Freud - Complete Works (272 page)

   Since I have become acquainted
with the notion of bisexuality I have regarded it as the decisive
factor, and without taking bisexuality into account I think it
would scarcely be possible to arrive at an understanding of the
sexual manifestations that are actually to be observed in men and
women.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1915:] It is
essential to understand clearly that the concepts of
‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’, whose meaning
seems so unambiguous to ordinary people, are among the most
confused that occur in science. It is possible to distinguish at
least three uses. ‘Masculine’ and
‘feminine’ are used sometimes in the sense of activity
and passivity, sometimes in a biological, and sometimes, again, in
a sociological sense. The first of these three meanings is the
essential one and the most serviceable in psycho-analysis. When,
for instance, libido was described in the text above as being
‘masculine’, the word was being used in this sense, for
an instinct is always active even when it has a passive aim in
view. The second, or biological, meaning of ‘masculine’
and ‘feminine’ is the one whose applicability can be
determined most easily. Here ‘masculine’ and
‘feminine’ are characterized by the presence of
spermatozoa or ova respectively and by the functions proceeding
from them. Activity and its concomitant phenomena (more powerful
muscular development, aggressiveness, greater intensity of libido)
are as a rule linked with biological masculinity; but they are not
necessarily so, for there are animal species in which these
qualities are on the contrary assigned to the female. The third, or
sociological, meaning receives its connotation from the observation
of actually existing masculine and feminine individuals. Such
observation shows that in human beings pure masculinity or
femininity is not to be found either in a psychological or a
biological sense. Every individual on the contrary displays a
mixture of the character-traits belonging to his own and to the
opposite sex; and he shows a combination of activity and passivity
whether or not these last character-traits tally with his
biological ones.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1534

LEADING ZONES IN
MEN AND WOMEN
   Apart from this I have only the
following to add. The

                                                              
leading erotogenic zone in female children is located at the
clitoris, and is thus homologous to the masculine genital zone of
the glans penis. All my experience concerning masturbation in
little girls has related to the clitoris and not to the regions of
the external genitalia that are important in later sexual
functioning. I am even doubtful whether a female child can be led
by the influence of seduction to anything other than clitoridal
masturbation. If such a thing occurs, it is quite exceptional. The
spontaneous discharges of sexual excitement which occur so often
precisely in little girls are expressed in spasms of the clitoris.
Frequent erections of that organ make it possible for girls to form
a correct judgement, even without any instruction, of the sexual
manifestations of the other sex: they merely transfer on to boys
the sensations derived from their own sexual processes.

   If we are to understand how a
little girl turns into a woman, we must follow the further
vicissitudes of this excitability of the clitoris. Puberty, which
brings about so great an accession of libido in boys, is marked in
girls by a fresh wave of
repression
, in which it is
precisely clitoridal sexuality that is affected. What is thus
overtaken by repression is a piece of masculine sexuality. The
intensification of the brake upon sexuality brought about by
pubertal repression in women serves as a stimulus to the libido in
men and causes an increase of its activity. Along with this
heightening of libido there is also an increase of sexual
overvaluation which only emerges in full force in relation to a
woman who holds herself back and who denies her sexuality. When at
last the sexual act is permitted and the clitoris itself becomes
excited, it still retains a function: the task, namely, of
transmitting the excitation to the adjacent female sexual parts,
just as - to use a simile - pine shavings can be kindled in order
to set a log of harder wood on fire. Before this transference can
be effected, a certain interval of time must often elapse, during
which the young woman is anaesthetic. This anaesthesia may become
permanent if the clitoridal zone refuses to abandon its
excitability, an event for which the way is prepared precisely by
an extensive activity of that zone in childhood. Anaesthesia in
women, as is well known, is often only apparent and local. They are
anaesthetic at the vaginal orifice but are by no means incapable of
excitement originating in the clitoris or even in other zones.
Alongside these erotogenic determinants of anaesthesia must also be
set the psychical determinants, which equally, arise from
repression.

   When erotogenic susceptibility to
stimulation has been successfully transferred by a woman from the
clitoris to the vaginal orifice, it implies that she has adopted a
new leading zone for the purposes of her later sexual activity. A
man, on the other hand, retains his leading zone unchanged from
childhood. The fact that women change their leading erotogenic zone
in this way, together with the wave of repression at puberty,
which, as it were, puts aside their childish masculinity, are the
chief determinants of the greater proneness of woman to neurosis
and especially to hysteria. These determinants, therefore, are
intimately related to the essence of femininity.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1535

THE
FINDING OF AN OBJECT

   The processes at puberty thus
establish the primacy of the genital zones; and, in a man, the
penis, which has now become capable of erection, presses forward
insistently towards the new sexual aim - penetration into a cavity
in the body which excites his genital zone. Simultaneously on the
psychical side the process of finding an object, for which
preparations have been made from earliest childhood, is completed.
At a time at which the first beginnings of sexual satisfaction are
still linked with the taking of nourishment, the sexual instinct
has a sexual object outside the infant’s own body in the
shape of his mother’s breast. It is only later that the
instinct loses that object, just at the time, perhaps, when the
child is able to form a total idea of the person to whom the organ
that is giving him satisfaction belongs. As a rule the sexual
instinct then becomes auto-erotic, and not until the period of
latency has been passed through is the original relation restored.
There are thus good reasons why a child sucking at his
mother’s breast has become the prototype of every relation of
love. The finding of an object is in fact a refinding of
it.¹

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1915:]
Psycho-analysis informs us that there are two methods of finding an
object. The first, described in the text, is the
‘anaclitic’ or ‘attachment’ one, based on
attachment to early infantile prototypes. The second is the
narcissistic one, which seeks for the subject’s own ego and
finds it again in other people. This latter method is of
particularly great importance in cases where the outcome is a
pathological one, but it is not relevant to the present
context.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1536

THE SEXUAL
OBJECT DURING EARLY INFANCY
   But even after
sexual activity has become

                                                                           
detached from the taking of nourishment, an important part of this
first and most significant of all sexual relations is left over,
which helps to prepare for the choice of an object and thus to
restore the happiness that has been lost. All through the period of
latency children learn to feel for other people who help them in
their helplessness and satisfy their needs a love which is on the
model of, and a continuation of, their relation as sucklings to
their nursing mother. There may perhaps be an inclination to
dispute the possibility of identifying a child’s affection
and esteem for those who look after him with sexual love. I think,
however, that a closer psychological examination may make it
possible to establish this identity beyond any doubt. A
child’s intercourse with anyone responsible for his care
affords him an unending source of sexual excitation and
satisfaction from his erotogenic zones. This is especially so since
the person in charge of him, who, after all, is as a rule his
mother, herself regards him with feelings that are derived from her
own sexual life: she strokes him, kisses him, rocks him and quite
clearly treats him as a substitute for a complete sexual
object.¹ A mother would probably be horrified if she were made
aware that all her marks of affection were rousing her
child’s sexual instinct and preparing for its later
intensity. She regards what she does as asexual, ‘pure’
love, since, after all, she carefully avoids applying more
excitations to the child’s genitals than are unavoidable in
nursery care. As we know, however, the sexual instinct is not
aroused only by direct excitation of the genital zone. What we call
affection will unfailingly show its effects one day on the genital
zones as well. Moreover, if the mother understood more of the high
importance of the part played by instincts in mental life as a
whole - in all its ethical and psychical achievements - she would
spare herself any self-reproaches even after her enlightenment. She
is only fulfilling her task in teaching the child to love. After
all, he is meant to grow up into a strong and capable person with
vigorous sexual needs and to accomplish during his life all the
things that human beings are urged to do by their instincts. It is
true that an excess of parental affection does harm by causing
precocious sexual maturity and also because, by spoiling the child,
it makes him incapable in later life of temporarily doing without
love or of being content with a smaller amount of it. One of the
clearest indications that a child will later become neurotic is to
be seen in an insatiable demand for his parents’ affection.
And on the other hand neuropathic parents, who are inclined as a
rule to display excessive affection, are precisely those who are
most likely by their caresses to arouse the child’s
disposition to neurotic illness. Incidentally, this example shows
that there are ways more direct than inheritance by which neurotic
parents can hand their disorder on to their children.

  
¹
Anyone who considers this
‘sacrilegious’ may be recommended to read Havelock
Ellis’s views on the relation between mother and child, which
agree almost completely with mine.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1537

INFANTILE
ANXIETY
   Children themselves behave from an early
age as though their dependence

                                 
on the people looking after them were in the nature of sexual love.
Anxiety in children is originally nothing other than an expression
of the fact that they are feeling the loss of the person they love.
It is for this reason that they are frightened of every stranger.
They are afraid in the dark because in the dark they cannot see the
person they love; and their fear is soothed if they can take hold
of that person’s hand in the dark. To attribute to bogeys and
blood-curdling stories told by nurses the responsibility for making
children timid is to over-estimate their efficacy. The truth is
merely that children who are inclined to be timid are affected by
stories which would make no impression what ever upon others, and
it is only children with a sexual instinct that is excessive or has
developed prematurely or has become vociferous owing to too much
petting who are inclined to be timid. In this respect a child, by
turning his libido into anxiety when he cannot satisfy it, behaves
like an adult. On the other hand an adult who has become neurotic
owing to his libido being unsatisfied behaves in his anxiety like a
child: he begins to be frightened when he is alone, that is to say
when he is away from someone of whose love he had felt secure, and
he seeks to assuage this fear by the most childish
measures.¹

  
¹
For this explanation of the origin of
infantile anxiety I have to thank a three-year-old boy whom I once
heard calling out of a dark room: ‘Auntie, speak to me!
I’m frightened because it’s so dark.’ His aunt
answered him: ‘What good would that do? You can’t see
me.’ ‘That doesn’t matter,’ replied the
child, ‘if anyone speaks, it gets light.’ Thus what he
was afraid of was not the dark, but the absence of someone he
loved; and he could feel sure of being soothed as soon as he had
evidence of that person’s presence. [
Added
1920:] One
of the most important results of psycho-analytic research is this
discovery that neurotic anxiety arises out of libido, that it is
the product of a transformation of it, and that it is thus related
to it in the same kind of way as vinegar is to wine. A further
discussion of this problem will be found in my
Introductory
Lectures
(1916-17), Lecture XXV, though even there it must be
confessed, the question is not finally cleared up.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality