Pleasure, Perversion and Death 1.

Pleasure in medical discourse is a broad area and here it will be greatly limited. The main focus of this section is the specific and rather new field of neuro-sciences and sciences that deal with the ‘brain’ or ‘mind’ in a psycho- and physiological manner. Like the pathology of addiction, these brain oriented sciences both re-unite the Cartesian divided subject by planting behavior firmly in the flesh while simultaneously stating that our flesh is formed through our behavior and actions, thus re-splitting in effect the mind after/equals/before body ideology prevalent in most discourses. [25] Both theories of nature and nurture immobilize behavior wherever they see its induction.

I shall limit the use of pleasure as a concept to a few basic ideas on the terminology that defines pleasure and its implications in a cultural sphere. Before I launch into a discussion with medico-biology, however, I wish to preclude its theories by pointing out the focus that is placed on the link between pleasure and the brain, i.e. the logos. A quote from Kristeva, which I will return to, is an indication both of my suspicion of locating pleasure with the brain and reason,

The firm division of body pleasure from a more transcendent intellectual or literally brain pleasure is reflected in the separation of various epistemes. All focus of pleasure upon the brain in the following section is exploratory rather than empirically true. A focus on the pleasure of the body, or embodied subject, will follow.

Pleasure is prolific amongst physiological and psychiatric texts in two basic incarnations. The first is the idea of pleasure as a release, a drive towards eradicating the trauma of unpleasure. For example, infamous fifties psychiatrist Thomas S. Szasz writes “The concept of pleasure corresponding to this view of pain is either that pleasure is the non-ringing of the bell [where the ringing stands for the sensation of aggravated pain] or that it is the successful silencing of the noise. The former idea is commonly expressed by saying that pleasure consists of the absence of pain; the latter that pleasure is the state that ensues when pain is eliminated.” [27] This idea is most prolific in Freud, who sees the pleasure-unpleasure principle as one of the primary drives of infancy. He states “The governing purpose obeyed by these primary processes is easy to recognize; it is described as the pleasure-unpleasure principle, or more shortly the pleasure principle.” [28] In its most basic definition Freud describes the pleasure/unpleasure principle as that which exists within an economy of the psyche. [29] The psyche desires equilibrium, it begins in a state of tension (unpleasure) striving to release that tension (pleasure) in order to attain a level of equilibrium. The purpose of attaining equilibrium is to govern the economy of the psyche, perhaps more aptly named the treasurer of the psyche. In this way Freud adheres rigidly to the concept that pleasure and unpleasure are available to subjectivity within a limited span or space and either an extreme of pleasure or of unpleasure is definable within this limit. The subject’s pleasure/unpleasure state is one of oscillation rather than transformation. It is limited in this sense for any transformative mode of figuring subjectivity. Pleasure as oscillation rather than transformation does not allow pleasure a potential to change the subject permanently, but only to place it in a space of unpleasure which bides its time until it is able to return to a state of equilibrium through the tonic effect of pleasure.

The second neuro/psych-theoretical incarnation sees pleasure as a yield caused by a narrative of sensation, perception and affect. [30] In a schematic understanding of this particular approach, sensation would be equivalent to what is ‘outside’ of subjectivity, the Real inflicting upon the subject; perception as the subject’s own (and only) sensory version of sensation; [31] affect, according to James Drever, the “feeling or emotion attached to ideas or idea-complexes” [32] . Both pleasure/unpleasure and sensation-perception-affect are punctuated by an establishable end result - a product - that sets the experience of pleasure into an easily readable capital equation, available for repetition. Ironically, the use of pleasure in the first model is that of a product of absence rather than presence, the absence of pain being the fiber of present pleasure. In the second example pleasure is a product of inundation. A series of forces, both interior and exterior to the subject, converge towards the end affect of pleasure, the affect itself also being readable as not necessarily an entirely singular or unified experience. Affect may be pleasurable, but its origin from the self suggests it may mingle with ambivalent or conflicting emotions along with pleasure. This is opposed to effect originating entirely outside the body and simply entering and affecting, unchanged, the inside of the body, or, in other words, something outside the self being incorporated into the self. Pleasure is not the result of an external seed planted inside the self, producing an unchanged result indivisible from the self. Re-action from the mind, the action of the mind’s perception of sensation, drags with it all the residue of the mind along with the narrative product of sensation + perception. Though the terms sensation, perception and affect read as narrative and indicate an end, they are implicitly inextricable in that they must be mixed to achieve the alchemical brew of affect, affect being the signifier of pleasure if that is the result of the equation.

