This collection, written by leading Lacanian psychoanalytic theorists and practitioners, is a unique exploration of the novel aspects of perversion from the perspective of cruelty-a psychoanalytic study that has never been sufficiently undertaken in an English-speaking world. Instead of reducing the notion of perversion to cultural representations, a historical discourse or a clinical diagnosis, the authors in this collection draw on Freud, Kant, Hegel, Marquis de Sade, Derrida, Deleuze and Zizek to untie the knot of "psychic cruelty" intrinsic to perversion and therefore "de-sexualize" perverted acts. They do so by theorizing perversion in psychoanalytic concepts of the Oedipus complex, the-Name-of-the-Father and jouissance, and furthermore in the perspective of the clinics of neurosis and psychosis, in dialogue with a clinical praxis, philosophy and literature.
Chapter 1. Introduction: Psychoanalysis in the Bedroom.- Chapter 2. Cruelfictions of Psychoanalysis: Freud, Derrida, Mignotte.- Chapter 3. Intimate Cruelties: Perversions, Sexuality and the Human Animal.- Chapter 4. On the Right to Jouissance.- Chapter 5. A Perverse Fascination for Death and Jouissance: Bataille, Lacan and the Anti-social Turn in Queer Theory.- Chapter 6. Perversion after Freud: from the Cruel Father to the Joycean Clinic.- Chapter 7. The Anxiety at the Heart of Perverse Experience: A Clinical Perspective.- Chapter 8. 'The Pornography of His Eyes': A Vignette of Perversion.- Chapter 9. Neoliberalism and Liminality: Perverse Cruelties in the Age of the Capitalist Discourse.
Meera Lee is on the faculty of Asian American Studies Program at Hunter College, City University of New York, USA, and a psychoanalyst in analytic formation.
The book marks an important contribution to Lacanian studies as the essays manage to cut to the root of the perverse structure and isolate Lacan s important reflections and insights into perversion across culture, politics, the clinic, and philosophy. ... the essays in this collection offer a valuable contribution for a new generation of Lacanian scholarship. ... Lee s collection of essays have helped us reach a new level of clarity on the topic, which is laudable. (Daniel Tutt, Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, Vol. 30 (1), 2025)
