Where does perversion begin? Who is perverse? Ever since the wordfirst appeared in the Middle Ages, anyone who delights in evil andin 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 astudy of great emblematic figures of the perverse - Gilles de Rais,the mystical saints and the flagellants in the middle ages, theMarquis 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 ofthe paedophile and the terrorist in the twenty-first.
The perverse are rarely talked about and when they are it isusually only to be condemned. They are commonly viewed as monstrousand cruel, as something alien to the very nature of being human.And yet, perversion can also attest to creativity andself-transcendence, to the refusal of individuals to submit to therules and prohibitions that govern human life. Perversionfascinates us precisely because it can be both abject and sublime.Whether they are sublime because they turn to art or mysticism, orabject because they surrender to their murderous impulses, theperverse are part of us because they exhibit something that wealways conceal: our own negativity and our dark side.