Though this theory is prolific among psychiatric texts, Thomas Szasz explains that the term which bridges either end of the spectrum - perception - binds the physiological with the psychoanalytic. He states, “ As concepts, sensation is closest to physiology (and to physics), affect is closest to psychology, and perception is a mixture of the two.” [33] Ordering the terms within the pleasure equation relates to Foucault’s argument in The Order of Things that modern empirical science is concerned with the function of things which juxtaposes the classical natural historian’s concern with the description of things (in themselves and as they resembled other things). [34] Perception is ambiguous; it refers both to subject and to outside clinical observation of the subject. It is both visible and invisible in its symptoms, it can be articulated but not satisfactorily encompassed by language. It is, therefore, a contentious term, because its ordering, between psychiatry and physiology, makes it unclear. Perception is the term that binds the end terms and yet it is the one term that Szasz does not place within a scientific context, either empirically or ‘human’ly. The mistrust of any part of a scientific equation that may be sullied by subjectivity is traceable to Plato. Evelyn Keller and Christine Grontkowski point to the suspicion and disdain for terms susceptible to subjectivity in science. They state:

Science attempts the powerful task of predicting, classifying and knowing perception in and of the subject. It is attempting to know subjective experience despite, and because of, the fact that it is so suspicious and disdainful of it. There is a suggestion the ability to predict subjective experience (such as pleasure) would eventually mean an eradication of subjective knowledge (not ‘real’ knowledge in scientific terms) entirely. This process is not already uncommon - doctors tell their patients based on diagnosed illness how they feel regardless of the patient’s feeling. [36] Sensation is a change in the self through a function, (the nervous system, synaptic electrical trails, phenomenology). Affect, as a medical term, is a reaction able to be read and described. Perception however, is unique to the self and not entirely open to analysis by the physiologist or the psychologist. [37] Even though scientific definitions of pleasure seem wrought with the problematic desire for a tangible product their differing methodologies elucidate a less than stable, and not entirely easy to define as positive, term. Are scientific definitions of pleasure homogenous to each other? Is the concept of pleasure always and only a singular identifiable opposite to negative terms? Or is its relationship to such binary opposites as pain, unpleasure and psychical trauma more than simply polar?

Common understandings posit pleasure in diametrical opposition to a number of other ‘affects’ upon the body and psyche. For the single term ‘pleasure’ there seems to be multiple and frequently seemingly unrelated antipodal terms: Pain, unpleasure (which itself is polyphonous in meaning), violence, fear, absence of feeling. Attainment of pleasure according to this methodology relies on the negation of these affects; it does not seem to rely as much on positive force. For example, if sex is seen as a primary instigator of the product ‘pleasure’, whether it is infantile sexual pleasure or adult gratification, the pleasure is always haunted by sexual focus on the flesh’s potential to feel pain or to feel nothing. Libidinalization of pain during sexual activity elucidates the incredibly close proximity within which these binary terms exist. Frustrated drive for sexual gratification is also a specter in sex life. The ‘pathology’ of feeling neither pleasure nor unpleasure in sexual activity, instead feeling frustration at the absence of either is an example of pleasure over-signified as presence. This signification is available only when it has the potential for something less desirable, which may be absence.

Pleasure as presence in itself without a threatening negative partner is difficult to think. Sexual activity is pleasurable but always teetering on a precipice of potential violence upon the body of active unpleasure (in pain, in frustration, in boredom). Drive towards achieving pleasure through sexuality is a drive frequently for a specifically recognizable pleasure. Repetition creates expected pleasure as the desired result. Dominant phallologocentric terms come to mind - genital pleasure, productive orgasm, and hetero-interaction. What does unpleasure perform on the body and the mind? Szasz claims “Whereas ‘pain’ is a command for action, ‘pleasure’ (which may be equated here with contentment or happiness) calls for no action.” [38] This uncovers the contradiction implicit within a capitalist definition that sees pleasure as result, or as a benefit reaped from a narrative structure. Pleasure becomes confounding as a cultural positive by being posited as both absent-negative to the present-positive of unpleasure, as well as passive to pain’s active. Pleasure seems hard to conceive without a negative. The imaginary being that is pleasure is an object that stands before the subject as something to have or to gain possession of. The desire to grasp at pleasure is a tangible drive; otherwise drive in itself would stagnate as nothing. To be able to grasp at something necessitates its becoming visible, yet pleasure seems ‘invisible’; we can see its effect but not ‘it’ as such. It is phantasized as being readable yet there is no real description of this function. Further in this chapter, the visibility of pleasure will become important.

