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Overexposed: Perverting Perversions
A report on the administration of deviant desire in specialized clinics that documents the way our postmodern society exposes sexuality to the point of overexposure. Do you ever get aroused by your patient's fantasies? Do you discover through them something about your own sexuality?
–About my sexuality?
You are exposed to a lot of fantasies.
–Oh yes. Quite frankly, I think it has a satiation effect on me. I've been a sex researcher for ten years, and sometimes I get fed up with it, you know. I talk to people about sex all day long, and it does get to be a drag.
–from Overexposed The most perverse perversions are not always those one would expect. Originally conceived as an American update to Foucault's History of Sexuality , Overexposed is even more outrageous and thought-provoking today than it was twenty years ago when first published by a commercial publisher. By a strange reversal, rather than being punished, deviant desire now is administrated in specialized clinics under medical supervision. Sexual excess is being turned into a "boredom therapy" claiming to rid patients of their own desires by forcing them to indulge them past the point of satiety. But are perversions still perverse when they are vindicated unconditionally? At once clinical, bewildering, and deeply poignant, Overexposed shows how science can pervert itself by identifying too closely with its object. This insider's exposition of controversial cognitive behavioral methods (carried out with instruments straight out of A Clockwork Orange –penile transducer? pupillometer?) is a hallucinatory document on the manner in which our postmodern society exposes sexuality to the point of overexposure–in order to exterminate it.
–About my sexuality?
You are exposed to a lot of fantasies.
–Oh yes. Quite frankly, I think it has a satiation effect on me. I've been a sex researcher for ten years, and sometimes I get fed up with it, you know. I talk to people about sex all day long, and it does get to be a drag.
–from Overexposed The most perverse perversions are not always those one would expect. Originally conceived as an American update to Foucault's History of Sexuality , Overexposed is even more outrageous and thought-provoking today than it was twenty years ago when first published by a commercial publisher. By a strange reversal, rather than being punished, deviant desire now is administrated in specialized clinics under medical supervision. Sexual excess is being turned into a "boredom therapy" claiming to rid patients of their own desires by forcing them to indulge them past the point of satiety. But are perversions still perverse when they are vindicated unconditionally? At once clinical, bewildering, and deeply poignant, Overexposed shows how science can pervert itself by identifying too closely with its object. This insider's exposition of controversial cognitive behavioral methods (carried out with instruments straight out of A Clockwork Orange –penile transducer? pupillometer?) is a hallucinatory document on the manner in which our postmodern society exposes sexuality to the point of overexposure–in order to exterminate it.
213 pages, Paperback
First published February 12, 1988
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207 people want to read
About the author
Sylvère Lotringer
63 books52 followersSylvère Lotringer (born in 1938 in Paris, France) is a literary critic and cultural theorist. A younger contemporary of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio and Michel Foucault, he is best known for synthesizing French theory with American literary, cultural and architectural avant-garde movements through his work with Semiotext(e); and for his interpretations of French theory in a 21st-century context. An influential interpreter of Jean Baudrillard's theories, Lotringer invented the concept "extrapolationist" as a means of describing the hyperbolic world-views espoused by Baudrillard and Paul Virilio. Lotringer is a Professor of Foreign Philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 1, 2021
Personally speaking, I would punish sex offenders (rapists, molesters, pedophiles, lust murderers) with methods that would make the Roman and Spanish Inquisitions look like a bunch of squeamish old ladies: by skinning them, force-feeding them their hacked-off penises, tying them up with piano strings and leaving them to a hungry rat pack... something like that. Alas, four hundred centuries have deprived the world of the few positive aspects of our old-school legal system.
Nowadays we're into scientific methods that may or may not work. They don't, more often than not. Among such methods is the one described in this book, which seems to be no exception to the rule.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is supposed to change one's behavioral patterns by changing one's thought patterns. Some see it as a threat to human dignity, since it's basically a medical and legal attempt to reshape a human being from within. Others have focused on the actual results of such technique(s), which are at the very least questionable when it comes to either be condemned on the basis of a quack's clumsy report or get away with any sort of abomination courtesy of that very same quack's 'thorough analysis'.
In short, psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and CBT have proved themselves unable to deal with raging beasts who aren't in the least concerned about the moral consequences of their crimes, but only with being locked up - and therefore prevented from doing it again. That's the problem when you can't get it up unless someone ends up in a hospital bed or in therapy. Extreme deviance isn't compatible with social life, but the deviant has his own priorities: if he does heal from his mental illness, games are over. The Cat in the Hat must pack up and leave.
No doubt it's interesting to see how these Clockwork Orange methods were (still are?) implemented in a few American institutions: penile transducers, pupillometers, polygraphs, measurements, endless verbalisation of violent fantasies to the point of boredom etc. But I wonder whether it's really worth bothering (and wasting the taxpayers'money) when only 0,0001% of the subjects are genuinely willing to give up on their one and only source of pleasure.
Nowadays we're into scientific methods that may or may not work. They don't, more often than not. Among such methods is the one described in this book, which seems to be no exception to the rule.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is supposed to change one's behavioral patterns by changing one's thought patterns. Some see it as a threat to human dignity, since it's basically a medical and legal attempt to reshape a human being from within. Others have focused on the actual results of such technique(s), which are at the very least questionable when it comes to either be condemned on the basis of a quack's clumsy report or get away with any sort of abomination courtesy of that very same quack's 'thorough analysis'.
In short, psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and CBT have proved themselves unable to deal with raging beasts who aren't in the least concerned about the moral consequences of their crimes, but only with being locked up - and therefore prevented from doing it again. That's the problem when you can't get it up unless someone ends up in a hospital bed or in therapy. Extreme deviance isn't compatible with social life, but the deviant has his own priorities: if he does heal from his mental illness, games are over. The Cat in the Hat must pack up and leave.
No doubt it's interesting to see how these Clockwork Orange methods were (still are?) implemented in a few American institutions: penile transducers, pupillometers, polygraphs, measurements, endless verbalisation of violent fantasies to the point of boredom etc. But I wonder whether it's really worth bothering (and wasting the taxpayers'money) when only 0,0001% of the subjects are genuinely willing to give up on their one and only source of pleasure.
September 22, 2008
It's real life Clockwork Orange!
February 13, 2016
Ok there are two major trains of stuff going on in this book: (1) a description of cognitive behavioral therapy to treat sexual "deviants" and (2) Lotringer believing that this has something to say about culture in general. There is interesting material here (including that the sex researchers in the treatment center don't really seem to conceptualize a distinction between pedophilia, homosexuality, and transvestism) but the real thread of this is devoted to what reads as a low key apologia for pedophilia because there are definite questions of agency but Lotringer obsesses with those questions and ignores the whole "maybe there is some net good in preventing people from doing some of these things". I wanted to like this book more but even in 1988 i think it would have been extremely dry.
March 21, 2022
Adding this review in after much deliberation upon both the subject matter and the delivery style:
Lotringer has certainly collated a vast amount of data. Human sexuality and the legal/social/cultural mores that govern its expression and context(s) is an ongoing, multifaceted debate. Ditto to sex crimes and the racial, economic, gender and sometimes religious biases which determine who gets labeled a 'criminal' and who is simply regarded as 'mentally ill'. The book does include a lot of instances where perpetrators are afforded the consequences and benefits of both- i.e. jail time AND treatment.
Lotringer conducts his analysis in a neutral, informative tone, which judges neither the 'patients' (offenders) nor the clinical staff. The moral, social and gender aspects are, for the most part, left to the reader's discretion. I can appreciate this from an academic and/or research standpoint; this book is not for you if you need a an accompanying moral compass for its obviously grotesque (but nonetheless important) subject matter.
The storytelling/stream of consciousness tone that is employed, particularly in the re-telling of offenders' experiences and confessions, is both useful for conveying the full effect(s) of the psychological/mental forces that are at work, as well as in providing justification (particularly in the case of juvenile offenders*) for the treatment methods used. Whether or not you personally agree with the numerous counselling chats, tape recordings and blood-pressure measuring apparatus may determine your primary perception of the work.
Lotringer has certainly collated a vast amount of data. Human sexuality and the legal/social/cultural mores that govern its expression and context(s) is an ongoing, multifaceted debate. Ditto to sex crimes and the racial, economic, gender and sometimes religious biases which determine who gets labeled a 'criminal' and who is simply regarded as 'mentally ill'. The book does include a lot of instances where perpetrators are afforded the consequences and benefits of both- i.e. jail time AND treatment.
Lotringer conducts his analysis in a neutral, informative tone, which judges neither the 'patients' (offenders) nor the clinical staff. The moral, social and gender aspects are, for the most part, left to the reader's discretion. I can appreciate this from an academic and/or research standpoint; this book is not for you if you need a an accompanying moral compass for its obviously grotesque (but nonetheless important) subject matter.
The storytelling/stream of consciousness tone that is employed, particularly in the re-telling of offenders' experiences and confessions, is both useful for conveying the full effect(s) of the psychological/mental forces that are at work, as well as in providing justification (particularly in the case of juvenile offenders*) for the treatment methods used. Whether or not you personally agree with the numerous counselling chats, tape recordings and blood-pressure measuring apparatus may determine your primary perception of the work.
June 17, 2024
Rly wild. Picked this up based on the cover — don’t think im some sort of freak. This book is simultaneously horrifying, propulsive, disgusting, violent, funny… it also exposes the complete deficit of the semiotexte/continental/freudian viewpoint against something like (I would not describe this therapy as science… but,) the scientific method. Lotringer and Sachs are having two different conversations, and lotringer fails at each point to undermine Sachs’ method, which boils down to something fairly commonplace (and pragmatic!) in both moral and philosophical terms. Not that lotringer is wrong about what this method does to societies (of control) - he isn’t - but it just isn’t that… effective? Or Interesting? I mean maybe it was in the 80s. It’s our snowian disjunction again — the forking paths of the literary and the scientific — which aren’t brought together here, but kept further apart.
This book is a much better document when read in the context of what desire actually looks like for these pervs, and what consumption and boredom does to them. Throw Foucault out, keep the fantasy.
Anyways, any sex and love addict might take this book as a method for cure. It wouldn’t work for other addiction, though.
This book is a much better document when read in the context of what desire actually looks like for these pervs, and what consumption and boredom does to them. Throw Foucault out, keep the fantasy.
Anyways, any sex and love addict might take this book as a method for cure. It wouldn’t work for other addiction, though.
September 22, 2024
“‘You find boredom powerful?’
‘Can you find me something stronger?’
‘In sexual terms?’
‘That's what I said. Find me something stronger.’
‘It's stronger than electric aversion?’
‘That's correct.’
‘Don't you think this is true for the culture as a whole?’
‘I don't think so. The culture is constantly developing new sexual things. That's why Playboy always has a different playmate every month.’"
—
“I'm feeling my slip as I run my hands over my ass. My dick is hard.
I would like to be a woman.
I would like to have softer skin.
I would like to have female genitals.
I would like to be a wife.
I would like to be a mother.
I would like to be a husband.
I would like to have a deep masculine voice.
I would like to have male genitals.
I would like to be a father.
I'm fucking my daughter. I feel her smooth little body beneath mine.”
—
“The haunting image of the bull stopped dead by an invisible switch already stands, monumental, at the threshold of another era. Physical coercion has run its course. Talking is now the punishment.”
‘Can you find me something stronger?’
‘In sexual terms?’
‘That's what I said. Find me something stronger.’
‘It's stronger than electric aversion?’
‘That's correct.’
‘Don't you think this is true for the culture as a whole?’
‘I don't think so. The culture is constantly developing new sexual things. That's why Playboy always has a different playmate every month.’"
—
“I'm feeling my slip as I run my hands over my ass. My dick is hard.
I would like to be a woman.
I would like to have softer skin.
I would like to have female genitals.
I would like to be a wife.
I would like to be a mother.
I would like to be a husband.
I would like to have a deep masculine voice.
I would like to have male genitals.
I would like to be a father.
I'm fucking my daughter. I feel her smooth little body beneath mine.”
—
“The haunting image of the bull stopped dead by an invisible switch already stands, monumental, at the threshold of another era. Physical coercion has run its course. Talking is now the punishment.”
August 4, 2019
My first book that I have read on this subject so I am perhaps not that qualified to judge its subject matter. Nonetheless I found the book made the subject matter very engaging and made me more interested into reading more about sexuality.
The use of the interview format made the material very realistic and easy to read.
Would thoroughly recommend this
The use of the interview format made the material very realistic and easy to read.
Would thoroughly recommend this
February 3, 2018
the writing was great, and the subject matter phenomenal, I was just left wanting...a bit more. but that might be up to me to discover
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews