Freud - Complete Works (274 page)

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1542

SUMMARY

The time has arrived for me to attempt to
summarize what I have said. We started out from the aberrations of
the sexual instinct in respect of its object and of its aim and we
were faced by the question of whether these arise from an innate
disposition or are acquired as a result of experiences in life. We
arrived at an answer to this question from an understanding,
derived from psycho-analytic investigation, of the workings of the
sexual instinct in psychoneurotics, a numerous class of people and
one not far removed from the healthy. We found that in them
tendencies to every kind of perversion can be shown to exist as
unconscious forces and betray their presence as factors leading to
the formation of symptoms. It was thus possible to say that
neurosis is, as it were, the negative of perversion. In view of
what was now seen to be the wide dissemination of tendencies to
perversion we were driven to the conclusion that a disposition to
perversions is an original and universal disposition of the human
sexual instinct and that normal sexual behaviour is developed out
of it as a result of organic changes and psychical inhibitions
occurring in the course of maturation; we hoped to be able to show
the presence of this original disposition in childhood. Among the
forces restricting the direction taken by the sexual instinct we
laid emphasis upon shame, disgust, pity and the structures of
morality and authority erected by society. We were thus led to
regard any established aberration from normal sexuality as an
instance of developmental inhibition and infantilism. Though it was
necessary to place in the foreground the importance of the
variations in the original disposition, a co-operative and not an
opposing relation was to be assumed as existing between them and
the influences of actual life. It appeared, on the other hand, that
since the original disposition is necessarily a complex one, the
sexual instinct itself must be something put together from various
factors, and that in the perversions it falls apart, as it were,
into its components. The perversions were thus seen to be on the
one hand inhibitions, and on the other hand dissociations, of
normal development. Both these aspects were brought together in the
supposition that the sexual instinct of adults arises from a
combination of a number of impulses of childhood into a unity, an
impulsion with a single aim.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1543

   After having explained the
preponderance of perverse tendencies in psychoneurotics by
recognizing it as a collateral filling of subsidiary channels when
the main current of the instinctual stream has been blocked by
‘repression’,¹ we proceeded to a consideration of
sexual life in childhood. We found it a regrettable thing that the
existence of the sexual instinct in childhood has been denied and
that the sexual manifestations not infrequently to be observed in
children have been described as irregularities. It seemed to us on
the contrary that children bring germs of sexual activity with them
into the world, that they already enjoy sexual satisfaction when
they begin to take nourishment and that they persistently seek to
repeat the experience in the familiar activity of
‘thumb-sucking’. The sexual activity of children,
however, does not, it appeared, develop
pari passu
with
their other functions, but, after a short period of efflorescence
from the ages of two to five, enters upon the so-called period of
latency. During that period the production of sexual excitation is
not by any means stopped but continues and produces a store of
energy which is employed to a great extent for purposes other than
sexual - namely, on the one hand in contributing the sexual
components to social feelings and on the other hand (through
repression and reaction-forming) in building up the subsequently
developed barriers against sexuality. On this view, the forces
destined to retain the sexual instinct upon certain lines are built
up in childhood chiefly at the cost of perverse sexual impulses and
with the assistance of education. A certain portion of the
infantile sexual impulses would seem to evade these uses and
succeed in expressing itself as sexual activity. We next found that
sexual excitation in children springs from a multiplicity of
forces. Satisfaction arises first and foremost from the appropriate
sensory excitation of what we have described as erotogenic zones.
It seems probable that any part of the skin and any sense-organ -
probably, indeed,
any
organ - can function as an erotogenic
zone, though there are some particularly marked erotogenic zones
whose excitation would seem to be secured from the very first by
certain organic contrivances. It further appears that sexual
excitation arises as a by-product, as it were, of a large number of
processes that occur in the organism, as soon as they reach a
certain degree of intensity, and most especially of any relatively
powerful emotion, even though it is of a distressing nature. The
excitations from all these sources are not yet combined; but each
follows its own separate aim, which is merely the attainment of a
certain sort of pleasure. In childhood, therefore, the sexual
instinct is not unified and is at first without an object, that is,
auto-erotic.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1915:] This does not
apply only to the ‘negative’ tendencies to perversion
which appear in neuroses but equally to the ‘positive,’
properly so-called, perversions. Thus these latter are to be
derived not merely from a fixation of infantile tendencies but also
from a regression to those tendencies as a result of other channels
of the sexual current being blocked. It is for this reason that the
positive perversions also are accessible to psycho-analytic
therapy.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1544

   The erotogenic zone of the
genitals begins to make itself noticeable, it seems, even during
the years of childhood. This may happen in two ways. Either, like
any other erotogenic zone, it yields satisfaction in response to
appropriate sensory stimulation; or, in a manner which is not quite
understandable, when satisfaction is derived from other sources, a
sexual excitation is simultaneously produced which has a special
relation to the genital zone. We were reluctantly obliged to admit
that we could not satisfactorily explain the relation between
sexual satisfaction and sexual excitation, or that between the
activity of the genital zone and the activity of the other sources
of sexuality.

   We found from the study of
neurotic disorders that beginnings of an organization of the sexual
instinctual components can be detected in the sexual life of
children from its very beginning. During a first, very early phase,
oral erotism occupies most of the picture. A second of these
pregenital organizations is characterized by the predominance of
sadism and anal erotism. It is not until a third phase has been
reached that the genital zones proper contribute their share in
determining sexual life, and in children this last phase is
developed only so far as to a primacy of the phallus.

   We were then obliged to
recognize, as one of our most surprising findings, that this early
efflorescence of infantile sexual life (between the ages of two and
five) already gives rise to the choice of an object, with all the
wealth of mental activities which such a process involves. Thus, in
spite of the lack of synthesis between the different instinctual
components and the uncertainty of the sexual aim, the phase of
development corresponding to that period must be regarded as an
important precursor of the subsequent final sexual
organization.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1545

   The fact that the onset of sexual
development in human beings occurs in two phases, i.e. that the
development is interrupted by the period of latency, seemed to call
for particular notice. This appears to be one of the necessary
conditions of the aptitude of men for developing a higher
civilization, but also of their tendency to neurosis. So far as we
know, nothing analogous is to be found in man’s animal
relatives. It would seem that the origin of this peculiarity of man
must be looked for in the prehistory of the human species.

   It was not possible to say what
amount of sexual activity can occur in childhood without being
described as abnormal or detrimental to further development. The
nature of these sexual manifestations was found to be predominantly
masturbatory. Experience further showed that the external
influences of seduction are capable of provoking interruptions of
the latency period or even its cessation, and that in this
connection the sexual instinct of children proves in fact to be
polymorphously perverse; it seems, moreover, that any such
premature sexual activity diminishes a child’s
educability.

   In spite of the gaps in our
knowledge of infantile sexual life, we had to proceed to an attempt
at examining the alterations brought about in it by the arrival of
puberty. We selected two of these as being the decisive ones: the
subordination of all the other sources of sexual excitation under
the primacy of the genital zones and the process of finding an
object. Both of these are already adumbrated in childhood. The
first is accomplished by the mechanism of exploiting fore-pleasure:
what were formerly self-contained sexual acts, attended by pleasure
and excitation, become acts preparatory to the new sexual aim (the
discharge of the sexual products), the attainment of which,
enormously pleasurable, brings the sexual excitation to an end. In
this connection we had to take into account the differentiation of
sexuality into masculine and feminine; and we found that in order
to become a woman a further stage of repression is necessary, which
discards a portion of infantile masculinity and prepares the woman
for changing her leading genital zone. As regards object-choice, we
found that it is given its direction by the childhood hints
(revived at puberty) of the child’s sexual inclination
towards his parents and others in charge of him, but that it is
diverted away from them, on to other people who resemble them,
owing to the barrier against incest which has meanwhile been
erected. Finally it must be added that during the transition period
of puberty the processes of somatic and of psychical development
continue for a time side by side independently, until the irruption
of an intense mental erotic impulse, leading to the innervation of
the genitals, brings about the unity of the erotic function which
is necessary for normality.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1546

FACTORS
INTERFERING WITH DEVELOPMENT
   Every step on this
long path of development can

                                                                          
become a point of fixation, every juncture in this involved
combination can be an occasion for a dissociation of the sexual
instinct, as we have already shown from numerous instances. It
remains for us to enumerate the various factors, internal and
external, that interfere with development, and to indicate the
place in the mechanism on which the disturbance arising from each
of them impinges. The factors that we shall enumerate can evidently
not be of equal importance, and we must be prepared for
difficulties in assigning an appropriate value to each.

CONSTITUTION AND
HEREDITY
   First and foremost we must name the
innate variety of sexual

             
                                      constitutions,
upon which it is probable that the principal weight falls, but
which can clearly only be inferred from their later manifestations
and even then not always with great certainty. We picture this
variety as a preponderance of one or another of the many sources of
sexual excitation, and it is our view that a difference in
disposition of this kind is always bound to find expression in the
final result, even though that result may not overstep the limits
of what is normal. No doubt it is conceivable that there may also
be variations in the original disposition of a kind which must
necessarily, and without the concurrence of any other factors, lead
to the development of an abnormal sexual life. These might be
described as ‘degenerative’ and be regarded as an
expression of inherited degeneracy. In this connection I have a
remarkable fact to record. In more than half of the severe cases of
hysteria, obsessional neurosis, etc., which I have treated
psychotherapeutically, I have been able to prove with certainty
that the patient’s father suffered from syphilis before
marriage, whether there was evidence of tabes or general paralysis,
or whether the anamnesis indicated in some other way the presence
of syphilitic disease. I should like to make it perfectly plain
that the children who later became neurotic bore no physical signs
of hereditary syphilis, so that it was their abnormal sexual
constitution that was to be regarded as the last echo of their
syphilitic heritage. Though I am far from wishing to assert that
descent from syphilitic parents is an invariable or indispensable
aetiological condition of a neuropathic constitution, I am
nevertheless of opinion that the coincidence which I have observed
is neither accidental nor unimportant.

   The hereditary conditions in the
case of positive perverts are less well known, for they know how to
avoid investigation. Yet there are good reasons to suppose that
what is true of the neuroses applies also to the perversions. For
it is no rare thing to find perversions and psychoneuroses
occurring in the same family, and distributed between the two sexes
in such a way that the male members of the family, or one of them,
are positive perverts, while the females, true to the tendency of
their sex to repression, are negative perverts, that is, hysterics.
This is good evidence of the essential connections which we have
shown to exist between the two disorders.