idea of freedom and the practice of torture, finds itself at the very heart of contemporary politics, its operative unconscious.

This text presents how Freud thinks about the masochism. In 1915, it is the return of active sadism in a passive drive which is characteristic of masochism, always secondary. In 1919, he sees in masochism the genesis of perversions. And the article of 1924 knows a primary masochism and distinguishes erotogenic masochism, feminine masochism and moral masochism. After Freud, many studies of clinical forms of masochism can be noted, and in France there is a thesis about the masochism as a first psychic link (Benno Rosenberg, Marilia Aisenstein). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cette étude discute de difficultés conceptuelles liées aux notions d'empathie et de sympathie dans le champ de la psychopathologie. Partant d'une définition de ces concepts héritée de Max Scheler, nous étudions trois diagnostics : la personnalité perverse, la psychopathie et la schizophrénie. Chacune de ces entités diagnostiques se caractérise par des modalités spécifiques d'adhérence avec le monde social révélées par une analyse approfondie de l'empathie et de la sympathie. Si le psychopathe et le pervers se révèlent doués d'empathie (mais ont un rapport différent à la sympathie), le schizophrène présente un déficit empathique tout en préservant une considération sympathique d'autrui qu'il s'avère nécessaire d'identifier dans un contexte thérapeutique. Ce cheminement dans la psychopathologie phénoménologique et le monde social est riche en enseignements et fournissent des clarifications quant au fonctionnement psychologique des trois figures étudiées. The aim of this paper is to highlight some conceptual difficulties related to the notions of empathy and sympathy in the field of psychopathology. Starting from a definition of these concepts inherited from Max Scheler, we study three diagnostics: the pervert, the psychopath, and the schizophrenic. Each of these diagnostic entities is characterized by specific modalities of adherence to the social world revealed by an in-depth analysis of empathy and sympathy. While the psychopath and the pervert appear to be empathic (but have a different relationship to sympathy), the schizophrenic presents an empathic deficit while preserving a sympathetic consideration of others necessary to identify in a therapeutic context. Taking phenomenological psychopathology and the social world into account is instructive and provides clarifications about the psychological functioning of the three figures studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Algorithmic Desire: Toward a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media offers an account of internet culture that draws as much on the Marxist theories of Fredric Jameson, Mark Fisher, and Maurizio Lazzarato as it does on the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and Slavoj Žižek (the last of whom falls into both camps). This essay emphasizes that through line for readers of Rethinking Marxism who may be skeptical of the book's psychoanalytic insights. In this reading, the perverse subject of social media, who cynically "knows very well" that they are wasting time on their phone, is also a potential activist, as shown not only by the role that social media has played in Iran, in the Arab Spring, and in Black Lives Matter but also in how we are "subjected" by the algorithms of our desire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homoeroticism or same-sex relationship though considered impious and abhorred publicly has existed in the Subcontinent of India in almost all sections and genders of society from the elite to the most downtrodden. Though male homosexuality has been a subject of both public discourse and academic writings, women’s same-sex relationship, however, is largely viewed as taboo and hence is discreetly referred to. This paper drawing upon Judith Butler’s criticism of normative gender with psychoanalytic commentary from Freudian sources investigates the queer characterizations and sexuality in the context of colonial India. Thus, this paper aims to explore and discuss the effects of the homoerotic practices of men and women, especially within the institution of marriage by employing textual analysis of Ismat Chughtai’s short story The Quilt. The story portrays a woman whose desire for her husband is thwarted because of his being homoerotic. This suppressed desire finds its way into her actual and attempted coerced sexual relationships with the other women around her. Homoeroticism, thus, results in gender oppression, economic exploitation, and worst of all paedophilia, all of which remain muffled and silenced because of their association with homoeroticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of maternal criminal behaviour is often unacknowledged due to the cultural idealization of the maternal role. The societies’ tendency to glorify motherhood serves to disregard the idea of female subjectivity and the necessity of developing a distinctive identity. Perverse behaviour is ascribed to the disturbances in mother-infant relationship at early developmental stage. Lack of emotional fulfilment in mother-child relationship can lead to a sense of anger and the desire to inflict pain on an object or a person. While in male perverse behaviour, the perpetrator of the perverse act shows an urge to hurt others, in the case of female perversion, the individual often turns this anger against herself or her own baby. This indicates a symbolic attack on the maternal body. This paper aims at investigating the idea of female criminality in Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects with particular attention to Estela Welldon and Anna Motz's views about female perversion. It will be argued that the different instances of perverse acts such as self-cutting, child abuse, infanticide and murder committed by the female characters in the novel are the consequences of abusive mothering as well as the societies' tendency to glorify the notion of ideal motherhood.

