Chasseguet-Smirgel, Janine Español

Chasseguet-Smirgel, J. (1981).
Loss of Reality in Perversions—With Special Reference to

Fetishism. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 29:511-534.
(1981). Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 29:511-534
Loss of Reality in Perversions—With Special Reference to Fetishism
Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel
IN RECENT YEARS MUCH WORK HAS been devoted to the study of perversion, both in France and
abroad.
As a matter of fact, it seems that progress made in theory, in clinical observation and treatment
technique of perversion may affect the whole of our understanding of both our patients and
ourselves, considering that we are all more or less tempted by the "perverse solution" and that
our "perverse core" may be activated under various circumstances.
This problem seems to be fundamental for understanding the psyche and for the very future of
psychoanalysis within a sociocultural context where the perverse solution is becoming ever more
frequent.
For various structural and countertransferential reasons, the analyst may be more or less an
accomplice of his analysand's devious steps and may carry out with him a pseudo analysis, never
reaching the depressive core which must eventually be uncovered through the loss of the illusion,
together with the truth in its terrible nakedness. It is necessary for the analyst to recognize and
face both his own perverse core and that of his patients. Otherwise it is conceivable that his desire
to search for the truth may eventually disappear in favor of the maintenance of illusion. In effect,
there is a close link between the perverse personality organization and the necessary maintenance
of illusion, of the lure. It is even possible that perverse personality organization is better defined by
the way in which such a lure is established,
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lasts, and gives rise to various forms of behavior rather than by the perverse sexual act itself.
I shall examine some aspects of the perverse solution, which implies that, compared to the
neurotic, the pervert attempts to "negotiate" his conflicts in a specific manner just as a driver
negotiates certain turns in the road. I hope to demonstrate that this gives rise to a certain way of
approaching reality. My ultimate goal is to define what constitutes loss of reality in perversion.
On other occasions I have drawn attention to the maturational aspect of the ego ideal in some—
undoubtedly in most—people, even though it is counterbalanced by an opposing trend, as I just
pointed out. This function of the ego ideal is fundamental for the evolution of the analytic process
and for what American authors call the "therapeutic alliance." To my mind, the maturational
aspect of the ego ideal determines analyzability to a greater extent than the distinctions based on
nosography. At a certain level, the ego ideal merges with the love of truth, i.e., the preference to
face conflicts rather than magically evade them: "…we must not forget that the analytical
relationship is based on a love of truth—that is, on a recognition of reality—and that it precludes
any kind of sham or deceit." This was written by Freud in Analysis Terminable and
Interminable(1937p. 248). In my studies on the ego ideal (1973), (1975), (1976) I emphasized two
main forms taken on by the ego ideal.
Freud (1908) states that "hardly anything is harder for a man than to give up a pleasure which he
has once experienced. Actually, we can never give anything up; we only exchange one thing for
another" (p. 145). Freud's conception of the ego ideal, introduced in 1914, derives from that
observation. In it, the ego ideal is a substitute for the original narcissistic perfection, separated
from the ego by a gap that man will always try to bridge. Freud (1914) shows that man is unable to
give up the pleasure he once enjoyed "is not willing to forgo the narcissistic perfection of his
childhood," and "seeks to recover it in the new form of an ego ideal. What he projects before him
as his ideal is the substitute for the lost narcissism of his childhood in which he was his own ideal"
(p. 94).
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I have deduced from other texts by Freud—the Project(1895), a note in Instincts and Their
Vissicitudes(1915), a passage from Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety(1926)—that the disruption
of the primary fusion of the child with his mother, when he is his own ideal, results from his
original helplessness: he depends on the object for satisfaction and is therefore forced to
recognize the "not-me." From this point of view, a desire to re-experience the feeling of fusion
with mother will always persist. Incestuous wishes are supported by narcissistic motivations, i.e.,
the refinding of the period when self and nonself were fused. The child's nostalgia for experiencing
himself as his own ideal without any lack of satisfaction, any desire, or any loss, when he was
perfectly happy, can lead to his projecting his narcissism before him—according to Freud—upon
his first object and then, in the boy's case, upon his father and the latter's attributes (mainly the
father's penis) during the oedipal period. This projection comprises a project for identification: he
wishes to become like his father, the object of his mother, in order to realize an incestuous genital
relationship with her. At this stage, I wish to recall the theory of genitality as put forward by
Ferenczi (1924) in Thalassa, where he shows that the wish to go back to the mother's womb
constitutes the fundamental human wish, which can be fulfilled, in a sense, through coitus. If we
follow this theory to its conclusion, it leads to the view that the culmination of human sexual
development contains the promise, and even the fulfillment, of the most archaic wish, the wish to
return to the mother's womb and to the primal narcissistic phase where there is no distinction
between self and nonself.
That which pushes us ahead (toward the oedipal phase and genitality) is linked to the nostalgia of
our past glory—the time when we were our own ideal, a period which coincides with primal
fusion. This concept seems consistent with Freud's (1914) statement: "the development of the ego
consists in a departure from primary narcissism and gives rise to a vigorous attempt to recover
that state. This departure is brought about by means of the displacement of libido on to an ego
ideal imposed from without;
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and satisfaction is brought about from fulfilling this ideal" (p. 100). The projection onto the parents
(and onto the father during the oedipal period, in any case, for the boy) of primal narcissism in the
form of its heir, the ego ideal, constitutes progress in the conquest of the sense of reality and
objectality, primal omnipotence being projected onto the object.
At the same time, the projection "before" of narcissism in the form of the ego ideal implies the
postponement of satisfaction and is therefore more consistent with the reality principle, the path
chosen being the long path, as opposed to the short path of immediate gratification of the
