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The common perversion

Common perversion

José Durval Cavalcanti de Albuquerque

Review of:
Lebrun, J.-P.(2010). The common perversion; living together without another. Rio
Rio de Janeiro: Freud Company, 352 pages.

The author, Jean-Pierre Lebrun, became more known among

we through the book The Man Without Gravity (2003), in which between-
view Charles Melman. The publication, aimed at the lay reader, does not
theoretical bindings were proposed, being a transcription of a
conversation about the postmodern, its consequences for the field of
psychoanalysis and the contemporary subject.
Lebrun publishes, one year later, The World Without Limit (2004),
seeking to provide a theoretical consistency to the issues raised
about this man without gravity associated with a new economy
psychic, organized by enjoyment and not by repression, which is characterized
I would like to apologize for the impossibility of the transfer and for the emptying of the
subjectivity. The author imparts to the preface of this book a character
apocalyptic when describing the painting by Francis Bacon, 'Three Studies
of characters at the foot of a crucifixion in which three figures which
monstrous chimeras shared a voracity without
compassion, an automatic and uncontrollable hunger and a force of

Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst member of the Iracy Doyle Psychoanalysis Society

(SPID).

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212 • jose du Val Cavalcanti de Albuquerqu

hat that is both delirious and undifferentiated, producing a

anguish and dispersing the audience that had gathered there, in a
London exhibition in April 1945. At this same moment, in
Milan, Mussolini, and Claretta Petacci remained dead, hanging in
butcher hooks exposed to public condemnation, while in the
Northern Europe, in Bergen-Belsen and Dachau, prisoners were freed
Rados showing logo later to the world the Nazi slaughterhouses.
This serves as material for the Belgian psychoanalyst to pose the question: no
would these anticipatory events be a form of 'dehumanization',
of a 'despeciation' of the human species?
Now, Freud, in 1932 (1976), answering the question that
Einstein had asked you about what to do to protect humanity-
unit of the curse of war, places cruelty as something that does not
It ends. It is through violence, he writes, that conflicts of interest
among men are resolved. And, resuming the myth of the foundation
cultural, Freud argues that in the beginning, in a human horde
primitive, it was the muscular strength that decided on possession or will
of the other and even its annihilation. Later, the refinement
intellectual introduces the weapons; however the objective of a faction inflict
damage and dismantling the strength of the other remained the same. Besides
everything, remember Freud, to murder an enemy satisfies an inclination
pulsional that confirms cruelty as belonging to the order of
human and the species. Excessively human.
In the book titled The Common Perversion, the subject of our rese-
In his preliminary text, Lebrun (2010) asks, 'What do we...
"it happens today", "to whom we are referring, if to individuals, taken
each one separately, whether to subjects or to the collective itself?” And
still, "how can we interpret the changes that occur in these
so-called advanced societies and their consequences on our
subjectivity?” (Lebrun, 2010: 13). It thereby maintains the scope
from the approach made in The world without limits (Lebrun, 2004).
Lebrun proposes a reading that says it relies on its expe-
psychoanalytic experience, whose objective is to understand the effective incidence
the major changes that occurred in our society in the structure

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subjective. It is important to highlight that subjectivity is defined here

from the general traits detected in the culture. However, from the point
from the perspective of psychoanalysis, studying subjectivity in society is exa-
minimize its effects on each individual. The way in which the author of
The common perversion defines the domains of what is subjective leaves us
the impression that speaks of a unique, collective subject. It does not seem
take into account that each subject will assimilate the various data
that emerge from the social in a singular way.
Initially focusing on the 'crisis of legitimacy that characterizes
in societies” (Lebrun, 2010:18) and presents, in the first four
chapters, a social analysis of transformations that "led to a
"true mutation of the social bond" (Lebrun, 2010: 18). In the four
last chapters, describes the effects of these changes on subjectivity
and highlights the strategic role of education, 'the place par excellence where
the social bond and subjectivity” (Lebrun, 2010: 18).
It is indisputable that we are living in a period of intense transfor-
motions, operated in a dizzying manner by the scientific revolution and
technological, influencing from biology to communication engineering
creation. The works of thought gradually lose admiration
of what they enjoyed, being received with a certain indifference. The
science and technique seem to administer a unique order that does not
varia, obscuring the processes of abstract thought, the sagacity-
the insight and the human ingenuity.
The system of values of Western modernity, which consists-
the universal ideals seem to give the impression of moving towards a
bankruptcy situation with the globalization of exchanges. In the world
globalized, universal values tend to be reduced to the values of
Bags, causing them to float in the market in an undifferentiated manner
as commodities or 'subjective'.
Given this undeniable picture, Mr. Lebrun tells us that the
analysis of the changes led him to conclude that there was a true
mutation of the social bond.
Let's examine the idea of mutation. How changes can be
associated with a crisis situation, we could think about

