Freud - Complete Works (271 page)

PART PLAYED BY
THE SEXUAL SUBSTANCES
   Apart from the fact that
normally it is only the

                                                            
            discharge
of the sexual substances that brings sexual excitation to an end,
there are other points of contact between sexual tension and the
sexual products. In the case of a man living a continent life, the
sexual apparatus, at varying intervals, which, however, are not
ungoverned by rules, discharges the sexual substances during the
night, to the accompaniment of a pleasurable feeling and in the
course of a dream which hallucinates a sexual act. And in regard to
this process (nocturnal emission) it is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that the sexual tension, which succeeds in making use of
the short cut of hallucination as a substitute for the act itself,
is a function of the accumulation of semen in the vesicles
containing the sexual products. Our experience in connection with
the exhaustibility of the sexual mechanism argues in the same
sense. If the store of semen is exhausted, not only is it
impossible to carry out the sexual act, but the susceptibility of
the erotogenic zones to stimulus ceases, and their appropriate
excitation no longer gives rise to any pleasure. We thus learn
incidentally that a certain degree of sexual tension is required
even for the excitability of the erotogenic zones.

   This would seem to lead to what
is, if I am not mistaken, the fairly wide-spread hypothesis that
the accumulation of the sexual substances creates and maintains
sexual tension; the pressure of these products upon the walls of
the vesicles containing them might be supposed to act as a stimulus
upon a spinal centre, the condition of which would be perceived by
higher centres and would then give rise in consciousness to the
familiar sensation of tension. If the excitation of the erotogenic
zones increases sexual tension, this could only come about on the
supposition that the zones in question are in an anatomical
connection that has already been laid down with these centres, that
they increase the tonus of the excitation in them, and, if the
sexual tension is sufficient, set the sexual act in motion or, if
it is insufficient, stimulate the production of the sexual
substances.

   The weakness of this theory,
which we find accepted, for instance, in Krafft-Ebing’s
account of the sexual processes, lies in the fact that, having been
designed to account for the sexual activity of adult males, it
takes too little account of three sets of conditions which it
should also be able to explain. These are the conditions in
children, in females and in castrated males. In none of these three
cases can there be any question of an accumulation of sexual
products in the same sense as in males, and this makes a smooth
application of the theory difficult. Nevertheless it may at once be
admitted that it is possible to find means by which the theory may
be made to cover these cases as well. In any case we are warned not
to lay more weight on the factor of the accumulation of the sexual
products than it is able to bear.

  
¹
It is a highly instructive fact that the
German language in its use of the word ‘
Lust
’
takes into account the part played by the preparatory sexual
excitations which, as has been explained above, simultaneously
produce an element of satisfaction and a contribution to sexual
tension. ‘
Lust
’ has two meanings, and is used to
describe the sensation of sexual tension (‘
Ich habe
lust
’ = ‘I should like to’, ‘I feel an
impulse to’) as well as the feeling of
satisfaction.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1530

IMPORTANCE OF
THE INTERNAL SEXUAL ORGANS
   Observations on
castrated males seem to

                                                        
                         show
that sexual excitation can occur to a considerable degree
independently of the production of the sexual substances. The
operation of castration occasionally fails to bring about a
limitation of libido, although such limitation, which provides the
motive for the operation, is the usual outcome. Moreover, it has
long been known that diseases which abolish the production of the
masculine sex-cells leave the patient, though he is now sterile,
with his libido and potency undamaged. It is therefore by no means
as astonishing as Rieger represents it to be that the loss of the
masculine sex-glands in an adult may have no further effect upon
his mental behaviour. It is true that if castration is performed at
a tender age, before puberty, it approximates in its effect to the
aim of obliterating the sexual characters; but here too it is
possible that what is in question is, besides the actual loss of
the sex-glands, an inhibition (connected with that loss) in the
development of other factors.

CHEMICAL
THEORY
   Experiments in the removal of the
sex-glands (testes and ovaries) of

                                 
animals, and in the grafting into vertebrates of sex-glands from
other individuals of the opposite sex,¹ have at last thrown a
partial light on the origin of sexual excitation, and have at the
same time still further reduced the significance of a possible
accumulation of cellular sexual products. It has become
experimentally possible (E. Steinach) to transform a male into a
female, and conversely a female into a male. In this process the
psychosexual behaviour of the animal alters in accordance with the
somatic sexual characters and simultaneously with them. It seems,
however, that this sex-determining influence is not an attribute of
that part of the sex-glands which gives rise to the specific
sex-cells (spermatozoa and ovum) but of their interstitial tissue,
upon which special emphasis is laid by being described in the
literature as the ‘puberty-gland’. It is quite possible
that further investigation will show that this puberty-gland has
normally a hermaphrodite disposition. If this were so, the theory
of the bisexuality of the higher animals would be given anatomical
foundation. It is already probable that the puberty-gland is not
the only organ concerned with the production of sexual excitation
and sexual characters. In any case, what we already know of the
part played by the thyroid gland in sexuality fits in with this new
biological discovery. It seems probable, then, that special
chemical substances are produced in the interstitial portion of the
sex-glands; these are then taken up in the blood stream and cause
particular parts of the central nervous system to be charged with
sexual tension. (We are already familiar with the fact that other
toxic substances, introduced into the body from outside, can bring
about a similar transformation of a toxic condition into a stimulus
acting on a particular organ.) The question of how sexual
excitation arises from the stimulation of erotogenic zones, when
the central apparatus has been previously charged, and the question
of what interplay arises in the course of these sexual processes
between the effects of purely toxic stimuli and of physiological
ones - none of this can be treated, even hypothetically, in the
present state of our knowledge. It must suffice us to hold firmly
to what is essential in this view of the sexual processes: the
assumption that substances of a peculiar kind arise from the sexual
metabolism. For this apparently arbitrary supposition is supported
by a fact which has received little attention but deserves the
closest consideration. The neuroses, which can be derived only from
disturbances of sexual life, show the greatest clinical similarity
to the phenomena of intoxication and abstinence that arise from the
habitual use of toxic, pleasure-producing substances
(alkaloids).