Les théories du complot, aujourd'hui très présentes dans l'espace public, sont très peu étudiées par la psychologie clinique — en partie par crainte d'une application abusive des catégories psychopathologiques. Nous questionnons ici la pertinence d'une approche clinique psychodynamique de ce phénomène. Les implications et la portée heuristique de trois notions cliniques sont discutées : paranoïa, perversion et traumatisme. Une conception psychodynamique questionne les théories du complot comme des constructions subjectives et collectives, en évitant le risque d'une qualification diagnostique des sujets qui y adhèrent, et d'une dichotomie entre normal et pathologique. Cet article ébauche une clinique différentielle de ce phénomène très vaste et hétérogène du conspirationnisme, particulièrement nécessaire pour penser ses principales dimensions et des modalités de prévention. Conspiracy theories appear today as a specific collective imaginary. Belief in conspiracy theories seems to have clearly increased during the last decades, partly due to their elaboration and diffusion via social media. A lot of empirical research about conspiracy theories are designed in social and cognitive psychology, but only a few studies adopt a clinical point of view. One reason is that such a clinical approach carries the risk of abusively applying some psychopathological notions to a wide range of the general population, and to a social – and not only individual – construct. This paper aims to promote a psychodynamic approach to conspiracy theories. We argue that this approach allows to studying them as subjective and collective constructs, leaving aside any attempt to make a diagnosis on people believing in conspiracy theories, and any dichotomy between the normal and the pathological. We discuss three clinical ways to represent the psychological functions of conspiracy theories: paranoid ideation, perverse uses, and reaction to traumatic events. As a matter of fact, these clinical notions are often explicitly referred to, or implicitly implied, when psychological motives or functions of belief in conspiracy theories are discussed. We seek to point out the implications of these three clinical notions and their ability to shed light on conspiracy theories. This leads to discuss their relevance for a differential clinic of the belief in conspiracy theories, allowing to identify the various dimensions of conspiracy theories, and of their subjective uses and functions. Through a psychodynamic understanding of clinical entities, conspiracy theories can be studied as both subjective and collective constructs. In this way, we argue that a psychodynamic approach can avoid the risk of a diagnostical and pathological use of clinical concepts stemming from a binary distribution between the normal and the pathological. It rather leads to question along a continuum the various dimensions of conspiracy theories and of the belief in their content. The phenomenon of conspiracy theories seems to emerge from a wide range of heterogeneous and distinctive constructs, uses and attitudes. Belief in conspiracy theories can provide several kinds of psychological benefits, implying various subjective functions and psychic mechanisms. Moreover, in terms of psychological attitudes, we have to clearly distinguish different phenomena: some spontaneous and collective elaborations of conspiracy theories, belief in conspiracy theories, the process of their diffusion, and their political, social and psychological intentional uses. These heterogeneous dimensions raise the risk of undermining any study of this phenomenon considering it as a unidimensional and a unified construct. In this way, we argue that a differential clinic of this conspiracy phenomenon is a methodological need, prior to the design of empirical clinical studies and to the reflection about preventive actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author proposes that particular oedipal dynamics in individuals suffering with compulsive sexual behaviours tend to be characterized by imbalance between maternal and paternal functions. The maternal object is experienced as overwhelming and potentially annihilating. The paternal object is relatively weak and incapable of moderating fear of symbiosis. There is failure to develop a triangular space within the mind to enable the capacity to apprehend psychic reality and to relate. Compulsive sexual behaviours are defined as a series of compelling sexualized enactments, which function as a 'curative device' to prevent psychic collapse. Due to a lack of adequate internalized paternal function, perverse enactments signify premature attempts to structure reality. Enactment mitigates emotional contact and manifests within the here‐and‐now of treatment. The psychotherapist has to contend with enticements and pressures to act, sometimes in a retaliatory way. The setting or frame, representing the paternal function, is an arena for these dynamics to be manifest. There is an inducement to be drawn towards 'management' rather than the 'being with' of the maternal function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a patient presents for psychotherapy having accessed illegal images of children online, it may be impossible to know at the outset whether this reflects an enduring sexual interest in children, or the transient emergence of paedophilic sexual interest associated with a breakdown in ego functioning. Concerns about risk and the emotive nature of paedophilia may undermine the therapist's or analyst's capacity to tolerate uncertainty and maintain analytic neutrality, leading to premature assumptions about the nature of the underlying pathology. This paper describes the treatment of a patient who had a conviction for viewing indecent images of children online, and the challenge of suspending judgement and maintaining analytic doubt while exploring the meaning of his actions. There was a pressure towards a sadomasochistic transference in which the therapist would be perceived to be cruel if doubting him, but weak and naive if not questioning him. Analytic work over seven years led to a formulation of his acting out as reflecting, not enduring paedophilia, but a 'paedophilic breakdown'. Changes were evident in his psychic functioning and his external life, as well as in the quality of the therapeutic process. The countertransference challenges of this work are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine and analyze the main characters in Ian McEwan's novel The Comfort of Strangers (1981) in the light of the overarching theme of the novel, that is, how unconscious or conscious desires lead to violence and destruction. Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theory comprises the main theoretical framework of the paper. More specifically, his concepts of the symbolic order and clinical structure of perversion serve as an analytical tool for the analysis of characters. Therefore, the main hypothesis of the paper is that McEwan's characters, the problems of sexual violence and unrecognized desires can be analyzed and explained through Lacan's theory of perversion and symbolic order. What Lacan's theory illuminates in the context of the novel is that characters' unconscious motivations and drives formed during their earliest experiences, if left unrecognized and unaddressed, lead to violence and destruction.

