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The notion of transitory perversion was used fifty years ago about an adolescent in an article by R. Lebovici that was commented upon and discussed by J. Lacan in his seminar and in his Écrits. The author shows how this notion got lost in the meandering discussions about adult perversion that arose afterwards. However, it is particularly useful now, when there is a tendency to prejudge a subject’s future on the basis of his childhood or adolescent behaviour. We can see that it attests to difficulties in making certain messages prevail over sexual expression in the proper sense, and is a prerequisite for sexual identification. Qualifying the perversion as « transitory » is enough to signify that it is not a perversions in the same sense as in the adult, though it nevertheless has much to teach us about adult perversion.