Freud - Complete Works (259 page)

   Psychical hermaphroditism would
gain substance if the inversion of the sexual object were at least
accompanied by a parallel change-over of the subject’s other
mental qualities, instincts and character traits into those marking
the opposite sex. But it is only in inverted women that
character-inversion of this kind can be looked for with any
regularity. In men the most complete mental masculinity can be
combined with inversion. If the belief in psychical hermaphroditism
is to be persisted in, it will be necessary to add that its
manifestations in various spheres show only slight signs of being
mutually determined. Moreover the same is true of somatic
hermaphroditism: according to Halban (1903),¹ occurrences of
individual atrophied organs and of secondary sexual characters are
to a considerable extent independent of one another.

  
¹
His paper includes a bibliography of the
subject.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1472

   The theory of bisexuality has
been expressed in its crudest form by a spokesman of the male
inverts: ‘a feminine brain in a masculine body’. But we
are ignorant of what characterizes a feminine brain. There is
neither need nor justification for replacing the psychological
problem by the anatomical one. Krafft-Ebing’s attempted
explanation seems to be more exactly framed than that of Ulrichs
but does not differ from it in essentials. According to
Krafft-Ebing (1895, 5), every individual’s bisexual
disposition endows him with masculine and feminine brain centres as
well as with somatic organs of sex: these centres develop only at
puberty, for the most part under the influence of the sex-gland,
which is independent of them in the original disposition. But what
has just been said of masculine and feminine brains applies equally
to masculine and feminine ‘centres’; and incidentally
we have not even any grounds for assuming that certain areas of the
brain (‘centres’) are set aside for the functions of
sex, as is the case, for instance with those of speech.¹

   Nevertheless, two things emerge
from these discussions. In the first place, a bisexual disposition
is somehow concerned in inversion, though we do not know in what
that disposition consists, beyond anatomical structure. And
secondly, we have to deal with disturbances that affect the sexual
instinct in the course of its development.

  
¹
It appears (from a bibliography given in
the sixth volume of the
Jahrbuch für sexuelle
Zwischenstufen
) that E. Gley was the first writer to suggest
bisexuality as an explanation of inversion. As long ago as in
January, 1884, he published a paper, ‘Les aberrations de
l’instinct sexuel’, in the
Revue Philosophique
.
It is, moreover, noteworthy that the majority of authors who derive
inversion from bisexuality bring forward that factor not only in
the case of inverts, but also for all those who have grown up to be
normal, and that, as a logical consequence, they regard inversion
as the result of a disturbance in development. Chevalier (1893)
already writes in this sense. Krafft-Ebing (1895, 10) remarks that
there are a great number of observations ‘which prove at
least the virtual persistence of this second centre (that of the
subordinated sex).’ A Dr. Arduin (1900) asserts that
‘there are masculine and feminine elements in every human
being (cf. Hirschfeld, 1899); but one set of these - according to
the sex of the person in question - is incomparably more strongly
developed than the other, so far as heterosexual individuals are
concerned. . . .’ Herman (1903) is convinced
that ‘masculine elements and characteristics are present in
every woman and feminine ones in every man’, etc.
[
Added
1910:] Fliess (1906) subsequently claimed the idea of
bisexuality (in the sense of
duality of sex
) as his own.
[
Added
1924:] In lay circles the hypothesis of human
bisexuality is regarded as being due to O. Weininger, the
philosopher, who died at an early age, and who made the idea the
basis of a somewhat unbalanced book (1903). The particulars which I
have enumerated above will be sufficient to show how little
justification there is for the claim.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1473

SEXUAL OBJECT OF INVERTS
  
The theory of psychical hermaphroditism presupposes that

                                                 
the sexual object of an invert is the opposite of that of a normal
person. An inverted man, it holds, is like a woman in being subject
to the charm that proceeds from masculine attributes both physical
and mental: he feels he is a woman in search of a man.

   But however well this applies to
quite a number of inverts, it is, nevertheless, far from revealing
a universal characteristic of inversion. There can be no doubt that
a large proportion of male inverts retain the mental quality of
masculinity, that they possess relatively few of the secondary
characters of the opposite sex and that what they look for in their
sexual object are in fact feminine mental traits. If this were not
so, how would it be possible to explain the fact that male
prostitutes who offer themselves to inverts - to-day just as they
did in ancient times imitate women in all the externals of their
clothing and behaviour? Such imitation would otherwise inevitably
clash with the ideal of the inverts. It is clear that in Greece,
where the most masculine men were numbered among the inverts, what
excited a man’s love was not the
masculine
character
of a boy, but his physical resemblance to a woman as well as his
feminine mental qualities - his shyness, his modesty and his need
for instruction and assistance. As soon as the boy became a man he
ceased to be a sexual object for men and himself, perhaps, became a
lover of boys. In this instance, therefore, as in many others, the
sexual object is not someone of the same sex but someone who
combines the characters of both sexes; there is as, it were, a
compromise between an impulse that seeks for a man and one that
seeks for a woman, while it remains a paramount condition that the
object’s body (i.e. genitals) shall be masculine. Thus the
sexual object is a kind of reflection of the subject’s own
bisexual nature.¹

