Feminine Diverse Masochism
A Case of Feminine Perverse Masochism in a Woman who went through Paternal Incest
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Introduction
Although feminine perversion has been rather unstudied by psychoanalysts, it highlights a specificity of perversion in the feminine (Schaeffer, 2003) whereas masculine perversion is undergoing many theorizations (Casseguet-Smirgel, 1984) that emphasizes the denial of castration (particularly the mother’s castration as it exists in fetishism) and the denial of sexual difference.
In this paper, we intend to analyze the psychic functioning of Mary, a woman who was sexually abused by her father, and the transfero-countertransferential movements within the clinical relationship (Price, 1994). Indeed, beyond a stringent understanding of psychic scars …show more content…
She feels that she can be brought to life only by the excitations such as the pain she experiences in the sexual act. She neglects sexual or love meeting in favour of the rawest sexual with no desire. The extreme enjoyment that Mary finds in some sexual practices shows a cloacal confusion. She relentlessly seduces and consumes men (it expresses her phallic competition). She only invests activity while men are limited to their penis. Causing the act or the violent contact with the other’s body (as hallucinations of embraces with her father) may be a struggle against her confusion and disorganization, and paradoxically, a conjuration against her emptiness that is therefore delayed by sexual arousal (and not by any eroticized pleasure that is unachievable by Mary). The way she convokes man in a sadistic role (of a fantasized rapist) matches with an economic need to restrict the arousal in order to secure her psychic survival. With forced contacts, Mary can experience emotions again, admittedly with pain, and protect herself from the risk of a psychic death. The seduction ordered by the other is unacceptable. Passivity is then transformed into activity, that is to say, into the compulsive search for painful and degrading situations. Her sexuality becomes
–
Introduction
Although feminine perversion has been rather unstudied by psychoanalysts, it highlights a specificity of perversion in the feminine (Schaeffer, 2003) whereas masculine perversion is undergoing many theorizations (Casseguet-Smirgel, 1984) that emphasizes the denial of castration (particularly the mother’s castration as it exists in fetishism) and the denial of sexual difference.
In this paper, we intend to analyze the psychic functioning of Mary, a woman who was sexually abused by her father, and the transfero-countertransferential movements within the clinical relationship (Price, 1994). Indeed, beyond a stringent understanding of psychic scars …show more content…
She feels that she can be brought to life only by the excitations such as the pain she experiences in the sexual act. She neglects sexual or love meeting in favour of the rawest sexual with no desire. The extreme enjoyment that Mary finds in some sexual practices shows a cloacal confusion. She relentlessly seduces and consumes men (it expresses her phallic competition). She only invests activity while men are limited to their penis. Causing the act or the violent contact with the other’s body (as hallucinations of embraces with her father) may be a struggle against her confusion and disorganization, and paradoxically, a conjuration against her emptiness that is therefore delayed by sexual arousal (and not by any eroticized pleasure that is unachievable by Mary). The way she convokes man in a sadistic role (of a fantasized rapist) matches with an economic need to restrict the arousal in order to secure her psychic survival. With forced contacts, Mary can experience emotions again, admittedly with pain, and protect herself from the risk of a psychic death. The seduction ordered by the other is unacceptable. Passivity is then transformed into activity, that is to say, into the compulsive search for painful and degrading situations. Her sexuality becomes