pleasure principle.1 The projection of the ego ideal onto the oedipal father, in the hope of a future
realization of the return to the maternal womb through incestuous coitus, confers on the
incestuous fantasy a place and a significance which go far beyond sexual discharge.
I would like to support the preceding arguments with clinical material involving an examination
dream of a perverse patient. This patient, twenty-eight years of age, is the youngest son of a very
catholic family of six children. He was born with a congenital defect which was corrected soon
after his birth. Because of his handicap and the surgery it required, his mother took him into her
bed when he was a child. She repeatedly concealed from the father the child's "foolishness." This
young man, now married and a father, masturbates on the pyjamas of his mother-in-law with
accompanying overtly sadomasochistic fantasies. He has sexual relations with his wife whom he
binds with ropes. As an adolescent he engaged in homosexual activity with a one-legged older
man in whom his father "had complete trust." This man, who was highly regarded by the city
authorities, especially the police, protected my patient from prosecution when he had a car
accident. Indeed, my patient drove a car without a license in the presence of this man.
During his analysis, my patient had a dream of failing his
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1 These two paths define the two forms of the ego ideal I have tried to clarify. See also those
studies where the links between reality testing as an ego function and the ego ideal are discussed
(Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1973), (1975).
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matriculation examination. The failure worried and angered him. One of his teachers drew him
aside and told him, "They (the examination committee) are a bunch of jerks. I'm going to fix it." At
that moment he associated to his mother, who took him to bed and concealed his "foolishness"
from father, and to the one-legged man. The teacher, who singled him out in the dream, seemed
to make sexual advances toward him.
The teacher thus plays the role of the mother who, as an accomplice, helps him avoid his oedipal
conflict (with the committee) and the fraternal rivalry (with the other candidates). The teacher
enables him to obtain his matriculation2 without his having to integrate or resolve conflicts, just as
his mother, by allowing him to share her bed, led him to believe he did not have to mature to take
his father's place. Similarly, the one-legged man helps him deceive authority (his father "who had
complete trust in him" and the police). He can drive without a license (without an examination),
therefore without acquiring the necessary ability (maturity) thanks to the complicity of his friend,
a substitute for mother.
At the very beginning of the analysis he got a job in the following manner. An ex-classmate told
him he was going to apply for a job which was vacant in an institution managed by a woman; my
patient, without saying a word to his friend, went to see the woman and got the job. This acting
out was a clear indication under what auspices the treatment was going to unfold.
Once, after he missed a session, he told me he had used the time of his session to cheat on his
wife with his mistress. His wife believed he had attended his analytic session. After all, as long as
he paid for the missed session, he could very well spend that time as he liked. It became obvious
that he wished me to resume the role of the teacher of his dream (the mother, the one-legged
man) and to help him fool the examiners (the father and also his wife during his affair with his
mistress. He discredited not only his superego but also his ego ideal—the castrated father
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2 In many languages this is called matura, thus alluding to the attainment of maturity.
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who was unworthy of becoming his ego ideal: "They are a bunch of jerks"). In general, he refused
to consider the latent meaning of his behavior, idealizing its pregenital characteristics (cf.
Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1974) and attributing ideological reasons for it (cf. Etchegoyen, 1973). For
example, when I asked him to associate to the numerous abortions he had performed, he replied
that he was prompted "by an ideal," and sulked for a long time (in the transference, he performed
abortions on the psychoanalytic process itself).
During the session of the examination dream my patient associated to the one-legged
homosexual. That man, had, when the patient was seventeen, asked him to go with him on a long
auto trip. They had ended up in a hotel room. My patient made a slip of the tongue, "I was already
naive," when he consciously meant to say that he was "still" naive at that time. Thus he revealed
to me a modus operandi he discovered at the time and had used since: he played innocent. He
fooled authorities, his father in particular, by playing the role of a sick and innocent child, living in
close proximity to his mother who spoiled him and colluded with him against the father.
Up to this point, I have intentionally left aside the fetishistic and homosexual aspects of the
patient's relationship with the one-legged man to underline his role as an accomplice pitted
against authority, a role which makes him a substitute for the mother. In the transference, he
wanted me to behave in the same way as his mother had during his childhood, when she was his
accomplice against the father's authority.
I shall now sketch a view of fetishism that accounts for all samples of this perversion, whereas the
various existing theories have the disadvantage of not covering the entire clinical picture, even if
they contain some remarkable approximations to this strange phenomenon. Freud (1905) stressed
the coprophilic character of the fetishist. In 1927, however, he described the fetish as a substitute
for the maternal phallus which the subject does not want to renounce because of the intensity of
his castration fears. These were confirmed by the existence of "castrated" beings,
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namely women. Thanks to the splitting of the ego, the edification of the fetish serves both to deny
and to affirm the "castration" of women. McDougall (1972) went further int he resolution of the
enigma through stressing that the construction of the fetish not only is linked to the need to deny
the absence of the penis, supporting the castration fears, but also is linked to the need to deny the
maternal orifice which is a proof of sexual relation between the parents—of the primal scene.
Grunberger (1976) supported the idea that the fetish is the commemorative monument of intense
anal exchanges between the mother and the son. These two conceptions (of McDougall and
Grunberger) have the great advantage of linking the creation of the fetish with the denial of the
power of the father's genital penis. The exclusion of the genital penis and of the genital father is
signified and maintained through the very presence of the fetish. As I have had occasion to show
