Understanding certain components of the psychoanalytic view requires detaching ourselves from certain moral judgments we carry in common sense. When we speak of perversion and perversity, confusion is almost inevitable because, in everyday language, both evoke the idea of evil, cruelty, or a lack of character. However, for the psychoanalytic clinic, these words occupy distinct registers: one concerns the structure of desire and subjective organization, while the other refers to an ethical or moral value of human actions.

PERVERSION AS A CLINICAL STRUCTURE

In Freudian and, later, Lacanian psychoanalysis, perversion is not a diagnosis of "evil," but rather one of the three major clinical structures, alongside neurosis and psychosis. To understand perversion, we must return to the concepts of the Oedipus Complex and Castration.

While the neurotic represses (reprime) castration, knowing the Law exists but attempting to ignore it via the unconscious, the pervert utilizes a specific defense mechanism called disavowal (Verleugnung). The perverse subject recognizes castration but acts as if it does not exist. Freud classically illustrates this through fetishism: the subject knows that the woman does not possess a phallus but creates a substitute (the fetish) to deny this "lack."

Perversion, therefore, is a way of organizing desire that aims to bypass the anxiety of castration. The pervert positions themselves as the object that completes the Other, attempting to plug the lack (manque) that exists in human existence. They are not necessarily trying to do evil; they are trying to maintain a scene where the Law does not apply to them in the same way it does to others. It is a setup, a "staging" necessary for pleasure to occur.

PERVERSITY AS AN ATTRIBUTE OF ACTION AND MORALITY

Unlike perversion, perversity is not a diagnostic category. It belongs to the field of ethics, behavior, and social relations. Perversity is linked to the intention to cause harm, to pleasure in destruction, or the humiliation of the other without necessarily being anchored in a clinical structure of perversion.

A neurotic can act with perversity. A psychotic can commit perverse acts. Even an institution can be perverse in its dehumanizing bureaucracy. Perversity is "evil" in its rawest form: the quest to deconstruct the other to obtain an advantage or immediate jouissance (enjoyment).

The confusion arises because common sense believes that every pervert (structure) is perverse (evil). In clinical practice, we observe that many subjects with a perverse structure are law-abiding citizens whose sexual or desiring particularities occur in private and consensual settings. On the other hand, perverse (evil) subjects may have a hysterical or obsessive structure, using manipulation to hurt, driven by revenge, envy, or wounded narcissism.

THE MECHANISM OF DISAVOWAL VS. CRUEL INTENTION

The key to differentiating the two is the underlying psychic mechanism. In perversion, disavowal functions as a protection against anxiety. The pervert needs a specific "scenography" to achieve jouissance. If the fetish or the rule of their scene is not followed, they collapse or lose interest. They are a slave to their own ritual.

In perversity, the engine is often the will to power and the negation of the other's subjectivity. The perverse person (in the moral sense) views the other as a thing, an instrument. While the subject of the perverse structure needs the other to participate in their scene (even if in a position of submission), the subject of perversity seeks the annihilation of the other's will to assert their own omnipotence.

It is important to note that perversity is much closer to what psychiatry today calls antisocial personality disorder or psychopathy. In psychoanalysis, we avoid these static labels, but we recognize that perversity is an ethical refusal to recognize the other as a fellow human being.

Frederico de Lima Silva, in his master's thesis entitled Literatura e violência: efeitos do desmentido na contística de Rinaldo de Fernandes, discusses the problem surrounding the distinction between these terms in our historical itinerary. Referring to the pejorative weight that the nomenclature "perversion" has carried since its first mention around 1444, the researcher states:

All this difficulty exists, above all, due to the clear depreciative association attached to the term, which carries a disagreeable epistemological meaning, allowing for a very prejudiced interpretation of the theme, considering also the thin and borderline state in which the false correlates perversion and perversity find themselves. When we turn to popular sense, we find that the perverted subject is the one who acts based on a depraving principle, who corrupts, who distorts the order of things. The perverse individual would be, in this same sphere of popular understanding, the one who, in addition to possessing the same characteristics as the former, is governed by cruel practices (Silva, 2017, p. 55).

In turn, the French historian and psychoanalyst Elisabeth Roudinesco also discusses this misunderstanding, reflecting that:

Confused with perversity, perversion was formerly seen — especially from the Middle Ages to the end of the Classical Age — as a particular way of shaking the natural order of the world and converting men to vices, both to distort and corrupt them and to avoid any form of confrontation with the sovereignty of good and truth (Roudinesco, 2008, p. 10).

THE PLACE OF THE OTHER IN PERVERSION AND PERVERSITY

How is the other viewed in each of these cases? This is the fundamental question for the clinician.

In perversion, the other is a necessary accomplice. There is a contract, albeit implicit. The fetishist, the exhibitionist, or the voyeur needs the other to occupy a specific place so that their script of desire works. The pervert is, in a way, an "educator": they want to show the other that the Law is a sham and that jouissance is possible beyond it. Lacan said that the pervert dedicates themselves to restoring the jouissance of the Other.

In perversity, the other is a residue. There is no contract, only use. Perversity ignores alterity (otherness) to satisfy an impulse for dominance. If in perversion there is an almost ritualistic rigidity, in perversity there is an opportunistic fluidity. The moral pervert does not want to "teach" the other anything; they only want to extract what suits them, be it pleasure, money, or power, leaving behind a trail of psychic destruction.

CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS AND THE ANALYST'S MANAGEMENT

The distinction between these concepts defines how treatment will be conducted. Treating a subject with a perverse structure requires that the analyst does not position themselves as a moral judge. The challenge is to make the subject take responsibility for their jouissance and understand the consequences of their "scene" within the social bond. Analysis here often seeks to transform a "wild" perversion into something that can be mediated by speech.

Faced with perversity, however, the management is ethical. The analyst must be vigilant not to become an object of manipulation themselves. When perversity manifests in the transference, the subject attempts to destroy the analyst's knowledge or turn the session into a power game. Here, the "limit" (setting boundaries) is the primary tool.

Perversion is a structural response to the enigma of human desire and lack, while perversity is a choice (or lack thereof) in the field of action that ignores the suffering of others. A pervert can be ethical; a neurotic can be perverse. Separating diagnosis from morality is the first step toward true psychoanalytic listening.