  
¹
Cf. Lipschütz’s work (1919),
referred to on
p. 1474 
n
.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1531

THE
LIBIDO THEORY

   The conceptual scaffolding which
we have set up to help us in dealing with the psychical
manifestations of sexual life tallies well with these hypotheses as
to the chemical basis of sexual excitation. We have defined the
concept of libido as a quantitatively variable force which could
serve as a measure of processes and transformations occurring in
the field of sexual excitation. We distinguish this libido in
respect of its special origin from the energy which must be
supposed to underlie mental processes in general, and we thus also
attribute a
qualitative
character to it. In thus
distinguishing between libidinal and other forms of psychical
energy we are giving expression to the presumption that the sexual
processes occurring in the organism are distinguished from the
nutritive processes by a special chemistry. The analysis of the
perversions and psychoneuroses has shown us that this sexual
excitation is derived not from the so-called sexual parts alone,
but from all the bodily organs. We thus reach the idea of a
quantity of libido, to the mental representation of which we give
the name of ‘ego-libido’, and whose production,
increase or diminution, distribution and displacement should afford
us possibilities for explaining the psychosexual phenomena
observed.

   This ego-libido is, however, only
conveniently accessible to analytic study when it has been put to
the use of cathecting sexual objects, that is, when it has become
object-libido. We can then perceive it concentrating upon objects,
becoming fixed upon them or abandoning them, moving from one object
to another and, from these situations, directing the
subject’s sexual activity, which leads to the satisfaction,
that is, to the partial and temporary extinction, of the libido.
The psycho-analysis of what are termed transference neuroses
(hysteria and obsessional neurosis) affords us a clear insight at
this point.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1532

   We can follow the object-libido
through still further vicissitudes. When it is withdrawn from
objects, it is held in suspense in peculiar conditions of tension
and is finally drawn back into the ego, so that it becomes
ego-libido once again. In contrast to object-libido, we also
describe ego-libido as ‘narcissistic’ libido. From the
vantage-point of psycho-analysis we can look across a frontier,
which we may not pass, at the activities of narcissistic libido,
and may form some idea of the relation between it and
object-libido.¹ Narcissistic or ego-libido seems to be the
great reservoir from which the object-cathexes are sent out and
into which they are withdrawn once more; the narcissistic libidinal
cathexis of the ego is the original state of things, realized in
earliest childhood, and is merely covered by the later extrusions
of libido, but in essentials persists behind them.

   It should be the task of a libido
theory of neurotic and psychotic disorders to express all the
observed phenomena and inferred processes in terms of the economics
of the libido. It is easy to guess that the vicissitudes of the
ego-libido will have the major part to play in this connection,
especially when it is a question of explaining the deeper psychotic
disturbances. We are then faced by the difficulty that our method
of research, psycho-analysis, for the moment affords us assured
information only on the transformations that take place in the
object-libido,² but is unable to make any immediate
distinction between the ego-libido and the other forms of energy
operating in the ego.³

   For the present, therefore, no
further development of the libido theory is possible, except upon
speculative lines. It would, however, be sacrificing all that we
have gained hitherto from psycho-analytic observation, if we were
to follow the example of C. G. Jung and water down the meaning of
the concept of libido itself by equating it with psychical
instinctual force in general. The distinguishing of the sexual
instinctual impulses from the rest and the consequent restriction
of the concept of libido to the former receives strong support from
the assumption which I have already discussed that there is a
special chemistry of the sexual function.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1924:] Since
neuroses other than the transference neuroses have become to a
greater extent accessible to psycho-analysis, this limitation has
lost its earlier validity.

  
²
[
Footnote added
1924:] See the
previous footnote.

  
³
[
Footnote added
1915:] Cf. my paper
on narcissism (1914
c
). [
Added
1920:] The term
‘narcissism’ was not introduced, as I erroneously
stated in that paper, by Näcke, but by Havelock
Ellis.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1533

THE
DIFFERENTIATION BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

   As we all know, it is not until
puberty that the sharp distinction is established between the
masculine and feminine characters. From that time on, this contrast
has a more decisive influence than any other upon the shaping of
human life. It is true that the masculine and feminine dispositions
are already easily recognizable in childhood. The development of
the inhibitions of sexuality (shame, disgust, pity, etc.) takes
place in little girls earlier and in the face of less resistance
than in boys; the tendency to sexual repression seems in general to
be greater; and, where the component instincts of sexuality appear,
they prefer the passive form. The auto-erotic activity of the
erotogenic zones is, however, the same in both sexes, and owing to
this uniformity there is no possibility of a distinction between
the two sexes such as arises after puberty. So far as the
auto-erotic and masturbatory manifestations of sexuality are
concerned, we might lay it down that the sexuality of little girls
is of a wholly masculine character. Indeed, if we were able to give
a more definite connotation to the concepts of
‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’, it would even
be possible to maintain that libido is invariably and necessarily
of a masculine nature, whether it occurs in men or in women and
irrespective of whether its object is a man or a woman.¹