Authors: Elisabeth Roudinesco
Our Dark Side (23 page)
Psychoanalysis is not in good repute these days ⦠But what endeavour other than psychoanalysis, what treatment, what study of humans, has at its core unending curiosity and scepticism, the absolute demand that the individual find his truth â cut loose from magic, from secrets, and from the erotization of victimhood? Analysis, with astonishing speed, went from revolution to respectability, to outdated mythology. I do not think that a free society can easily bear the loss.
Stoller's words have never been more relevant. While the psychoanalytic movement has, over the last one hundred years, developed a coherent clinical approach to psychosis and has succeeded in developing new approaches to neurosis â which is now being challenged by perverse theories and practices â its almost exclusive concentration on structure in the clinical sense of the term
53
has led it to overlook the historical, political, cultural and anthropological question of perversion. For years, psychoanalysts therefore refused to take note of the changes that were occuring in the way that society saw the perverse, to say nothing of how those who were so designated saw themselves as they rejected the classifications of psychopathology in their struggle for emancipation.
Freud's heirs were afraid that perverse clinicians â sexual abusers, transgressive gurus or inveterate seducers
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â would worm their way into their associations to wreak destruction. For three-quarters of a century, they misused the concepts of denial and splitting, and therefore chose the wrong target and prevented homosexuals â who were deemed to be perverse because of their homosexuality
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â from becoming psychoanalysts. By adopting that attitude, they not only avoided the new issues that were being raised in civil society, but took the view that the perverse were not able to come to terms with their unconscious.
There are, however, as many perverts within the psychoanalytic community as there are in society in general. Very few of them sexually abuse their patients (which would mean perverting psychoanalysis),
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and they are marginalized and, if need be, sanctioned by their peers, if not by the courts. The great clinicians of perversion, for their part, have, from Masud Khan to Stoller and François Peraldi, always formed a separate community.
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It is as though there was always a danger that they would be accused of colluding with what fascinates them because they had signed a pact with the Devil.
And yet the psychoanalytic approach to perversions and the perverse is rapidly changing, now that homosexual analysts can assert their rights within their associations and no longer have to remain in the closet. And as Western society becomes more and more fascinated with exploring its own sexuality, perverse individuals who are not in trouble with the law
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are turning increasingly to psychotherapy, now that the resources of sexology and pharmacology have been exhausted.
By dint of denying the existence of unconscious subjectivity, the discourse of science will perhaps one day convince us that perversion is nothing more than an illness, and that the perverse can be eliminated from the social body. That would mean, however, that the word âdeviance' would have to be used to describe â perversely â all the transgressive acts, good and bad, that humanity is capable of. And the belief that absolute evil can be eradicated would then mean that we would have to cease to admire most of those who have helped civilization to advance.
And assuming that these developments do occur and that we are no longer able to use the word âperversion', we would still have to come to terms with its subterranean metamorphoses and our dark side.
Notes
1
The term has taken on many meanings and is used in a general sense to define the metamorphoses of globalized capitalism and ways of fighting it.
2
Bernard Stiegler (2006) refers to this characteristic feature of the new industrial society as âdesublimation'. For his art, Jean Baudrillard (2005) speaks of the advent of the implacable banality that is bound up with Integral Reality.
3
When, in the course of the Jerusalem trial, prosecutor Gideon Hausner described Eichmann as âinhuman' because he had sunk to the level of animality, he was mistaken because only human beings are capable of such crimes. Cf. Rony Brauman and Eyal Sivan's documentary film
Un Spécialiste
(France 1999), Bertolt Brecht added the adjective âfilthy' to described fascism and Nazism as âthe filthy beast'. The reference is to the two beasts in St John's Apocalypse: the martyred lamb and the diabolic dragon.
4
It will be recalled that Article 3 of the Nuremberg tribunal's code states that any new therapeutic or experimental approach must first be tested on animals. Horrified by the Nazis' experiments, those who drafted it appear to have forgotten that men are capable of inflicting upon animals the tortures they inflict upon other human beings.
5
On the way philosophy has viewed the question of animality from Antiquity until now, see Ãlisabeth de Fontenay's admirable study (1998). See also Picq and Coppens (2001).
6
There are about thirty-five million pets in France.
7
Dressed in animal skins, Nero would hurl himself upon the sexual organs of prisoners who had been tied to stakes for torture, while Tiberius called the young boys he trained to suck his testicles under water âminnows'. Cf. Master and Lea (1963).
8
In the so-called âbath of flies' torture, the prisoner is blindfolded or has his hands and feet tied. Parts of his body â the armpits, anus, lips, genitals and nostrils â are then daubed with honey. Swarms of flies appear and he either goes mad or dies in less than two hours. The flies can be replaced with ants or, worse still, bees.
9
Inflicting cruelty on the animal is now the only thing that is subject to legal sanctions. But is a man or woman who has sex with an animal being cruel to it? That question is now the subject of a wide-ranging debate.
10
It might be added that the genius of La Fontaine had already done a lot to subvert that sovereignty.
11
Ãlisabeth de Fontenay rightly notes that there is an analogy between the way people gazed at the mad and the way they stared at animals. To make the point, she even suggests that the term âmad' should be replaced by âanimal' in Michel Foucault's famous preface to his
History of Madness
(2006). On the pornographic way in which native people and the abnormal were put on show, see Bancel, Blanchard, Boëtsch and Deroo (2002).
12
They were known at the time as âanimal defenders'.
