ABSTRACT
E. L. Freud described the development of a very common, perhaps universal fantasy. Dr. William G. Niederland presents a case of overt homosexualmasochistic perversion. Dr. Niederland's penetrating study allows to postulate a genetic formulation for the clinical difference. In both cases there is a primal scene in which the child identifies with the passive partner. In Dr. Niederland's case, however, the major trauma must have been early, preoedipal, and the primal-scene experience seems to have served for the mastery of a preceding trauma. As in the two steps of the perversion, one may assume that a diffuse chaotic early threat of contentless sensory overstimulation was mastered through erotization, with the aid of the contents of the oedipal period. This explains the conscious persistence of, and even insistence on, a fantasy that is so close to the primal-scene experience itself. Dr. Niederland's short paper constitutes a distinct advance in the psychoanalytic knowledge about the meaning and genesis of sexual perversion.
