Freud - Complete Works (340 page)

'Civilized' Sexual Morality And Modern Nervous Illness

1957

   This brings us to the question
whether sexual intercourse in legal marriage can offer full
compensation for the restrictions imposed before marriage. There is
such an abundance of material supporting a reply in the negative
that we can give only the briefest summary of it. It must above all
be borne in mind that our cultural sexual morality restricts sexual
intercourse even in marriage itself, since it imposes on married
couples the necessity of contenting themselves, as a rule, with a
very few procreative acts. As a consequence of this consideration,
satisfying sexual intercourse in marriage takes place only for a
few years; and we must subtract from this, of course, the intervals
of abstention necessitated by regard for the wife’s health.
After these three, four or five years, the marriage becomes a
failure in so far as it has promised the satisfaction of sexual
needs. For all the devices hitherto invented for preventing
conception impair sexual enjoyment, hurt the fine susceptibilities
of both partners and even actually cause illness. Fear of the
consequences of sexual intercourse first brings the married
couple’s physical affection to an end; and then, as a remoter
result, it usually puts a stop as well to the mental sympathy
between them, which should have been the successor to their
original passionate love. The spiritual disillusionment and bodily
deprivation to which most marriages are thus doomed puts both
partners back in the state they were in before their marriage,
except for being the poorer by the loss of an illusion, and they
must once more have recourse to their fortitude in mastering and
deflecting their sexual instinct. We need not enquire how far men,
by then in their maturer years, succeed in this task. Experience
shows that they very frequently avail themselves of the degree of
sexual freedom which is allowed them - although only with
reluctance and under a veil of silence - by even the strictest
sexual code. The ‘double’ sexual morality which is
valid for men in our society is the plainest admission that society
itself does not believe in the possibility of enforcing the
precepts which it itself has laid down. But experience shows as
well that women, who, as being the actual vehicle of the sexual
interests of mankind, are only endowed in a small measure with the
gift of sublimating their instincts, and who, though they may find
a sufficient substitute for the sexual object in an infant at the
breast, do not find one in a growing child - experience shows, I
repeat, that women, when they are subjected to the disillusionments
of marriage, fall ill of severe neuroses which permanently darken
their lives.(Under the cultural conditions of to-day, marriage has
long ceased to be a panacea for the nervous troubles of women; and
if we doctors still advise marriage in such cases, we are
nevertheless aware that, on the contrary, a girl must be very
healthy if she is to be able to tolerate it, and we urgently advise
our male patients not to marry any girl who has had nervous trouble
before marriage. On the contrary, the cure for nervous illness
arising from marriage would be marital unfaithfulness. But the more
strictly a woman has been brought up and the more sternly she has
submitted to the demands of civilization, the more she is afraid of
taking this way out; and in the conflict between her desires and
her sense of duty, she once more seeks refuge in a neurosis.
Nothing protects her virtue as securely as an illness. Thus the
married state, which is held out as a consolation to the sexual
instinct of the civilized person in his youth, proves to be
inadequate even to the demands of the actual period of life covered
by it. There is no question of its being able to compensate for the
deprivation which precedes it.

'Civilized' Sexual Morality And Modern Nervous Illness

1958

   But even if the damage done by
civilized sexual morality is admitted, it may be argued in reply to
our third question that the cultural gain derived from such an
extensive restriction of sexuality probably more than balances
these sufferings, which, after all, only affect a minority in any
severe form. I must confess that I am unable to balance gain
against loss correctly on this point, but I could advance a great
many more considerations on the side of the loss. Going back to the
subject of abstinence, which I have already touched on, I must
insist that it brings in its train other noxae besides those
involved in the neuroses and that the importance of the neuroses
has for the most part not been fully appreciated.

   The retardation of sexual
development and sexual activity at which our education and
civilization aim is certainly not injurious to begin with. It is
seen to be a necessity, when one considers the late age at which
young people of the educated classes reach independence and are
able to earn a living. (This reminds one, incidentally, of the
intimate interconnection between all our cultural institutions and
of the difficulty of altering any part of them without regard to
the whole.) But abstinence continued long after the age of twenty
is no longer unobjectionable for a young man; and it leads to other
damage even when it does not lead to neurosis. People say, to be
sure, that the struggle against such a powerful instinct, and the
strengthening of all the ethical and aesthetic forces which are
necessary for this struggle, ‘steel’ the character; and
this is true for a few specially favourably organized natures. It
must also be admitted that the differentiation of individual
character, which is so marked in our day, has only become possible
with the existence of sexual restriction. But in the vast majority
of cases the struggle against sexuality eats up the energy
available in a character and this at the very time when a young man
is in need of all his forces in order to win his share and place in
society. The relationship between the amount of sublimation
possible and the amount of sexual activity necessary naturally
varies very much from person to person and even from one calling to
another. An abstinent artist is hardly conceivable; but an
abstinent young
savant
is certainly no rarity. The latter
can, by his self-restraint, liberate forces for his studies; while
the former probably finds his artistic achievements powerfully
stimulated by his sexual experience. In general I have not gained
the impression that sexual abstinence helps to bring about
energetic and self-reliant men of action or original thinkers or
bold emancipators and reformers. Far more often it goes to produce
well-behaved weaklings who later become lost in the great mass of
people that tends to follow, unwillingly, the leads given by strong
individuals.

