PERVERSIONS AND PARAPHILIAS: INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND CLINICAL EXAMPLES

Abstract

Perversion: currently this term is commonly used as a synonymous for deviance from shared social norms in the context of sexuality and it describes all those sexual practices whose aim differs from classic coitus. It is connected more closely to the concept of paraphilia only when pathological conditions arise. Perversions and paraphilias, however, occur in situations where we experience pleasure in the use of power in a destructive sense. The individual-psychological conception of sexuality is very complex: it fails to hit the phenomenology of sexuality and love as if it were just a simple movement of instinctual drives, but, without denying that it is also this, I.P. amplifi es and enrich sexuality with dynamics the meanings of which is related to the subtleties that characterize the lifestyle and therefore sexuality is also infl uenced by environment and culture. The study of sexuality branches out into a complex interdisciplinary network with psychological, cultural, ethical and religious implications. These implications
play a significant role, especially on those aspects that particularly interest us as Adlerian psychodynamic psychotherapists: intrapsychic and relational communication. Some clinical examples are presented