A slow match is a very slow-burning fuse presenting only a small glowing tip whereas a quick match is one, which once ignited, burns at top speed. In this paper, I will present a number of clinical vignettes to illustrate situations when the therapist realised there was a sudden unexpected rise in 'temperature' of a patient's mind and why this may have occurred. A fuse was lit but was it a slow or a quick one? I will relate this ignition to the possibility of premature interpretations, or a failure to notice how anxious the patient was in the presence of the terrifying object-therapist and also, patients' unexpected responses to external interferences during a session. Descriptions of how these situations unfolded during sessions are given, and how, upon reflection, these could have been diffused differently. The emphasis will be on how best to maintain a psychoanalytic stance but also how to clinically judge when a session must be terminated in order to protect patient and therapist from exploding 'bombs' inadvertently ignited by patient or therapist. The importance of supervision and consultation with colleagues will be stressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I describe my ongoing journey with Daniel, a patient with a severe dissociative disorder. With detailed explorations of major enactments, I illustrate how issues around desire, excitement, and intimacy shape our eroticized transference-countertransference imbrication and compel episodic relational states of deadness and terror. Reflecting on the shifting roles of dominance, submission and states of dissociation, I explicate the powerful effects of spontaneity and self-disclosure in the navigation of seemingly intractable stalemates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discussions by Celenza and Itzkowitz underline the therapeutic principle that the splintered internal worlds of dissociative patients can be accessed in multiple ways. In my response to their commentaries, I will discuss how the use of theory can become a simulacrum of the colonial mind-set. I also echo Celenza's idea (this issue) that the enactment of maternal eroticism is crucial in clinical work with psychopathy and perversion. I add that there is no degree of preparation or style of participation that protects the therapist from encounters with his own alterity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essential experience of suffering with our patients is discussed in relation to Daniel, a man with prominent psychopathy and dissociative disorder. The ways in which the author, Shelley Heusser, was receptive to Daniel despite repeated power plays and doer-done to relational dynamics, is highlighted, with appreciation for Heusser's steadfastness, courage and devotion. Mutual vulnerability and fallibility are discussed as crucial to the development of internal strength for both therapist and patient alike, even as these are attempted to be sadistically vanquished by reciprocal, dyadically triggered "internal predators." Descriptive accounts of perverse scenarios are presented to establish boundaries around which empathy can take root and grow. These do not substitute for mutually living through necessary enactments that may involve life or death struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article begins by identifying the demand for "masc" in gay male digital cultures as a repressive phenomenon. Drawing on a key queer alt‐right text by Jack Donovan in which "masc" is explicitly theorized, it shows that its disciplinary logic is distinct from homonormativity. The homo/hetero binary is explicitly rejected, and the perverse structure is weaponized as a repressive mechanism suited to a postnormative environment. Under these conditions, critiques of normativity and homonationalism are unable to provide an effective counter because the subjects they address have stopped caring. The article describes perverse homogenization processes as "homotribalism," arguing that they provide an erotic basis for ethnonationalism. It then provides a detailed reading of Call Me by Your Name (2017), claiming that its striking contemporary relevance during the first year of the Trump administration followed from working through the question of homotribal desire within liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses "The concept of (Anomalous Recitation) and (Recitation Adopted by Collective of Quran Reciters) in Quranic Recitations according to Al- Farrā's "Maani Al-Quran". Such paper clearly reflects on both terms according to Al- Farrā through examination and analysis of recitations addressed by Al- Farrā in multiple ways and listed as a recitation that is not commonly