Freud - Complete Works (561 page)

   And one thing more! On the whole
you will have gained very little for what you want to assert - the
sexual purity of children - even if you succeed in convincing me
that it would be better to regard the activities of infants-in-arms
as non-sexual. For the sexual life of children is already free from
all these doubts from the third year of life onwards: at about that
time the genitals already begin to stir, a period of infantile
masturbation - of genital satisfaction, therefore - sets in,
regularly perhaps. The mental and social phenomena of sexual life
need no longer be absent; the choice of an object, an affectionate
preference for particular people, a decision, even, in favour of
one of the two sexes, jealousy - all these have been established by
impartial observations made independently of psycho-analysis and
before its time, and they can be confirmed by any observer who
cares to see them. You will object that you have never doubted the
early awakening of affection; you have only doubted whether this
affection bears a ‘sexual’ character. It is true that
children have already learnt to conceal this between the ages of
three and eight. But if you are attentive you will be able
nevertheless to collect enough evidence of the
‘sensual’ aims of this affection, and whatever you
still lack after that can easily be supplied in plenty by the
investigations of analysis. The sexual aims at this period of life
are intimately connected with the child’s contemporary sexual
researches, of which I have given you some in stances. The perverse
character of some of these aims is of course dependent on the
child’s constitutional immaturity, for he has not yet
discovered the aim that consists in the act of copulation.

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   From about the sixth to the
eighth year of life onwards, we can observe a halt and
retrogression in sexual development, which, in cases where it is
most propitious culturally, deserves to be called a period of
latency. The latency period may also be absent: it need not bring
with it any interruption of sexual activity and sexual interests
along the whole line. The majority of experiences and mental
impulses before the start of the latency period now fall victim to
infantile amnesia - the forgetting (already discussed by us) which
veils our earliest youth from us and makes us strangers to it. The
task is set us in every psycho-analysis of bringing this forgotten
period back into memory. It is impossible to avoid a suspicion that
the beginnings of sexual life which are included in that period
have provided the motive for its being forgotten - that this
forgetting, in fact, is an outcome of repression.

   From the third year of life a
child’s sexual life shows much agreement with an
adult’s. It differs from the latter, as we already know, in
lacking a firm organization under the primacy of the genitals, in
its inevitable traits of perversion and also, of course, in the far
lesser intensity of the whole trend. But from the point of view of
theory the most interesting phases of sexual, or, as we will say,
of libidinal, development lie earlier than this point of time. This
course of development takes place so rapidly that we should
probably never have succeeded in getting a firm hold of its
fleeting pictures by direct observation. It was only with the help
of the psycho-analytic investigation of the neuroses that it became
possible to discern the still earlier phases of the development of
the libido. These are nothing but constructions, to be sure, but,
if you carry out psycho-analyses in practice, you will find that
they are necessary and useful constructions. You will soon learn
how it comes about that pathology can here put us in possession of
conditions which we should inevitably overlook in a normal
subject.

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   Accordingly, I can now describe
to you the form taken by a child’s sexual life before the
establishment of the primacy of the genitals, preparations for
which are made in the first period of infancy preceding the latency
period and which is permanently organized from puberty onwards. A
kind of loose organization which may be called
‘pregenital’ exists during this early period. During
this phase what stand in the forefront are not the genital
component instincts but the sadistic and anal ones. The contrast
between ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ plays no
part here as yet. Its place is taken by the contrast between
‘active’ and ‘passive’, which may be
described as a precursor of the sexual polarity and which later on
is soldered to that polarity, what appears to us as masculine in
the activities of this phase, when we look at it from the point of
view of the genital phase, turns out to be an expression of an
instinct for mastery which easily passes over into cruelty. Trends
with a passive aim are attached to the erotogenic zone of the anal
orifice, which is very important at this period. The instincts for
looking and for gaining knowledge are powerfully at work; the
genitals actually play a part in sexual life only as organs for the
excretion of urine. The component instincts of this phase are not
without objects, but those objects do not necessarily converge into
a single object. The sadistic anal organization is the immediate
forerunner of the phase of genital primacy. Detailed study shows
how much of it is retained in the later definitive shape of things
and shows too the way in which its component instincts are
compelled to take their place in the new genital organization.
Behind the sadistic-anal phase of libidinal development we get a
glimpse of a still earlier and more primitive stage of
organization, in which the erotogenic zone of the mouth plays the
chief part. As you will guess, the sexual activity of sensual
sucking belongs to it. We must admire the understanding of the
Ancient Egyptians who, in their art, represented children,
including the God Horus, with a finger in their mouth. Only
recently Abraham has given examples of the traces which this
primitive oral phase leaves behind it in later sexual life.

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   I can well suppose, Gentlemen,
that this last account of the sexual organizations has obstructed
rather than instructed you, and it may be that I have once more
entered too much into details. But you must have patience. What you
have just heard will derive increased value for you from its later
application. For the present you should keep firmly in mind that
sexual life (or, as we put it, the libidinal function) does not
emerge as something ready-made and does not even develop further in
its own likeness, but passes through a series of successive phases
which do not resemble one another; its development is thus several
times repeated - like that of a caterpillar into a butterfly. The
turning-point of this development is the subordination of all the
component sexual instincts under the primacy of the genitals and
along with this the subjection of sexuality to the reproductive
function. This is preceded by a sexual life that might be described
as distracted - the independent activity of the different component
instincts striving for organ-pleasure. This anarchy is mitigated by
abortive beginnings of ‘pregenital’ organizations - a
sadistic-anal phase preceded by an oral one, which is perhaps the
most primitive. In addition, there are the various, still
incompletely known, processes which lead one stage of organization
over to the subsequent and next higher one. We shall learn later
what an important light is thrown on the neuroses by the fact that
the libido passes through such a long course of development and one
which has so many breaks in it.

   To-day we will follow yet another
side of this development namely the relation of the component
sexual instincts to their object. Or rather, we will make a hasty
survey of this development and dwell somewhat longer on one of its
rather late consequences. A few of the components of the sexual
instinct, there, have an object from the first and hold fast to it
- for instance, the instinct for mastery (sadism) and the
scopophilic and epistemophilic instincts. Others, more definitely
linked to particular erotogenic zones of the body, have one to
begin with only, so long as they are still attached to the
non-sexual functions, and give it up when they become separated
from them. Thus the first object of the oral component of the
sexual instinct is the mother’s breast which satisfies the
infant’s need for nourishment. The erotic component, which is
satisfied simultaneously during the sucking, makes itself
independent with the act of
sensual
sucking
[
lutschen
]; it gives up the outside object and replaces it
by an area of the subject’s own body. The oral instinct
becomes
auto-erotic
, as are the anal and other erotogenic
instincts from the first. Further development, to put the matter as
concisely as possible, has two aims: firstly, the abandonment of
auto-erotism, the replacement of the subject’s own body once
more by an outside object, and secondly, the unification of the
various objects of the separate instincts and their replacement by
a single object. This can, of course, only be achieved if the
object is again a whole body, similar to the subject’s own.
Nor can it be effected unless a number of the auto-erotic
instinctual impulses are left behind as being unserviceable.

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   The processes of finding an
object are fairly complex and no comprehensive account has hitherto
been given of them. For our purposes it may be specially pointed
out that when, in the years of childhood before puberty, the
process has in some respects reached a conclusion, the object that
has been found turns out to be almost identical with the first
object of the oral pleasure-instinct, which was reached by
attachment. Though it is not actually the mother’s breast, at
least it is the mother. We call the mother the first
love
-object. For we speak of love when we bring the mental
side of the sexual trends into the foreground and want to force
back the underlying physical or ‘sensual’ instinctual
demands or to forget them for a moment. At the time at which the
child’s mother becomes his love-object the psychical work of
repression has already begun in him, which is withdrawing from his
knowledge awareness of a part of his sexual aims. To his choice of
his mother as a love-object everything becomes attached which,
under the name of the ‘Oedipus complex’, has attained
so much importance in the psycho-analytic explanation of the
neuroses and has played no less a part, perhaps, in the resistance
to psycho-analysis.

