We must find a way to speak without passion about the so-called sexual perversions, that is, the deviations of sexual function concerning bodily zones and the sexual object. The indeterminate limits within which the so-called normal sexual life could be enclosed, depending on races and eras, should be sufficient to reassure the overly critical.

We must not forget that among these perversions, the most repugnant to us, the carnal love of man toward man, has been not only accepted but also associated with significant social honors among a people with a culture long superior to ours, the Greek people.

Each of us transcends, in one way or another, the narrow boundaries of the normal in our personal sexual lives. Perversions do not constitute either bestialities or degenerative tendencies in the sense of a paroxysm. They arise from the development of fragments that are all included in the undifferentiated sexual predisposition of the child, fragments of which suppression or redirection toward higher non-sexual goals – their sublimation – determines the driving forces of a significant part of our achievements as civilized beings.

Characteristic of all perversions is that they disregard the fundamental goal of sexuality, namely reproduction. Indeed, any sexual activity that, having renounced reproduction, seeks pleasure as an independent aim is considered perverse. Therefore, you understand that the break and change of direction during the development of sexual life are due to its subordination to the purposes of reproduction. Everything that happens before this turning point, everything that denies the aforementioned subjugation, everything that aims solely at achieving satisfaction is characterized by the rather unflattering term “perversion,” and consequently of the despicable.

We can today argue that perversions have something inherent at their core, but something inherent in all humans, something that fluctuates in its intensity as a predisposition and awaits to be brought out by various life influences. These are innate roots that sometimes undergo insufficient suppression (repression), and thus may, indirectly, evolve into pathological symptoms, drawing a significant part of sexual energy, while in the most favorable cases, between the two extremes, lead – through an appropriate restriction and other psychological processes – to what we call a normal sexual life." – SIGMUND FREUD

COVER IMAGE ANDY WARHOL Portrait of Sigmund Freud, from the series Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century, 1980