Assembled Gentiles

Chapter 5 resituates figurations from both Paul’s letter to the Romans and Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, particularly within the two “clobber” passages more recent users claim condemn homosexuality (in Rom 1:18–32 and 1 Cor 6:9–10). The role of Gentiles in Pauline epistles and interpretations are troubled by the figurations of the barbarian and foreign Other that appear in both of these “bashing” passages, highlighting a larger role for sexual exceptionalism than sexual orientation for understanding these arguments. Pauline repetitions of Roman imperial claims about the sexual aberration and inferiority of barbaric foreigners reflect a recurrent, yet altered significance, particularly given ongoing imperial and colonial tendencies. The unexpected resonances between those people addressed in these passages and named in the conclusion of Romans (16:1–16) and those targeted as especially barbaric or terrorizing today name the racialized stereotypes of monstrous sexuality that frequently accompany empires’ insistence about their own sexual exceptionalism and, then, provide an alternative angle on assembly and the intersecting dynamics that bring contingents together.

Two cases of transvestophilia arising following behavioural psychotherapy treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder

Early psychodynamic formulations of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)suggest that its aetiology lies in repressed sexual impulses. Despite this, sexual aberration has rarely been reported in conjunction with OCD or arising following treatment. This paper describes two case histories of patients with severe, chronic OCD whose sexually deviant behaviour increased following successful behavioural psychotherapy. Classical Freudian, behavioural cognitive and neuropsychological models for this finding are discussed.