The influence of legal medicine on the delimitation of the concept of perversion is analyzed here. In the process, a different approach is described, one that identifies the pervert as a figure of social imagery whose function is to bring about social cohesion around and against itself - the scapegoat. The focus of research moves toward mental and social mechanisms, as well as needs that stimulate the psychodynamics of expiation, in other words, in the engendering of scapegoats.
Psychoanalysis; perversion; legal medicine; scapegoat