ABSTRACT
In the previous chapters, we followed our discussion of hysteria and the compulsion neurosis with a description of pathological conditions which, in contrast to the transference neuroses, showed a more or less loosened contact with the world of realities and objects; these conditions were transitional between transference neuroses and narcissistic disorders; therefore, to proceed logically we should now turn our attention to the narcissistic group of mental disorders. However, there exists a group of psychogenic disturbances not readily fitted into a classification based on the degree and depth of regression and the degree of attachment to objects—namely, the sexual perversions. The sexually perverse are without question pregenital and maintain their attachment to objects; yet perversions differ considerably from pregenital transference neuroses (such as the compulsion neurosis) and in one feature stand in opposition to all other psychogenic disorders; to wit, the patients themselves do not believe that they are ill, or at any rate need not have this belief. Their abnormality consists in the fact that throughout life their sexuality is represented by other noteworthy impulses in a direct, conscious fashion; whether these impulses are acted upon, or merely phantasied, is generally speaking irrelevant. Since, according to psychoanalytic theory, neurotic symptoms are regarded as the distorted expression of an infantile sexual desire, which is necessarily a perverse desire, the point of differentiation between a neurosis and a perversion is easily stated: in the perversion there is no distortion. Which circumstances permit this absence of distortion is the central problem in the psychology of the perversions.
