INTRODUCTION
The three essays on sexuality comprise undoubtedly one of the most avant-garde and foundational texts in Freud's body of work and in the history of Psychoanalysis. Yet, given the taboo nature of the topic, the text was also one of the most controversial, published in 1095 by the novice analyst in Freud, who, while still tapping into his theory about the unconscious, was simultaneously widening the eyes of many – especially those in the medical field – about subjects vastly considered unstudied or disregarded.
It is somewhat surprising that Freud's initial views on sexuality are still not easily digestible for many one hundred and eighteen years later. I believe a comprehensive misinterpreting of his ideas and concepts throughout the last century led to a general oversight of still invaluable insights about the correlation of childhood, sexuality, and psychopathologies. In truth, these essays allowed sexuality to become a more usual conversation. As a whole, it hinted at how Psychoanalysis was divorcing both from Psychology and the medical field by gradually reframing the notion of 'normality' and what it says about psychic structures, even if, in this text, the word 'normal' still comes up often in questionable ways to anchor Freud's discoveries and arguments. If not for anything else, Freud's text is a pivot towards the inclusion of homosexuality and the amplification of the collective understanding of perversion and infantile sexuality.
In this text, Freud covers several key concepts, including sexual object and sexual goal, inversion (homosexuality), perversion, fetichism, sadism and masochism, sublimation, sexual instinct, erogenous zones and partial instincts, and infantilism of sexuality. Due to the "encyclopedic" nature of the text, filled with quick and assertive takes on various topics spread across numerous sections and bullet points, I opted to keep its overall structure, yet in a more approachable, concise, and organized form.
We are all a bit hysterical. – P. J. Möbius, German neurologist
Freud would certainly expand it, by saying “We are all a bit neurotic”.
SEXUAL ABERRATIONS
In exploring the theme of sexuality at the turn of the 20th century, it was inevitable for Freud to create terminology to explicate well enough the amplitude and depth of his discoveries and insights. On the other hand, he needed to do so because the subject was rather taboo and insufficiently documented in the medical field. Terminology, then, helped, and still does, land the gravitas of his concepts. Terminology, then, supported, and still does, land the gravitas of his ideas and undertake the subject more scientifically (objectively). He opens the text by clarifying and distinguishing two overarching concepts:
Sexual object: the person from whom the sexual attraction comes.
Sexual goal: the action urged by instinct (to resolve the sexual tension).
Deviations regarding the sexual object: Freud initiates by challenging the notion that the human species is divided in two, male and female; therefore, men and women are mutually attracted to one another. At the time, the term homosexuality was novel, more commonly referred to as ‘inversion.’
Inversion: people can behave in three ways regarding their sexual preferences; absolutely inverted (no attraction for the opposite sex); partially inverted (when sexual attraction varies between sexes); or occasionally inverted (when inversion happens under certain conditions, sometimes extreme, such of inaccessibility of the desired sexual object, i.e., prisons).
Origins of inversion:
Known to the individual as far as their memory traces.
Manifested later in life (sometimes after “normal” sexual activity).
Reasons for inversion:
Degeneration: inversion occurs due to pathological manifestations of traumatic or infectious nature (quickly rebuked and proved wrong by Freud, showing it had nothing to do with nervous capacity or intellectual development, highlighted by the example of inversion present in Ancient cultures).
Inversion is innate: proved wrong by Freud in citing the points on partial and occasional inversion above.
Inversion is acquired: early impressions of sexual nature might have led to a homosexual inclination (first time using the term); external factors might contribute (such as being incarcerated); inversion can be “eliminated” by hypnotic suggestion (later proved wrong).
Conclusions: many people have experienced very similar sexual influences early in life, leading to different sexual orientations, debunking the theory of it being neither innate nor acquirable. Some authors (Frank Lydston, Kiernan, and Chevalier) used the idea of biological bisexuality to explain innate psychic bisexuality, which Freud revealed as faulty or insufficient. Later, Freud discovers the connection between inversion and an early phase of fixation (in boys) with the mother, desiring men. He clearly states that homosexuals are not any “special” kind of people or group and that sexual orientation is much of an unconscious choice; according to the views of psychoanalysis, the selection of a sexual object is considered normal for both homosexuals and heterosexuals, as a set of natural and accidental circumstances (including the presence – or absence – of parents).