If pleasure is no-action, which counters the active misery or tension of subjectivity, then it is presumed that a.) All subjects live in misery unless they live without pain (which is a stagnant state; boredom) or b.) Drive is only ever a drive away from pain rather than towards pleasure. Hence sexual activity is a decrease of pain! Psychoanalytically, especially pertaining to the winding up of sexual motor energy, this may be the case. For example, in ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ Freud states

Even the ‘production’ of pleasure however, has something to do with the release or expulsion of tension, a ‘painful’ affect. There is nothing new created from the equation unpleasurable tension + production of pleasure = lowering of tension. In cultural imagination there is a very real presence of pleasure as presence rather than absence, available as an object of study, no matter how hard it is to conceptualize.

If pleasure is so pivotal to experience, and the inability to attain it causes excessive trauma that could not exist without the drive to pleasure in the first place, is the attainment of pleasure always dependent on the potential for unpleasure? This goes against the standard pleasure/unpleasure principle in that pleasure is not actively sought, only the alleviation of unpleasure is sought. But drive itself must be a seeking of pleasure, if it is opposed to instinct, which seeks alleviation of primal needs. Instinct dictates a survival mechanism is in force, drive is a choice made towards seeking pleasure. (Although drive props anacliticly upon instinct after weaning.) Is the active attainment of pleasure relevant to the pleasure/unpleasure principle? If we read the principle literally then it is not. The pleasure principle simply demands an alleviation of tension - if there is no tension there is no need for pleasure. We as subjects are encouraged to find pleasure, to seek, consume and attain it. Pleasure, despite being constantly opposed by a polar term, is here a sentient materiality, a subjectivity of its own - it is a ‘thing’, which must be sought, taken, experienced. ‘Does X give you pleasure?’ Even though pleasure is an abstract term it is imagined as a tangible, evident object, perhaps a psychical object, but one fleshed by phantasmatic desire. Common phraseology denotes pleasure as a responsive demi-god, a parent; ‘I do this for pleasure’ or ‘ I get pleasure from this’. What this suggests is that apart from an avoidance of unpleasure, pleasure may have a self of its own.

Imagining this thing ‘pleasure’ as a homogenized, communally felt same, and most importantly, predictable perception of affect, is problematic. James Feibleman, taking the empirically scientific version of the term pleasure and ‘adapting’ it to a philosophical approach, writes, “One characteristic of pleasure is that it is always the same. As a disturbance which spreads through the whole organism, it does not change in feeling, varying only in intensity, never in pervasiveness.” [40] This comment immediately brings to mind the Greeks and their configuration of degrees and intensity of pleasure. But if Feibleman’s comment is true in a biological sense (which I deeply suspect) then it could not be further from the truth in a cultural respect. His idea does not even begin to account for all the diversities of act which different subjects pursue in order to achieve pleasure. More importantly, it does not account for the fear culture has in those who pursue pleasure in a ‘perverse’ way; whether it be too much of something, not enough, or the wrong something. Feibleman’s comment begs the question: why does the definition of pleasure pose such a problem if, as he suggests, pleasure is always the same? Why does disparity in drive towards the attainment of pleasure occur if all subjectivities and all experiences arrive at an exact, repetitious conclusion? Physiology also, especially neurology, frequently arrives at a similar conclusion to Feibleman, positing identical repetitive pleasure within the brain.

Feibleman quotes another scientist of pleasure, D.O. Hebb, because of his particular expertise in neurology. The truth of the body, and especially of the brain - the seat of logos - is seen as the most conclusive example of the way in which to define a human experience. Hebb, “defines pleasure as ‘a directed growth or development in cerebral organization’.” [41] The visible growth of pleasure, the pattern available for description that makes the function accessible, which Hebb locates in the brain, makes intensity, and desire, two peculiarly invisible terms, definable as rational function. As a directed growth or development, this biological phenomenon would presumably be directed by culture, which allows an early homogenization not only of the normalized perception of pleasure but of the sensations that inspire it. Dangerous is the idea that drive and pleasure satisfaction are biologically implanted in the brain of the subject without acknowledging the cultural impact on what Hebb calls cerebral organization. Both psychoanalysis and neurophysiology agree upon this. [42] But equally dangerous is the suggestion that whether culturally or biologically formed, cerebral organization is immobilized into repetition only.

