Freud - Complete Works (401 page)

  
¹
I am at the same time very willing to admit
that frigidity in women s a complex subject which can also be
approached from another angle.

On The Universal Tendency To Debasement In The Sphere Of Love

2342

   If however we turn our attention
not to an extension of the concept of psychical impotence, but to
the gradations in its symptomatology, we cannot escape the
conclusion that the behaviour in love of men in the civilized world
to-day bears the stamp altogether of psychical impotence. There are
only a very few educated people in whom the two currents of
affection and sensuality have become properly fused; the man almost
always feels his respect for the woman acting as a restriction on
his sexual activity, and only develops full potency when he is with
a debased sexual object; and this in its turn is partly caused by
the entrance of perverse components into his sexual aims, which he
does not venture to satisfy with a woman he respects. He is assured
of complete sexual pleasure only when he can devote himself
unreservedly to obtaining satisfaction, which with his
well-brought-up wife, for instance, he does not dare to do. This is
the source of his need for a debased sexual object, a woman who is
ethically inferior, to whom he need attribute no aesthetic
scruples, who does not know him in his other social relations and
cannot judge him in them. It is to such a woman that he prefers to
devote his sexual potency, even when the whole of his affection
belongs to a woman of a higher kind. It is possible, too, that the
tendency so often observed in men of the highest classes of society
to choose a woman of a lower class as a permanent mistress or even
as a wife is nothing but a consequence of their need for a debased
sexual object, to whom, psychologically, the possibility of
complete satisfaction is linked.

On The Universal Tendency To Debasement In The Sphere Of Love

2343

   I do not hesitate to make the two
factors at work in psychical impotence in the strict sense - the
factors of intense incestuous fixation in childhood and the
frustration by reality in adolescence - responsible, too, for this
extremely common characteristic of the love of civilized men. It
sounds not only disagreeable but also paradoxical, yet it must
nevertheless be said that anyone who is to be really free and happy
in love must have surmounted his respect for women and have come to
terms with the idea of incest with his mother or sister. Anyone who
subjects himself to a serious self-examination on the subject of
this requirement will be sure to find that he regards the sexual
act basically as something degrading, which defiles and pollutes
not only the body. The origin of this low opinion, which he will
certainly not willingly acknowledge, must be looked for in the
period of his youth in which the sensual current in him was already
strongly developed but its satisfaction with an object outside the
family was almost as completely prohibited as it was with an
incestuous one.

   In our civilized world women are
under the influence of a similar after-effect of their upbringing,
and, in addition, of their reaction to men’s behaviour. It is
naturally just as unfavourable for a woman if a man approaches her
without his full potency as it is if his initial overvaluation of
her when he is in love gives place to undervaluation after he has
possessed her. In the case of women there is little sign of a need
to debase their sexual object. This is no doubt connected with the
absence in them as a rule of anything similar to the sexual
overvaluation found in men. But their long holding back from
sexuality and the lingering of their sensuality in phantasy has
another important consequence for them. They are subsequently often
unable to undo the connection between sensual activity and the
prohibition, and prove to be psychically impotent, that is, frigid,
when such activity is at last allowed them. This is the origin of
the endeavour made by many women to keep even legitimate relations
secret for a while; and of the capacity of other women for normal
sensation as soon as the condition of prohibition is re-established
by a secret love affair: unfaithful to their husband, they are able
to keep a second order of faith with their lover.

On The Universal Tendency To Debasement In The Sphere Of Love

2344

   The condition of forbiddenness in
the erotic life of women is, I think, comparable to the need on the
part of men to debase their sexual object. Both are consequences of
the long period of delay, which is demanded by education for
cultural reasons, between sexual maturity and sexual activity. Both
aim at abolishing the psychical impotence that results from the
failure of affectionate and sensual impulses to coalesce. That the
effect of the same causes should be so different in men and in
women may perhaps be traced to another difference in the behaviour
of the two sexes. Civilized women do not usually transgress the
prohibition on sexual activity in the period during which they have
to wait, and thus they acquire the intimate connection between
prohibition and sexuality. Men usually break through this
prohibition if they can satisfy the condition of debasing the
object, and so they carry on this condition into their love in
later life.

   In view of the strenuous efforts
being made in the civilized world to-day to reform sexual life, it
will not be superfluous to give a reminder that psycho-analytic
research is as remote from tendentiousness as any other kind of
research. It has no other end in view than to throw light on things
by tracing what is manifest back to what is hidden. It is quite
satisfied if reforms make use of its findings to replace what is
injurious by something more advantageous; but it cannot predict
whether other institutions may not result in other, and perhaps
graver, sacrifices.

3

   The fact that the curb put upon
love by civilization involves a universal tendency to debase sexual
objects will perhaps lead us to turn our attention from the object
to the instincts themselves. The damage caused by the initial
frustration of sexual pleasure is seen in the fact that the freedom
later given to that pleasure in marriage does not bring full
satisfaction. But at the same time, if sexual freedom is
unrestricted from the outset the result is no better. It can easily
be shown that the psychical value of erotic needs is reduced as
soon as their satisfaction becomes easy. An obstacle is required in
order to heighten libido; and where natural resistances to
satisfaction have not been sufficient men have at all times erected
conventional ones so as to be able to enjoy love. This is true both
of individuals and of nations. In times in which there were no
difficulties standing in the way of sexual satisfaction, such as
perhaps during the decline of the ancient civilizations, love
became worthless and life empty, and strong reaction-formations
were required to restore indispensable affective values. In this
connection it may be claimed that the ascetic current in
Christianity created psychical values for love which pagan
antiquity was never able to confer on it. This current assumed its
greatest importance with the ascetic monks, whose lives were almost
entirely occupied with the struggle against libidinal
temptation.

On The Universal Tendency To Debasement In The Sphere Of Love

2345

   One’s first inclination is
no doubt to trace back the difficulties revealed here to universal
characteristics of our organic instincts. It is no doubt also true
in general that the psychical importance of an instinct rises in
proportion to its frustration. Suppose a number of totally
different human beings were all equally exposed to hunger. As their
imperative need for food mounted, all the individual differences
would disappear and in their place one would see the uniform
manifestations of the one unappeased instinct. But is it also true
that with the satisfaction of an instinct its psychical value
always falls just as sharply? Consider, for example, the relation
of a drinker to wine. Is it not true that wine always provides the
drinker with the same toxic satisfaction, which in poetry has so
often been compared to erotic satisfaction - a comparison
acceptable from the scientific point of view as well? Has one ever
heard of the drinker being obliged constantly to change his drink
because he soon grows tired of keeping to the same one? On the
contrary, habit constantly tightens the bond between a man and the
kind of wine he drinks. Does one ever hear of a drinker who needs
to go to a country where wine is dearer or drinking is prohibited,
so that by introducing obstacles he can reinforce the dwindling
satisfaction that he obtains? Not at all. If we listen to what our
great alcoholics, such as Böcklin,¹ say about their
relation to wine, it sounds like the most perfect harmony, a model
of a happy marriage. Why is the relation of the lover to his sexual
object so very different?

   It is my belief that, however
strange it may sound, we must reckon with the possibility that
something in the nature of the sexual instinct itself is
unfavourable to the realization of complete satisfaction. If we
consider the long and difficult developmental history of the
instinct, two factors immediately spring to mind which might be
made responsible for this difficulty Firstly, as a result of the
diphasic onset of object-choice, and the interposition of the
barrier against incest, the final object of the sexual instinct is
never any longer the original object but only a surrogate for it.
Psycho-analysis has shown us that when the original object of a
wishful impulse has been lost as a result of repression, it is
frequently represented by an endless series of substitutive objects
none of which, however, brings full satisfaction. This may explain
the inconstancy in object-choice, the ‘craving for
stimulation’ which is so often a feature of the love of
adults.

  
¹
Floerke (1902, 16).

On The Universal Tendency To Debasement In The Sphere Of Love

2346

   Secondly, we know that the sexual
instinct is originally divided into a great number of components -
or rather, it develops out of them - some of which cannot be taken
up into the instinct in its later form, but have at an earlier
stage to be suppressed or put to other uses. These are above all
the coprophilic instinctual components, which have proved
incompatible with our aesthetic standards of culture, probably
since, as a result of our adopting an erect gait, we raised our
organ of smell from the ground. The same is true of a large portion
of the sadistic urges which are a part of erotic life. But all such
developmental processes affect only the upper layers of the complex
structure. The fundamental processes which produce erotic
excitation remain unaltered. The excremental is all too intimately
and inseparably bound up with the sexual; the position of the
genitals -
inter unrinas et faeces
- remains the decisive
and unchangeable factor. One might say here, varying a well-known
saying of the great Napoleon: ‘Anatomy is destiny.’ The
genitals themselves have not taken part in the development of the
human body in the direction of beauty: they have remained animal,
and thus love, too, has remained in essence just as animal as it
ever was. The instincts of love are hard to educate; education of
them achieves now too much, now too little. What civilization aims
at making out of them seems unattainable except at the price of a
sensible loss of pleasure; the persistence of the impulses that
could not be made use of can be detected in sexual activity in the
form of non-satisfaction.