in my essay on the ego ideal (1973) as well as in other studies, the denial of differences between
the sexes is intrinsically linked to the difference between generations. The little boy feels, "If my
mother does not have a vagina to be filled, I, the little prepubescent boy with my little penis and
my pregenital sexuality, have no need to identify with my father who does not possess anything
more than I to satisfy my mother. I will be an adequate sexual partner for my mother as I am. Is
this not what she communicates to me when she makes me share her bed, pampers me, loves me
dearly; when she despises my father, conceals my 'foolishness' from him, and makes me her
adorable accomplice? Therefore, I have no need to grow up and mature to take my father's place."
Such is the implicit discourse of the future pervert, most often comforted in his illusion by his
mother.
Now it happens that the fetish is not always placed on a woman's body. It is not always that last
piece of underwear which covers the woman's body before the absence of phallus is revealed.
Sometimes, it may be constituted by a garment of the subject himself. As a matter of fact, Freud
(1927) refers to an athletic support which was taken as a fetish and worn by the fetishist
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himself. However, clinical practice shows that the fetish may be worn by a homosexual object. I
knew a man who used to put on riding boots at the request of his boss. The latter cleaned and
polished them lovingly until they shone, kissed them, and presumably, reached orgasm that way.
The perverse patient whose examination dream I related above had at least two fetishes: one
which was worn by his mother-in-law and separated from her—the pyjamas on which he
ejaculated—and the prosthesis of the one-legged man. If the fetish is nothing but the mother's
phallus, a question arises: why should it be worn by a man (as in the case of the riding boots or the
prosthesis) when men possess an authentic genital penis and, as far as my patient is concerned,
why choose a "castrated" (minus one limb) man and a prosthesized one? As a matter of fact, the
latter occurrence (prosthesis taken as a fetish) seems to be frequent; in times past, any thriving
brothel featured a "wooden-legged woman." I already said (1968) that while the anal penis is a
prefiguration of the genital one, a posteriori it is an imitation of it. At the level of the primary
process, orthopedic instruments or prostheses, which replace and imitate a missing limb and a
defective function, are anal phallic objects substituted for the genital penis and often set up as
fetishes. This brings us back to the fundamental range of problems of the pervert: the
maintenance of the illusion that he has nothing to envy his father, no need for a genital, fertile
penis, and can, therefore, escape the conflicts resulting from the introjection of the virile
attributes of the father without need to identify with his sire. He can thus manage to avoid the
Oedipus complex and that which is correlated with it, the threat of castration: his father is not his
rival and he does not have to take away his object—the mother—whom he thinks he already
possesses and who enthrones him as a privileged partner. He does not try to capture or introject
the penis of the father who, therefore, will not retaliate. Besides—and this is essential in my
opinion — he tries to pass the anal penis, the precursor of the genital penis, as equal or superior
to the paternal penis whose genital and procreative functions are denigrated or denied.
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This takes us back to fetishism, and I would like to put forth, provisionally, the following
hypothesis: the fetish represents the anal phallus insofar as it comes to occupy the place of the
genital penis and excludes it from the sexual scene and from the psyche in general. It is therefore
not only the mother's missing phallus. The excitation the fetishist derives from the fetish (or,
rather, the excitation it permits) is necessary to maintain the lure on which his psychosexuality is
built. The fact that its wearer is a man, a woman, or the subject himself, or that it is reduced to an
inanimate object—a garment, shoes, underwear, or hair—separated from any real support,
becomes secondary (although not indifferent, of course) to the need for the fetish to exist
somewhere in a manner which is unfailing and perfectly exciting.
In fact, many authors have shown the overdetermined character of the fetish (Gillespie, 1940),
(1952); (Greenacre, 1953); (Parkin, 1963). Parkin's patient, whose fetish was a raincoat, identifies
with the anal phallus of the mother when he is squeezed into the fetish, whereas the woman
dressed in the raincoat becomes his own penis. He can also, on another level, identify with the
anal phallus of his father, a strict military man who used to manipulate the testicles of his son and
who, when afflicted with dysentery, would often speak of his own intestinal functions. His mother
had died from hemorrhaging colitis. Wulff (1946) and Winnicott (1953)—to a certain extent, when
he compares the transitional object to the fetish—link the fetish, phallus of the mother, to what is
supposed to be its origin, the breast. This is also one of the meanings of the fetish according to
Sperling (1963), who thinks that it can represent the mother's whole body. The fetish was for the
patient described by Socarides (1960) not only the phallus of the mother, but the breast and the
abdomen of the pregnant mother. Indeed, when we attempt to trace the genealogy of these
multiple meanings, we cannot but be struck by the fact that authors have increasingly tended to
emphasize the pregenital conflicts that fetishism aims to resolve, and no longer castration anxiety
alone. Payne (1939) stressed the importance of protection against sadistic impulses toward the
object
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represented by the fetish. Then, Gillespie (1940) underscored latent pregenital factors and the
anxiety attached to them, reactivated at the sight of female genitals. Like Payne, he stressed the
fear concerning the destruction of the object which is relieved by the fetish. The fetish, an
inanimate object, is immutable and permanent; any sadism directed at it remains without
response. Greenacre (1968) tried to connect the disturbing effects of phenomena occurring during
two phases, fundamental for the constitution of the fetish: the first, during the first eighteen
months of life which lead to faulty development of the body image, and the second, between the
ages of two and four, coinciding with the phallic phase, which lead to an "exaggerated" castration
complex. However, it is due to archaic pregenital distortions that the castration complex is
insurmountable without the help of the fetish. As a matter of fact, the sight of female sexual
organs deprived of a penis reactivates a tendency toward primary identification (with the female
partner, a substitute for the mother) linked to the pathology of early development. If it represents
the phallus of the mother and denies the difference between the sexes, the fetish re-establishes
the existence of the phallus of the subject himself through visual and olfactory introjection. For
many authors, who have more or less completely abrogated the theory that the fetish represents
the maternal phallus and the importance conferred by Freud to the castration complex in
fetishism, separation anxiety and the inability to renounce primary identification with the mother
are at the heart of the problem in fetishism. For Weissman (1957) fetishism aims at overcoming
separation anxiety through a feeling of complete union with the mother obtained by means of the
introjection of the good object (the good breast). The ultimate aim of the fetishist is not to get
genital satisfaction, but to feel a state of elation linked to that union with the good object. The
fetishistic activity strives to undo an identification with the bad breast in order to establish an
identification with the good breast, "The fetishistic object is not only an object but an
identification." The fetishist acts out his fetishism in his own character and treats his real objects
like inanimate fetishes.
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This is also the opinion of Sperling (1963) who insists on the omnipotent control exerted by some
fetishists on their objects, made possible by the use of the fetish which permits the denial of the
loss of the preoedipal mother. Sperling observed these mechanisms in fetishistic children.
Separation anxiety predominates by far over castration anxiety. This remains the case in adults
whose fetishism gratifies the original desire for union with the mother. Socarides (1960), by
insisting that the fetish represents a "child" and that the fetishist wishes to be pregnant, links
fetishism to the solution of the same problem: to be the pregnant mother in order to be the child
within the mother is to avoid separation from the primary objects. Although the stressing of
separation anxiety at the expense of castration anxiety accounts for some important clinical
observations, it does not recognize the organic link between these two types of anxiety, just as the
classic theory does not provide sufficient explanation for the loss of reality in perversion by making
it consubstantial with the problem of castration taken in a narrow sense, connecting it with the
sight of female genitals (second phase of the castration complex).
In "Fetishism," Freud (1927) deals with the denial of the reality of castration of women, which is
accompanied by splitting of the ego. The fetish corresponds to the refusal to admit castration,
whereas the knowledge of the "castration" of women remains present on the intellectual level.
Two opposing attitudes coexist: one denying an unbearable perception connected with a real
castration danger, and another accepting such perception on an intellectual level (there is no
hallucination). Such coexistence is perfectly illustrated by the clinical example given by Freud
(1938) at the end of his paper on ego splitting—the contact between two toes represents both the
denial and the recognition of castration.
I would like to put forth the hypothesis that the concept of castration itself should be enlarged. I
have already stressed on several occasions that Freud's theory of sexual phallic monism, inferring
that the oedipal boy has no desire to penetrate his mother,
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lacking at all levels the knowledge of the existence of the vagina, deprives the oedipal situation of
most of its dramatic impact. The father does nothing to the mother that the little boy could not do,
since the latter only wishes to have "vague and unprecise contacts" with her, where "his penis is
obscurely involved," and ignores that the mother could be gratified in any other way, in particular
through coitus. The theory of sexual phallic monism goes along perfectly with the defenses of the
pervert, and Freud's theory of fetishism proceeds directly from it. In reality, women, including
mother, are not castrated; mother actually possesses a vagina that the little boy cannot fill and
fulfill. The denial does not apply to the "castration" of the mother, but to her vagina which is the
place of the erotic exchanges between the parents and inevitably leads back to the existence of its
complement, the penis of the father.
The patient who adopts the theory of phallic sexual monism spares himself fears of castration. He
has nothing to envy as far as his father is concerned; his father's penis has no meaning, he does
not wish to take it away from him, and he does not want to dislodge it from the vagina or womb of
the mother. For him the "big" and fertile penis of the father is a totally useless organ. The desire to
acquire the virile attributes of the father is intrinsically linked to the transmission of the name and
the inheritance which assigns to the subject his place within a lineage (the impostor, like the
pervert, refuses the filiation). The lack of interest in obtaining the father's penis protects the
patient from retaliation. In addition, it allows him to bypass tremendous suffering due to his
feeling of inadequacy, which Freud (1920) has magnificently described in Beyond the Pleasure
Principle and also in "The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex" (1924). Therefore, I propose that
we join to and make an intrinsic part of the castration complex the painful feeling of inadequacy of
the pregenital child unable to satisfy his mother sexually and to give her a child.
The castration complex understood in this way enables us to link it to that which precedes it:
separation anxiety. The Oedipus complex, the father, the desire of the mother for the penis
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of the father, the genital order, then take their place as factors in the disruption of the original
union between mother and child. Paradoxically, the idea of an organic link between separation
anxiety and castration anxiety is supported by Freud himself (1926) in his last theory of anxiety.
The two precursors of castration anxiety are related to separation from the mother. As regards
castration anxiety during the phallic phase, Freud (1926) considers it is also related to separation:
separation from the genital organ: "Ferenczi [1924] has traced, quite correctly, I think, a clear line
of connection between this fear and the fears contained in the earlier situations of danger. The
high degree of narcissistic value which the penis possesses can appeal to the fact that that organ is
a guarantee to its owner that he can be once more united to his mother—i.e. to a substitute for
her—in the act of copulation. Being deprived of it amounts to a renewed separation from her." It
should be noted that in this instance Freud seems to contradict himself, since he connects the
castration anxiety at the phallic stage with the fear of losing the organ which enables the boy to
return into his mother's body through coitus. Now, is it possible to imagine that the little oedipal
boy does not experience a feeling of castration, he who is separated from his mother by his
physiological inadequacy and needs time to overcome it and identify with the owner of the genital
penis, the father?
I am tempted to think that the split in perversion is much more vast than Freud indicates in his