   The position in the case of women
is less ambiguous; for among them the active inverts exhibit
masculine characteristics, both physical and mental, with peculiar
frequency and look for femininity in their sexual objects - though
here again a closer knowledge of the facts might reveal greater
variety.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1910:] It is true
that psycho-analysis has not yet produced a complete explanation of
the origin of inversion; nevertheless, it has discovered the
psychical mechanism of its development, and has made essential
contributions to the statement of the problems involved. In all the
cases we have examined we have established the fact that the future
inverts, in the earliest years of their childhood, pass through a
phase of very intense but short lived fixation to a woman (usually
their mother), and that, after leaving this behind, they identify
themselves with a woman and take
themselves
as their sexual
object. That is to say, they proceed from a narcissistic basis, and
look for a young man who resembles themselves and whom
they
may love as their mother loved
them
. Moreover, we have
frequently found that alleged inverts have been by no means
insusceptible to the charms of women, but have continually
transposed the excitation aroused by women on to a male object.
They have thus repeated all through their lives the mechanism by
which their inversion arose. Their compulsive longing for men has
turned out to be determined by their ceaseless flight from
women.

  
[
Added
1915:] Psycho-analytic research is most decidedly
opposed to any attempt at separating off homosexuals from the rest
of mankind as a group of a special character. By studying sexual
excitations other than those that are manifestly displayed, it has
found that all human beings are capable of making a homosexual
object-choice and have in fact made one in their unconscious.
Indeed, libidinal attachments to persons of the same sex play no
less a part as factors in normal mental life, and a greater part as
a motive force for illness, than do similar attachments to the
opposite sex. On the contrary, psycho-analysis considers that a
choice of an object independently of its sex - freedom to range
equally over male and female objects - as it is found in childhood,
in primitive states of society and early periods of history, is the
original basis from which, as a result of restriction in one
direction or the other, both the normal and the inverted types
develop. Thus from the point of view of psycho-analysis the
exclusive sexual interest felt by men for women is also a problem
that needs elucidating and is not a self-evident fact based upon an
attraction that is ultimately of a chemical nature. A
person’s final sexual attitude is not decided until after
puberty and is the result of a number of factors, not all of which
are yet known; some are of a constitutional nature but others are
accidental. No doubt a few of these factors may happen to carry so
much weight that they influence the result in their sense. But in
general the multiplicity of determining factors is reflected in the
variety of manifest sexual attitudes in which they find their issue
in mankind. In inverted types, a predominance of archaic
constitutions and primitive psychical mechanisms is regularly to be
found. Their most essential characteristics seem to be a coming
into operation of narcissistic object-choice and a retention of the
erotic significance of the anal zone. There is nothing to be
gained, however, by separating the most extreme types of inversion
from the rest on the basis of constitutional peculiarities of that
kind. What we find as an apparently sufficient explanation of these
types can be equally shown to be present, though less strongly, in
the constitution of transitional types and of those whose manifest
attitude is normal. The differences in the end-products may be of a
qualitative nature, but analysis shows that the differences between
their determinants are only quantitative. Among the accidental
factors that influence object-choice we have found that frustration
(in the form of an early deterrence, by fear, from sexual activity)
deserves attention, and we have observed that the presence of both
parents plays an important part. The absence of a strong father in
childhood not infrequently favours the occurrence of inversion.
Finally, it may be insisted that the concept of inversion in
respect of the sexual object should be sharply distinguished from
that of the occurrence in the subject of a mixture of sexual
characters. In the relation between these two factors, too, a
certain degree of reciprocal independence is unmistakably
present.

  
[
Added
1920:] Ferenczi (1914) has brought forward a number
of interesting points on the subject of inversion. He rightly
protests that, because they have in common the symptom of
inversion, a large number of conditions, which are very different
from one another and which are of unequal importance both in
organic and psychical respects, have been thrown together under the
name of ‘homosexuality’ (or, to follow him in giving it
a better name, ‘homo-erotism’). He insists that a sharp
distinction should at least be made between two types:
‘subject homo-erotics’, who feel and behave like women,
and ‘object homo-erotics’, who are completely masculine
and who have merely exchanged a female for a male object. The first
of these two types he recognizes as true ‘sexual
intermediates’ in Hirschfeld’s sense of the word; the
second he describes, less happily, as obsessional neurotics.
According to him, it is only in the case of object homo-erotics
that there is any question of their struggling against their
inclination to inversion or of the possibility of their being
influenced psychologically. While granting the existence of these
two types, we may add that there are many people in whom a certain
quantity of subject homo-erotism is found in combination with a
proportion of object homo-erotism.

  
During the last few years work carried out by biologists, notably
by Steinach, has thrown a strong light on the organic determinants
of homo-erotism and of sexual characters in general. By carrying
out experimental castration and subsequently grafting the
sex-glands of the opposite sex, it was possible in the case of
various species of mammals to transform a male into a female and
vice versa. The transformation affected more or less completely
both the somatic sexual characters and the psychosexual attitude
(that is, both subject and object erotism). It appeared that the
vehicle of the force which thus acted as a sex-determinant was not
the part of the sex-gland which forms the sex-cells but what is
known as its interstitial tissue (the ‘puberty-gland’).
In one case this transformation of sex was actually effected in a
man who had lost his testes owing to tuberculosis. In his sexual
life he behaved in a feminine manner, as a passive homosexual, and
exhibited very clearly marked feminine sexual characters of a
secondary kind (e.g. in regard to growth of hair and beard and
deposits of fat on the breasts and hips). After an undescended
testis from another male patient had been grafted into him, he
began to behave in a masculine manner and to direct his libido
towards women in a normal way. Simultaneously his somatic feminine
characters disappeared. (Lipschütz, 1919, 356-7.)