   Thus we may perhaps be forced to
become reconciled to the idea that it is quite impossible to adjust
the claims of the sexual instinct to the demands of civilization;
that in consequence of its cultural development renunciation and
suffering, as well as the danger of extinction in the remotest
future, cannot be avoided by the human race. This gloomy prognosis
rests, it is true, on the single conjecture that the
non-satisfaction that goes with civilization is the necessary
consequence of certain peculiarities which the sexual instinct has
assumed under the pressure of culture. The very incapacity of the
sexual instinct to yield complete satisfaction as soon as it
submits to the first demands of civilization becomes the source,
however, of the noblest cultural achievements which are brought
into being by ever more extensive sublimation of its instinctual
components. For what motive would men have for putting sexual
instinctual forces to other uses if, by any distribution of those
forces, they could obtain fully satisfying pleasure? They would
never abandon that pleasure and they would never make any further
progress. It seems, therefore, that the irreconcilable difference
between the demands of the two instincts - the sexual and the
egoistic - has made men capable of ever higher achievements, though
subject, it is true, to a constant danger, to which, in the form of
neurosis, the weaker are succumbing to-day.

   It is not the aim of science
either to frighten or to console. But I myself am quite ready to
admit that such far-reaching conclusions as those I have drawn
should be built on a broader foundation, and that perhaps
developments in other directions may enable mankind to correct the
results of the developments I have here been considering in
isolation.

2347

THE TABOO OF VIRGINITY

(CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE III)

(1918)

2348

Intentionally left blank

2349

THE TABOO OF VIRGINITY

(CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE III)

Few details of the sexual life of primitive
peoples are so alien to our own feelings as their estimate of
virginity, the state in a woman of being untouched. The high value
which her suitor places on a woman’s virginity seems to us so
firmly rooted, so much a matter of course, that we find ourselves
almost at a loss if we have to give reasons for this opinion. The
demand that a girl shall not bring to her marriage with a
particular man any memory of sexual relations with another is,
indeed, nothing other than a logical continuation of the right to
exclusive possession of a woman, which forms the essence of
monogamy, the extension of this monopoly to cover the past.

   From this point we have no
trouble in justifying what looked at first like a prejudice, by
referring to our views on the erotic life of women. Whoever is the
first to satisfy a virgin’s desire for love, long and
laboriously held in check, and who in doing so overcomes the
resistances which have been built up in her through the influences
of her milieu and education, that is the man she will take into a
lasting relationship, the possibility of which will never again be
open to any other man. This experience creates a state of bondage
in the woman which guarantees that possession of her shall continue
undisturbed and makes her able to resist new impressions and
enticements from outside.

   The expression ‘sexual
bondage’ was chosen by von Krafft Ebing (1892) to describe
the phenomenon of a person’s acquiring an unusually high
degree of dependence and lack of self-reliance in relation to
another person with whom he has a sexual relationship. This bondage
can on occasion extend very far, as far as the loss of all
independence will and as far as causing a person to suffer the
greatest sacrifices of his own interests; the author, however, does
not fail to remark that a certain measure of such dependence
‘is absolutely necessary, if the tie is to last for any
length of time’. Some such measure of sexual bondage is,
indeed, indispensable to the maintenance of civilized marriage and
to holding at bay the polygamous tendencies which threaten it, and
in our social communities this factor is regularly reckoned
upon.

The Taboo Of Virginity

2350

   Von Krafft-Ebing derives the
formation of sexual bondage from a conjunction of an
‘uncommon degree of the state of being in love and of
weakness of character’ in one person and unbounded egoism in
the other. Analytic experience, however, will not let us rest
satisfied with this simple attempt at explanation. We can see,
rather, that the decisive factor is the amount of sexual resistance
that is overcome and in addition the fact that the process of
overcoming the resistance is concentrated and happens only once.
This state of bondage is, accordingly, far more frequent and more
intense in women than in men, though it is true it occurs in the
latter more often nowadays than it did in ancient times. Wherever
we have been able to study sexual bondage in men it has shown
itself as resulting from an overcoming of psychical impotence
through one particular woman, to whom the man in question has
remained subsequently bound. Many strange marriages and not a few
tragic events - even some with far-reaching consequences - seem to
owe their explanation to this origin.