description of the fetishist. It affects two psychosexual dimensions inherent in two stages of
libidinal development. The first is a phase of access to reality based on the recognition of the
double difference (between sexes and generations), and it merges with genitality and the
acceptance of the primal scene. The second is the anal-sadistic universe in which all differences
are razed. However, vestiges of genital reality resurge in the forced idealization of objects and
instincts belonging to this stage. (In 1974, I have supported the hypothesis of a possible
idealization of instincts.) In effect, if somewhere in the pervert's mind the idea did not subsist—an
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idea he struggles against, represses, and countercathects—that genitality and identification with
the genital father still are an ideal to be attained, he would have no need to idealize compulsively
the objects and instincts of the anal-sadistic stage to which he has regressed.
If psychosis creates a new reality through delusion and if neurosis tends to substitute a fantasy
world for the real world, perversion performs a transmutation of reality through the idealization of
anality, by decreeing it as equal to, or better than, the real, genital world.
What seems to signal the presence of a split in the ego is not the fact that the subject both knows
and ignores that mother has no penis, but the fact that he both knows and ignores that an anal
phallus is not equal to, nor better than, the paternal penis. In summary, there is a split between
the affirmation of his mother's absolute preference for her exquisite baby and the obscure and
annihilating intuition of the prevalence of paternal prerogatives and of the genital world. This
terrifying feeling, which may lead the pervert to a state of dereliction, is fought against by a
veritable compulsion to idealize (explaining, inter alia, the pervert's affinity for the beautiful: the
pervert is often an aesthete). It has been pointed out that the process of idealization is applied to
the fetish. Freud, in his paper on fetishism, mentions the fetishist's veneration for the fetish. And
we know that initially the fetish was a god, a painted idol.
Freud (1908) says that children's games are directed by wishes, namely by the wish that assists in
bringing up the child, the wish to grow up and become an adult. The child always plays at "being
grown-up" and imitates what he has seen of adults' life. I think that "the wish to grow up" is one of
the essential components of the "normal" ego ideal but that precisely it is lacking in the pervert's
ego ideal. Now, the ego ideal of the pervert, partly misled by his mother, has some undeniable
advantages: it has spared the young pervert the pain of facing the existing anachronism between
the advent of the oedipal desire and the (physiological) ability to gratify it. Grunberger (1966–
1971)
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insists that this anachronism is the result of human prematurity. It enables the pervert to avoid
both the oedipal conflict and the castration complex. It spares him the introjection and
identification conflicts related to the desire to be like father and to take over father's properties. It
does not block the way toward pleasure. And even though he obtains all this at the expense of
some gaps in his ego and a distorted reality, the benefits are such that we can understand that he
would hesitate before giving up his perverted solution and before reducing to dust the magic sand
duck which crashed down from its pedestal in the dream described by Joseph (1971).
From this it is easy to understand that the primal scene is central to the access to reality as it is to
the hatred of reality (McDougall, 1972). When the hatred of reality prevails, the subject tries to
destroy reality and to create a new one, the reality of the anal world where all differences are
abolished.
In a previous work (1978) I have tried to show that all perversions are essentially anal-sadistic
since the anal universe is a universe where the equation penis = child = feces, as studied by Freud
(1917) is to be understood literally. In reality, the need to possess a genital penis or a child
involves the necessity of growing and maturing. Opposed to that are the feces which are a
possession common to men and women, adults and children. To reduce the values, the objects
and the parts of objects, the most highly differentiated erogenous zones to homogeneous particles
(which happens in digestion), to change the universe into excrement, is inherent to perversions,
for which the anal-sadistic dimension is the only acceptable one since it eliminates genital
sexuality from the pervert's world and with that the double difference between sexes and
generations. The anal phallus has here a pervasive role. It is indefinitely renewable, therefore
eternal and invulnerable, whereas the child is mortal and the penis can be castrated. The anal
phallus can appear or disappear at will through the sphincter play of push and pull. Like the
phoenix, the brilliantly colored mythological bird, it is reborn every day from its ashes. We may
think that everything
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that is brilliant and colorful is antithetical to excrement, which is dull and uniform; thus it leads to
it. The French word maquiller means both "to make up" (therefore to color) and "to disguise" or
"mask." The etymology of maquiller is the same as for "to make"—to fabricate. To fabricate is the
equivalent of "to create anally" and is opposed to "to engender," which is to create genitally. I
have elaborated the difference between "to fabricate" and "to engender" elsewhere (1968), a
difference which implies an opposition between inanimate and animate, between life and death,
between that which can be castrated and that which cannot be castrated. In addition, I have
stressed (1973), (1975), (1976) that what is idealized is often bright, sparkling, glittering (for
example, theophanies). It is well known that such characteristics are often part of the fetish (shiny
boots, the oilcloth raincoat, satin underwear, etc.), thus masking its anality. Practically all writers
who have studied fetishism have pointed out the twofold nature of the fetish, anal and brilliant.
Greenacre (1953) mentions "shiny and smelly objects," and Socarides (1960) "shiny or odorous
objects." Even when the writers do not point out the twofold nature of the fetish, their clinical
observations never fail to make allusions to it. For example, Kronengold and Sterba (1936) refer to
a patient, insisting on the anal determinants of his fetish (the smell of rubber; to be "swaddled and
dirty"). Another patient they describe used to tie himself up with rope and masturbate in front of a
mirror while completely naked, but keeping on his "carefully polished" shoes.
To be tied up means to identify oneself with the anal penis inside the rectum. This is in effect the
fantasy of Parkin's (1963) patient whom I have mentioned above. Moreover this latter patient, the
raincoat fetishist, sees the woman wrapped in the fetish "in radiant unspoiled beauty." In my
