ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud noted that the "artful" way of dealing with reality at work in disavowal, where two contradictory attitudes coexist without influencing each other, was, however, achieved at the price of a rift in the ego, which persists or increases over time. In addition, the multitude of perverse acts, scenarios, or fetishistic objects that have been described and the recognition that a perversion usually involves a combination of diverse perverse elements have led workers in the field away from characterizing perversions according to sexual behaviour, and towards a conceptualization of perversion in terms of defensive organization, psychic strategy, mechanism, or form of relationship. Khan drew attention to the quality of relatedness to the partner in perversion. His observations are important to grasp the nature of the relatedness at play in the perverse transference. Khan thought that the perverse partner had the value of a transitional object, but it might more accurate to describe him as a fetish-object.
