Based on the genealogical and epistemological analyzes proposed by Foucault and Lanteri-Laura, we aim to discern which are the main discursive lines that constituted the knowledge around perversion, producing a so-called perverse subject. It emerges in a fundamental way from this reading how the idea of transgression of limits accompanies the history of the perverse: whether the moral limit imposed by divine authority, whether the legal limit determined by criminal law, or the normal limit defined by medicine, perversion always points towards the transgressive excess. Such readings constitute the epistemological ground on which Freud relies to develop the conception of a metapsychology whose central axis is sexuality. The Freudian discourse subverts the status of perversion by affrming it as an inescapable dimension of sexuality and of the constitution of human subjectivity.
Key words:
Perversion; sexuality; transgression; psychoanalysis