opinion, this should be connected with the last sight he had of his dying mother. She had an acute
attack of ulcerative colitis just after her little boy's fifth birthday; stretching her arms toward him,
"she seemed suffused with a spiritual radiance and the aura of her delicate loveliness
encompassed him with a heavenly feeling." I shall come
- 526 -
back to this last observation. In the famous Glanz auf der Nase, which Freud (1927) reduces to
"glance," I would agree with Grunberger (1976) that the German meaning of Glanz ("shine")
should not be underestimated.
Glover (1931) points out that "the perverse activity is exercised more freely when certain aesthetic
conditions are fulfilled." This is the writer who, in my opinion, seems to have best succeeded in
approximating the apparently mysterious links between perversion—and particularly fetishism—
and aesthetics. In effect, the pervert often needs to surround himself with an exquisite and
precious decor where he can contemplate the reflection of his idealized self, his anal phallus
masked under an elegant disguise. One of Oscar Wilde's tales, "The Birthday of the Infanta"
(1888), illustrates the tragedy of one whose illusion of a magnificent self crumbles away, who
suddenly sees his reflection in the mirror of truth: A little dwarf thinks the Princess loves him
because she has thrown him a flower (like the mother who misleads her child by making him
believe he is an adequate sexual partner). This dwarf, living in the forest, has never seen his own
image. Looking for his beloved, he enters the royal palace and walks through magnificently
decorated rooms. He finally reaches the last room: "Of all the rooms this was the brightest and the
most beautiful. The walls were covered with a pink-flowered Lucca damask, patterned with birds
and dotted with dainty blossoms of silver; the furniture was of massive silver, festooned with florid
wreaths, and swinging Cupids; in front of the two large fire-places stood great screens broidered
with parrots and peacocks, and the floor, which was of sea-green onyx, seemed to stretch far away
into the distance. Nor was he alone." We may have surmised that after revelling in his reflection
which merges with the beautiful setting, he is suddenly confronted with his true image in a mirror.
When he realizes that the horrible gnome figure is actually his own, he dies. (We may think that
the dwarf stands for the child who is too small to gratify mother, and his ugliness, for his
unmasked anality.)
In another tale, "The Young King," Wilde writes: "And it
- 527 -
seems that from the very first moment of his recognition he had shown signs of that strange
passion for beauty that was destined to have so great an influence over his life…and as soon as he
could escape from the council-board or audience-chamber, he would run down the great
staircase, with its lions of gilt bronze and its steps of bright porphyry, and wander from room to
room, and from corridor to corridor, like one who was seeking to find in beauty an anodyne from
pain, a sort of restoration from sickness" (italics added).
In another story, "The Portrait of Mr. W. H.," Wilde describes a literary forgery. The impostor, once
exposed, commits suicide. The critic, who was at the root of the matter and who caused the hero
to commit suicide, begins to agree with the theory of the impostor who pretended he had
discovered the identity of the person to whom Shakespeare's sonnets were dedicated. He to
commits suicide after writing a letter to the author, beseeching him to believe in the existence of
Willie Hughes (Mr. W. H.). It is then that the author acquires the certainty that it was actually a
forgery: "No one dies for what he knows to be the truth. Men die for what they wish to be true,
for something that an inexpressible, innermost fright tells them is not true" (italics added).3
The pervert's inclination for beauty, his aesthetic tendencies, his idealization of that which
surrounds him, and the idealization of the fetish by the fetishist are linked to an absolute
constraint aimed at masking the unbearable truth, that of his sexual inadequacy, of the superiority
of the father and his attributes and the superiority of the genital universe over the anal universe.
The anal phallus is often represented by an iridescent bird. In Andersen's tale of "The Nightingale
and the Emperor of China" the mechanical nightingale is covered with gems, and when it sings, its
glittering tail moves up and down. The living nightingale is clad in the sober plumage nature gave
it. I equate the "fabricated" mechanical nightingale with the anal phallus and
—————————————
3 This last sentence, which appears in brackets in the French version, is not to be found in the
English text published in 1956.
- 528 -
the "true" (engendered) nightingale with the penis (Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1968). I think it is not by
chance the La Fontaine wrote a fable, the title and theme of which became a common saying:
"The Jackdaw in Borrowed Feathers." I am also reminded of Glover (1938) who states that the
pervert does not idealize adult objects, only part objects, especially those pertaining to the anal
phase. And Glover adds humorously: "However devoid of idealization of adult relations he may be,
his geese are usually regarded by him as swans" (p. 94). This may be interpreted as an idealization
of the anal phallus: geese may be considered vulgar birds as compared to swans, noble birds.
In the case of one of Joseph's (1971) patients, the brightly colored sand duck, standing on a
pedestal in order to be worshipped, seems to me to represent the prepubescent patient's anal
phallus, venerated as an idol by the elder sister, which tries to pass—with the help of the brilliant
colors idealizing it—as superior to the adult's genital penis. This perverse creation is a factitious
penis ("factitious" and "fetish" have the same etymology), an idealized anal phallus. Joseph's
patient is, inter alia, a raincoat fetishist. His objects or he may equally wear the fetish.
The idol, the fetish are imitations, shams; the two represent a god, as well as a phallus. The
imitation is nothing but anality trying to pass itself off as genitality, feces pretending to be a
substitute for the penis. The ornaments, the colors of the fetish or of the idol, mask the raw
materials of which they are made. Their unveiling would nullify their "effectiveness" (i.e., the
possibility of keeping the illusion—the preconceived, false idea—according to which the idol is a
god and the fetish, a penis).
In my work on the ego ideal (1973) I said of the pervert that, "the revered fetish reflects to him the
transfigured image of his own infantile attributes. Through it he comes closer to the time when he
was his own ideal. He mirrors himself in his exalted (pregenital) impulses, in his magnified (part)
objects as he mirrored himself formerly in the eyes of his mother, in order to draw from there the
confirmation of his adorable perfection" (p. 774). I have elaborated the links between perversion
and anality
- 529 -
in connection with Sade. I would like to add that the destruction of reality by the pervert implies
the hatred of both parents united in genital coitus and the victory won over them.
