Freud - Complete Works (339 page)

  
¹
[In English in the original]

'Civilized' Sexual Morality And Modern Nervous Illness

1952

   The sexual instinct - or, more
correctly, the sexual instincts, for analytic investigation teaches
us that the sexual instinct is made up of many separate
constituents or component instincts - is probably more strongly
developed in man than in most of the higher animals; it is
certainly more constant, since it has almost entirely overcome the
periodicity to which it is tied in animals. It places
extraordinarily large amounts of force at the disposal of civilized
activity, and it does this in virtue of its especially marked
characteristic of being able to displace its aim without materially
diminishing in intensity. This capacity to exchange its originally
sexual aim for another one, which is no longer sexual but which is
psychically related to the first aim, is called the capacity for
sublimation
. In contrast to this displaceability, in which
its value for civilization lies, the sexual instinct may also
exhibit a particularly obstinate fixation which renders it
unserviceable and which sometimes causes it to degenerate into what
are described as abnormalities. The original strength of the sexual
instinct probably varies in each individual; certainly the
proportion of it which is suitable for sublimation varies. It seems
to us that it is the innate constitution of each individual which
decides in the first instance how large a part of his sexual
instinct it will be possible to sublimate and make use of. In
addition to this, the effects of experience and the intellectual
influences upon his mental apparatus succeed in bringing about the
sublimation of a further portion of it. To extend this process of
displacement indefinitely is, however, certainly not possible, any
more than is the case with the transformation of heat into
mechanical energy in our machines. A certain amount of direct
sexual satisfaction seems to be indispensable for most
organizations, and a deficiency in this amount, which varies from
individual to individual, is visited by phenomena which, on account
of their detrimental effects on functioning and their subjective
quality of unpleasure, must be regarded as an illness.

'Civilized' Sexual Morality And Modern Nervous Illness

1953

   Further prospects are opened up
when we take into consideration the fact that in man the sexual
instinct does not originally serve the purposes of reproduction at
all, but has as its aim the gaining of particular kinds of
pleasure.¹ It manifests itself in this way in human infancy,
during which it attains its aim of gaining pleasure not only from
the genitals but from other parts of the body (the erotogenic
zones), and can therefore disregard any objects other than these
convenient ones. We call this stage the stage of
auto-erotism
, and the child’s upbringing has, in our
view, the task of restricting it, because to linger in it would
make the sexual instinct uncontrollable and unserviceable later on.
The development of the sexual instinct then proceeds from
auto-erotism to object-love and from the autonomy of the erotogenic
zones to their subordination under the primacy of the genitals,
which are put at the service of reproduction. During this
development a part of the sexual excitation which is provided by
the subject’s own body is inhibited as being unserviceable
for the reproductive function and in favourable cases is brought to
sublimation. The forces that can be employed for cultural
activities are thus to a great extent obtained through the
suppression of what are known as the
perverse
elements of
sexual excitation.

   If this evolution of the sexual
instinct is borne in mind, three stages of civilization can be
distinguished: a first one, in which the sexual instinct may be
freely exercised without regard to the aims of reproduction; a
second, in which all of the sexual instinct is suppressed except
what serves the aims of reproduction; and a third, in which only
legitimate
reproduction is allowed as a sexual aim. This
third stage is reflected in our present-day ‘civilized’
sexual morality.

   If we take the second of these
stages as an average, we must point out that a number of people
are, on account of their organization, not equal to meeting its
demands. In whole classes of individuals the development of the
sexual instinct, as we have described it above, from auto-erotism
to object-love with its aim of uniting the genitals, has not been
carried out correctly and sufficiently fully. As a result of these
disturbances of development two kinds of harmful deviation from
normal sexuality - that is, sexuality which is serviceable to
civilization - come about; and the relation between these two is
almost that of positive and negative.¹

   In the first place (disregarding
people whose sexual instinct is altogether excessive and
uninhibitable) there are the different varieties
perverts
,
in whom an infantile fixation to a preliminary sexual aim has
prevented the primacy of the reproductive function from being
established, and the
homosexuals
or
inverts
, in whom,
in a manner that is not yet quite understood, the sexual aim has
been deflected away from the opposite sex. If the injurious effects
of these two kinds of developmental disturbance are less than might
be expected, this mitigation can be ascribed precisely to the
complex way in which the sexual instinct is put together, which
makes it possible for a person’s sexual life to reach a
serviceable final form even if one or more components of the
instinct have been shut off from development. The constitution of
people suffering from inversion - the homosexuals - is, indeed,
often distinguished by their sexual instinct’s possessing a
special aptitude for cultural sublimation.

  
¹
Cf. my
Three Essays on the Theory of
Sexuality
(1905
d
).

'Civilized' Sexual Morality And Modern Nervous Illness

1954

   More pronounced forms of the
perversions and of homosexuality, especially if they are exclusive,
do, it is true, make those subject to them socially useless and
unhappy, so that it must be recognized that the cultural
requirements even of the second stage are a source of suffering for
a certain proportion of mankind. The fate of these people who
differ constitutionally from the rest varies, and depends on
whether they have been born with a sexual instinct which by
absolute standards is strong or comparatively weak. In the latter
case - where the sexual instinct is in general weak - perverts
succeed in totally suppressing the inclinations which bring them
into conflict with the moral demands of their stage of
civilization. But this, from the ideal point of view, is also the
only thing they succeed in achieving; for, in order to effect this
suppression of their sexual instinct, they use up the forces which
they would otherwise employ in cultural activities. They are, as it
were, inwardly inhibited and outwardly paralysed. What we shall be
saying again later on about the abstinence demanded of men and
women in the third stage of civilization applies to them too.

