ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will be exploring some of the dynamics of working with perversions. In keeping with Etchegoyen (1978) and Baker (1994), I am making a distinction between perverse transferences, which may appear with patients with no evident perverse sexuality, and transference perversion, which is specific to patients with frank sexual perversions. Transference perversions do not simply engage a form of resistance in either the analyst or analysand, whereby a diligent and persistent process of interpretation (silently made inside the analyst or spoken directly to the patient) liberates the potential growth characteristics that attach themselves to defences. Rather they employ something much more potentially destructive to the whole analytic process and are probably more likely to suck the life out of the therapeutic engagement.
