Perverse Female Relating: The Objectified Self

Abstract

This article discusses present-day culturally facilitated fetishizations of the body and how these may account for a variety of sexual disorders in women. It is proposed that a hallmark of female perverse relating is self-objectification in an effort to control a dangerous subjectivity within. This is in contrast to typical male perverse relating, which largely revolves around objectifying others as a means to control the dangerous subjectivity of the other. The danger that is often feared by women is localized within as an intense, uncontrollable (and feared excessive) desire, concretized as a voracious appetite. In some cases, this fear may culminate in an obsession with remaining thin, reflecting a wish to control a self-experience of wanting too much, desiring too much, or becoming or being too big. A self-structure, the Objectified Self, is offered as a way to visualize the dissociated, relatively nonaffective position of constructed self-experience in relation to these fears and is schematized as derived from the Subjective Object or the self for others. An unconscious fear of “phallic” power is proposed as an unconscious conviction in many women who struggle with assertion, thrust, and the dread of being too big, too potent, or too strong.

Keywords:

• Embodiment
• fetish
• receptivity
• objectified
• perversion
• subjectivity

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrea Celenza

Andrea Celenza, Ph.D., is assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School and Faculty at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis.