BOOK REVIEWS
The Enigma of Desire
Noga ARIEL-GALOR
Our mothers were our first unrequited we can measure, observe, and rationally ex-
loves, our first relational gain and loss. In a plain. The enigmatic aspects, on the other
rich and vivid way, Galit Atlas describes how hand, are what we can only feel or listen
our first physical and emotional connection, to but can never truly know. The tension
thus created between these two concepts,
The Enigma of Desire: Sex, Longing, and according to Atlas, is similar to the ten-
Belonging in Psychoanalysis sion between darkness and light—opposites
By Galit Atlas complementing each other, each being nec-
New York, NY: Routledge Press, 173pp., $50.95 essary for the other’s existence. Therefore
(Hardcover), 2016 the pairing is not a binary opposition;
our bond to our mothers, can be traced in rather, the terms possess a simultaneous
our mature desires and longing for others. existence that manifests its own dialectical
As infants we longed for the mother’s touch movement. Sexuality is constructed of both
and for her body. When we were in her the pragmatic and the enigmatic elements.
arms, we felt whole. When she was away, Research on sexuality and attachment
we longed to be reunited with her. Yet this patterns addresses intimacy problems, but
constant longing creates anxious tension— not adult sexual patterns. Into this lacuna,
what if she doesn’t feel the same way toward Atlas inserts the idea that sexual excite-
us? Atlas uses Meltzer’s formulation on how ment, or the lack of it, is present in the early
the tension between the mother’s tangible, infant-mother relationship.
loving arms and her enigmatic, tacit aspects— Lust is the state of consciousness that
her unknown thoughts and often puzzling connects these two levels of experience and
actions—provokes anxiety. She further elab- existence. The known body is the agent to
orates how the baby is therefore left with an confront what is inaccessible and unknown,
aching fear of being dropped, neglected, or both in infancy and in adult sexual life.
left alone, yet at the same time achingly and Through the erotic we come into contact
dreadfully longs for the maternal touch. with parts of ourselves that aren’t always
This aching fear and desire derived accessible or are, in other ways, too exces-
from the encounter with the “Enigmatic sive. There are things we will never know
Mother,” a term Atlas uses following about ourselves and about others, and this
Laplanche and Stein, and her enigmatic inaccessible aspect of the unrepresentable
messages. These enigmatic messages refer mother becomes the basis for longing.
to both the implicit messages and enigmat- There are many levels of desiring and
ic signifiers from the mother’s unconscious, longing for the other, and they are aroused
which are imprinted in the baby’s body and in the most intimate dyadic settings, where
mind. These imprints, Atlas contends, are the other’s mind and body are simultane-
connected with mature sexuality patterns, ously known and unknown. Sexual desire
and especially their existential aspects. is therefore immersed in hope and dread.
In many ways, the mother and her in- Atlas’s patients struggle with the vulnera-
fant were never truly symbiotic—the moth- bility their sexual longing exposes them to.
er’s enigmatic aspects highlighted her sep- We meet some of these patients in
arateness, her otherness. Yet they were still the first section, entitled “Enigmatic and
connected, enigmatically and pragmatically, Pragmatic,” as they struggle with nameless
through the pragmatic aspects of the moth- longing and loss. This section is based in
er—her touch, gaze and mirroring. And so, part on current infant research, which em-
sexual longing presupposes a sense of loss, phasizes the (m)other’s role as regulator
and a hope of re-finding what has been lost. of emotional and bodily experiences alike.
This loss is inevitable, yet painful nonetheless. (Atlas, 2016, p.13)
The book explores the diachronic axis Ella, for example, needs the other in
from birth to death, combines a person- order to regulate her restlessness and long-
al and cultural view, and contains autobi- ing through sex, and only after she learns
ographical aspects which accord with the to self-regulate can she achieve a more ma-
Relational perspective on the analyst’s sub- ture, fulfilling sexuality. Ben and Leo each
jectivity. In this review I will not follow the struggle to regulate themselves, and so
sections of the book as Atlas has ordered block out the other in order not to feel the
them, but rather will present some of its “too muchness” of their own desire, and the
richly treated themes. fear that they will be tricked into being “an
excited idiot,” standing there with an erec-
The Enigmatic and Pragmatic Aspects tion—longing to be held, yet dreading being
of the Mother dropped, they opt to avoid emotional inti-
Atlas defines the pragmatic aspects of macy. For Danny, the dybbuk (ghost) was
subjectivity and intersubjectivity to be what a dissociated, “not-me” part of himself that
12 DIVISION | R E V I E W SPRING 2017
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Enigmatic and Pragmatic Language: connect to the unknown Enigmatic pieces, as “blow job,” both she and Atlas enacted
Psychoanalytic Writing as Enactment without dreading being over-stimulated. the brute, raw sexuality that Ella sought in
In poetry, paradoxically, the use of This is what Atlas believes happens in ther- her sexual encounters with strangers. Yet,
enabled him to experience his sexuality, words brings us in closer touch with the apy—and this is the unique “psychoanalytic through the process of co-regulation, Atlas
while in his “me” part, sexuality was some- ineffable. Atlas writes that the tension be- touch,” which manifests itself in her writing. succeeded in becoming “a tough moth-
thing he cast aside, because wanting some- tween vessel and content, between theory With each chapter we come to “know” er with a soft touch,” helping Ella move
thing, anything, was far too intimidating. and poetics, is what allows the enigmatic Atlas better and, like the infant who learns from an identification with her father to
In these adult patients, sex has become to surface. We immediately recognize the her mother’s reactions, we learn about her the acceptance of a softer, sensual maternal
a way to regulate emotional needs. Since Enigmatic when we are in its realm: the air soft touch and her toughness, and find that touch, which helped her discover her own
the way we have sex represents parts of is thicker, the words read slower, the eyes there are aspects of her Pragmatic care that subjective sexuality.
ourselves, shifting sexual patterns symbol- wander away from the page and the breath are more familiar to us. But then we notice With Tomaz, Atlas used the language
ize development in the self. And so, through turns heavier. The pragmatic gives us order that it isn’t us she is touching, but rather the of tenderness, softness, creativity, and play-
these patients’ treatments, we watch how and shape, while the Enigmatic connects patients in the book. This feeling resonates fulness, replete with much humor. Their
sex, once a way for them to self-regulate, us to the feeling of not-knowing, of certain with the primal scene—the reader becomes touching was elusive, taking place on the
becomes a pathway for expression and a helplessness and vulnerability. I could feel the toddler, watching his mother touching surface without being superficial. They
fuller experience of the self. myself shifting between these levels of con- and knowing someone else. This feeling colluded to avoid other sorts of languages,
The book’s first section addressed sciousness while reading Atlas’s book. reconnects with the reader’s own longing, which might have been too hard to bear,
infants, but then, at the beginning of This experience makes Atlas’s words making the reading process experiential for these would have been experienced as
the second section, entitled “Enigmatic and writing style an experience in itself. Her rather than merely intellectual. penetrative and aggressive. The tender lan-
Knowing,” (p.59) we meet Celine, the writing combines theoretical, dramatic, and guage they used was also experienced as an
mother. Celine is a character from Richard poetic language and thus creates a strong Talking as Touching—The Embodiment Attack on Linking, for pain, aggression, and
Linklater’s movie trilogy, which includes enactment that she is very much aware of. of Language abandonment were lingering under the sur-
Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), Most chapters are titled after her patients, Atlas talks about the psychoanalytic face, waiting for a time to emerge.
and Before Midnight (2013). Atlas chose and we are introduced to each particular touch bestowed upon patients, custom-made Another question that arose was
her character because she regards it to be dyad, and its therapeutic tale, at a very dra- for each of them, using our choice of words, when to touch and when not to. When
an archetype of the “female experience,” as matic, defining moment. As readers we ex- their music, our gestures, and our use of hu- Danny spoke about the dybbuk, the ghost
Atlas so aptly puts it, regarding sex, preg- perience moments of sexual arousal, tension, mor. The specific touch she reserves for each that possessed his psyche, Atlas chose not
nancy, and childbirth. This chapter is an horror, breakdown, and humor, all regulat- patient is yet another form of co-regulation. to engage in interpretation. And so the
extremely enlightening account of a sort ed and balanced through the cooling effect Her cases raise questions of how to touch, language remained senseless yet full of af-
that is much needed in the psychoanalytic of “experience far,” theoretical discourse. when to touch, and where. fect, and she could feel his mind and be
field. Through Celine, we encounter moth- This structure allows the theory to be the With Ella, by using straightforward, touched herself. This point leads to the
ers who are broken, penetrated from both Pragmatic container through which we can sexually charged words and phrases such idea that when we touch too soon we
the inside and outside. We get to know
their caesuras, their Breaks in Unity, and
their fear of disintegration. It’s as if Atlas is
showing us why it’s so difficult for mothers
to assume the role of the regulator: they
are so often dysregulated themselves. The
intersubjective movement back and forth
from the infant to the mother, and later
back to the infant, touches upon an exis-
tential pain, a tragic component of human
birth: a mother is required to take on the
role of her most “together” self when she
feels the most fragmented.
This drama, between the weak, dysreg-
ulated mother and the baby who longs to
be held, is later described in Karen’s tale.
Karen is the infant who fears abandonment
for being too difficult, who fears she will
destroy the parent. What she longs for is
the feeling that the parent/therapist shares
her drama, that it is not she alone who is
to blame for the collapse of the therapeutic
couple, that there was also a parent there
who did not manage to survive.
Last but not least, this section ends
with the story of Galit (Atlas) herself, an-
other way of letting in the analyst’s subjec-
tivity. In this sense, Atlas is the mother who
wishes to be known. Yet much like with her
patients, the more we know, the more the
Enigmatic is revealed; paradoxically, as we
stare into that realm we realize we know
less and less. The Gelatari
13 DIVISION | R E V I E W SPRING 2017

might in fact push the other person away,
and that often our not interpreting can
form a space for transformation. Here this
was enabled, again and again, through the
process of translation, deconstruction, and
reconstruction.
Reclaiming Female Desire
Atlas is a feminist writer. Yet she
writes not only as a woman, but as a fe-
male psychoanalyst whose biological
mothers were born “East of Freud,” as an
American-Israeli Jew, with roots in Iran and
Syria. Professionally, she was birthed by a
Kleinian mother and nursed by relational
ones, and so inherited the many tongues
they have bequeathed her. The unique en-
counter with our maternal voices is yet an-
other original way of observing the present
self—we are the sum of our multiple moth-
ers, but as a whole we are greater than that.
In her quest to crack the code of female
desire, she finds herself back in the kitchen,
not only in the patriarchal sense, but mining
it as a source for understanding a certain fem-
inine realm, where Enigmatic aspects of femi-
nine sexuality take form, assuming a smell and
a taste. This is in accordance with the under-
lying notion that runs throughout the book:
whether one is male or female, sex is related
to the paternal, while sensuality is something
The Savior
BOOK REVIEWS
we learn from our mothers. By asking not
only how women desire, but also what are we
allowed to desire and how much, and whether
we are permitted to express such desire, she
combines psychoanalysis, politics, and his-
tory, and thus widens our perception of the
Enigmatic messages we receive, this time in-
cluding also the cultural and political.
Her reclaiming of female desire also in-
volves a strong emphasis on the female body
and bodily functions (such as pregnancy and
giving birth), autoeroticism, homoerotic de-
sire for other women, and more. She consid-
ers the conscious and unconscious fantasies
women have towards each other, towards
each other’s bodies, and not only in a strictly
sexual way, but also regarding their pregnan-
cies. Atlas shares the tale of Jo and Simone
and the way their therapeutic relationships
changed following their parallel pregnancies
with Atlas, and the unknown psychic mate-
rials they concealed.
The metaphor of the kitchen returns
with Sophie and Sarah’s tale, this time used as
a metaphor for the therapeutic space, which
opens up an opportunity for patient and an-
alyst to “cook together” an analytic process.
The metaphor of “preparing a dish” is yet
another original way of viewing the psy-
choanalytic process, since it relates not only
to the further digestion of things that have
14 DIVISION | R E V I E W SPRING 2017
happened in the past, but also to a “progres-
sive function,” a term Aron and Atlas (2015)
used following Jung, a construction of the fu-
ture, enabled through the therapeutic process.
In conclusion, Atlas’s book is overflow-
ing with beautiful ideas, carefully articulated,
and told in a vivid, enticing, and stimulating
way. It observes psychoanalysis from many
angles and offers criticism of its inherent
binaries, while also creatively addressing
some of its lacunas and offering both useful
and beautiful insights. Yet it also seems that
alongside her critical thinking toward psy-
choanalysis, Atlas is one of its most fascinated
(Govrin, 2016) advocates, since her focus on
the unknown and Enigmatic aspects of our
psyche is an unequivocal response to those
who believe evidence-based theories are
sufficient for practicing therapy. Those are
related to the Pragmatic mother, while psy-
choanalysis complements our knowledge of
the Enigmatic, of our deepest and unknown
aspects of being.  z sexually “normal”—a development that clear-
REFERENCES
Aron, L. & Atlas, G. (2015). Generative enactment:
Memories from the future. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 25(3),
309-324.
Govrin, A. (2016). Conservative and radical perspectives
on psychoanalytic knowledge: The fascinated and the disenchant-
ed. New-York, NY: Routledge.
Linklater, R. (Director). (1995, 2004, 2013). The Before
Trilogy. [Motion Picture]. Unitied States: Sony Pictures
Classics.
What are Perversions? Sexuality, Ethics, Psychoanalysis
Although perversion as a psychoanalytic
diagnosis is almost as old as the field itself, the
comparatively few books devoted to the topic
each renew the same fundamental question:
What are Perversions? Sexuality, Ethics,
Psychoanalysis
By Sergio Benvenuto.
London, UK: Karnac. 210pp., $42.95, 2016
what is perversion? There are two basic ways
to define perversion: behaviorally and struc-
turally (i.e., via the personality). When perver-
sion is defined by actions, those actions are
perverse insofar as they violate a social norm.
Despite Freud’s observation that we are all
originally polymorphously perverse (insofar
as we enjoy bodily acts other than hetero-
sexual vaginal penetration) and that some of
us somehow manage to grow up to become
ly depends on the child’s socialization—some
20th and even 21st century psychoanalysts
continue to define perverse behaviors against
the backdrop of what was considered abnor-
mal in the early 20th century. Homosexuality,
for example, is now widely considered to be
a socially acceptable form of sexuality, and
yet some psychoanalysts who define per-
version on the basis of abnormal behaviors
continue to consider homosexuality to be
a form of perversion. In Sergio Benvenuto’s
book, What Are Perversions? Sexuality, Ethics,
Psychoanalysis (2016), Benvenuto shows how
the behaviorally-based definition of perver-
sion falls short. Using behavioral nosology,
not only are we faced with difficult questions
of where to draw the line between abnormal
and normal, ethical and unethical, but we
leave out the sense that the behaviors have
for the subject. In other words, according to
Benvenuto, depending on the meanings that
a homosexual act has for an individual, she or
he can engage in primarily homosexual acts
and be either neurotic or perverse. Indeed,
Benvenuto’s book is reflective of the second
approach to defining perversion insofar as he
argues for ways in which we can understand
a perversely structured person—rather than
someone who behaves in a way that society
would deem perverse—as engaging in acts
which reflect a certain relation to the Law, to
language, and to the agency of other people.
Benvenuto’s approach to perversion is influ-
enced by the work of Masud Khan, Jacques
Lacan, and Robert Stoller.
The behavioral versus structural ap-
proach to diagnosing perversion is one reason
for the continuation of the question of “What
is perversion?” What is more, we expect the
answers to reflect disagreements between
psychoanalytic schools. But the muddy wa-
ters related to the definition of perversion
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reach beyond theoretical differences. I take as
my guide to this quandary a remark of Jacques
Lacan from his twentieth seminar: “the per-
versions, such as we believe we discern them
in neurosis, are not that at all. Neurosis con-
sists in dreaming, not perverse acts. Neurotics
have none of the characteristics of perverts.
They simply dream of being perverts, which
is quite natural, for how else could they at-
tain their partner?” (Lacan, 1975/1998, p.80).
