ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses violence as an aspect of perversion. The perversion arises in the attempt to create this false reconciliation between contradictory ideas that can no longer be kept separate, and it is when the perverse solution proves inadequate to contain the patient's internal conflict that aggression and violence can erupt. Many people indulge in sexual fantasies that deviate from the accepted norm, and some may put such fantasies into occasional practice, but "sexual deviance" is defined as a persistent and preferred form of perverse sexual behaviour that reflects a global structure involving the individual's whole personality. Riesenberg-Malcolm thinks that perverse patients resist psychic change in order to avoid learning about what they believe to be their irreparably damaged internal objects. Perverse psychopathology can be understood as being a container for unbearable anxiety, and the perverse patient will usually attempt to convince both himself and the assessor that he is the innocent victim.
