by Rebecca Deibert, M.A.

There’s more to perversion than meets the… foot?

Seriousness in playfulness and playfulness in seriousness are traits of experiencing that give magnificence a point of access to an individual’s self-esteem without shame, incapacity to adapt, and torturous self-destruction needing to occur (Morgenthaler, [2020]).

In a recent consultation, a few colleagues and I sat in the congealed emotional movement Fritz Morgenthaler describes as a ritualistic occurrence for the society-broken fetishist. Importantly, the molasses through which we waded was our own doing as a group—it was a mode of interaction devoid of pleasure or ease, and it mirrored the therapist’s experience of the patient and his perversions. We were stuck; we saw nothing there. 

Morgenthaler presents the original perverse fascination as the “colorful stone” located and carefully placed in the mosaic of the self. It filled a hole, maybe literally. In addition to the pleasurable satisfaction of wholeness, the perverse aim prescribed a return to childlike omnipotence. It was a magical solution on all accounts, and this process isn’t unique to those with perverse features. Morgenthaler argues that each of us “suffers a shipwreck” and attempts to fill the gap as gracefully as our individual lives allow. 

As we sat there, it dawned on me that prior to discussing the case, the group had engaged a familiar topic–internship. We'd grown stilted and wooden, awkward in speech and limited in perspective, just as we had in discussing the patient. Neither the patient nor our fantasies of internship were allowed to exist; excitement was off the table and sensuality, forbidden. At such a serious time, levity was all too risky.

Except, was it? 

If Morgenthaler is correct, the therapist must become the self-object that excites the perverse patient. Play must be taken seriously and seriousness, playfully. At the same time that the therapist holds a function for the patient–the potential for becoming the good, balanced self–the patient attempts to seduce the therapist. And as the patient shares their perverse structure with the therapist, the therapist comes to terms with an inexhaustible perversion in themselves. This dialectic allows for spontaneity and color in a mode previously felt and rejected as strange or misfit. ‘Seeing nothing there’ becomes obsolete. 

It's possible that the case conference’s overlap with an anxiety-ridden discussion about internship was not a coincidence. Internship sites hold fruitful possibilities for their candidates, and we, the trainees, should attempt what Morgenthaler calls an “undulating, playful eroticism that seduces others into turning toward us.” So, perhaps it’s a stretch, or perhaps the perverse pervades all.