Cynicism: its function in the perversions.

Abstract

The author begins by noting the historical importance of perversion in the development of psychoanalysis and its potential for inspiring new ideas. Observing that cynicism is a component of perversion, he discusses some psychoanalytic views of the cynic and the role of the cynical attitude in politics. After a brief reference to the philosophy of the ancient Cynics and to irony, which he distinguishes from cynicism proper, he considers the clinical and theoretical aspects of cynicism and perversion in terms of representation/affect and hallucination/sensual pleasure. The connections with fetishim in particular are explored. The cynic is stated to possess an ethic of the negative, in which beauty is trampled underfoot by linguistic acts permeated with the subject's internal void, and to use a sexual theory translated into ideology. Specific elements of the cynic's logic include, in the author's view, a vindication of the mother's phallus, scepticism about the possibility of a male identification in the patient's father, and premonitions of the inexorable return of the non-human. These points, as well as the radical differences between perversion and cynicism on the one hand and neurosis and psychosis on the other, are illustrated by a literary example and the case history of a frotteur.