A mini-essay which illuminates the psychoanalytical concept of perversion and its relationship to the way people lead real lives. It is jargon-free and includes examples taken from the lives of well-known people, and from art, music, poetry and literature.

Whilst Freud clearly intended the psychoanalytic term "perversion" to be from the moral judgement that the world carries in colloquial use, its relationship to feelings of contempt, triumph, sexual excitement and to shame, revulsion and fear, necessarily make it a troubling concept. To what extent is moral panic about homosexuality and perversion a hysterical outburst from a fragile "normality"? The liberalisation of the legal status of homosexuality in Britain and the USA has encouraged attempts to recast perversion as "neo-sexualities" or as Foucauldian' "Queer Theory". As perversion is both a form of sexuality and a form of thinking or belief, it is ubiquitous, in sublimated forms, in the culture surrounding us. It is also a universal component of human sexuality. Having explained the original Freudian concept and the extent to which it is currently used as a diagnostic term, the author goes on to discuss how it can be used in the analysis of contemporary culture and everyday life.