The Re-turning of the Screw: The Question of Intent and the Risk of Ideality—A Response to Saketopoulou’s Essay “To Suffer Pleasure”

ABSTRACT

In her paper “To Suffer Pleasure: The Shattering of the Ego as Psychic Labor of Perverse Sexuality,” published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality, Volume 15, Number 4, Saketopoulou proposes an alternative interpretation of perversion that allows the analyst to recognize perversity’s “productive potential” (Saketopoulou, 2014, p. 255). In this paper I offer a close reading of Saketapoulou’s essay to address 3 contentious issues in her arguments: (a) the author’s proposed definition of perversion and its relationship with the concept of polymorphous perversity, (b) the potential of transgressive sexuality to “shatter” the ego, and (c) the status of the analytic dyad in the case itself and beyond. As I attempt to demonstrate, Saketopoulou’s legitimate and necessary call to move away from dogmatic, pathologizing, and dismissive approaches to perversity requires an even more radical reinterpretation of both the concept of perversion and of what it means to listen analytically to “perverse sexual scripts” (Saketopoulou, p. 257).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Oren Gozlan

Oren Gozlan, Psy.D., ABPP, is a clinical psychologist and a psychoanalyst in private practice. He is the chair of the Gender and Sexuality Committee of the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education. Dr. Gozlan has published numerous psychoanalytic articles on gender and sexuality. His recently published book ”Transsexuality and the Art of Transitioning: A Lacanian Approach” (Routledge, 2015) has won the American Academy & Board of Psychoanalysis’ annual book prize for books published in 2015. He is also the winner of the 2016 Symonds Prize from the Studies in Gender and Sexuality journal for his paper “The Transsexual Turn: Uncanniness at Wellesley College.” He is currently working on an edited collection titled In Transition: Current Critical Debates in the Field of Transsexual Studies (Routledge). His article “Stalled in the Stall: Reflections on a Strained Debate” will be published in an upcoming issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly.