The face of fear: castration and perversion

Abstract

The constant companion of Oedipal desires, castration anxiety, re-assembles earlier terrors of identity loss and helplessness. In the pressures of the male negative Oedipal constellation, castration fear may search for a solution in turning to its opposite; the boy creates a belief that precisely castration would be the condition for the final possession of the satisfying object. The father-son relationship becomes sado-masochistically perverted if the son, in the realm of his feminine identification, becomes fixated in his wish to offer himself as castrated to the ultimate satisfaction of the powerful father who uses his strength traumatically. The masochistic position of the son also hides a wish to rob the father of his sadistic phallus: as seduced, the omnipotent father would be dependent on the satisfaction the castrated son only is able to offer. To illuminate the perversion of the negative Oedipal constellation, the author investigates a fictitious person, the main character in Michael Powell's film “Peeping Tom” (1960). This young man murders women; his obsession is interpreted as a derivative of the attempt to pursue a sadomasochistic, homo-erotic union. The core of perversion is found to be the eroticized triumph in defeating castration terror.