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

Abstract

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.

Storm stress and the humble and perilous art of stage zero intervention

“…She knows neither what it is nor how it got there. Her father, very gently, very gradually, brings her out of dissociative flight and back into reality (Eshel, ). As we deepen our understanding of Stage Zero phenomenology we come closer to integrating it with the rest of what we think and do as analysts.…”

From Extension to Revolutionary Change in Clinical Psychoanalysis: The Radical Influence of Bion and Winnicott

“…In the many years that have passed since I treated Nir, I have come to realize that transformation in the most cut‐off, blocked, deadening, empty, desperate, and despairing psychic zones—zones of psychic breakdown, madness, annihilation, and catastrophe—may become possible only when the analyst/therapist is willing and able to be‐within (and with‐in ) the patient's experiential world and within the grip of the analytic process, with the ensuing patient‐analyst deep‐level interconnectedness or “witnessing” psyche‐with‐psyche (Eshel , , , , , , , ). This interconnectedness, which becomes at‐one‐ment when the analyst puts him‐/herself entirely within the patient's emotional reality, is difficult and demanding, an unyielding, ongoing struggle with the underlying catastrophe to reach a new and formative, deep experiencing, beyond epistemological exploration‐K.…”

“…In modern physics, different paradigms—classical physics and quantum mechanics—do coexist (Kuhn ). Whereas classical physics is based on assumptions of linear causality, determinism, and a sharp separation between observer and observed, quantum mechanics introduced into scientific thinking enigmatic principles of uncertainty and inseparability of observer and observed, the crucial formative effect of the process of observation, and the fundamental organization of unbroken wholeness that underlies our perceived world of separateness at the particle level (Bohm ; Botella and Botella ; Eshel , , , , , ; Field ; Godwin ; Kulka ; Mayer ; Sucharov ; Suchet ).…”

“…From my clinical experience, I would add patients with severe sexual perversions to this list of those in the most regressed group (Eshel ).…”

Pleasure Seeking and the Aspect of Longing for an Object in Perversion. A Neuropsychoanalytical Perspective.

“…It remains a highly erotized part object with a directly pleasure spending quality. Stoller (1975) interpreted perversion as "the erotic form of hatred" or "the reversal of a defeat in childhood in a triumph in adult live" (p. 3; but see also Brenner, 1996;Eshel, 2005). In Stoller's view castration anxiety does not simply mean anxiety about the loss of one's genitals, but also the loss of one's female or male identity.…”