Let us take up again the points important for the understanding of the loss of reality in perversion
as it can be apprehended during analysis.
(1) The perverse patient testifies to a seductive mother and an absent, fallen, and uninvolved
father. (2) A projection of the ego ideal on pregenitality and the part objects appears (which can
assume the form of a compulsion to idealize) and the correlative contempt for genitality, the
genital father, and his attributes. (3) In the transference the tendency is to destroy in the two
protagonists the ability to reach psychic reality through interpretation and insight—the aim being
to cause and to maintain. (4) The destruction of reality and the abolition of the differences by
substituting for it exclusively the anal-sadistic dimension of the psyche.
Concerning the first point—seduction by the mother—one can note that it is present in practically
all of the observations and that it has become classically linked to the description of the family
constellation of the pervert. It was present, moreover, in Freud's (1910) reconstruction of
Leonardo's childhood. (It is not within the scope of this paper to deal with the fact that perversions
are less frequent in women than in men.) I have already stressed the predominant role of the anal
phallus in perversion, particularly in fetishism. It is the epitome of "fabricated objects." I have also
insisted on the fact that while it is necessary to grow up and mature in order to have a genital
penis or a child, the possession of an anal phallus is something common to men and women,
adults and children; therefore it stands for the denial of the difference between sexes and
generations and, at the same time, of all differences. Everlasting, unchanging, invulnerable,
renewable, it abolishes castration, absence, and death.
Parkin's patient who finds in the woman dressed in a raincoat the celestial aura surrounding his
dying mother, could realize in the fetish—of which the author himself outlines the essentially
- 530 -
excremental character—the embalming of the mother's corpse, the ending of the corruption of
the flesh. I propose this hypothesis because the practice of embalmment—by the Egyptians in
particular—produces exactly a fetish. Makeup is applied to a putrefying body which is then
decorated with jewels, dressed up with a golden mask, and made into a god.
In one of Oscar Wilde's tales, the mummified body of a dazzling golden-haired young girl is found,
obviously presenting the characteristics of a fetish. Some of Edgar Allan Poe's stories can be
interpreted from the same point of view. In other words, the fetish is emblematic of perversion. It
not only represents an alteration in a circumscribed sector of the ego, but it condenses the
elements of the transmutation of reality that the perversion causes to happen: the reign of anality
and its concomitant idealization with the exclusion of genitality. Thus the fetish signifies the
entrance of the subject into a new dimension. This accounts for the frequent presence of fetishism
in most perversions (even if they are not dominated by fetishism) and for the fact, also often
observed, that fetishism constitutes the model of perversions. Its presence on the sexual scene
acts like a magic wand by transfiguring it.
I have also emphasized (1978) the analogy between the pervert and the magician, suggesting that
the "bag of tricks," "from which the conjuror (the magician) draws the objects he needs," is
nothing but the rectum from which feces come out unendingly. The magician produces an infinite
variety of objects from his bag or box, unravels yards and yards of glittering materials; he has
"more than one trick in his bag." Like an almighty creator he also knows how to multiply objects,
make them smaller or bigger, conjure them away and bring them back at will. The woman who
was cut in pieces or stabbed with knives emerges unharmed from the trunk where she was locked.
The rope which was hacked to pieces a while ago is restored to its initial wholeness before us.
Killing and reviving objects, cutting them up and putting them back together, making them
disappear and reappear, multiplying them and making them vanish,
- 531 -
such are the tricks he uses to fascinate us. In other words, he makes us share for an instant the
illusion that the "range of possibilities" (Pindare) has been stretched out to infinity. Neither
absence nor castration nor death exist any longer. What is finally juggled away and mastered is
difference itself, the difference between the one and the multiple, between large and small, dead
and alive, complete and lacking, between being and nothingness.
This makes me think that the fetish—the idealized anal phallus—conjures up all those elements
that separate the son from his mother—primal object and oedipal object—ensuring a continuity in
their relationship. Even the breast, although it does not belong to the anal-sadistic phase, can be
brought back to life through the fetish, due to the nature of anal-sadistic regression which —
abolishing differences — allows the exercise of an omnipotent magic control over objects. This
omnipotent magic control does not only allow the subject to merge again with the primal object
but also to separate from it at will, i.e., to both re-establish and undo the fusion.
SUMMARY
I have underscored the fundamental role played by idealization in the transmutation of reality
with which it is implicitly associated. It is impossible to understand the essential nature of the loss
of reality in perversion without taking into account the idealization of anality, the aim of which
consists in making it equivalent or superior to the real genital world while, at the same time,
raising a slight doubt in this respect. I think that perversions combine two types of split. The first is
a horizontal split between genitality and anality that takes place between the ego and the id, as in
neurosis (for instance as in obsessional neurosis), with the difference that what is repressed in
neurosis does not belong to genitality but essentially to pregenitality (this leads us to the famous
formula: neurosis is the negative of perversion). The second split is a vertical one, located in the
ego. This split takes
- 532 -
place, on one hand, between the perverse act and the underlying anal dimension which it tries to
promote to an absolute reign, and on the other hand, the idealization of anality which expresses a
kind of return of the repressed, that is to say, the impetus toward the ego of the repressed genital
universe and its values (mainly the genital primal scene and the father's penis).
The loss of reality in perversions is not only focused on the female genital, but leads the whole
psyche into a new dimension. We cannot call this dimension a delusion, but it can be considered
as a generalized illusion. As such it is necessary to understand it for its seductive qualities not only
to a limited number of patients, but to all of us, and for its implications in many aspects of culture
and society.
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Article Citation [Who Cited This?]
Chasseguet-Smirgel, J. (1981). Loss of Reality in Perversions—With Special Reference to Fetishism.

