Finding Normal: Response to Philippe Van Haute’s Discussion of Perversion and Differential Diagnosis

ABSTRACT

Attending to 3 themes—the favored levers of revolution, the relation of inscription to the corporeal, and the function of the phallus within heteronormativity—this essay responds to Van Haute’s (this issue) important critique of some pathways through Lacanian territory. Careful consideration of the parameters marking clinical work and social theory bear attention as well as formulating the terms of radical clinical work. The reification of perversion as it is cast in Lacanian circles does merit careful scrutiny, but the meaning of this nomination, perversion, as well as both its cultural and clinical dimensions requires close examination. Although rightly showing a certain diagnostic reification in Lacanian use of the term perversion, Van Haute at times is himself a bit incautious in thinking through the stakes of the domain of psychoanalysis, the unconscious, and perhaps conflating some political perspectives with approaches that may take their mooring elsewhere.

Notes

¹ It is a question of whether psychoanalysis promises liberation in the sense implied here. Certainly, its “therapeutic aims” are quite defined and included the possibility of a truth and more subjective leeway and freedom. The translation to larger projects may be intimated in Freud’s later turn to certain religious queries (Haddad, 2013) and Lacan’s (2007) Seminar 17, but I say their political stripe is not necessarily predictable, so that one’s address to this liberatory potential is not unproblematic in itself (O. Nierenberg, personal communication, July 3, 2016).

² Perhaps these readings reflected what was available in English at the time. Very few clinical readings were easily obtainable. Certainly Grosz has made innovative and substantive contributions to feminism as in her work Volatile Bodies (1994) and many others.

³ S1 functions as what one may call the Master Signifier, a “one,” which can be understood at any number of levels. It is the anchoring point or the pure point of authority per se. The S1 has only the “real” as referent or serves a trace, a place from which one may connect to other signifiers and thus occupy the space between them. A name is like an S1, a super-egoic appellation or a way to be connected with other signifiers for better or worse. Culturally it is often empty, like “English” or “American.” Seminar 17: The other side of psychoanalysis discusses its function in the social link (Lacan, 2007).

⁴ Omar Mateen entered an LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) nightclub on “Latin” night around 2 a.m. on June 12, 2016, holding hostages and killing 49, wounding 53, using an automatic rifle. He pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a call to police that night, but it also seems he had a very ambivalent relationship with gay men, courting relations though social media and going to the bar many times, according to some reports. He had been heard to make racist and homophobic remarks and had been on the terror watch list of the U.S. government although his allegiances were incoherent and contradictory. He was a security guard and excellent marksman.

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Kareen Ror Malone

Kareen Ror Malone, Ph.D., L.P.C., is Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of West Georgia. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Analysand in Formation, and member of Après Coup Psychoanalytic Association, New York City. She has published numerous essays and co-edited and co-written books, mostly on psychoanalysis, race, gender, and psychological theory. She is in private practice and lives in Atlanta, GA.