Freud - Complete Works (275 page)

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1547

FURTHER
MODIFICATION
   On the other hand, it is not
possible to adopt the view that the form to

                                          
be taken by sexual life is unambiguously decided, once and for all,
with the inception of the different components of the sexual
constitution. On the contrary, the determining process continues,
and further possibilities arise according to the vicissitudes of
the tributary streams of sexuality springing from their separate
sources. This further modification is clearly what brings the
decisive outcome, and constitutions which might be described as the
same can lead to three different final results:-

   If the relation between all the
different dispositions - a relation which we will assume to be
abnormal - persists and grows stronger at maturity, the result can
only be a perverse sexual life. The analysis of abnormal
constitutional dispositions of this kind has not yet been properly
taken in hand. But we already know cases which can easily be
explained on such a basis as this. Writers on the subject, for
instance, have asserted that the necessary precondition of a whole
number of perverse fixations lies in an innate weakness of the
sexual instinct. In this form the view seems to me untenable. It
makes sense, however, if what is meant is a constitutional weakness
of one particular factor in the sexual instinct, namely the genital
zone - a zone which takes over the function of combining the
separate sexual activities for the purposes of reproduction. For if
the genital zone is weak, this combination, which is required to
take place at puberty, is bound to fail, and the strongest of the
other components of sexuality will continue its activity as a
perversion.¹

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1915:] In such
circumstances one often finds that at puberty a normal sexual
current begins to operate at first, but that, as a result of its
internal weakness, it breaks down in face of the first external
obstacles and is then replaced by regression to the perverse
fixation.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1548

REPRESSION
   A different
result is brought about if in the course of development some of
the

                       
components which are of excessive strength in the disposition are
submitted to the process of repression (which, it must be insisted,
is not equivalent to their being abolished). If this happens, the
excitations concerned continue to be generated as before; but they
are prevented by psychical obstruction from attaining their aim and
are diverted into numerous other channels till they find their way
to expression as symptoms. The outcome may be an approximately
normal sexual life - though usually a restricted one - but there is
in addition psychoneurotic illness. These particular cases have
become familiar to us from the psycho-analytic investigation of
neurotics. Their sexual life begins like that of perverts, and a
considerable part of their childhood is occupied with perverse
sexual activity which occasionally extends far into maturity. A
reversal due to repression then occurs, owing to internal causes
(usually before puberty, but now and then even long afterwards),
and from that time onwards neurosis takes the place of perversion,
without the old impulses being extinguished. We are reminded of the
proverb ‘Junge Hure, alte Betschwester’,¹ only
that here youth has lasted all too short a time. The fact that
perversion can be replaced by neurosis in the life of the same
person, like the fact which we have already mentioned that
perversion and neurosis can be distributed among different members
of the same family, tallies with the view that neurosis is the
negative of perversion.

  
¹
[‘A young whore makes an old
nun.’]

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1549

SUBLIMATION
   The third
alternative result of an abnormal constitutional disposition is
made 

                         
possible by the process of sublimation. This enables excessively
strong excitations arising from particular sources of sexuality to
find an outlet and use in other fields, so that a not
inconsiderable increase in psychical efficiency results from a
disposition which is itself is perilous. Here we have one of the
origins of artistic activity; and, according to the completeness or
incompleteness of the sublimation, a characterological analysis of
a highly gifted individual, and in particular of one with an
artistic disposition, may reveal a mixture, in every proportion, of
efficiency, perversion and neurosis. A sub-species of sublimation
is to be found in suppression by reaction-formation, which, as we
have seen, begins during a child’s period of latency and
continues in favourable cases throughout his whole life. What we
describe as a person’s ‘character’ is built up to
a considerable extent from the material of sexual excitations and
is composed of instincts that have been fixed since childhood, of
constructions achieved by means of sublimation, and of other
constructions, employed for effectively holding in check perverse
impulses which have been recognized as being unutilizable.¹
The multifariously perverse sexual disposition of childhood can
accordingly be regarded as the source of a number of our virtues,
in so far as through reaction-formation it stimulates their
development.²

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1920:] In the case
of some character-traits it has even been possible to trace a
connection with particular erotogenic components. Thus, obstinacy,
thrift and orderliness arise from an exploitation of anal erotism,
while ambition is determined by a strong urethral-erotic
disposition.

  
²
Emile Zola, a keen observer of human
nature, describes in
La joie de vivre
how a girl, cheerfully
and selflessly and without thought of reward, sacrificed to those
she loved everything that she possessed or could lay claim to - her
money and her hopes. This girl’s childhood was dominated by
an insatiable thirst for affection, which was transformed into
cruelty on an occasion when she found herself slighted in favour of
another girl.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1550

ACCIDENTAL
EXPERIENCES
   No other influences on the course of
sexual development can

                                              
compare in importance with releases of sexuality, waves of
repression and sublimations - the two latter being processes of
which the inner causes are quite unknown to us. It might be
possible to include repressions and sublimations as a part of the
constitutional disposition, by regarding them as manifestations of
it in life; and anyone who does so is justified in asserting that
the final shape taken by sexual life is principally the outcome of
the innate constitution. No one with perception will, however,
dispute that an interplay of factors such as this also leaves room
for the modifying effects of accidental events experienced in
childhood and later. It is not easy to estimate the relative
efficacy of the constitutional and accidental factors. In theory
one is always inclined to overestimate the former; therapeutic
practice emphasizes the importance of the latter. It should,
however, of no account be forgotten that the relation between the
two is a co-operative and not a mutually exclusive one. The
constitutional factor must await experiences before it can make
itself felt; the accidental factor must have a constitutional basis
in order to come into operation. To cover the majority of cases we
can picture what has been described as a ‘complemental
series’, in which the diminishing intensity of one factor is
balanced by the increasing intensity of the other; there is,
however, no reason to deny the existence of extreme cases at the
two ends of the series.