13
This is the result of a biological inhibition that has nothing to do with the establishment of the probation of incest in human societies. We know very well that it is because humans desire the act of incest and feel guilty â and not inhibited â when they transgress its prohibition that it had to be made taboo.
14
Cf. Stoller (1975). Even so, some psychiatrists have no qualms about describing pets, and especially dogs which are, they, claim sexually hyperactive, as perverse. They have even treated them with anti-depressants.
15
Other pointless experiments consist in provoking states of madness in mammals by making them absorb chemical substances in order to demonstrate the equivalence between animal and human models of madness.
16
Vegetarians and vegans have formed an animal rights movement (Veggie Pride) modelled on Gay Pride, and denounce their adversaries as âmeatists'.
17
Singer is obsessed with ham sandwiches. In the preface to his book, he describes how, as he was having tea with a delightful old English lady who loved animals, he was horrified when she offered him a little sandwich as she told him how much she loved her cats and dogs. He told her in no uncertain terms that he did not love animals and had no pets, but that he was fighting to ensure that animals were treated as well as humans.
18
Let me make it quite clear that this thesis has absolutely nothing in common with Jacques Derrida's (2006) investigation into how philosophy theorizes animality by positing the principle of man's superiority over animals without establishing any basis for it. In that sense, Derrida rejects positivist science on the grounds that it claims to blur the difference between man and those animals who are most similar to humans (mammals and primates), rather than seeing the need to deconstruct the notion of human specificity.
19
As defined by Claude Lévi-Strauss.
20
Both Jacques Derrida and Ãlisabeth de Fontenay have defended the animal condition in very different ways from Singer's supporters. See Paola Cavalieri (2000) and Ãlisabeth de Fontenay's response (2000).
21
Cats are declawed, birds have their wings clipped to prevent them from flying, and monkeys have their teeth pulled out. All these surgical mutilations are common. They are of course performed under anaesthetic and are therefore painless. Even so, they reveal a perverse attitude towards the bodies of animals.
22
Animals often die spontaneously as a result of anal penetration by men. Women are more likely to indulge in fellatio with animals, which can sometimes be trained to have sexual relations with humans.
23
The term derives from the Greek (
para
= deviant and
philia
= love) and is used literally to define anyone who looks for excitation in response to sexual objects that are not part of the stimulus/response model.
24
On 19 July 1993, the Pentagon published its new directive on homosexuals in the army. It stated that the army should admit homosexuals, provided that they do not describe themselves as such. This is a puritanical approach similar to the one that inspired
DSM.
For a very good study of this question see Judith Butler's
Excitable Speech
(1997).
25
Positive discrimination.
26
Provided, of course, that they are in full possession of all their mental faculties. There is, however, one restriction to this âconsent'. It is, for example, argued that no one can consent to their own exploitation. This restriction applies to domestic slavery, prostitution and membership of criminal cults.
27
In Great Britain, subjects with cancerous or cardio-vascular pathologies are no longer treated on the same basis as other patients if it has been definitely established that their condition results from serious addiction to alcohol, tobacco and so on.
28
The mayor of the Parisian suburb of Argenteuil recently took delivery of a repellent designed for use on the homeless. See
Le Monde
, 26â7 August 2007.
29
Most paedophiles are men. When women become paedophiles, it is usually because they are encouraged to do so by men who have made them their slaves.
30
Paedophilia in the strict sense is therefore a sexual crime committed by an adult against the body of a child (and not corruption of a minor).
31
As in the Outreau trial of MayâJune 2004.
32
It should be recalled that although Hans Jurgen Eysenck, who was one of the founders of behavioural therapy, was forced to flee Nazi Germany, he was still influenced by anti-egalitarian theories, as can be seen from his
Inequality of Man
(1973). The French translation was prefaced by the right-wing philosopher Alain de Benoist.
33
While the defenders of the animal kingdom condemn the suffering that other researchers inflict on rats.
34
The goal is to reduce the secretion of testosterone, which is the male sex hormone that acts upon sexual desire, by using drugs used to treat prostate cancer. The treatment does not reduce the paedophiles' âsexual desires' and causes pain in the joints; there is also the danger of pulmonary embolism. Other molecules are now being tested on volunteers, and are used in combination with behavioural therapies.
35
Depending on the contrary concerned, it is between 9 and 13% for adults, and 2% for adolescents. I am grateful to Sylvère Lotringer for the wealth of documentation he supplied on this question.
36
Provided that prison does not make things worse for the perverse, who are often raped or assaulted by other prisoners who claim to be punishing them by making them undergo what they made others undergo.
37
The use of perverse forms of treatment does not reduce the re-offending rate.
38
They deliberately drug the children they rape, and use stimulants to increase their libido.
39
It has yet to be introduced in France.
40
Most judges and lawyers are critical of these excessive forms of treatment because they do not work, and protest whenever the media publicize another case of recidivism. Some have gone so far as to denounce the âpenal populism' that manipulates the cynical exploitation of the emotions aroused by paedophile acts and point out that, in most cases, the repeat offending results from the lack of financial resources to deal with the delinquents when they are first imprisoned (cf. Cotta and Dosé 2007; Lemoine 2007).
41
They began to be used in the United States in the 1980s, as
DSM
's categories changed.
42
A petition drawn up by child psychiatrists gathered two hundred thousand signatures. See
Prévention, dépistage du comportement chez l'enfant
? (Conference proceedings from
Pas de zéro de conduite pour les enfants de trois ans
, Société française de santé publique, Collection âSanté et société' 11, November 2006.