With these words, Lacan suggested that a
crucial difference between neurotics and per-
verts is that perverts act freely in the pursuit
of jouissance, whereas neurotics are inhibited
in putting into action what they typically only
dream or fantasize about. Importantly, Lacan
also pointed out that a neurotic perspective
shapes how we see the perversions. (Lacan,
of course, and I myself, take a structural or
personality-based approach to diagnosing
perversion, and so what follows should be
understood in that light.) In Benvenuto’s
words, “[g]ood psychoanalysis has a
strong propensity not so much to “normal-
ize” perversions as to “perversify” normal-
ity” (2016, p.19)—normality often relating
to a neurotic viewpoint.
Our tendency to perceive perversion
through the lens of neurosis might be further
magnified given the absence of more than a
few (typically brief ) clinical case studies of
perversion. This means that we lack firm evi-
dential grounds upon which to build our the-
ories. Benvenuto’s book adds a few short clini-
cal vignettes to the literature and it comments
on already published cases. His commentary
includes, for example, the late Serge André’s
(1993) account of his work with a masoch-
ist—Serge André having contributed consid-
erably to French psychoanalytic conceptions
of perversion in his book, L’imposture perverse,
which unfortunately has not been translated
into English. Benvenuto, however, relies most
heavily on examples of perversion from litera-
ture, film, and journalism, such as the writing
of Jun’ichirô Tanizaki, David Fincher’s (1995)
film Seven, and the case of Jack the Ripper.
Owing to the lack of published accounts of
clinical work with perverts, Benvenuto, like
other authors of books on perversion (includ-
ing myself ), draws upon non-clinical sources
out of necessity.
One reason for this lack in the literature
is that perversely structured individuals—rath-
er than neurotics with perverse traits—rarely
end up in psychoanalytic consultation rooms.
This may be because there are relatively few
perverts compared to neurotics and psychot-
ics. Or it may be that the pervert does not
believe a psychoanalyst can help him or her
and perhaps believes instead in a behavior-
ist’s methods. Another possibility is that the
15 DIVISION | R E V I E W SPRING 2017
Stephanie SWALES
pervert gets too much jouissance from his or
her symptom to want to enter into analysis in
order to relinquish it. Alternatively, psychoan-
alysts may not be situated in the clinical mi-
lieu in which perverts typically present them-
selves for treatment such as prisons. I gained
the majority of my experience with perverts
working at an outpatient forensic psycho-
therapy clinic. My (2012) book, Perversion:
A Lacanian Psychoanalytic Approach to the
Subject, includes a chapter-length case study
of my work in a forensic context with an ex-
hibitionist as well as brief clinical vignettes of
work with individuals with exhibitionistic or
sadistic substructures. (For Lacan, the sub-
structures of the general structure of perver-
sion include fetishism, exhibitionism, voyeur-
ism, sadism, and masochism).
In the absence, then, of numerous
and substantive clinical case studies (which
optimally provide some of the analysand’s
dreams, fantasies, and speech), we theorize
by making do with what we have and sup-
plementing it with examples from literature
and film. But how much of our theories are
clouded by the neurotic dreams of being
perverts found in literature and film? We,
as a culture, are fascinated by the figure of
the psychopath (or, in psychoanalytic ter-
minology, the sadistic pervert, or someone
with an antisocial tendency). This fascina-
tion is reflected in the plethora of accounts
in literature and on the screen of psycho-
paths. In recent years, psychopaths have of
course continued to be depicted in much of
the horror movie genre and as the villains in
James Bond and superhero movies, but have
also appeared in films such as Nightcrawler
(Gilroy, 2014), We Need to Talk About Kevin
(Ramsay, 2011), and No Country for Old Men
(Coen & Coen, 2007)—to name but a few.
Our question as psychoanalysts should not
be “What can we learn about perversion
from these films?” but rather “What can we
learn from these fictional accounts of psy-
chopaths about neurotic fantasies of perver-
sion?” With this question, it is not so much
that we need to learn more about neurotic
fantasy but that we would do well to recog-
nize that our conceptions of perversion are
shaped by accounts of perversion that are
rooted in a neurotic perspective.
Taking these three films as exemplary
of recent film depictions of the pervert as
psychopath, we immediately notice that the
pervert plots, schemes, and murders without
inhibition or remorse. It is also clear that he
derives jouissance from his perverse acts and
seems immune to psychological suffering
except when the world gets in his way (e.g.,
when he is incarcerated). In terms of the latter,
the neurotic fantasizes, by way of the figure of