ABSTRACT
Just as the sexual deviations are very diverse psychic experiences that cannot readily be subsumed under a single common denominator, so too the sadomasochistic sexual perversion cannot be classified under one heading owing to its multiplicity of levels and psychodynamic implications. Psychoanalysis owes the discovery of infantile sexuality to the perversions, and these, in turn, owe much to the theory of psychosexuality. Today, however, Freud's theories of infantile sexuality no longer constitute the linchpin of interpretations of the perversions, but have been replaced by some of his later intuitions on the general principles of mental functioning. The psychosexual theory, which implies a continuum between normality and perversion, distinguishes the existence of a physiological propensity to perversion from perversion proper. In the theory of the life and death drives, Freud distinguishes between relational and destructive aggression. The fusion of the drives also features in the contemporary analytic literature—in particular, in the work of two authors from very different theoretical schools.
