Writing ‘Perverse’ Behaviour for the Feiticeiro/a: Revisioning the ICD Diagnostic Criteria

Abstract

If the Feiticeiro/a as a psychologically defined and complex character is to be seen as an embodied form/structure (not substance) that exists in dialectical relationships between self, other and discursive constructions of society, a clearer indication should be made about what kinds of behaviours or actions he/she should engage in. This chapter explores how psychiatric diagnostic criteria fail to provide assistance, despite professing to authoritatively mark stable, reliable and accurate epistemic boundaries to sexual activity. The chapter thereby addresses questions of the description of actions versus the demarcation of thoughts, objects, feelings and time as invisible and abstracted notions that are virtually the opposite of what is useful for an episteme for the Feiticeiro/a. It also approaches how the diagnostic criteria codify ‘perverse’ activity in determinist terms, thereby insidiously refusing an epistemic construct of action into which is built an acknowledgement of the behaviours of the Feiticeiro/a as a complex subjectivity.