the type of possession that is the object of sexual desire is carried out by “a double reciprocal incarnation” and that this is accomplished, typically in the form of a caress, in the following way: “I make myself flesh in order to impel the Other to realize for- herself and for me her own flesh, and my caresses cause my flesh to be born for me in so far as it is for the Other flesh causing her to be born as flesh” The incarnation in question is described variously as a clogging or troubling of consciousness, which is inundated by the flesh in which it is embodied.
appetite, it would seem, can have perversions if in addition to its biological function it has a significant psychological structure. In the case of hunger, psychological complexity is provided by the activities that give it expression.
reflexive mutual recognition is to be found in the phenomenon of meaning, which appears to involve an intention to produce a belief or other effect in another by bringing about his recognition of one’s intention to produce that effect. Sex has a related structure: it involves a desire that one’s partner be aroused by the recognition of one’s desire that he or she be aroused.
All stages of sexual perception are varieties of identification of a person with his body. What is perceived is one’s own or another’s subjection to or immersion in his body
Desire is therefore not merely the perception of a preexisting embodiment of the other, but ideally a contribution to his further embodiment which in turn enhances the original subject’s sense of himself. This explains why it is important that the partner be aroused, and not merely aroused, but aroused by the awareness of one’s desire. It also explains the sense in which desire has unity and possession as its object: physical possession must eventuate in creation of the sexual object in the image of one’s desire, and not merely in the object’s recognition of that desire, or in his or her own private arousal.
if the object of desire is not alive, the experience is reduced entirely to an awareness of one’s own sexual embodiment.
Sadism concentrates on the evocation of passive self-awareness in others, but the sadist’s engagement is itself active and requires a retention of deliberate control which impedes awareness of himself as a bodily subject of passion in the required sense
regard as sadistic an excessive preoccupation with sexual technique, which does not permit one to abandon the role of agent at any stage of the sexual act. Ideally one should be able to surmount one’s technique at some point. A masochist on the other hand imposes the same disability on his partner as the sadist imposes on himself. The masochist cannot find a satisfactory embodiment as the object of another’s sexual desire, but only as the object of his control. He is passive not in relation to his partner’s passion but in relation to his nonpassive agency. In addition, the subjection to one’s body characteristic of pain and physical restraint is of a very different kind from that of sexual excitement: pain causes people to contract rather than dissolve. Both of these disorders have to do with the second stage, which involves the awareness of oneself as an object of desire. In straight- forward sadism and masochism other attentions are substituted for desire as a source of the object’s self-awareness
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