This article examines the manifestations of sexual ambiguity in Japan and in the West. It traces the history of the juvenile style called kawaï and the shôjo, or female adolescent culture, and explores certain of its aspects as shown in the streets and in Japanese comic books, the mangas. The frontier between the kawaï and the Lolitas is vague. The girls transform their appearance, act seductively, dress as transvestites and read mangas whose wide-eyed characters have great appeal. The article advances several hypothesis for this insistence on the infantile in the search for sexual identity and on the efforts to cope with its confusions and anxieties.
Archives de catégorie : ENG – Perversion ? – 2006 T. 24 n°3
CONDAMIN CHRISTINE : THE METAMORPHOSIS OF MAN INTO BREAST AND THE FANTASY OF UNLIMITED ENJOYMENT IN PHILIP ROTH’S THE BREAST
»Philip Roth, in works of tremendous creativity and dazzling humour, presents heroes in the grip of psychopathological problems that hamper their love lives in a singular way : their desire is often marked by straying, inconstancy and even inconsistency, and their sexuality by an insatiable need for sensual contact. The metaphorical tale The breast (1972), which belongs to the tradition of metamorphosis, leads one to reflect, through the transformation of David Kapesh into a breast, upon the fantasy (or perversion), taboo but frequent, of experiencing unlimited and constantly renewed sexual enjoyment. In The dying Animal (2004), the same hero manages, after a profound psychical reorganisation, to abandon his cherished unconditional freedom and his constant search for erotic pleasure ; he achieves a real love relationship where the Other can really be loved, both sexually and affectively.»
BRIENT PIERRICK : THE DISAVOWAL OF THE FEMALE IN THE ABBOT DE CHOISY
»Adolescence is a privileged time for the revelation of perverse organisation. We propose to illustrate it using the Memoirs of the Abbot de Choisy dressed as a woman « (1687-1695), that J. Lacan invited us to read. Articulated with the maternal imaginary, the transvestite practice of Choisy attests to a denial of castration and to the identification of the subject to the phallus. Through the maintenance of a phallicisation of the penis, where the fetish dominates, the puberty innovation is disavowed and the Female is not illustrated. For him, a fetishistic strategy was the only answer to the his mother’s death.»
HAIE BRIGITTE: THE STATUS OF FANTASY IN PERVERSION, THROUGH OF P. KLOSSOWSKI’S WRITINGS
The study of fantasy as an adolescent theory permits a preview of the general future orientation of the subject-in-becoming into different clinical structures. More specifically, our point here is the status of fantasy in perversion as illustrated by some of Klossowski’s writings. Through the study of several of the characters, we are able to observe a freeze frame view in the perverse fantasy, which consequently renders the editing of it ineffective. What remains is only a repetitive, boring production.
SAVINAUD CLAUDE: THE EXHIBITIONIST’S DE-MONSTRATION
» A perversion couldn’t exist separately from its disjunction with sexual intercourse. Using a case of peeping-exhibitionism, we will study this dad-version « as making up for a supposed disharmony in the relation between sexes, through the production of a sign, phallus, which presents the Subject through the opposite sex’s gaze. In accordance with an inhibition to enact the separation from the maternal object, it shows that this sexless version of coïtus depends on failure of the real father to intervene in the symbolic castration complex.»
VAILLANT SOLINS ANNE-MARIE, STÉPHANE BOURCET : REFLECTIONS ON THE CRIMINOLOGICAL IMPACT OF PERVERSE ORGANISATIONS IN ADOLESCENCE
The judicial expert is frequently confronted with the problems of puberty and its transitory organisations of a perverse type. Certain clinical elements enable us to make a prognosis as to the possibility that these will stabilize. But, in all cases, the expert must exercise prudence regarding a diagnosis of perversion.
SIMONNET-TOUSSAINT CÉLINE, PASCAL-HENRIKELLE, HAZA MARION: WINE PUT TO THE TEST OF THE FILIATION
»Taking a research on wine representations among young adults as a starting point, we have envisaged the question of filiation and the paternal function within a trans-generational dynamic. After having conducted clinical interviews where the sole instruction was : Tell us your personal story about wine «, we discovered that people associate the signifier « wine « with unexpected issues. Thinking about wine very often means thinking about the father, and also of the mother. The case of Lucien will show how, through the play of the transference, the clinical research interview was able to enable the subject put a traumatic domestic history into words.»
WENGER STEPHAN: »AURÉLIE, THE PAIRING OF PERVERSION « – PUBERTAIRE PSYCHOSIS»
»Since reaching puberty, Aurélie has been invaded by paedophilic and sadistic fantasies ; after having contained them in her imagination for years, she has just acted upon them. As a parallel to this, everything that she presents during the session and elsewhere has an inflexibly labile character. Her psychopathological characteristics bear witness to a recurrent danger of psychotic disorganisation and are situated in the register of pubertaire psychosis. This clinical vignette offers an opportunity to discuss the link between perversion « and psychosis in puberty.»
DARGENT FANNY : SCARIFICATIONS AND ADOLESCENT GIRLS : FROM CRUEL MASOCHISM TO PERVERSE SCENARIOS AS A PARADOXICAL MOVEMENT OF SUBJECTIVATION
A clinical case in an adolescent unit of a hospital demonstrates that scarifications serve two consecutive psychic movements. The first one, related to a cruel masochism, seeks to release a tension that cannot be elaborated and that originates in a real trauma that occurred during childhood. The second movement allows for the actualisation of the trauma through the realisation of perverse scenarios (exhibitionistic in particular) in the transference movements in the unit. Paradoxically, this use of the act-symptom in a perverse context allows to restart the processes of symbolisation and of subjectivation when faced with the risks of manifest psychic disorganisations.
MAÏDI HOUARI :THE BODY OF THE PROBLEM
»The body of fate and the fate of the body are important issues during adolescence, which discloses the fate « of the absolute, unique and fundamental inheritance passed on to the adolescent by his parents. In this sense, there exists, to our mind, an intergenerational aftereffect of the traumatic, which is defined by the excess of the « too much « and the « not enough «. In this way, the « bad « is introduced and transmitted in the psychological life of the child, who during adolescence feels encumbered by the « corporeal « history of his parents. Also, beyond the onslaught of drives experienced during adolescence, the body, at this stage of development, reveals a sort of « original flaw «. This is why the young subject cannot manage to rid himself of the « body problem «, which brings into play seduction and sexuality and is, finally, the « problem « of the body.»