   Where the sexual instinct is
fairly intense, but perverse, there are two possible outcomes. The
first, which we shall not discuss further, is that the person
affected remains a pervert and has to put up with the consequences
of his deviation from the standard of civilization. The second is
far more interesting. It is that, under the influence of education
and social demands, a suppression of the perverse instincts is
indeed achieved, but it is a kind of suppression which is really no
suppression at all. It can better be described as a suppression
that has failed. The inhibited sexual instincts are, it is true, no
longer expressed as such - and this constitutes the success of the
process - but they find expression in other ways, which are quite
as injurious to the subject and make him quite as useless for
society as satisfaction of the suppressed instincts in an
unmodified form would have done. This constitutes the failure of
the process, which in the long run more than counterbalances its
success. The substitutive phenomena which emerge in consequence of
the suppression of the instinct amount to what we call nervous
illness, or, more precisely, the psychoneuroses.¹ Neurotics
are the class of people who, since they possess a recalcitrant
organization, only succeed, under the influence of cultural
requirements, in achieving a suppression of their instincts which
is
apparent
and which becomes increasingly unsuccessful.
They therefore only carry on their collaboration with cultural
activities by a great expenditure of force and at the cost of an
internal impoverishment, or are obliged at times to interrupt it
and fall ill. I have described the neuroses as the
‘negative’ of the perversions because in the neuroses
the perverse impulses, after being repressed, manifest themselves
from the unconscious part of the mind - because the neuroses
contain the same tendencies, though in a state of
‘repression’, as do the positive perversions.

  
¹
Cf. my introductory remarks
above.

'Civilized' Sexual Morality And Modern Nervous Illness

1955

   Experience teaches us that for
most people there is a limit beyond which their constitution cannot
comply with the demands of civilization. All who wish to be more
noble-minded than their constitution allows fall victims to
neurosis; they would have been more healthy if it could have been
possible for them to be less good. The discovery that perversions
and neuroses stand in the relation of positive and negative is
often unmistakably confirmed by observations made on the members of
one generation of a family. Quite frequently a brother is a sexual
pervert, while his sister, who, being a woman, possesses a weaker
sexual instinct, is a neurotic whose symptoms express the same
inclinations as the perversions of her sexually more active
brother. And correspondingly, in many families the men are healthy,
but from a social point of view immoral to an undesirable degree,
while the women are high-minded and over-refined, but severely
neurotic.

   It is one of the obvious social
injustices that the standard of civilization should demand from
everyone the same conduct of sexual life - conduct which can be
followed without any difficulty by some people, thanks to their
organization, but which imposes the heaviest psychical sacrifices
on others; though, indeed, the injustice is as a rule wiped out by
disobedience to the injunctions of morality.

   These considerations have been
based so far on the requirement laid down by the second of the
stages of civilization which we have postulated, the requirement
that every sexual activity of the kind described as perverse is
prohibited, while what is called normal sexual intercourse is
freely permitted. We have found that even when the line between
sexual freedom and restriction is drawn at this point, a number of
individuals are ruled out as perverts, and a number of others, who
make efforts not to be perverts whilst constitutionally they should
be so, are forced into nervous illness. It is easy to predict the
result that will follow if sexual freedom is still further
circumscribed and the requirements of civilization are raised to
the level of the third stage, which bans all sexual activity
outside legal marriage. The number of strong natures who openly
oppose the demands of civilization will increase enormously, and so
will the number of weaker ones who, faced with the conflict between
the pressure of cultural influences and the resistance of their
constitution, take flight into neurotic illness.

'Civilized' Sexual Morality And Modern Nervous Illness

1956

   Let us now try to answer three
questions that arise here:

   (1) What is the task that is set
to the individual by the requirements of the third stage of
civilization?

   (2) Can the legitimate sexual
satisfaction that is permissible offer acceptable compensation for
the renunciation of all other satisfactions?

   (3) In what relation do the
possible injurious effects of this renunciation stand to its
exploitation in the cultural field?

   The answer to the first question
touches on a problem which has often been discussed and cannot be
exhaustively treated here - that of sexual abstinence. Our third
stage of civilization demands of individuals of both sexes that
they shall practise abstinence until they are married and that all
who do not contract a legal marriage shall remain abstinent
throughout their lives. The position, agreeable to all the
authorities, that sexual abstinence is not harmful and not
difficult to maintain, has also been widely supported by the
medical profession. It may be asserted, however, that the task of
mastering such a powerful impulse as that of the sexual instinct by
any other means than satisfying it is one which can call for the
whole of a man’s forces. Mastering it by sublimation, by
deflecting the sexual instinctual forces away from their sexual aim
to higher cultural aims, can be achieved by a minority and then
only intermittently, and least easily during the period of ardent
and vigorous youth. Most of the rest become neurotic or are harmed
in one way or another. Experience shows that the majority of the
people who make up our society are constitutionally unfit to face
the task of abstinence. Those who would have fallen ill under
milder sexual restrictions fall ill all the more readily and more
severely before the demands of our cultural sexual morality of
to-day; for we know no better safe-guard against the threat to
normal sexual life offered by defective innate dispositions or
disturbances of development than sexual satisfaction itself. The
more a person is disposed to neurosis, the less can he tolerate
abstinence; instincts which have been withdrawn from normal
development, in the sense in which it has been described above,
become at the same time all the more uninhibitable. But even those
people who would have retained their health under the requirements
of the second stage of civilization will now succumb to neurosis in
great numbers. For the psychical value of sexual satisfaction
increases with its frustration. The dammed-up libido is now put in
a position to detect one or other of the weaker spots which are
seldom absent in the structure of sexual life, and there to break
through and obtain substitutive satisfaction of a neurotic kind in
the form of pathological symptoms. Anyone who is able to penetrate
the determinants of nervous illness will soon become convinced that
its increase in our society arises from the intensification of
sexual restrictions.