Language of Perversion and the Language of Love

By Sheldon Bach

Book Overview

From long before the Trojan War to the ethnic cleansings of our own century, people have often used their potential to treat other human beings as things. It is this treatment of another person as a thing rather than as a human being that the eminent psychoanalyst, Dr. Sheldon Bach, sees as a perversion of object relationships and that forms the background of this powerful book. Perversion is a lack of capacity for whole object love, and while this includes the sexual perversions it also includes certain character perversions, character disorders and psychotic conditions. In this brilliant exposition Dr. Bach shows how some of the paradoxes of self/other, subjectivity/objectivity, male/female and instinct/object are negotiated in both illness and health.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765702304
• ISBN13: 9780765702302
• Release Date: May 1999
• Publisher: Jason Aronson
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

A marvelous exploration of self states and their regulation.

Sheldon Bach has written a teriffic book not only about perversion, but also about the development of self states and their regulation. While all of us have the capacity to have masochistic and sadistic elements in out intimate relationships, not all of us become frozen in those dynamics. In his eloquent work, Mr. Bach simply states,"The pain of suffering defends against the greater pain of loss."(p17) It is at this point that we start to see how failed attempts at relating and separating from the primary caregiver lead to part object relationships(fetishes),difficulties with boundries and problems in self regulation. The book gets extra merit for Mr. Bach's ability to bring the theory into the room and into the relationship between patient and analyst. Whether you are a therapist or a patient, this is a must read.