You are a sexual deviant. A pervert, through and through. We may not want to admit it, but as the award-winning columnist and psychologist Jesse Bering reveals in Perv, there is a spectrum of perversion along which we all sit. Whether it’s voyeurism, exhibitionism, or your run-of-the-mill foot fetish, we all possess a suite of sexual tastes as unique as our fingerprints—and as secret as the rest of the skeletons we’ve hidden in our closets

Where does perversion begin? Who is perverse? Ever since the word first appeared in the Middle Ages, anyone who delights in evil and in the destruction of the self or others has been described as 'perverse'. But while the experience of perversion is universal, every era has seen it and dealt with it in its own way. The history of perversion in the West is told here through a study of great emblematic figures of the perverse - Gilles de Rais, the mystical saints and the flagellants in the middle ages, the Marquis de Sade in the eighteenth century, the masturbating child, the male homosexual and the hysterical woman nineteenth century, Nazism in the twentieth century, and the complementary figures of the paedophile and the terrorist in the twenty-first. The perverse are rarely talked about and when they are it is usually only to be condemned. They are commonly viewed as monstrous and cruel, as something alien to the very nature of being human. And yet, perversion can also attest to creativity and self-transcendence, to the refusal of individuals to submit to the rules and prohibitions that govern human life. Perversion fascinates us precisely because it can be both abject and sublime. Whether they are sublime because they turn to art or mysticism, or abject because they surrender to their murderous impulses, the perverse are part of us because they exhibit something that we always conceal: our own negativity and our dark side. -- Back cover.

"Stoller is not just a scientist but a lover of words and language. In this book, his text is as playful, charming, and serious as his topic. The mix, a scientific and aesthetic exploration of the erotic imagination, is almost as irresistible as one's own erotic daydreams. Observing the Erotic Imagination is for all professional and private students of the erotic."--Dr. Ethel Person "This book is a delight....He offers a model clinical illustration, brilliant and full of presence. Indeed, Stoller's entire book is a model of clear, elegant conversational prose."--Jerome B. Katz, M.D., Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic "Stoller presents new thoughts on his most provocative theory of the relationship between erotic excitement and fantasy of revenge and hostility."--Anke A. Ehrhardt, Ph.D. and Evan J. Elkin, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent "Stoller's account is comprehensive and levelheaded."-- Psychological Reports

Sadism and Masochism Mass Market Paperback

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.