Lacanian psychoanalyst Moustafa Safouan, defines pleasure by paraphrasing Freud’s ‘Project for a Scientific Psychology’:

In the language of this apparently empirical paragraph pleasure ironically beats a path into the brain of the child, while the agony of the absence of pleasure leaves a smooth non-inscribed surface. Once again, pain is configured as bulkier, more present and swollen, than the absence (here the active absence) which is pleasure. Pleasure violently makes its absence visible by beating into the child’s brain its chasmic arrival. Pleasure in its earliest form, that which brings the most instinctual of joys, is a pain causing affect (if the beating of cortical paths may be imagined as a beating which potentially could be felt, though even the sound of it brings images of agony). It could almost be seen as some internal cortical form of masochistic experience. Elizabeth Grosz, in her discussion of the body and its many inscribable surfaces states

The brain is configured then as having a skin or surface, or at best a finite number of inscribable surfaces, which are beaten into. We submit to pleasure via the inscriptions or writing within our brain through which it remembers or recognizes and hence ‘reads the writing of’ pleasure. Considering the brain’s cortical inscriptions are electrical, the repetition of pleasure could be described as a self-inflicted form of shock treatment.

A positive aspect of Safouan’s reading of Freud is his focus on an individual experience of pleasure as beating a network of cortical channels. Here is where the brain’s potential networks could be described as pure possibility rather than a finite and predictable series of connections. The network suggests the vast array of drives, libidinalizations and experiences the subject strives with and towards in order to reach pleasure, are due, in a biological state at least, to no singular pathway leading to pleasure, (even that originally beaten out by one individual’s satiation of a drive for pleasure). Rather, even the complex subjectivity of an infant suggests pleasure follows many unrecognizable pathways frequently to achieve a singular end, and perhaps conversely a single pathway achieves many ends. Or both pathways and ends are a dizzying polyphony. This idea could be read to encourage specificity of subjectivity, both within and in reference to a subject, whether the subject is read as biological or psychical or both, in order to efface the idea of truth and perversion at a cerebral level. Such a plateau configuration of pleasure may be a way to imagine the brain itself, as a thousand plateaus, although this retains the idea of the organized body, which Deleuze and Guattari are against.

Upon consuming physio and psycho-logical theories of pleasure, the aim of defining pleasure in itself as anything - as one or many, as passive, active or absent - is elucidated as problematic. Neurology somewhat challenges this difficulty, specifying the chemicals of pleasure, such as dopamine for example, and their release, as the problem of excess pleasure, which makes the cortical trails less important than the chemical release regardless of the specific act that causes this release. It becomes difficult to highlight the diversity and unpredictability of pleasure as representing subjectivity temporally when the repetitious release of a chemical reduces all pleasure to a level of sameness. Whether or not one chooses to analyze the motivation for human pleasure, one must, it seems, analyze the motives for analyzing the motives for pleasure. Especially in a desire to excavate the biological realm of pleasure, which translates frequently to the ‘natural’ or the ‘true’, pleasure analyses are either trying to find a reason for why the human feels pleasure, or learning about how to regulate the pleasure they study. It presumes a reason, which presumes a cause/effect equation, which brings with it many other problems of behavior regulation such as pharmaceutical prevention, torture, reward, homogenized subjective experience and logic in desire (or the recognition of illogical desire). Pleasure, then, as a neurological entity, always looks to recognize the cortical pathways of pleasure, their primal creation, and then to theorize the normal against the aberration. But pleasure, by its abstraction, traverses far beyond human neurology because, beyond the basic chemical, neurology cannot tell us why, how or what pleasure works upon subjectivity. [45]

Earlier, I explained the product of pleasure, the ‘solid’ aspect of the attainment of pleasurable feeling. This aspect, which relies heavily on the equation, sensation + perception = affect, produces it as a result, the empirical equation that births a truth. In order to theorize a more amorphic, though no less affect-ive, version of pleasure a new version of the equation must be formulated - one that has little or no resemblance, both logically and empirically - to the former. The desire for the ‘solid’ must be lost especially the desire for one solid. G. Ryle, a medical psychiatrist, theorizes pleasure as such.

