Citation

Torres ER. Int. J. Psychoanal. 1991; 72(1): 73-92.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1991, Institute of Psychoanalysis, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

2050495

Abstract

Inspired by the title of the work, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, the author argues that desire and perversion are equivalent, based on the following. (1) The notion of infanatile sexuality as polymorphously perverse, and whose components constitute the 'core of our unconscious' and the ultimate 'matter' of unconscious desire. (2) The perspective of narcissism, which establishes desire, supported by the theory that maternity implants an illusion of completeness which culture promotes, despite the fact that such an ideal conflicts with the laws governing the foundation of culture. (3) The resulting forms of the oedipal complex and the castration complex, whether man or woman, imply a visible or unapparent violence with regard to the original 'call' of desire. (4) The traditional structures refer to the possibility of the mother imagining herself as completed by the child: the blocking of that illusion is associated with psychosis; the weakness of the desire, once established, demands, in the context of perversion, the presence of the figure of plenitude. Neurosis prefers its absence on the level of the apparent while insuring its permanence on the unconscious level.

Language: en