used, that is to say, anomalous recitation. The paper, as well, reflects on correct recitations commonly used by a great number by reciters, that is, recitation adopted by collective of Quran reciters. Thus, Al- Farrā provides the basis for definition of both terms. In addition, he provides a clear definition for the pillars of correct recitation, which scholars of Quranic Recitations adopted thereafter. The paper basically consists of two themes preceded by an introduction and followed by a conclusion that sums up its results. The first theme addresses the concept of anomalous recitation. It comprises three titles as follows: "circumstances of anomalous recitation permissibility", "Recitations that are linguistically correct but may not be used" and "Adoption of Anomalous recitation in Quran interpretation". The second theme reflects on the Concept of Recitation Adopted by Collective of Quran Reciters. It consists of two titles: "Recitation Adopted by Collective of Quran Reciters Vs Correct Recitations" and "Recitation Adopted by Collective of Quran Reciters Vs Anomalous Recitations". عنوان هذا البحث:" مفهوم (الشذوذ) و (العامّة) في القراءات عند الفرّاء في معاني القرآن". يبيِّـن البحث مفهوم هذين المصطلحين بوضوح عند الفرّاء في كتابه معاني القرآن بدراسة القراءات وتحليلها التي تناولها الفرّاء بطرق متعددة، وتندرج تحت القراءة التي لا يُقرأ بها مما يدخل في مفهوم (الشذوذ)، أو القراءات الصحيحة المشهورة للكثرة من القراء التي تدخل تحت مفهوم ( العامّة)، والفرّاء بهذا يؤسس لتعريف هذين المصطلحين ويضع حداً واضحاً لأركان القراءة الصحيحة الذي سار عليه علماء القراءات فيما بعده. وجاء هيكل البحث في مبحثين تسبقهما مقدمة وتقفوهما خاتمة لخصت نتائجه . الأول: مفهوم الشذوذ، وفيه ثلاثة عناوين: التصريح بالشذوذ، وقراءات تصح عربية ولا تجوز القراءة بها، وحمل القرآن على الشاذّ. الآخر: مفهوم العامّة، وفيه عنوانان: قراءة العامّة مقابل قراءات صحيحة، وقراءة العامّة مقابل قراءات شاذّة.

This article analyses the slippery notions of the normal and normality in select works of Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) and Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and argues that homosexuality became a 'boundary object' between the normal and the abnormal in their works. Constructing homosexuality as 'normal enough' provided these two key thinkers of the fin de siècle with an opportunity to challenge societal and medical norms: Krafft-Ebing did this through mapping perversions; Freud, by challenging perceived norms about sexual development more broadly. The article submits that the scientific logic presented in Krafft-Ebing's seminal case study compilation Psychopathia Sexualis and Freud's early theoretical writings and cases, including Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), was itself haunted by notions of norms and the normal that were not always easy to resolve, and sometimes involved a certain amount of inspired conjecture on the part of both thinkers in order to develop and validate their differing tripartite models of normality. Krafft-Ebing imagined homosexuality as a variation of the normal by generalizing a gay male experience. He also recorded the obstreperous cases of homosexual women based largely inside the clinic but by and large ignored this evidence. Freud inextricably bound homosexuality to normality (and vice versa) by redefining homosexuals as a group to include individuals with unconscious same-sex desire. Doing so allowed him to conceptualize the fear of homosexuality as crucial in the formation of neurosis and psychosis, and at the same time put him at odds with relevant early identity politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article adopts a psychoanalytic perspective and argues that users are in a perverse relationship with contemporary platforms. Following a review of recent critical scholarship on datafication, which places too much emphasis on platforms and situates users as helpless, the psychoanalytic concept of perversion is introduced. Perversion describes a relationship that is characterised by dominance, exploitation and dehumanization as well as care, love, and idealization. While the pervert (the platform and its owners and developers) is the perpetrator, the other (the user) is also actively participating in the perverse relationship. Contemporary relations are thus marked by foregrounding connectivity, convenience and communication which mask the violence of datafication. Such relations are upheld, because users affirmatively reproduce them by using highly attractive platforms which are customized for each individual. Psychoanalysis can thus offer a complex conceptualisation of the interplay between affirmation, attraction and exploitation that is immanent to platforms and users today.