Freud - Complete Works (684 page)

An Autobiographical Study

4210

   Before going further into the
question of infantile sexuality I must mention an error into which
I fell for a while and which might well have had fatal consequences
for the whole of my work. Under the influence of the technical
procedure which I used at that time, the majority of my patients
reproduced from their childhood scenes in which they were sexually
seduced by some grown-up person. With female patients the part of
seducer was almost always assigned to their father. I believed
these stories, and consequently supposed that I had discovered the
roots of the subsequent neurosis in these experiences of sexual
seduction in childhood. My confidence was strengthened by a few
cases in which relations of this kind with a father, uncle, or
elder brother had continued up to an age at which memory was to be
trusted. If the reader feels inclined to shake his head at my
credulity, I cannot altogether blame him; though I may plead that
this was at a time when I was intentionally keeping my critical
faculty in abeyance so as to preserve an unprejudiced and receptive
attitude towards the many novelties which were coming to my notice
every day. When, however, I was at last obliged to recognize that
these scenes of seduction had never taken place, and that they were
only phantasies which my patients had made up or which I myself had
perhaps forced on them, I was for some time completely at a loss.
My confidence alike in my technique and in its results suffered a
severe blow; it could not be disputed that I had arrived at these
scenes by a technical method which I considered correct, and their
subject-matter was unquestionably related to the symptoms from
which my investigation had started. When I had pulled myself
together, I was able to draw the right conclusions from my
discovery: namely, that the neurotic symptoms were not related
directly to actual events but to wishful phantasies, and that as
far as the neurosis was concerned psychical reality was of more
importance than material reality. I do not believe even now that I
forced the seduction-phantasies on my patients, that I
‘suggested’ them. I had in fact stumbled for the first
time upon the
Oedipus complex
, which was later to assume
such an overwhelming importance, but which I did not recognize as
yet in its disguise of phantasy. Moreover, seduction during
childhood retained a certain share, though a humbler one, in the
aetiology of neuroses. But the seducers turned out as a rule to
have been older children.

An Autobiographical Study

4211

   It will be seen, then, that my
mistake was of the same kind as would be made by someone who
believed that the legendary story of the early kings of Rome (as
told by Livy) was historical truth instead of what it is in fact -
a reaction against the memory of times and circumstances that were
insignificant and occasionally, perhaps, inglorious. When the
mistake had been cleared up, the path to the study of the sexual
life of children lay open. It thus became possible to apply
psycho-analysis to another field of science and to use its data as
a means of discovering a new piece of biological knowledge.

   The sexual function, as I found,
is in existence from the very beginning of the individual’s
life, though at first it is attached to the other vital functions
and does not become independent of them until later; it has to pass
through a long and complicated process of development before it
becomes what we are familiar with as the normal sexual life of the
adult. It begins by manifesting itself in the activity of a whole
number of
component instincts
. These are dependent upon
erotogenic zones
in the body; some of them make their
appearance in pairs of opposite impulses (such as sadism and
masochism or the impulses to look and to be looked at); they
operate independently of one another in a search for pleasure, and
they find their object for the most part in the subject’s own
body. Thus at first the sexual function is non-centralized and
predominantly
auto-erotic
. Later, syntheses begin to appear
in it; a first stage of organization is reached under the dominance
of the
oral
components, an
anal-sadistic
stage
follows, and it is only after the third stage has at last been
reached that the primacy of the
genitals
is established and
that the sexual function begins to serve the ends of reproduction.
In the course of this process of development a number of elements
of the various component instincts turn out to be unserviceable for
this last end and are therefore left on one side or turned to other
uses, while others are diverted from their aims and carried over
into the genital organization. I gave the name of
libido
to
the energy of the sexual instincts and to that form of energy
alone. I was next driven to suppose that the libido does not always
pass through its prescribed course of development smoothly. As a
result either of the excessive strength of certain of the
components or of experiences involving premature satisfaction,
fixations
of the libido may occur at various points in the
course of its development. If subsequently a repression takes
place, the libido flows back to these points (a process described
as
regression
), and it is from them that the energy breaks
through in the form of a symptom. Later on it further became clear
that the localization of the point of fixation is what determines
the
choice of neurosis
, that is, the form in which the
subsequent illness makes its appearance.

