Perversion - its ubiquity in infantile life and its persistence in the psychical and sexual lives of some adults - was a central element of Freud's lifelong work. The problem of perversion has since been revisited by many psychoanalytic schools with the result that Freud's original view of perversion has been replaced by numerous - often c

Perversion--its ubiquity in infantile life and its persistence in the psychical and sexual lives of some adults--was a central element of Freud's lifelong empirical and theoretical work. Many psychoanalytic schools and orientations have since revisited the problem of perversion. Some authors have sharpened the definition of perversion by differentiating it from perverse fantasies, so-called near-perversions, and perverse traits, whereas others have sought to re-conceptualize perversion as an erotic form of hatred, a fixated anal object-relation, or a neo-sexuality. The result is that Freud's original view of perversion has been replaced by a large variety of, often contradictory, psychoanalytic perspectives on its etiology, development, and treatment.This bi-partite collection of essays offers a series of perspectives on perversion by a range of psychoanalytic practitioners and theorists, and a selection of papers by scholars from related fields who work with, or critique, psychoanalytic theories on perversion. These unique and invaluable contributions to the study of psychoanalysis, perversion, and culture stage a serious dialogue between the discipline of psychoanalysis and its critics and commentators on the controversial issue of non-normative sexuality. It is essential reading for students and practitioners of psychoanalysis, for cultural critics, and for anyone who wants to know more about the positions occupied by psychoanalysis in contemporary debates about sexuality.

In the 19th century, literature shared with the medical and psychological sciences a strategy of examining the most extreme manifestations of human desire. While fetishism, sadism and masochism still resonate as concepts with critical currency, necrophilia has received little attention. In this groundbreaking study, Lisa Downing rescues necrophilia from the margins of sexual desire, relocating it as a symptom and a pervasive fantasy of modern subjectivity. Drawing case material from the 19th century French canon, the author brings works by Baudelaire and Rachilde into dialogue with foundational European texts of sexology and Psychoanalysis. She reads against the grain of traditional Freudian theories of sexuality, the conventions of 19th century literary scholarship, and feminist critiques of the 'masculine' morbid aesthetic in order to bring to light a model of desire whose problematic nature afflicts existing discourses about sexuality and gender in 19th century France and beyond.