   Turning to the attitude of
primitive peoples, it is incorrect to describe it by declaring that
they set no value on virginity and to submit as proof of this the
fact that they perform the defloration of girls outside marriage
and before the first act of marital intercourse. On the contrary,
it appears that for them, too, defloration is a significant act;
but it has become the subject of a taboo - of a prohibition which
may be described as religious. Instead of reserving it for the
girl’s bridegroom and future partner in marriage, custom
demands that
he shall shun the performance of it
.¹

   It is no part of my purpose to
make a full collection of the literary evidence for the existence
of this custom of prohibition, to pursue its geographical
distribution and to enumerate all the forms in which it is
expressed. I shall content myself, therefore, with stating the fact
that the practice of rupturing the hymen in this way outside the
subsequent marriage is very widespread among primitive races living
to-day. As Crawley says ‘This marriage ceremony consists in
perforation of the hymen by some appointed person other than the
husband; it is most common in the lowest stages of culture,
especially in Australia.’ (Crawley, 1902, 347.)

  
¹
Cf. Crawley (1902), Ploss and Bartels
(1891), Frazer (1911) and Havelock Ellis.

The Taboo Of Virginity

2351

   If, however, defloration is not
to result from the first act of marital intercourse, then it must
have been carried out beforehand - whatever the way and whoever the
agent may have been. I shall quote a few passages from
Crawley’s book, mentioned above, which provide information on
these points but also give grounds for some critical
observations.

   (Ibid., 191.) ‘Thus in the
Dieri and neighbouring tribes (in Australia) it is the universal
custom when a girl reaches puberty to rupture the hymen (
Journal
of the Royal Antrhopological Institute
,
24
, 169). In the
Portland and Glenelg tribes this is done to the bride by an old
woman; and sometimes white men are asked for this reason to
deflower maidens (Brough Smith,
2
, 319).’

   (Ibid., 307.) ‘The
artificial rupture of the hymen sometimes takes place in infancy,
but generally at puberty. . . . It is often
combined, as in Australia, with a ceremonial act of
intercourse.’

   (Ibid., 348.) (Of Australian
tribes among which the well known exogamous marriage-restrictions
are in force, from communications by Spencer and Gillen:)
‘The hymen is artificially perforated, and then the assisting
men have access (ceremonial, be it observed) to the girl in a
stated order. . . . The act is in two parts,
perforation and intercourse.’

   (Ibid., 349.) ‘An important
preliminary of marriage amongst the Masai (in Equatorial Africa) is
the performance of this operation on the girl (J. Thomson,
2
, 258). This defloration is performed by the father of the
bride amongst the Sakais (Malay), Battas (Sumatra), and Alfoers of
Celebes (Ploss and Bartels,
2
, 490). In the Philippines
there were certain men whose profession it was to deflower brides,
in case the hymen had not been ruptured in childhood by an old
woman who was sometimes employed for this (Featherman,
2
,
474). The defloration of the bride was amongst some Eskimo tribes
entrusted to the
angekok
, or priest (ibid.,
3
,
406).’

The Taboo Of Virginity

2352

   The critical remarks I referred
to are concerned with two points. Firstly, it is a pity that in
these reports a more careful distinction is not made between simple
rupture of the hymen without intercourse, and intercourse for the
purpose of effecting this rupture. There is only one passage in
which we are told expressly that the procedure falls into two
actions: defloration (carried out by hand or with some instrument)
and the act of intercourse which follows it. The material in Ploss
and Bartels (1891), in other respects so rich, is almost useless
for our purpose, because in their presentation of it the
psychological importance of the act of defloration is completely
displaced in favour of its anatomical results. Secondly, we should
be glad to be informed how the ‘ceremonial’ (purely
formal, ritual, or official) coitus, which takes place on these
occasions, differs from ordinary sexual intercourse. The authors to
whom I have had access either have been too embarrassed to discuss
the matter or have once again underestimated the psychological
importance of such sexual details. It is to be hoped that the
first-hand accounts of travellers and missionaries may be more
complete and less ambiguous, but since this literature, which is
for the most part foreign, is for the time being inaccessible I
cannot say anything definite on the subject. Besides, we may get
round the problem arising over this second point if we bear in mind
the fact that a ceremonial mock-coitus would after all only
represent a substitute for, and perhaps replace altogether, an act
that in earlier times would have been carried out
completely.¹

