Freud - Complete Works (560 page)

   From the very first, children are
at one in thinking that babies must be born through the bowel; they
must make their appearance like lumps of faeces. This theory is not
abandoned until all anal interests have been deprived of their
value, and it is then replaced by the hypothesis that the navel
comes open or that the area of the breast between the nipples is
where birth takes place. In this way the child in the course of his
researches comes nearer to the facts about sex, or, feeling at a
loss owing to his ignorance, he passes them by till, usually in the
years before puberty, he is given what is as a rule a depreciatory
and incomplete explanation, which often produces traumatic
effects.

   You will no doubt have heard,
Gentlemen, that in psycho-analysis the concept of what is sexual
has been unduly extended in order to support the theses of the
sexual causation of the neuroses and the sexual meaning of
symptoms. You are now in a position to judge for yourselves whether
this extension is unjustified. We have only extended the concept of
sexuality far enough to be able to comprise the sexual life of
perverts and of children. We have, that is to say, given it back
its true compass. What is called sexuality outside psycho-analysis
relates only to a restricted sexual life, which serves the purpose
of reproduction and is described as normal.

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LECTURE XXI

THE
DEVELOPMENT OF THE LIBIDO AND THE SEXUAL ORGANIZATIONS

GENTLEMEN
, - I am under the
impression that I have not succeeded in bringing home to you quite
convincingly the importance of the perversions for our view of
sexuality, and I should therefore like so far as I can to improve
and supplement what I have said.

   It is not the case that the
perversions alone would have obliged us to make the change in the
concept of sexuality which has brought such violent contradictions
down on us. The study of infantile sexuality had even more to do
with it and it was the concurrence of the two which was decisive
for us. But the manifestations of infantile sexuality, however
unmistakable they may be in later childhood, seem to melt into
indefiniteness towards their beginnings. Anyone who chooses to
disregard the history of their development and their analytic
context will deny that they are of a sexual character and will
attribute some undifferentiated character to them instead. You must
not forget that at the moment we are not in possession of any
generally recognized criterion of the sexual nature of a process,
apart, once again, from a connection with the reproductive function
which we must reject as being too narrow-minded. The biological
criteria, such as the periodicities of twenty-three and
twenty-eight days postulated by Wilhelm Fliess, are still highly
debatable; the chemical characteristics of the sexual process,
which we may suspect, are still awaiting discovery. On the other
hand, the sexual perversions of adults are something tangible and
unambiguous. As is already shown by the name by which they are
universally known, they are unquestionably sexual. Whether they are
described as indications of degeneracy or in any other way, no one
has yet had the courage to class them as anything but phenomena of
sexual life. On their account alone we are justified in asserting
that sexuality and reproduction do not coincide, for it is obvious
that all of them disavow the aim of reproduction.

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   I find a parallel here which is
not uninteresting. Whereas for most people ‘conscious’
and ‘psychical’ are the same, we have been obliged to
extend the concept of ‘psychical’ and to recognize
something ‘psychical’ that is not
‘conscious’. And in just the same way, whereas other
people declare that ‘sexual’ and ‘connected with
reproduction’ (or, if you prefer to put it more shortly,
‘genital’) are identical, we cannot avoid postulating
something ‘sexual’ that is not ‘genital’ -
has nothing to do with reproduction. The similarity here is only a
formal one, but it is not without a deeper foundation.

   But if the existence of sexual
perversions is such a decisive argument in this question, why has
it not long since had its effect and settled the matter? I really
cannot say. I think it is connected with the fact that these sexual
perversions are subject to a quite special ban, which has even
affected theory and has stood in the way of the scientific
consideration of them. It is as though no one could forget that
they are not only something disgusting but also something monstrous
and dangerous - as though people felt them as seductive, and had at
bottom to fight down a secret envy of those who were enjoying them.
One is reminded of the admission made by the condemnatory Landgraf
in the famous
Tannhäuser
parody:

                                               
‘ Im Venusberg vergass er Ehr und
Pflicht!   

                                               
- Merkwürdig, unser einem passiert

                                                                                               
so etwas nicht.’
¹

In reality perverts are poor wretches, rather,
who have to pay extremely dear for their hard-won satisfaction.

   What makes the activity of
perverts so unmistakably sexual in spite of all the strangeness of
its objects and aims is the fact that as a rule an act of perverse
satisfaction nevertheless ends in complete orgasm and voidance of
the genital products. This is of course only the result of the
people concerned being adults. In children orgasm and genital
excretion are scarcely possible; their place is taken by hints
which are once more not recognized as being clearly sexual.

  
¹
[‘The Venusberg made him
forget

       Honour
and Duty thus! -

      
Strange how these things don’t happen

       To
people such as us.’]