Ryle’s inability to actually articulate what or how the pleasure is, and even his lack of desire to do so is an indication of a non-capitalist version or incarnation of pleasure. It may also indicate certain irrationality in pleasure due to Ryle’s reluctance in defining pleasure as a term or concept unto itself. [47] His insistence that pleasure is almost inextricable from the related act and desire is very much in conformance with the Greek ideal and against the desire for a capital result of pleasure. Here the irrationality of non-definition somewhat escapes its negative connotations, because it is more difficult to align pleasure itself with the negative, especially when it is seen in polarity to other negatives (unpleasure, pain). [48] Pleasure’s slippery definition, its very slipperiness, its fluidity (rather than the solid object science phantasizes it to be) is the matrix of the joy it causes/is. Pleasure is slippery because it defies singular or object-ive definition, it is inarticulate-able, defying language as it defies bodily sanctioning, in that all bodies may experience pleasure despite their cultural status or order. [49] Irigaray, in her theorizing of the phallic supremacy of the rational solid, states

And how are we to prevent the very unconscious (of the) “subject” from being propagated as such, indeed diminished in its interpretation, by a systematics that re-marks a historical “inattention” to fluids? In other words, what structuration of (the) language does not maintain a complicity of long standing between rationality and a mechanics of solids alone? [50]

The fluidic experience of pleasure, even the image in the imagination of pleasure running and flowing, coursing through the cortical tributaries of the brain as posited by neurophysio-discourse, defies the desire to see a beneficial experience (like pleasure) as rational logic, as placed on the dominant side of cultural discourse. So rather than pushing pleasure-the-irrational outside dominant discourse, language instead articulates its presence as a solid, tangible product, exterior to and definable from activity and psychical process which exists with, and as, pleasure itself. Hand in hand with the solidification of pleasure is its visuality. Although fluids are visible, they are not easy to grasp, singular and symbol(izable). In the next section I will take quite a considerable digression to explore the visibility of pleasure, a theme which is almost the reverse of the major theme of this chapter, which is the pleasure of the visible.

Notes:

[25] Canguilhem will not return in this section, because, although his doctorate on the normal and pathological is a medical doctorate, it is suspicious enough of the medical field to be constituted as a cultural studies book. It does exhibit, however, that there are those within medicine who are suspicious of the supposed omnipotence of the field, something which my use of generally traditional texts may not clearly show but which must be acknowledged.

[27] Thomas S Szasz, Pain and Pleasure: A Study of Bodily Feelings. London: Tavistock Publications, 1957, p. vi.

[28] From Freud, (1911) ‘Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning.’ In Freud, Anna, ed. The Essentials of Psychoanalysis. Trans. James Strachey. London: Penguin. 1991, pp. 509-516, quote p. 510, quoted in Szasz, p. vi.

[29] Freud, (1911) 1991, p. 512. Freud uses the idea of expenditure in his discussion of the pleasure principle and its formulation alongside the reality principle that splits desire into either that which conforms to reality and is available or that which does not conform and hence becomes phantasy. Aversion to unpleasure within reality leads to repression, p. 510, and hence presumably an inability to regulate the pleasure principle within the reality principle would lead to psychosis. This idea is discussed further in the ‘Death’ section on the aggressive and regressive drives.

[30] Drever, James. A Dictionary of Psychology. London: Penguin. 1952, p. 201. quoted in Szasz, in his explication of this definition. 1957, p. 35.

[31] Maurice Merleau-Ponty refutes the traditional concept of perception explicitly in his phenomenological study of the term, but even his less conceptual, more corporeal version of perception privileges the dermis rather than a multi-plateaued version of corporeality that would include the viscera. See Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, (1945) Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. 1996.

[32] Drever, 1952, p. 201, quoted in Szasz, 1957, p. 35. Affect here is similar to my use of the term, however Drever would be more likely to suggest possible precise repetition of affect, as well as subsidence that would return the subject to an equilibrium.

[34] Foucault paraphrases Cuvier: “Our attention must be directed ‘rather upon the function themselves than upon the organs’; before defining organs by their variables, we must relate them to the functions they perform… so the visible diversity of structures no longer emerges from the background of a table of variables, but from the background of a few great functional units capable of being realized and of accomplishing their aims in various ways.” 1994, p. 264. Ironically, the main way in which surgeons of function in modern medicine still identify flaws or breakdowns in the functioning of an organ is through the visible and descriptive. For an example of this at an ‘everyday man’ level, see the television program Jonathan Miller’s The Body in Question (BBC 1978) Episode 12 ‘Perishable Goods’. Here two surgeons excavate the liver pathology of a recently deceased man by microscope, using only visual clues to describe the breakdown of the function.