   There are various factors which
can be adduced to explain this taboo of virginity and which I will
enumerate and consider briefly. When a virgin is deflowered, her
blood is as a rule shed; the first attempt at explanation, then, is
based on the horror of blood among primitive races who consider
blood as the seat of life. This blood taboo is seen in numerous
kinds of observances which have nothing to do with sexuality; it is
obviously connected with the prohibition against murder and forms a
protective measure against the primal thirst for blood, primaeval
man’s pleasure in killing. According to this view the taboo
of virginity is connected with the taboo of menstruation which is
almost universally maintained. Primitive people cannot dissociate
the puzzling phenomenon of this monthly flow of blood from sadistic
ideas. Menstruation, especially its first appearance, is
interpreted as the bite of some spirit-animal, perhaps as a sign of
sexual intercourse with this spirit. Occasionally some report gives
grounds for recognizing the spirit as that of an ancestor and then,
supported by other findings,² we understand that the
menstruating girl is taboo because she is the property of this
ancestral spirit.

  
¹
In numerous other examples of marriage
ceremonies there can be no doubt that people other than the
bridegroom, for example his assistants and companions (our
traditional ‘groomsmen’
[‘
Kranzelherrn
’]), are granted full sexual
access to the bride.

  
²
Cf.
Totem and Taboo
(1912-13).

The Taboo Of Virginity

2353

   Other considerations, however,
warn us not to over-estimate the influence of a factor such as the
horror of blood. It has not, after all, been strong enough to
suppress practices like the circumcision of boys and the still more
cruel equivalent with girls (excision of the clitoris and labia
minora) which are to some extent the custom in these same races,
nor to abolish the prevalence of other ceremonies involving
bloodshed. It would not therefore be surprising, either, if this
horror were overcome for the benefit of the husband on the occasion
of the first cohabitation.

   There is a second explanation,
also unconcerned with sexuality, which has, however, a much more
general scope than the first. It suggests that primitive man is
prey to a perpetual lurking apprehensiveness, just as in the
psycho-analytic theory of the neuroses we claim to be the case with
people suffering from anxiety neurosis. This apprehensiveness will
appear most strongly on all occasions which differ in any way from
the usual, which involve something new or unexpected, something not
understood or uncanny. This is also the origin of the ceremonial
practices, widely adopted in later religions, which are connected
with the beginning of every new undertaking, the start of every new
period of time, the first-fruits of human, animal and plant life.
The dangers which the anxious man believes to be threatening him
never appear more vivid in his expectation than on the threshold of
a dangerous situation, and then, too, is the only time when
protecting himself against them is of any use. The first act of
intercourse in marriage can certainly claim, on grounds of
importance, to be preceded by such precautionary measures. These
two attempts at explanation, based on horror of blood and on fear
of first occurrences, do not contradict but rather reinforce each
other. The first occasion of sexual intercourse is certainly a
critical action, all the more so if it is to involve a flow of
blood.

The Taboo Of Virginity

2354

   A third explanation - the one
which Crawley prefers - draws attention to the fact that the taboo
of virginity is part of a large totality which embraces the whole
of sexual life. It is not only the first coitus with a woman which
is taboo but sexual intercourse in general; one might almost say
that women are altogether taboo. A woman is not only taboo in
particular situations arising from her sexual life such as
menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth and lying-in; apart from these
situations, intercourse with women is subject to such solemn and
numerous restrictions that we have every reason to doubt the
reputed sexual freedom of savages. It is true that, on particular
occasions, primitive man’s sexuality will override all
inhibitions; but for the most part it seems to be more strongly
held in check by prohibitions than it is at higher levels of
civilization. Whenever the man undertakes some special enterprise,
like setting out on an expedition, a hunt or a campaign, he is
obliged to keep away from his wife and especially from sexual
intercourse with her; otherwise she will paralyse his strength and
bring him bad luck. In the usages of daily life as well there is an
unmistakable tendency to keep the sexes apart. Women live with
women, men with men; family life, in our sense, seems scarcely to
exist in many primitive tribes. This separation sometimes goes so
far that one sex is not allowed to say aloud the personal names of
members of the other sex, and that the women develop a language
with a special vocabulary. Sexual needs will from time to time
break through these barriers of separation afresh, but in some
tribes even the encounters of husband and wife have to take place
outside the house and in secret.