Freud - Complete Works (266 page)
Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality
1503
AUTO-EROTISM
We are in
duty bound to make a thorough examination of this example. It
must
be insisted that the most striking feature of this sexual activity
is that the instinct is not directed towards other people, but
obtains satisfaction from the subject’s own body. It is
‘auto-erotic’, to call it by a happily chosen term
introduced by Havelock Ellis (1910).¹
Furthermore, it is clear that the
behaviour of a child who indulges in thumb-sucking is determined by
a search for some pleasure which has already been experienced and
is now remembered. In the simplest case he proceeds to find this
satisfaction by sucking rhythmically at some part of the skin or
mucous membrane. It is also easy to guess the occasions on which
the child had his first experiences of the pleasure which he is now
striving to renew. It was the child’s first and most vital
activity, his sucking at his mother’s breast, or at
substitutes for it, that must have familiarized him with this
pleasure. The child’s lips, in our view, behave like an
erotogenic zone, and no doubt stimulation by the warm flow of milk
is the cause of the pleasurable sensation. The satisfaction of the
erotogenic zone is associated, in the first instance, with the
satisfaction of the need for nourishment. To begin with, sexual
activity attaches itself to functions serving the purpose of
self-preservation and does not become independent of them until
later. No one who has seen a baby sinking back satiated from the
breast and falling asleep with flushed cheeks and a blissful smile
can escape the reflection that this picture persists as a prototype
of the expression of sexual satisfaction in later life. The need
for repeating the sexual satisfaction now becomes detached from the
need for taking nourishment - a separation which becomes inevitable
when the teeth appear and food is no longer taken in only by
sucking, but is also chewed up. The child does not make use of an
extraneous body for his sucking, but prefers a part of his own skin
because it is more convenient, because it mikes him independent of
the external world, which he is not yet able to control, and
because in that way he provides himself, as it were, with a second
erotogenic zone, though one of an inferior kind. The inferiority of
this second region is among the reasons why at a later date he
seeks the corresponding part - the lips - of another person.
(‘It’s a pity I can’t kiss myself’, he
seems to be saying.)
It is not every child who sucks
in this way. It may be assumed that those children do so in whom
there is a constitutional intensification of the erotogenic
significance of the labial region. If that significance persists,
these same children when they are grown up will become epicures in
kissing, will be inclined to perverse kissing, or, if males, will
have a powerful motive for drinking and smoking. If, however,
repression ensues, they will feel disgust at food and will produce
hysterical vomiting. The repression extends to the nutritional
instinct owing to the dual purpose served by the labial zone. Many
of my women patients who suffer from disturbances of eating,
globus hystericus
, constriction of the throat and vomiting,
have indulged energetically in sucking during their childhood.
Our study of thumb-sucking or
sensual sucking has already given us the three essential
characteristics of an infantile sexual manifestation. At its origin
it attaches itself to one of the vital somatic functions; it has as
yet no sexual object, and is thus auto-erotic; and its sexual aim
is dominated by an erotogenic zone. It is to be anticipated that
these characteristics will be found to apply equally to most of the
other activities of the infantile sexual instincts.
¹
[
Footnote added
1920:] Havelock
Ellis, it is true, uses the word ‘auto-erotic’ in a
somewhat different sense, to describe an excitation which is not
provoked from outside but arises internally. What psycho-analysis
regards as the essential point is not the genesis of the
excitation, but the question of its relation to an
object.
Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality
1504
THE
SEXUAL AIM OF INFANTILE SEXUALITY
CHARACTERISTICS
OF EROTOGENIC ZONES
The example of thumb-sucking
shows us still
more about what constitutes an erotogenic zone. It is a part of the
skin or mucous membrane in which stimuli of a certain sort evoke a
feeling of pleasure possessing a particular quality. There can be
no doubt that the stimuli which produce the pleasure are governed
by special conditions, though we do not know what those are. A
rhythmic character must play a part among them and the analogy of
tickling is forced upon our notice. It seems less certain whether
the character of the pleasurable feeling evoked by the stimulus
should be described as a ‘specific’ one - a
‘specific’ quality in which the sexual factor would
precisely lie. Psychology is still so much in the dark in questions
of pleasure and unpleasure that the most cautious assumption is the
one most to be recommended. We may later come upon reasons which
seem to support the idea that the pleasurable feeling does in fact
possess a specific quality.
The character of erotogenicity
can be attached to some parts of the body in a particularly marked
way. There are predestined erotogenic zones, as is shown by the
example of sucking. The same example, however, also shows us that
any other part of the skin or mucous membrane can take over the
functions of an erotogenic zone, and must therefore have some
aptitude in that direction. Thus the quality of the stimulus has
more to do with producing the pleasurable feeling than has the
nature of the part of the body concerned. A child who is indulging
in sensual sucking searches about his body and chooses some part of
it to suck - a part which is afterwards preferred by him from force
of habit; if he happens to hit upon one of the predestined regions
(such as the nipples or genitals) no doubt it retains the
preference. A precisely analogous tendency to displacement is also
found in the symptomatology of hysteria. In that neurosis
repression affects most of all the actual genital zones and these
transmit their susceptibility to stimulation to other erotogenic
zones (normally neglected in adult life), which then behave exactly
like genitals. But besides this, precisely as in the case of
sucking, any other part of the body can acquire the same
susceptibility to stimulation as is possessed by the genitals and
can become an erotogenic zone. Erotogenic and hysterogenic zones
show the same characteristics.¹
¹
[
Footnote added
1915:] After further
reflection and after taking other observations into account, I have
been led to ascribe the quality of erotogenicity to all parts of
the body and to all the internal organs. Cf. also in this
connection what is said below on narcissism.
Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality
1505
THE INFANTILE
SEXUAL AIM
The sexual aim of the infantile
instinct consists in obtaining
satisfaction by means of an appropriate stimulation of the
erotogenic zone which has been selected in one way or another. This
satisfaction must have been previously experienced in order to have
left behind a need for its repetition; and we may expect that
Nature will have made safe provisions so that this experience of
satisfaction shall not be left to chance.¹ We have already
learnt what the contrivance is that fulfils this purpose in the
case of the labial zone: it is the simultaneous connection which
links this part of the body with the taking in of food. We shall
come across other, similar contrivances as sources of sexuality.
The state of being in need of a repetition of the satisfaction
reveals itself in two ways: by a peculiar feeling of tension,
possessing, rather, the character of unpleasure, and by a sensation
of itching or stimulation which is centrally conditioned and
projected on to the peripheral erotogenic zone. We can therefore
formulate a sexual aim in another way: it consists in replacing the
projected sensation of stimulation in the erotogenic zone by an
external stimulus which removes that sensation by producing a
feeling of satisfaction. This external stimulus will usually
consist in some kind of manipulation that is analogous to the
sucking.
The fact that the need can also
be evoked peripherally, by a real modification of the erotogenic
zone, is in complete harmony with our physiological knowledge. This
strikes us as somewhat strange only because, in order to remove one
stimulus, it seems necessary to adduce a second one at the same
spot.
¹ [
Footnote added
1920:] In
biological discussions it is scarcely possible to avoid a
teleological way of thinking, even though one is aware that in any
particular instance one is not secure against error.
Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality
1506
MASTURBATORY SEXUAL MANIFESTATIONS¹
It must come as a great relief to
find that, when once we have understood the nature of the instinct
arising from a single one of the erotogenic zones, we shall have
very little more to learn of the sexual activity of children. The
clearest distinctions as between one zone and another
concern the nature of the contrivance necessary for satisfying
the instinct; in the case of the labial zone it consisted of
sucking, and this has to be replaced by other muscular actions
according to the position and nature of the other zones.
ACTIVITY OF THE
ANAL ZONE
Like the labial zone, the anal zone is
well suited by its position to
act as a medium through which sexuality may attach itself to other
somatic functions. It is to be presumed that the erotogenic
significance of this part of the body is very great from the first.
We learn with some astonishment from psycho-analysis of the
transmutations normally undergone by the sexual excitations arising
from this zone and of the frequency with which it retains a
considerable amount of susceptibility to genital stimulation
throughout life.² The intestinal disturbances which are so
common in childhood see to it that the zone shall not lack intense
excitations. Intestinal catarrhs at the tenderest age make children
‘nervy’, as people say, and in cases of later neurotic
illness they have a determining influence on the symptoms in which
the neurosis is expressed, and they put at its disposal the whole
range of intestinal disturbances. If we bear in mind the erotogenic
significance of the outlet of the intestinal canal, which persists,
at all events in a modified form, we shall not be inclined to scoff
at the influence of haemorrhoids, to which old-fashioned medicine
used to attach so much importance in explaining neurotic
conditions.
¹
Cf. the very copious literature on the
subject of masturbation, which for the most part, however, is at
sea upon the main issues, e.g. Rohleder (1899). [
Added
1915:] See also the report of the discussion on the subject in the
Vienna Psycho-Analytical Society (
Diskussionen
,
1912).
²
[
Footnote added
1910:] Cf. my papers
on ‘Character and Anal Erotism’ (1908
b
)
[
added
1920:] and ‘On Transformations of Instinct as
Exemplified in Anal Erotism’ (1917
c
).
Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality
1507
Children who are making use of
the susceptibility to erotogenic stimulation of the anal zone
betray themselves by holding back their stool till its accumulation
brings about violent muscular contractions and, as it passes
through the anus, is able to produce powerful stimulation of the
mucous membrane. In so doing it must no doubt cause not only
painful but also highly pleasurable sensations. One of the clearest
signs of subsequent eccentricity or nervousness is to be seen when
a baby obstinately refuses to empty his bowels when he is put on
the pot - that is, when his nurse wants him to - and holds back
that function till he himself chooses to exercise it. He is
naturally not concerned with dirtying the bed, he is only anxious
not to miss the subsidiary pleasure attached to defaecating.
Educators are once more right when they describe children who keep
the process back as ‘naughty’.
The contents of the bowels, which
act as a stimulating mass upon a sexually sensitive portion of
mucous membrane, behave like forerunners of another organ, which is
destined to come into action after the phase of childhood. But they
have other important meanings for the infant. They are clearly
treated as a part of the infant’s own body and represent his
first ‘gift’: by producing them he can express his
active compliance with his environment and, by withholding them,
his disobedience. From being a ‘gift’ they later come
to acquire the meaning of ‘baby’ - for babies,
according to one of the sexual theories of children, are acquired
by eating and are born through the bowels.
The retention of the faecal mass,
which is thus carried out intentionally by the child to begin with,
in order to serve, as it were, as a masturbatory stimulus upon the
anal zone or to be employed in his relation to the people looking
after him, is also one of the roots of the constipation which is so
common among neuropaths. Further, the whole significance of the
anal zone is reflected in the fact that few neurotics are to be
found without their special scatological practices, ceremonies, and
so on, which they carefully keep secret.¹