'Civilized' Sexual Morality And Modern Nervous Illness

1959

   The fact that the sexual instinct
behaves in general in a self-willed and inflexible fashion is also
seen in the results produced by efforts at abstinence. Civilized
education may only attempt to suppress the instinct temporarily,
till marriage, intending to give it free rein afterwards with the
idea of then making use of it. But extreme measures are more
successful against it than attempts at moderating it; thus the
suppression often goes too far, with the unwished-for result that
when the instinct is set free it turns out to be permanently
impaired. For this reason complete abstinence in youth is often not
the best preparation for marriage for a young man. Women sense
this, and prefer among their suitors those who have already proved
their masculinity with other women. The harmful results which the
strict demand for abstinence before marriage produces in
women’s natures are quite especially apparent. It is clear
that education is far from underestimating the task of suppressing
a girl’s sensuality till her marriage, for it makes use of
the most drastic measures. Not only does it forbid sexual
intercourse and set a high premium on the preservation of female
chastity, but it also protects the young woman from temptation as
she grows up, by keeping her ignorant of all the facts of the part
she is to play and by not tolerating any impulse of love in her
which cannot lead to marriage. The result is that when the
girl’s parental authorities suddenly allow her to fall in
love, she is unequal to this psychical achievement and enters
marriage uncertain of her own feelings. In consequence of this
artificial retardation in her function of love, she has nothing but
disappointments to offer the man who has saved up all his desire
for her. In her mental feelings she is still attached to her
parents, whose authority has brought about the suppression of her
sexuality; and in her physical behaviour she shows herself frigid,
which deprives the man of any high degree of sexual enjoyment. I do
not know whether the anaesthetic type of woman exists apart from
civilized education, though I consider it probable. But in any case
such education actually breeds it, and these women who conceive
without pleasure show little willingness afterwards to face the
pains of frequent childbirth. In this way, the preparation for
marriage frustrates the aims of marriage itself. When later on the
retardation in the wife’s development has been overcome and
her capacity to love is awakened at the climax of her life as a
woman, her relations to her husband have long since been ruined;
and, as a reward for her previous docility, she is left with the
choice between unappeased desire, unfaithfulness or a neurosis.

'Civilized' Sexual Morality And Modern Nervous Illness

1960

   The sexual behaviour of a human
being often
lays down the pattern
for all his other modes of
reacting to life. If a man is energetic in winning the object of
his love, we are confident that he will pursue his other aims with
an equally unswerving energy; but if, for all sorts of reasons, he
refrains from satisfying his strong sexual instincts, his behaviour
will be conciliatory and resigned rather than vigorous in other
spheres of life as well. A special application of this proposition
that sexual life lays down the pattern for the exercise of other
functions can easily be recognized in the female sex as a whole.
Their upbringing forbids their concerning themselves intellectually
with sexual problems though they nevertheless feel extremely
curious about them, and frightens them by condemning such curiosity
as unwomanly and a sign of a sinful disposition. In this way they
are scared away from
any
form of thinking, and knowledge
loses its value for them. The prohibition of thought extends beyond
the sexual field, partly through unavoidable association, partly
automatically, like the prohibition of thought about religion among
men, or the prohibition of thought about loyalty among faithful
subjects. I do not believe that women’s ‘physiological
feeble-mindedness’ is to be explained by a biological
opposition between intellectual work and sexual activity, as
Moebius has asserted in a work which has been widely disputed. I
think that the undoubted intellectual inferiority of so many women
can rather be traced back to the inhibition of thought necessitated
by sexual suppression.

   In considering the question of
abstinence, the distinction is not nearly strictly enough made
between two forms of it - namely abstention from any sexual
activity whatever and abstention from sexual intercourse with the
opposite sex. Many people who boast of succeeding in being
abstinent have only been able to do so with the help of
masturbation and similar satisfactions which are linked with the
auto-erotic sexual activities of early childhood. But precisely
because of this connection such substitutive means of sexual
satisfaction are by no means harmless; they predispose to the
numerous varieties of neuroses and psychoses which are conditional
on an involution of sexual life to its infantile forms.
Masturbation, moreover, is far from meeting the ideal demands of
civilized sexual morality, and consequently drives young people
into the same conflicts with the ideals of education which they
hoped to escape by abstinence. Furthermore, it vitiates the
character through
indulgence
, and this in more than one way.
In the first place, it teaches people to achieve important aims
without taking trouble and by easy paths instead of through an
energetic exertion of force - that is, it follows the principle
that
sexuality lays down the pattern
of behaviour; secondly,
in the phantasies that accompany satisfaction the sexual object is
raised to a degree of excellence which is not easily found again in
reality. A witty writer (Karl Kraus in the Vienna paper
Die
Fackel
) once expressed this truth in reverse by cynically
remarking: ‘Copulation is no more than an unsatisfying
substitute for masturbation.’

'Civilized' Sexual Morality And Modern Nervous Illness

1961

   The sternness of the demands of
civilization and the difficulty of the task of abstinence have
combined to make avoidance of the union of the genitals of the two
opposite sexes into the central point of abstinence and to favour
other kinds of sexual activity, which, it might be said, are
equivalent to semi-obedience. Since normal intercourse has been so
relentlessly persecuted by morality - and also, on account of the
possibilities of infection, by hygiene - what are known as the
perverse forms of intercourse between the two sexes, in which other
parts of the body take over the role of the genitals, have
undoubtedly increased in social importance. These activities
cannot, however, be regarded as being as harmless as analogous
extensions in love-relationships. They are ethically objectionable,
for they degrade the relationships of love between two human beings
from a serious matter to a convenient game, attended by no risk and
no spiritual participation. A further consequence of the
aggravation of the difficulties of normal sexual life is to be
found in the spread of homosexual satisfaction; in addition to all
those who are homosexuals in virtue of their organization, or who
became so in their childhood, there must be reckoned the great
number of those in whom, in their maturer years, a blocking of the
main stream of their libido has caused a widening in the
side-channel of homosexuality.