J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 29:511-534

Chasseguet-Smirgel, Janine Español

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Chasseguet-Smirgel, J. (1981).

Loss of Reality in Perversions—With Special Reference to

(1981). Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 29:511-534

Loss of Reality in Perversions—With Special Reference to Fetishism

During his analysis, my patient had a dream of failing his

In another tale, "The Young King," Wilde writes: "And it

CHASSEGUET-SMIRGEL, J. 1974 Perversion, idealization and sublimation Int. J. Psychoanal. 55:349-

CHASSEGUET-SMIRGEL, J. 1975 L'Idal du Moi: Essai Psychoanalytique sur la "Maladie d'Idalit."

ETCHEGOYEN, R. H. 1973 A note on ideology and psychoanalytic technique Int. J. Psychoanal.

FREUD, S. 1895 Project for a scientific psychology S.E. 1 [→]

FREUD, S. 1905 Three essays on the theory of sexuality S.E. 7 [→]

FREUD, S. 1908 Creative writers and day-dreaming S.E. 9 [→]

FREUD, S. 1914 On narcissism: an introduction S.E. 14 [→]

FREUD, S. 1915 Instincts and their vicissitudes S.E. 14 [→]

FREUD, S. 1917 On transformation of instincts as exemplified in anal erotism S.E. 17 [→]

FREUD, S. 1920 Beyond the pleasure principle S.E. 18 [→]

FREUD, S. 1924 The dissolution of the Oedipus complex S.E. 19 [→]

FREUD, S. 1926 Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety S.E. 20 [→]

FREUD, S. 1937 Analysis terminable and interminable S.E. 23 [→]

GLOVER, E. 1938 A note on idealization Int. J. Psychoanal. 19:91-96 [→]

GRUNBERGER, B. 1966-1971 Narcissism New York: Int. Univ. Press, 1979

GRUNBERGER, B. 1976 Essai sur le fetichisme Rev. Fran. Psychanal. 40 235-264

PARKIN, A. 1963 On fetishism Int. J. Psychoanal. 44:352-361 [→]

SOCARIDES, C. 1960 Development of a fetishistic perversion J. Am. Psychoanal. Assoc. 8:281-311

SPERLING, M. 1963 Fetishism in children Psychoanal. Q. 32:374-392 [→]

Article Citation [Who Cited This?]

Chasseguet-Smirgel, J. (1981). Loss of Reality in Perversions—With Special Reference to Fetishism.

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