Freud - Complete Works (265 page)

   Moreover, the connection between
infantile and hysterical amnesia is more than a mere play upon
words. Hysterical amnesia, which occurs at the bidding of
repression, is only explicable by the fact that the subject is
already in possession of a store of memory-traces which have been
withdrawn from conscious disposal, and which are now, by an
associative link, attracting to themselves the material which the
forces of repression are engaged in repelling from
consciousness.¹ It may be said that without infantile amnesia
there would be no hysterical amnesia.

   I believe, then, that infantile
amnesia, which turns everyone’s childhood into something like
a prehistoric epoch and conceals from him the beginnings of his own
sexual life, is responsible for the fact that in general no
importance is attached to childhood in the development of sexual
life. The gaps in our knowledge which have arisen in this way
cannot be bridged by a single observer. As long ago as in the year
1896 I insisted on the significance of the years of childhood in
the origin of certain important phenomena connected with sexual
life, and since then I have never ceased to emphasize the part
played in sexuality, by the infantile factor.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1915:] The mechanism
of repression cannot be understood unless account is taken of
both
of these two concurrent processes. They may be compared
with the manner in which tourists are conducted to the top of the
Great Pyramid of Giza by being pushed from one direction and pulled
from the other.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1499

THE
PERIOD OF SEXUAL LATENCY IN CHILDHOOD AND ITS INTERRUPTIONS

   The remarkably frequent reports
of what are described as irregular and exceptional sexual impulses
in childhood, as well as the uncovering in neurotics of what have
hitherto been unconscious memories of childhood, allow us to sketch
out the sexual occurrences of that period in some such way as
this.¹

   There seems no doubt that germs
of sexual impulses are already present in the new-born child and
that these continue to develop for a time, but are then overtaken
by a progressive process of suppression; this in turn is itself
interrupted by periodical advances in sexual development or may be
held up by individual peculiarities. Nothing is known for certain
concerning the regularity and periodicity of this oscillating
course of development. It seems, however, that the sexual life of
children usually emerges in a form accessible to observation round
about the third or fourth year of life.²

  
¹
We are able to make use of the second of
these two sources material since we are justified in expecting that
the early years of children who are later to become neurotic are
not likely in this respect to differ
essentially
from those
of children who are to grow up into normal adults, [
added
1915:] but only in the intensity and clarity of the phenomena
involved.

  
²
There is a possible anatomical analogy to
what I believe to be the course of development of the infantile
sexual function in Bayer’s discovery (1902) that the internal
sexual organs (i.e. the uterus) are as a rule larger in new-born
children than in older ones. It is not certain, however, what view
we should take of this involution that occurs after birth (which
has been shown by Halban to apply also to other portions of the
genital apparatus). According to Halban (1904) the process of
involution comes to an end after a few weeks of extra-uterine life.
[
Added
1920:] Those authorities who regard the interstitial
portion of the sex-gland as the organ that determines sex have on
their side been led by anatomical researches to speak of infantile
sexuality and a period of sexual latency. I quote a passage from
Lipschütz’s book (1919, 168), which I mentioned on
p. 1473 
n
.
: ‘We shall
be doing more justice to the facts if we say that the maturation of
the sexual characters which is accomplished at puberty is only due
to a great acceleration which occurs at that time of processes
which began much earlier - in my view as early as during
intra-uterine life.’ ‘What has hitherto been described
in a summary way as puberty is probably only a second major phase
of puberty which sets in about the middle of the second decade of
life . . . Childhood, from birth until the beginning of this second
major phase, might be described as "the intermediate phase of
puberty"' (ibid., 170). Attention was drawn to this
coincidence between anatomical findings and psychological
observation in a review by Ferenczi (1920). The agreement is marred
only by the fact that the ‘first peak’ in the
development of the sexual organ occurs during the early
intra-uterine period, whereas the early efflorescence of infantile
sexual life must be ascribed to the third and fourth years of life.
There is, of course, no need to expect that anatomical growth and
psychical development must be exactly simultaneous. The researches
in question were made on the sex-glands of human beings. Since a
period of latency in the psychological sense does not occur in
animals, it would be very interesting to know whether the
anatomical findings which have led these writers to assume the
occurrence of two peaks in sexual development are also demonstrable
in the higher animals.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1500

SEXUAL
INHIBITIONS
   It is during this period of total or
only partial latency that are built up the

                   
                mental
forces which are later to impede the course of the sexual instinct
and, like dams, restrict its flow - disgust, feelings of shame and
the claims of aesthetic and moral ideals. One gets an impression
from civilized children that the construction of these dams is a
product of education, and no doubt education has much to do with
it. But in reality this development is organically determined and
fixed by heredity, and it can occasionally occur without any help
at all from education. Education will not be trespassing beyond its
appropriate domain if it limits itself to following the lines which
have already been laid down organically and to impressing them
somewhat more clearly and deeply.

REACTION-FORMATION AND
SUBLIMATION
   What is it that goes to the making
of these

                                                                     
constructions which are so important for the growth of a civilized
and normal individual? They probably emerge at the cost of the
infantile sexual impulses themselves. Thus the activity of those
impulses does not cease even during this period of latency, though
their energy is diverted, wholly or in great part, from their
sexual use and directed to other ends. Historians of civilization
appear to be at one in assuming that powerful components are
acquired for every kind of cultural achievement by this diversion
of sexual instinctual forces from sexual aims and their direction
to new ones - a process which deserves the name of
‘sublimation’. To this we would add, accordingly, that
the same process plays a part in the development of the individual
and we would place its beginning in the period of sexual latency of
childhood.¹

   It is possible further to form
some idea of the mechanism of this process of sublimation. On the
one hand, it would seem, the sexual impulses cannot be utilized
during these years of childhood, since the reproductive functions
have been deferred - a fact which constitutes the main feature of
the period of latency. On the other hand, these impulses would seem
in themselves to be perverse - that is, to arise from erotogenic
zones and to derive their activity from instincts which, in view of
the direction of the subject’s development, can only arouse
unpleasurable feelings. They consequently evoke opposing mental
forces (reacting impulses) which, in order to suppress this
unpleasure effectively, build up the mental dams that have already
mentioned - disgust, shame and morality.²

  
¹
Once again, it is from Fliess that I have
borrowed the term ‘period of sexual
latency’.

  
²
[
Footnote added
1915:] In the case
which I am here discussing, the sublimation of sexual instinctual
forces takes place along the path of reaction-formation. But in
general it is possible to distinguish the concepts of sublimation
and reaction-formation from each other as two different processes.
Sublimation can also take place by other and simpler
mechanisms.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1501

INTERRUPTIONS OF
THE LATENCY PERIOD
   We must not deceive ourselves
as to the

                        
                                              hypothetical
nature and insufficient clarity of our knowledge concerning the
processes of the infantile period of latency or deferment; but we
shall be on firmer ground in pointing out that such an application
of infantile sexuality represents an educational ideal from which
individual development usually diverges at some point and often to
a considerable degree. From time to time a fragmentary
manifestation of sexuality which has evaded sublimation may break
through; or some sexual activity may persist through the whole
duration of the latency period until the sexual instinct emerges
with greater intensity at puberty. In so far as educators pay any
attention at all to infantile sexuality, they behave exactly as
though they shared our views as to the construction of the moral
defensive forces at the cost of sexuality, and as though they knew
that sexual activity makes a child ineducable: for they stigmatize
every sexual manifestation by children as a ‘vice’,
without being able to do much against it. We, on the other hand,
have every reason for turning our attention to these phenomena
which are so much dreaded by education, for we may expect them to
help us to discover the original configuration of the sexual
instincts.

THE
MANIFESTATIONS OF INFANTILE SEXUALITY

THUMB-SUCKING
   For
reasons which will appear later, I shall take thumb-sucking (or
sensual

                             
sucking) as a sample of the sexual manifestations of childhood. (An
excellent study of this subject has been made by the Hungarian
paediatrician, Lindner, 1879.)

   Thumb-sucking appears already in
early infancy and may continue into maturity, or even persist all
through life. It consists in the rhythmic repetition of a sucking
contact by the mouth (or lips). There is no question of the purpose
of this procedure being the taking of nourishment. A portion of the
lip itself, the tongue, or any other part of the skin within reach
- even the big toe - may be taken as the object upon which this
sucking is carried out. In this connection a grasping-instinct may
appear and may manifest itself as a simultaneous rhythmic tugging
at the lobes of the ears or a catching hold of some part of another
person (as a rule the ear) for the same purpose. Sensual sucking
involves a complete absorption of the attention and leads either to
sleep or even to a motor reaction in the nature of an orgasm.¹
It is not infrequently combined with rubbing some sensitive part of
the body such as the breast or the external genitalia. Many
children proceed by this path from sucking to masturbation.

  
¹ Thus we find at this early stage,
what holds good all through life, that sexual satisfaction is the
best soporific. Most cases of nervous insomnia can be traced back
to lack of sexual satisfaction. It is well known that unscrupulous
nurses put crying children to sleep by stroking their
genitals.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1502

   Lindner himself clearly
recognized the sexual nature of this activity and emphasized it
without qualification. In the nursery, sucking is often classed
along with the other kinds of sexual ‘naughtiness’ of
children. This view has been most energetically repudiated by
numbers of paediatricians and nerve-specialists, though this is no
doubt partly due to a confusion between ‘sexual’ and
‘genital’. Their objection raises a difficult question
and one which cannot be evaded: what is the general characteristic
which enables us to recognize the sexual manifestations of
children? The concatenation of phenomena into which we have been
given an insight by psycho-analytic investigation justifies us, in
my opinion, in regarding thumb-sucking as a sexual manifestation
and in choosing it for our study of the essential features of
infantile sexual activity.¹

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1920:] In 1919, a
Dr. Galant published, under the title of ‘Das
Lutscherli’, the confession of a grown-up girl who had never
given up this infantile sexual activity and who represents the
satisfaction to be gained from sucking as something completely
analogous to sexual satisfaction, particularly when this is
obtained from a lover’s kiss: ‘Not every kiss is equal
to a "
Lutscherli
" - no, no, not by any means! It
is impossible to describe what a lovely feeling goes through your
whole body when you suck; you are right away from this world. You
are absolutely satisfied, and happy beyond desire. It is a
wonderful feeling; you long for nothing but peace - uninterrupted
peace. It is just unspeakably lovely: you feel no pain and no
sorrow, and ah! you are carried into another
world.’