[35] Keller, Evelyn and Grontkowski, Christine. ‘The Mind’s Eye’. In Harding, Sandra and Hintikka, Merrill B., eds. Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company. 1983, pp. 207-224. Quote from p. 212. Plato quote from ‘Theaetetus’, 186e.

[36] The whole concept of ‘pain’ in medicine is simply the signifier that brings the patient to the medical profession - it has little practical use in diagnosis and is even seen as untrustworthy in locating the site of illness. Medicine claims that where the body feels pain is more often than not away from the site of disease or inflammation. Canguilhem points this out for medicine, Schilder for body image psychiatry in Schilder, Paul. (1950) The Image and Appearance of the Human Body: Studies in the Constructive Energies of the Psyche. New York: International Universities Press. 1978. And Jonathan Miller for popular culture in his television series The Body in Question, 1978.

[37] But necessarily relevant to the problematic notion of extreme relativity. Perception would require, in its definition, more of a mixture of physiology and psychology that exceeds the uniqueness of each of the two or an overlap of both.

[39] Freud, ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ (1920). In Freud, Anna, 1991, pp. 218-268, quote p. 218.

[40] Feibleman, James K. ‘A Philosophical Analysis of Pleasure.’ in Robert G. Heath, ed. The Role of Pleasure in Behaviour. New York: Harper and Row. 1964, p. 252.

[41] Hebb, D.O. The Organization of Behaviour. New York: Wiley. 1959, pp. 232-234, quoted in Feibleman, 1964, p. 255.

[42] The medical implications of this theory are a question for bioethics, which I cannot possibly grapple with in the context of my interests. To naturalize cerebral biology without acknowledging cultural influx insinuates that if a drive is exhibited towards an act deemed culturally perverse; sexuality, food etc., it is a flaw in the body of the ‘perverse’ subject. This then becomes ‘proof’ of pathology, corporeal and psychical madness, and an inability ‘in the flesh’ to be ‘normal’. It also insinuates that there is a truth in normal behavior (the right pathways in the cerebrum) and a genetic (i.e. natural) flaw in non-normative subjectivity. For example, dopamine - the chemical given off by receptors in the brain that traces the established paths of pleasure, connected by seratonin - has been linked with schizophrenia. It is suggested that schizophrenics produce too much dopamine constantly and therefore their brains, like their subjectivity, is physiologically flawed. Eventually this could lead to the idea that perversity may not only be cured (or indeed that it needs to be at all) but that it can be physiologically prevented somehow through medical intervention at an embryonic stage. This idea is pervasive in the following chapter ‘Perversion’.

[43] Safouan, Moustafa, Pleasure and Being: Hedonism: from a Psychoanalytic Point of View. Trans. Martin Thom. London: Macmillan. 1983.

[44] Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1994a, p. 117.

[45] It can certainly theorize, but to pay any more or less attention to neurological aspects of pleasure theory is to naturalize, once again, its conclusions. Better to play with the ideas of pleasure from culture, from text, from biology and watch their interplay with each other. This is why this piece will seem at times non-committal and conflicting. Neurology itself admits that the brain is still an object of mystery within medical research.

[46] Ryle, G. The Concept of the Mind. London: Hutchinson’s University Library. 1949, pp. 108 and 132, my italics, quoted in Szasz, 1957, pp. 194 and 195.

[47] Remembering Foucault and his affirmation that in naming something as unto itself in function sciences, it becomes a real object for analysis and classification.

[48] Though, as noted earlier, pleasure does, paradoxically, align frequently with the negative terms of binary opposition: pleasure is absence rather than presence, is passive rather than active etc.

[49] In this respect pleasure is similar to Foucualt’s definition of power in that all bodies have their own version of pleasure and power which interacts with others will to pleasure/power, rather than pleasure being a monolithic element only few are allowed. This configuration elucidates the panic that perverse forms of pleasure ignite. Bodies which are traditionally oppressed cause panic for dominant culture when they experience their own pleasure, from the confusion and debate the question of what ‘female’ pleasure is in psychoanalysis, that Freud almost ignores and Lacan obsesses upon, to the biological excavation of homosexual pleasure in order to uncover its’ ‘how’ and ‘why’.

[50] Irigaray, Luce. (1977) ‘The ‘Mechanics’ of Fluids.’ In This Sex Which is Not One. Trans. Catherine Porter. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1985b, p. 107.