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this notion. Thus, considering it as a fissure of a position

stable, the crisis can be overcome by organizing a movement
that leads to the seal of the gap, thus restoring the direction
loss. If we take into account the intensity of the modifications in the
in various fields of knowledge, we can affirm that this is not the scenario
contemporary.
In the mutation, the past is tattered in such a way
that no longer provides any reference. Thus, new ope-
Providers should be sought in order to account for alternatives of
continuation and meaning. Mutation is like a leap, a deviation in the
historical succession. It is an invention of thought. It occurred with the
Heliocentrism, the Origin of Species, Psychoanalysis... Something that, from-
after it has happened, it makes everything not the same as before. Has it already happened
such a break with these revolutions characteristic of modernity?
Now, our author titles his book Common Perversion,
ordinary, that is, that which does not present a particular condition, that
it is according to the custom, which is regular, habitual... In its prolegomena-
less, affirms that he will lecture based on his psychoanalytic practice and,
at the same time, says not to know if it will talk about the "individual separately,"
subject or collective" (Lebrun, 2010: 13). Being the science of the subject,
it is assumed that psychoanalysis, when examining subjectivity in society,
investigate their effects on each one. The father of the aforementioned work, when
at the same time that it is completely related to the discourse
Freudian, proposes to the reader much less orthodox readings to invention.
psychanalytical.
When qualifying the 'common perversion', characteristic of the 'neo-subject
to”, as an effect of changes in subjectivity, reveals
a misreading of psychoanalytic theory.
The term "perversion", used in common language, whose pri-
my record is from 1444 in the French language, comes from classical Latin
perversion, created from deperversum, supine of the verb pervertere, which
originally means 'to invert'; 'to turn over'; then it transforms into
"unfortunate turnaround" with a pejorative meaning, of a twist
bad, transformation of good into evil, also associated with perversion

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are of customs, to the anomaly of sexual behavior - as if

found in the medical dictionaries of the 19th century.
Freud, in 1905 (1976), in the "Three Essays on the Theory of
sexuality
term "drive", reaching the perversions in the oldest sense of the
term: inverted, turned inside out. The perversions, according to the inventor
from psychoanalysis, they are determined from a deviation of the object of
sexual drive or as a deviation relative to its end. Saying that
in normal sexual development, the germs that
they will lead to such deviations, the Viennese master removes the perverse process
of the field of deviation from normativity, inscribing it in itself
norm. Ten years later, in 'The Instincts and Their Vicissitudes' (Freud,
[1915] 1976), specifies that the return of the drive of activity to
the passivity and the transformation of its content of love into hate,
two of the drive destinations constitute fundamental connections in the
gears of the wicked mechanism. Lebrun will tell us in his
book that the anthropological turn, characteristic of current times,
allows to discuss what the perversion concerns us and what does not
refers to the forensic pathology known until then. Declares, of this
way, that "only now" the perversion would have come out of the field of anor-
disease, ignoring what was proposed by the inventor of psychoanalysis
in his 1905 article.
From Freudian metapsychology, we point out three indis-
thinkable for the understanding of the perverse process: the disavowal
(Denial) of reality, the denial of castration and the splitting of
It is in 1927 (1976) in 'Fetishism' that the mechanism of des-
lie will remain as specific of perversions, to the extent that
acts defensively in relation to castration, expressed in a reality
perceived as the absence of a penis in women.
In the common perversion, the author affirms the existence of a des-
consideration of external authority as a consequence of the claim
democratic to universalize the right to equality among men.
Now, this other one that represents an authority does not actually exist and
like a symbolic function. (For example, the declaration of one of the

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our Ministers upon assuming their position: “I am not a Minister, I am

Minister”). Continuing, in the text, regarding the disappearance of the
external authority due to 'real and not formal equality between the
men” (Lebrun, 2010: 41), we read that, “because of this transformation-
radical action, the symbolic is no longer what allows us to grasp the real
(Lebrun, 2010: 41). And that: "only the record of the imaginary is compatible
with such a regime” (Lebrun, 2010: 41). In this way, when we consider
the Freudian letter, the Le Brunian neosubjects would be governed by the
unpredictable grammar of psychosis. The statement that the perverse
common is managed by an operator different from the proposal
Freudian (in Lebrun's case, a generalized perverse economy.
in which the symbolic no longer apprehends the Real [and note: it is not in the
Lacanian sense in which the symbolic does not completely encompass the
Real]) leaves the reader somewhat bewildered about what is said. Perhaps because
an excessive schematism leaves one with an impression of rarefaction
conceptual.
This impression is reinforced by the description of what the author calls
further on from 'a new perversion' and how it is organized, saying
ipsis litteris: "the search for the positivized object is what constitutes the economy"
perverse collective" (Lebrun, 2010: 46). In other words, it talks about a
subject and in a way to collectively subjectify, an impropriety,
as previously mentioned, from a psychoanalytic point of view. To address the
collective departing from the clinic, from a theorized practice, from a science
of the subject in its singularity, is only carried out analogously. Po-
let's accept that the neosubject will try to conceal the lack through
of the fetich consumer object, but it stays far from achieving success,
as Lebrun says: “This bait (consumer object), to which the
the subject will therefore connect, it will help him to perpetuate the avoidance of the
confrontation with loss” (Lebrun, 2010: 346).
When considering the Freudian understanding of the perverse mechanism
so, we learned that the law is known and at the same time
denied. Knowing and denied means that the subject does not escape all of the
time to recognize the missing. He is constantly found altered-
wandering between yes and no. To better clarify this, it is sufficient

