ABSTRACT

The world of illusion goes back to the earliest bond between mother and child, in which the child is able to imagine himself existing in an inextricable, symbiotic dyad with his mother. Conversely, when the mother does need her child for her own psychic survival, they have an unhealthy relationship: a symmetrical symbiosis is a parasitical relationship, based on a mutual illusion. To make sure that the symbiotic illusion is not broken, hostility must be denied; a reversal of any trace of hate into love must take place. The perverse world of illusion is a Sadean universe where values are turned upside down and the law of the father, the Oedipal law, is for the most part excluded. Perversion clarifies that the mother–child relationship, which unfolds there, is paradigmatic for women as well. In Proust’s work, perversion is very narrowly intertwined with homosexuality.