"No one can hate you more than I do": The perverse interplay of life and death drives in Roman Polanski's film Bitter Moon.

In this paper, the authors explore the depiction of perversion and the associated interplay of life and death drives in Roman Polanski's 1992 film Bitter Moon. To begin with, a theoretical discussion is presented regarding perverse organizations of mastery and sadomasochism. Perversion is viewed as an expression of the death drive under erotic disguise, in which the destructive fingerprint of the death drive is revealed at every stage, having as its ultimate purpose the destruction of the other. Based on these theoretical insights a dialogue is developed with Polanski's film, which brings to life the theory of sadomasochistic relations through the multidimensional aesthetic medium of cinema. It is shown how Polanski's cinematic oeuvre conveys the essence of the difficult and complex experience of perverse relations, where the life and death drives and their transformations are manifested. The portrayal of the sadomasochistic relations in this film contributes to the experiential knowledge with which the authors promote insight that would potentially enrich the clinical work with patients with perverse organizations.

Do I Dare to Be Human? The Perverse Failure to Mourn, to Think, and to Love.

The authors discuss the relation between perverse psychic formations and the ability to develop a mind of one's own. The authors characterize the formation of perversity in terms of failure to develop the key capacities of thinking, mourning, and loving. These failures result in the abolishment of thinking and the repudiation of separateness and lead to the creation of different kinds of twisted coalitions, which shape the transference-counter-transference matrix. Persons with perverse psychic organizations have difficulties developing their own minds due to their refusal to acknowledge human limitations and their inability to accept the fundamental differences of human existence: self-other, child-adult, male-female. These characterizations are illustrated by clinical material, including a detailed analytic session, demonstrating the perverse aggresivization and sexualization of the analytic relationship. The role of the analyst is to detoxify the violence and destruction and to translate the language of perversion into the language of love.

Borges in my office: the analysis of a man dwelling outside of time.

This article weaves together two threads: the intricacies of the analysis of a difficult-to-reach yet extraordinary patient and the literary works of Jorge Luis Borges, which played a significant role in the analysis as a source of inspiration, enriching the analyst's reverie and opening up new psychic spaces. The authors demonstrate the analyst's recourse to several of Borges's stories in order to enrich his own inner world and to better understand the analysand. Some of these stories are briefly presented through the analyst's dialogue with them, and there is a discussion of their function in facilitating the process of working through issues of time, memory, mortality, and identity, contributing to the enhancement of the patient's ability to come face to face with the unwanted, split-off parts of his self and of reality.