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consider the fetishist, who tries to freeze the image in the minute an-
before the woman's undressing, in a vain attempt to "not know"
of the absence of the penis. With this cracked I, there is no possibility
from a comfortable residence in the denial!
Lebrun says that language and the symbolic preexist the subject,
since access to the symbolic must be earned as a
organized construction from a 'body to body, of what
it usually happens with the mother, of the mother version. When we forget
this necessary route, we condemn the neosubject to have to remain
confined to your initial luck, we keep you in your place of un-
tidor” (Lebrun, 2010: 347).
We can ask, with Roland Gori (2010), if it is not the case
to consider how these current pathologies hold a great
proximity to the psychopathological models set up for stu-
give them and offer therapeutic alternatives. For, still saying with
there is a remarkable insistence on behavioral changes and the
search for your neurogenetic determinations. The discourses about such
knowledge seems, at every moment, to reduce the subject to
individual and the Other to the other (the notion of Other marking the place
of the social structures to which the subject is subjected). Syndrome
panic disorder, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder,
attention deficit with hyperactivity, delinquency, addiction, the
violences, all these aspects are addressed without the place of
Outro – to which this is addressed – may be established. Patients
the therapists seem to share a similar proposal. Denies-
the internal reality of subjects and their partners, as well as the
mental representation and history, to value performances
of action and emotional exaltations. Therefore, they will not be the neossu-
lejítos lebrunianos the translation of the models that make them what they are? One sees
that, on one hand, patients present themselves suggesting that their
symptoms have an organic origin, demonstrating their alignment
with biopolitics. On the other hand, psychopharmacology, composing a
science that knows everything, helps, intending to silence suffering,
announcing that everything is capable of healing or that everything has a cause

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218 José Durval Cavalcanti de Albuquerque

measurable, tangible. The medicalization of complaints and disorders

of behavior, far from intending to direct towards healing, to
to gag or put a chemical straitjacket on the subject, assumes
a colorful police force, not dealing with listening, reality
psychic and the desire.
In chapter nine, titled "The Analyst Today", the author mentions
Charles Melman in The Man Without Gravity says that 'we are
attending a collective transfer liquidation, source of a
notable freedom. There is neither authority nor reference anymore,
nor knowing that it is maintained. We are now only in management,
there are no more practices” (Lebrun, 2010: 321-322).
The author then asks how the transfer could
arise, whether in relation to an analyst, a teacher, or even a
know by then supposedly established, if everyone occupied
an equivalent place, if nothing and no one constitutes exception?
And continues to assert that the neosubjects refuse the transfer,
since they were not forced to subjectivize, but they appear to
show what is not going well, even without complaining about it, without anything
ask, since they know nothing of their stories.
Now, the creator of common perversion says throughout this work
which is always referred to its psychoanalytic practice. In other words,
initially reported to the fundamental concepts of this discourse:
imprint, unconscious and transfer, precondition for the establishment
of this practice.
The psychoanalyst, ceasing to consider himself an observer
neutral, constantly questioning oneself and recognizing being involved
through analytical work, will define psychoanalytic training as
permanent. And more: what happens in an analysis is something that occurs between
analyst and analyzing, having the analytical process established from
of an act of the psychoanalyst. If this is not the case, the 'neopsychanalysts'
they will sleep waiting for their clients to transfer and dream, for,
Freud, we know that it is through transference love that the narrative will be
attack of interest, enabling the opening of the unconscious.
Therefore, if there is no analyst in position, there will be no training sessions.
of the unconscious.

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Referências

Freud, S. (1905/1976).Três ensaios sobre a teoria da sexualidade.Obras

completas, ESB, v. VII. Rio de Janeiro: Imago.
Freud, S. (1915/1976). Os instintos e suas vicissitudes.Obras completas,
ESB, v. XIV.Rio de Janeiro: Imago.
Freud, S. (1927/1976). Fetichismo.Obras completas, ESB, v. XXI. Rio de
Janeiro: Imago.
Freud, S. (1932/1976). Porque a Guerra.Obras completas, ESB, v. XXII,
Rio de Janeiro: Imago.
Gori, R. (2010). As patologias do niilismo em nossa modernidade.Tempo
Psicanalítico,42(1), s/p.
Lebrun, J.-P.(2003).Melman, Charles: O homem sem gravidade – Gozar a
qualquer preço. Rio de Janeiro: Cia de Freud.
Lebrun, J.-P.(2004).Um mundo sem limite. Rio de Janeiro: Cia de Freud.

tempo psicanalítico, Rio de Janeiro, v.42.1, p.211-219, 2010