MARY MORGAN AND JUDITH FREEDMAN
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in a way that diminishes them as people. Their perverse activities rob the other person of
the uniqueness and fullness of their experience. The other is required to become just what
the partner wants him or her to be. If the other complies, it is at the price of becoming much
less of an individual. We suggest that this deadening constriction within the couple results
from the hatred that is at the core of the perversion.
We find the notions of `defensive sameness' and 'defensive difference' helpful in this
context. We mean by these an insistence that the other is completely the same as or
completely different from oneself. These beliefs are maintained with certainty for defensive
reasons, when a true reckoning of what is the same and what is different threatens to expose
the separateness and independence of an individual's existence. The other person is
dismissed as entirely the same (so there is nothing to get to know) or as entirely different (
and therefore unknowable).
The perverse act often represents an attempt to obliterate differences, whether between
the sexes as in cross-dressing or between the generations as in incest, or by exploring
differences in a controlling way. The characters in this film seem to have very much in mind
their differences from one another. John says early on: 'Graham? We were very close many
years ago, but I think we're very different now'. Graham agrees and says a little later, 'John
and I were very much alike'. It is interesting that neither of them says which one supposedly
has changed. When Graham asks Ann to describe her sister, the first thing she says is that
she is very different from Cynthia. Cynthia pointedly seems to live her life as differently
from Ann as possible, but then she wants to take over her sister's husband and marital bed.
We come to know that these characters are expressing defensive differences from each
other. As events in the film proceed, the defensive process is revealed as the four characters
gradually transform their self-images into what previously was their hated other. Thus,
Cynthia wants most to have sex in a marital bed and ends up withdrawing from her
promiscuous relationship with John. Ann reveals herself as interested in sex and begins a
new, presumably sexual, relationship with Graham. Meanwhile, Graham steps into John's
position as partner to Ann, while John becomes the odd man out, as Graham was at the
beginning of the film. Ann tries to keep interest in sex located in Cynthia, while Cynthia
tries to keep fear of sex located in Ann. But already this distinction is breaking down. Ann's
obvious excitement and interest in the details of what happened between Cynthia and
Graham belie her insistence that 'I don't want to talk about it'. What we are seeing here can
be thought about as aspects of perverse internal relationships enacted in couple
relationships. In other words, at the beginning of the film, each character invokes projective
identification to rid themselves of internal parts that they cannot face. Cynthia carries Ann's
sexuality. Ann carries Cynthia's identification with their mother. John is the potent man and
liar for Graham. Graham is the sexual and professional failure for John.
This splitting up of internal experience is a central aspect of perversion. Couple
relationships present an arena, particularly for more disturbed couples, in which the
partners can divide between themselves aspects of their internal lives and evade the reality
of who they are. Knowing that this is happening leaves us, as observers, with an ill-at-ease
sense that something unpleasant is being done by each character to another, something that
rigidly constrains both themselves and the other. Hence, we might construe the frequent
accusations about lying as a reference to what each character is unwilling to face about him
or herself. It is only with the resolution at the end of the film that Ann can admit this. She
says, 'I hate it when I have feelings she