   We shall be in even closer
harmony with psycho-analytic research if we give a place of
preference among the accidental factors to the experiences of early
childhood. The single aetiological series then falls into two,
which may be called the dispositional and the definitive. In the
first the constitution and the accidental experiences of childhood
interact in the same manner as do the disposition and later
traumatic experiences in the second. All the factors that impair
sexual development show their effects by bringing about a
regression, a return to an earlier phase of development.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1551

   Let us now resume our task of
enumerating the factors which we have found to exercise an
influence on sexual development, whether they are themselves
operative forces or merely manifestations of such forces.

PRECOCITY
   One such
factor is spontaneous sexual precocity, whose presence at least can
be

 
                    demonstrated
with certainty in the aetiology of the neuroses though, like other
factors, it is not in itself a sufficient cause. It is manifested
in the interruption, abbreviation or bringing to an end of the
infantile period of latency; and it is a cause of disturbances by
occasioning sexual manifestations which, owing on the one hand to
the sexual inhibitions being incomplete and on the other hand to
the genital system being undeveloped, are bound to be in the nature
of perversions. These tendencies to perversion may thereafter
either persist as such or, after repressions have set in, become
the motive forces of neurotic symptoms. In any case sexual
precocity makes more difficult the later control of the sexual
instinct by the higher mental agencies which is so desirable, and
it increases the impulsive quality which, quite apart from this,
characterizes the psychical representations of the instinct. Sexual
precocity often runs parallel with premature intellectual
development and, linked in this way, is to be found in the
childhood history of persons of the greatest eminence and capacity;
under such conditions its effects do not seem to be so pathogenic
as when it appears in isolation.

TEMPORAL
FACTORS
   Other factors which, along with
precocity, may be classed as temporal

                                    
also deserve attention. The order in which the various instinctual
impulses come into activity seems to be phylogenetically
determined; so, too, does the length of time during which they are
able to manifest themselves before they succumb to the effects of
some freshly emerging instinctual impulse or to some typical
repression. Variations, however, seem to occur both in temporal
sequence and in duration, and these variations must exercise a
determining influence upon the final result. It cannot be a matter
of indifference whether a given current makes its appearance
earlier or later than a current flowing in the opposite direction,
for the effect of a repression cannot be undone. Divergences in the
temporal sequence in which the components come together invariably
produce a difference in the outcome. On the other hand, instinctual
impulses which emerge with special intensity often run a
surprisingly short course - as, for instance, the heterosexual
attachment of persons who later become manifest homosexuals. There
is no justification for the fear that trends which set in with the
greatest violence in childhood will permanently dominate the adult
character; it is just as likely that they will disappear and make
way for an opposite tendency. (‘Gestrenge Herren regieren
nicht Lange.’)¹

   We are not in a position to give
so much as hint as to the causes of these temporal disturbances of
the process of development. A prospect opens before us at this
point upon a whole phalanx of biological and perhaps, too, of
historical problems of which we have not even come within striking
distance.

  
¹
[‘Harsh rulers have short
reigns.’]

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1552

PERTINACITY OF
EARLY IMPRESSIONS
   The importance of all early
sexual manifestations is

                                                               
increased by a psychical factor of unknown origin, which at the
moment, it must be admitted, can only be brought forward as a
provisional psychological concept. I have in mind the fact that, in
order to account for the situation, it is necessary to assume that
these early impressions of sexual life are characterized by an
increased pertinacity or susceptibility to fixation in persons who
are later to become neurotics or perverts. For the same premature
sexual manifestations, when they occur in other persons, fail to
make so deep an impression; they do not tend in a compulsive manner
towards repetition nor do they lay down the path to be taken by the
sexual instinct for a whole lifetime. Part of the explanation of
this pertinacity of early impressions may perhaps lie in another
psychical factor which we must not overlook in the causation of the
neuroses, namely the preponderance attaching in mental life to
memory-traces in comparison with recent impressions. This factor is
clearly dependent on intellectual education and increases in
proportion to the degree of individual culture. The savage has been
described in contrast as ‘das unglückselige Kind des
Augenblickes’
[‘The
hapless child of the moment.’]
.¹ In consequence
of the inverse relation holding between civilization and the free
development of sexuality, of which the consequences can be followed
far into the structure of our existences, the course taken by the
sexual life of a child is just as unimportant for later life where
the cultural or social level is relatively low as it is important
where that level is relatively high.