Praise of Perversion

[Christophe]

This is a rather slippery topic, so I'll put it into a dark corner of the O'Kenny's Pub. To reach this dark back room, you gotta pass through small rusty doors surround by litter, and duck into long narrow corridors with hidden branch-offs and trapdoors.

 

Et voilà! We're inmidst of a scenario as described by Marquis de Sade in his numerous literary works, the most popular being Justine or the 120 days of Sodom.

 

As part of my ITP Gold Star Shadow Module, I recently decided to study the meaning and non-meaning of Perversion in order to cleanse myself from any such dirty phantasmas, desires, dreams or anything else that has anything to do with this sick bastard crap shit called perversion.

 

So I read a book, and watched a movie about said content to develop an opinion about it. The book being Janine Chasseguet-Smirguel's "Anatomy of human perversion" which gives a psychoanalytic account of the matter at hand.

 

It was suprisingly boring to read this book. Only the original passages by "pervert"  artists (de Sade, Wilde, Carroll) provoked some bodily response in me (sic).

 

In short, Miss Chasseguet-Smirguel traces the origin of perversion back to the subject's infancy. Basically the pervert subject doesn't acknowledge the authority of the father, instead remains in narcissistic union with the mother who ensures his superiority by giving the child every love and pleasure she can manage to give.

This constellation results in an avoidance of the Oedipal Conflict. The loss of self-worth and the baisse of narcissistic feed charge that comes with the disenchantment of the omnipotence of the partial body drives through the Incest Taboo (The NO of the Father) is not happening with the pervert individual.

Instead, the pervert phantasizes his own genital tool as being superior to the real genital Phallus of the Father. He must constantly convince himself and his surroundings that his feeling of superiority is for real; the result is a certain pressure and defense mechanism against the truth, all the while the pervert has a weak intuition that his position is an incorrect one. But the pain and indeed torture that would come with the realization of the truth (which matches the original avoidance) is usually too much to bear and the pervert reality must go on, stabilized with fetish, wild unleashed sexuality, polyamory orgies, always with a focus on the pre-genital body drives (oral, anal).

Chasseguet-Smirguel shows with detailed analysis of De Sade and Oscar Wilde, that the aim of the pervert is the negation of all hierarchies and differences. Everything must be reduced to mush, dirt, shit, primordial ooze. It's all the same, it's all equal, pain and pleasure, life and death, good and evil. No hierarchies means nothing is better than anything else. All this is based on the original denial and repression of the Law of the Father.

Lacan, as usual, gives a slightly different interpretation. He (with Freud) describes the coming together of male and female, the presexual courtship, as drilling tunnels from two different directions: the males following the penetrating sexual drive, the female following the relational, narrational clearance. With Lacan, these two tunnels never meet in the middle: there's always a remainder. The only way to make the Loving Couple meet, is to bend the Law of the Father to create the short-circuit necessary for actualizing the sexual intercourse. This bending of the Law necessarily implies some form of perversion or another.

Suffice it to say that for Lacan the normal healthy human being does not exist. We can only choose between more or less pathological coping strategies concerning the Real; all friction, no perfection.

 

yuk yuk

[Edward theurj Berge]

Related to my link above about suicidal apotheosis, and to perverse sexual practices like choking, death by auto-erotic asphyxiation is becoming more popular, or at least being reported more often, David Carradine being one of the more recent celebrity examples. "Yes grasshopper, the supreme moment of union with the universe is accomplished through our breath, or rather by the lack thereof."

[e]

hahaha

Thought you woulda posted Grover Washington Jr.s Winelight for this thread.

NIN and Korn are posers!

 

Orgasm Addict

kelamuni said:

e, you were expecting...kenny g? :-)

[Mary W.]

Christophe, are you trying to organize some kind of mutiny of preverts??!!

[Christophe]

Mary W.: Christophe, are you trying to organize some kind of mutiny of preverts??!!

 

Uh Oh. What if it's true? Will I have to answer to the Coca Cola Company? ahahaha

btw you seem to be intrigued by the topic also, hahaha

 

No actually this is a thought experiment, part of my Shadow Module and driven by curiosity. I am a bit overwhelmed by the feedback. The further inquiry into the subject and the setting in the intersubjective domain opened up a whole new perspective for me. It's hard to put into words yet, but I'll try, since you ask so politely ;-)

 

The question that came up for me was: How is spiritual realization carried on in the generations, or even in the family?

 

We know from decades of clinical data  that it almost always causes problems when there is a priest or a spiritual realizer in the family. Part of the problem is that the Law of the Father has the backup of the mythic God, and is thus unchanging and eternal. A son of a priesterman has bascially two options: to become a priest like his dad, following the old laws, being devout to his father's superiority (thus staying a son all his life, betraying his own unique gift to the world). Or he starts to rebel and becomes a pervert, mabye converts to a different religion with even more rigor, or becomes an atheist, sets his own standards, makes his own mistakes etc.

 

I was thinking of poor Caligula who really had no choice but to rebel against the weight of the God-like Power of the Emperors before him. Or take Marvin Gaye, who managed a middle way between priest and pervert, praising god and sexuality in his music. And so on.

[Mary W.]

        btw you seem to be intrigued by the topic also, hahaha

 

Well, intrigued is probably too strong a word. Next to you and Edward I'm polymorphous vanilla. ;)

 

     We know from decades of clinical data  that it almost always causes problems when there is a priest or a spiritual realizer in the family. Part of the problem is that the Law of the Father has the backup of the mythic God, and is thus unchanging and eternal. A son of a priesterman has bascially two options: to become a priest like his dad, following the old laws, being devout to his father's superiority (thus staying a son all his life, betraying his own unique gift to the world). Or he starts to rebel and becomes a pervert, mabye converts to a different religion with even more rigor, or becomes an atheist, sets his own standards, makes his own mistakes etc.

 

But isn't this frequently the case anyway -- whether or not an explicitly "spiritual" realization is involved? Some kind of adolescent rebellion against authorities and/or parents is expected, considered a regular part of development and maturation, right? I don't have kids, but among my circle of friends and family, I've seen the kids of vegetarians become carnivores, the son of an anti-war advocate join the ROTC, the daughter of an old-school feminist activist aspiring to become a lingerie model, the children of atheists become born-again Christians....

 

The song that now begs to be played: Son of a Preacher Man

 

 

[kelamuni]

What about girls who had fathers who were preachers. I knew a few of them...:-)

[Balder]

We should consult Grof, as well.  Seems he might trace "preversion" and sado-masochistic tendencies back to unresolved material from the 3rd perinatal matrix (where life-and-death themes are central).

[Edward theurj Berge]

As we and Frank Zappa knew only too well, catholic girls were the easiest and best lays in high school.*

There's nothing like a Catholic Girl
At the CYO when they learn to blow...

* Ok, and Jewish girls.

[Christophe]

Grof is a good reference here.

Somehow Perversion seems to represent the "darkest night before the end of the tunnel".

The feeling of pre-orgasmic suspense and arousal makes it pretty artsy, methinks.

There's nothing more avant-garde than decadence and decay, eh?

hahahaha

...

I was reading more Lacan last weekend and he gives a nice phenomenal description of the orgasm:

At the onset, the Ego disappears and the drive do what it do; the whole energy is concentrating towards a singular point, usually the second chakra, like tempest clouds towering up before the lightning strikes... Then, at the climax, the Ego returns, surfing at the crest of the wave, screaming "YEEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaawwww...."

Next: fatigue, weariness, maybe a little sweet sadness and melancholy. Time for a cigarette...

 

ha ha

[kelamuni]

There's nothing quite like breaking a few prohibitions to make it fun.

theurj said:

As we and Frank Zappa knew only too well, catholic girls were the easiest and best lays in high school.*

There's nothing like a Catholic Girl
At the CYO when they learn to blow...

* Ok, and Jewish girls.

[Mary W.]

 

Re: Catholic girls: the, um, great and profound Billy Joel believes otherwise.  ;-)

[Edward theurj Berge]

Joel's problem though was that he was a goody two-shoes. Catholic girls only put out easily for the bad boys like the Fonz because it was sooo forbidden, sooo naughty, sooo exciting and oh so perverse.