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   There is something else that I
must add in order to complete our view of sexual perversions.
However infamous they may be, however sharply they may be
contrasted with normal sexual activity, quiet consideration will
show that some perverse trait or other is seldom absent from the
sexual life of normal people. Even a kiss can claim to be described
as a perverse act, since it consists in the bringing together of
two oral erotogenic zones instead of the two genitals. Yet no one
rejects it as perverse; on the contrary, it is permitted in
theatrical performances as a softened hint at the sexual act. But
precisely kissing can easily turn into a complete perversion - if,
that is to say, it becomes so intense that a genital discharge and
orgasm follow upon it directly, an event that is far from rare. We
can learn, too, that for one person feeling and looking at the
object are indispensable preconditions of sexual enjoyment, that
another person will pinch or bite at the climax of sexual
excitation, that the highest pitch of excitement in lovers is not
always provoked by the genitals but by some other region of the
object’s body, and any number of similar things besides.
There is no sense in excluding people with individual traits of
this kind from the class of the normal and putting them among the
perverts. On the contrary, we shall recognize more and more clearly
that the essence of the perversions lies not in the extension of
the sexual aim, not in the replacement of the genitals, not even
always in the variant choice of the object, but solely in the
exclusiveness with which these deviations are carried out and as a
result of which the sexual act serving the purpose of reproduction
is put on one side. In so far as the perverse actions are inserted
in the performance of the normal sexual act as preparatory or
intensifying contributions, they are in reality not perversions at
all. The gulf between normal and perverse sexuality is of course
very much narrowed by facts of this kind. It is an easy conclusion
that normal sexuality has emerged out of something that was in
existence before it, by weeding out certain features of that
material as unserviceable and collecting together the rest in order
to subordinate them to a new aim, that of reproduction.

  Before we make use of our familiarity
with the perversions to plunge once again into the study of
infantile sexuality on the basis of clearer premisses, I must draw
your attention to an important difference between them. Perverse
sexuality is as a rule excellently centred: all its actions are
directed to an aim - usually to a single one; one component
instinct has gained the upper hand in it and is either the only one
observable or has subjected the others to its purposes. In that
respect there is no distinction between perverse and normal
sexuality other than the fact that their dominating component
instincts and consequently their sexual aims are different. In both
of them, one might say, a well-organized tyranny has been
established, but in each of the two a different family has seized
the reins of power. Infantile sexuality, on the other hand, lacks,
speaking generally, any such centring and organization; its
separate component instincts have equal rights, each of them goes
its own way to obtaining pleasure. Both the absence and the
presence of centring harmonize well, of course, with the fact that
both perverse and normal sexuality have arisen out of infantile
sexuality. Incidentally, there are also cases of perverse sexuality
which have a much greater resemblance to the infantile kind, since
in them numerous component instincts have put through (or, more
correctly, have persisted in) their aims independently of one
another. It is better in such cases to speak of infantilism in
sexual life rather than of a perversion.

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   Thus forearmed we can proceed to
the consideration of a suggestion which we shall certainly not be
spared. ‘Why’, we shall be asked, ‘are you so
obstinate in describing as being already sexuality what on your own
evidence are indefinable manifestations in childhood out of which
sexual life will later develop? Why should you not be content
instead with giving them a physiological description and simply say
that in an infant at the breast we already observe activities, such
as sensual sucking or holding back the excreta, which show us that
he is striving for "organ-pleasure"? In that way you
would have avoided the hypothesis, so repugnant to every feeling,
of the smallest babies having a sexual life.’ - Indeed,
Gentlemen, I have no objection at all to organ-pleasure. I know
that even the supreme pleasure of sexual union is only an
organ-pleasure attached to the activity of the genitals. But can
you tell me when this originally indifferent organ-pleasure
acquires the sexual character which it undoubtedly possesses in the
later phases of development? Do we know any more about
‘organ-pleasure’ than about sexuality? You will reply
that it gains its sexual character precisely when the genitals
begin to play their part; ‘sexual’ coincides with
‘genital’. You will even reject the objection raised by
the perversions by pointing out to me that in the majority of
perversions a genital orgasm is after all aimed at, even if it is
arrived at by a method other than the union of the genitals. You
are certainly taking up a much stronger position in determining the
characteristics of what is sexual if you knock out of it the
relation to reproduction which is made untenable by the perversions
and put genital activity in its place. But, if so, we are no longer
far apart: it is only a question of the genital organs versus the
other organs. What are you going to do, however, about the numerous
experiences which show you that the genitals can be represented as
regards their yield of pleasure by other organs, as in the case of
kissing or of the perverse practices of voluptuaries or of the
symptoms of hysteria? In that neurosis it is quite usual for signs
of stimulation, sensations and innervations, and even the processes
of erection, which belong properly to the genitals, to be displaced
on to other, remote regions of the body - as, for instance, by
transposition upwards, to the head and face. Being thus convinced
that you have nothing to catch hold of for your characterization of
what is sexual, you will no doubt have to make up your minds to
follow my example and extend the description of being
‘sexual’ to the activities of early childhood, too,
which strive for organ-pleasure.

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   And now, for my justification,
there are two other considerations which I must ask you to take
into account. As you know, we call the dubious and indefinable
pleasurable activities of earliest childhood sexual because, in the
course of analysis, we arrive at them from the symptoms after
passing through indisputably sexual material. They need not
necessarily themselves be sexual on that account - agreed! But take
an analogous case. Suppose we had no means of observing the
development from their seed of two dicotyledonous plants, the
apple-tree and the bean, but that it was possible in both cases for
us to trace their development backwards from the fully developed
individual plant to the first seedling with two seed-leaves. The
two seed leaves have a neutral appearance; they are just alike in
both cases. Am I then to suppose that they are really alike, and
that the specific difference between an apple-tree and a bean is
only introduced into the plants later? Or is it biologically more
correct to believe that this difference is already there in the
seedling, although I cannot observe any distinction in the seed
leaves? But we are doing the same thing when we call the pleasure
in the activities of an infant-in-arms a sexual one. I cannot
discuss here whether each and every organ-pleasure should be called
a sexual one or whether, alongside of the sexual one, there is
another which does not deserve to be so called. I know too little
about organ-pleasure and its determinants; and, in view of the
retrogressive character of analysis in general, I cannot feel
surprised if at the very end I arrive at what are for the time
being indefinable factors.