   Listen to this episode which
occurred in the course of the present war. One of the stout
disciples of psycho-analysis was stationed as medical officer on
the German front somewhere in Poland. He attracted his
colleagues’ attention by the fact that he occasionally
exercised an unexpected influence on a patient. When he was
questioned, he acknowledged that he was employing the methods of
psycho-analysis and declared his readiness to convey his knowledge
to his colleagues. Every evening there after the medical officers
of the corps, his colleagues and his superiors, came together in
order to learn the secret doctrines of analysis. All went well for
a while; but when he spoke to his audience about the Oedipus
complex, one of his superiors rose, declared he did not believe it,
that it was a vile act on the part of the lecturer to speak of such
things to them, honest men who were fighting for their country and
fathers of a family, and that he forbade the continuance of the
lectures. That was the end of the matter. The analyst got himself
transferred to another part of the front. It seems to me a bad
thing, however, if a German victory requires that science shall be
‘organized’ in this way, and German science will not
respond well to organization of such a kind.

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   And now you will be eager to hear
what this terrible Oedipus complex contains. Its name tells you.
You all know the Greek legend of King Oedipus, who was destined by
fate to kill his father and take his mother to wife, who did
everything possible to escape the oracle’s decree and
punished himself by blinding when he learned that he had none the
less unwittingly committed both these crimes. I hope many of you
may yourselves have felt the shattering effect of the tragedy in
which Sophocles has treated the story. The work of the Athenian
dramatist exhibits the way in which the long-past deed of Oedipus
is gradually brought to light by an investigation ingeniously
protracted and fanned into life by ever fresh relays of evidence.
To this extent it has a certain resemblance to the progress of a
psycho-analysis. In the course of the dialogue Jocasta, the deluded
mother and wife, declares herself opposed to the continuance of the
enquiry. She appeals to the fact that many people have dreamt of
lying with their mothers, but that dreams should be despised. We do
not despise dreams - least of all, typical dreams which occur to
many people; and we do not doubt that the dream referred to by
Jocasta has an intimate connection with the strange and terrifying
content of the legend.

   It is a surprising thing that the
tragedy of Sophocles does not call up indignant repudiation in his
audience - a reaction similar to that of our simple-minded army
doctor but far better justified. For fundamentally it is an amoral
work: it absolves men from moral responsibility, exhibits the gods
as promoters of crime and shows the impotence of the moral impulses
of men which struggle against crime. It might easily be supposed
that the material of the legend had in view an indictment of the
gods and of fate; and in the hands of Euripides, the critic and
enemy of the gods, it would probably have become such an
indictment. But with the devout Sophocles there is no question of
an application of that kind. The difficulty is overcome by the
pious sophistry that to bow to the will of the gods is the highest
morality even when it promotes crime. I cannot think that this
morality is a strong point of the play, but it has no influence on
its effect. It is not to it that the auditor reacts but to the
secret sense and content of the legend. He reacts as though by self
analysis he had recognized the Oedipus complex in himself and had
unveiled the will of the gods and the oracle as exalted disguises
of his own unconscious. It is as though he was obliged to remember
the two wishes - to do away with his father and in place of him to
take his mother to wife - and to be horrified at them. And he
understands the dramatist’s voice as though it were saying to
him: ‘You are struggling in vain against your responsibility
and are protesting in vain of what you have done in opposition to
these criminal intentions. You are guilty, for you have not been
able to destroy them; they still persist in you
unconsciously.’ And there is psychological truth contained in
this. Even if a man has repressed his evil impulses into the
unconscious and would like to tell himself afterwards that he is
not responsible for them, he is nevertheless bound to be aware of
this responsibility as a sense of guilt whose basis is unknown to
him.