An Autobiographical Study

4212

   The process of arriving at an
object
, which plays such an important part in mental life,
takes place alongside of the organization of the libido. After the
stage of
auto-erotism
, the first love-object in the case of
both sexes is the mother; and it seems probable that to begin with
a child does not distinguish its mother’s organ of nutrition
from its own body. Later, but still in the first years of infancy,
the relation known as the
Oedipus complex
becomes
established: boys concentrate their sexual wishes upon their mother
and develop hostile impulses against their father as being a rival,
while girls adopt an analogous attitude.¹ All of the different
variations and consequences of the Oedipus complex are important;
and the innately bisexual constitution of human beings makes itself
felt and increases the number of simultaneously active tendencies.
Children do not become clear for quite a long time about the
differences between the sexes; and during this period of
sexual
researches
they produce typical
sexual theories
which,
being circumscribed by the incompleteness of their authors’
own physical development, are a mixture of truth and error and fail
to solve the problems of sexual life (the riddle of the Sphinx -
that is, the question of where babies come from). We see, then,
that a child’s first object-choice is an
incestuous
one. The whole course of development that I have described is run
through rapidly. For the most remarkable feature of the sexual life
of man is its
diphasic
onset, its onset in two waves, with
an interval between them. It reaches a first climax in the fourth
or fifth year of a child’s life. But thereafter this early
efflorescence of sexuality passes off; the sexual impulses which
have shown such liveliness are overcome by repression, and a
period of latency
follows, which lasts until puberty and
during which the
reaction-formations
of morality, shame, and
disgust are built up.² Of all living creatures man alone seems
to show this diphasic onset of sexual growth, and it may perhaps be
the biological determinant of his predisposition to neuroses. At
puberty the impulses and object-relations of a child’s early
years become re-animated, and amongst them the emotional ties of
its Oedipus complex. In the sexual life of puberty there is a
struggle between the urges of early years and the inhibitions of
the latency period. Before this, and while the child is at the
highest point of its infantile sexual development, a genital
organization of a sort is established; but only the male genitals
play a part in it, and the female ones remain undiscovered. (I have
described this as the period of
phallic
primacy.) At this
stage the contrast between the sexes is not stated in terms of
‘male’ or ‘female’ but of ‘possessing
a penis’ or ‘castrated’. The
castration
complex
which arises in this connection is of the profoundest
importance in the formation alike of character and of neuroses.

  
¹
(
Footnote added
1935:) The
information about infantile sexuality was obtained from the study
of men and the theory deduced from it was concerned with male
children. It was natural enough to expect to find a complete
parallel between the two sexes; but this turned out not to hold.
Further investigations and reflections revealed profound
differences between the sexual development of men and women. The
first sexual object of a baby girl (just as of a baby boy) is her
mother; and before a woman can reach the end of her normal
development she has to change not only her sexual object but also
her leading genital zone. From this circumstance difficulties arise
and possibilities of inhibition which are not present in the case
of men.

  
²
(
Footnote added
1935:) The period of
latency is a physiological phenomenon. It can, however, only give
rise to a complete interruption of sexual life in cultural
organizations which have made the suppression of infantile
sexuality a part of their system. This is not the case with the
majority of primitive peoples.

An Autobiographical Study

4213

   In order to make this condensed
account of my discoveries upon the sexual life of man more
intelligible, I have brought together conclusions which I reached
at different dates and incorporated by way of supplement or
correction in the successive editions of my
Three Essays on the
Theory of Sexuality
(1905
d
). I hope it will have been
easy to gather the nature of my extension (on which so much stress
has been laid and which has excited so much opposition) of the
concept of sexuality. That extension is of a twofold kind. In the
first place sexuality is divorced from its too close connection
with the genitals and is regarded as a more comprehensive bodily
function, having pleasure as its goal and only secondarily coming
to serve the ends of reproduction. In the second place the sexual
impulses are regarded as including all of those merely affectionate
and friendly impulses to which usage applies the exceedingly
ambiguous word ‘love’. I do not, however, consider that
these extensions are innovations but rather restorations: they
signify the removal of inexpedient limitations of the concept into
which we had allowed ourselves to be led.

   The detaching of sexuality from
the genitals has the advantage of allowing us to bring the sexual
activities of children and of perverts into the same scope as those
of normal adults. The sexual activities of children have hitherto
been entirely neglected and though those of perverts have been
recognized it has been with moral indignation and without
understanding. Looked at from the psycho-analytic standpoint, even
the most eccentric and repellent perversions are explicable as
manifestations of component instincts of sexuality which have freed
themselves from the primacy of the genitals and are now in pursuit
of pleasure on their own account as they were in the very early
days of the libido’s development. The most important of these
perversions, homosexuality, scarcely deserves the name. It can be
traced back to the constitutional bisexuality of all human beings
and to the after-effects of the phallic primacy. Psycho-analysis
enables us to point to some trace or other of a homosexual
object-choice in everyone. If I have described children as
‘polymorphously perverse’, I was only using a
terminology that was generally current; no moral judgement was
implied by the phrase. Psycho-analysis has no concern whatever with
such judgements of value.

An Autobiographical Study

4214

   The second of my alleged
extensions of the concept of sexuality finds its justification in
the fact revealed by psycho-analytic investigation that all of
these affectionate impulses were originally of a completely sexual
nature but have become
inhibited in their aim
or
sublimated
. The manner in which the sexual instincts can
thus be influenced and diverted enables them to be employed for
cultural activities of every kind, to which indeed they bring the
most important contributions.

   My surprising discoveries as to
the sexuality of children were made in the first instance through
the analysis of adults. But later (from about 1908 onwards) it
became possible to confirm them fully and in every detail by direct
observations upon children. Indeed, it is so easy to convince
oneself of the regular sexual activities of children that one
cannot help asking in astonishment how the human race can have
succeeded in overlooking the facts and in maintaining for so long
the wishful legend of the asexuality of childhood. This surprising
circumstance must be connected with the amnesia which, with the
majority of adults, hides their own infancy.

An Autobiographical Study

4215

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