ABSTRACT
Freud uses perversion to emphasise the importance of infantile sexuality. His two paradigms of polymorphous perversity and the Oedipus complex bind perversion to sexuality and limit perverse enactments to sexual perversions. The value of introducing a Jungian perspective to traditional theory is that it offers the possibility of a broader conceptual framework for perversion than sexuality alone. Such a framework can incorporate a range of etiologies, psychic processes, and behavioural expressions. The qualities of aggression and sadism are prominent in the psycho-analytic model. Perversion creates an emotional learning plateau on which psychic processes succumb to addiction and cyclical repetition that obstructs development. Considered from a clinical perspective, perversion recruits a range of defence mechanisms that might be experienced transferentially, and could obstruct treatment. These include particular types of projection and dissociation, as well as deep regression to technically based relationships that deny the other as a whole person.