The sexual object of inverted: homosexual men may carry a masculine psychic character and seek feminine psychic traits (in the example of male prostitutes appearing like women), or men seeking a “fusion” of characteristics from both sexes (in the example of the Greeks, where boys attracted men). An important distinction presented by Hungarian psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi suggests a shift from homosexuality to homoerotism, where the latter can be homoerotism in the subject (such as a man who feels and behaves like a woman) or homoerotism in the object (a man who acts as such but is attracted to other men).
The sexual goal of inverted: Freud says that there’s not only one sexual goal for homosexuals, that anal penetration does not mean being a male homosexual, and masturbation frequently is a sole goal both in men and women.
Conclusion: the “normality” based on the more significant number of heterosexual relations misleads to the determination of an intrinsic connection between sexual instinct and sexual object, a connection which must be loosened when factoring in that homosexuals prove that instinct and object are independent at the outset.
Sexually immature people: animals and children as sexual objects.
The choice of children or animals as sexual objects is an example of extreme aberrations, then viewed as a product of the weakness of the individual, and not rarely seen in the countryside (animals as objects) and in abuse of teachers or caretakers (children as objects).
Freud formulates that those who are “mentally normal” in social or ethical life are usually so also in their sexual life. Still, many are “abnormal” in their sexual life, despite being considered normal in other aspects of their life.
Deviations regarding the sexual goal: by ‘sexual goal,’ Freud clarifies as “the union of genitals in the act of copulation that leads to the resolution of the sexual tension, temporarily cooling the sexual instinct,” while elucidating that “intermediate relations with the sexual object” prior to the actual copulation itself, such as gaze, touch, and kiss, are considered “interim goals.” Here, he begins to distinguish and classify as perversions the deviations from the sexual goal (later conceding perversion the status of psychic structure - see image above). By perverted, he does not mean abnormal but part of the normal sexual relation.
Anatomic extensions: entails the psychic appreciation for the entire body of the sexual object, not limited solely to the genitals, which expands into what Freud referred to as “logical blindness” (weakness of judgment) as the basis for the state of initial passion, that elevates other parts of the body to a status of sexual goals. He justifies that, until that point, only a man’s sexual life could be subjected to research, as women’s was still considered a mystery due to civilization, while also seen as reserved or insincere. Oral sex and anal sex is, in Freud, believed to be a type of perversion (again, typical to sexual life), making an interesting point on how the feeling of disgust (a distinctive characteristic found in hysterical people) can be overcome by sexual libido. So often, this was the case that Freud opened the possibility of considering the mouth and the anus also part of group sexual genitalia.
Fetichism: the substitution of the sexual object for another with which it is related, yet inappropriate for serving the sexual goal. Fetichism results from a more considerable overestimation of the sexual object to the point of abandoning the sexual goal for parts of the body (hair, feet) or an inanimate object related to the sexual object (underwear). To a certain degree, fetichism is considered normal in that it anticipates meeting the sexual goal – unless it substitutes it, failing to achieve the sexual goal. Interestingly, Freud explains that the condition for pathological fetichism is rooted somehow in an initial impression of the first love left in the individual, citing French psychologist Alfred Binet, “We always return to our first love”. In other cases, fetich is an unconscious symbolic connection the individual makes leading to the substitution of the object. Freud also touches on the pleasure of smelling, which would only be considered fetich in the cases of bad smell (a product of repression in culture and civilization).
Fixations of interim sexual goals: the tendency of remaining on interim goals as a substitute for the sexual goal to a certain degree can be normal or pathologic.
Touching and gazing: only considered fetich if they prevent meeting the sexual goal. Regarding the pleasure in gazing, Freud points to the concept of (optic) beauty developed in civilization as sharing an intrinsic connection with sexual excitation. In other words, what we consider beautiful excites us, even unconsciously. Here is where Freud first alludes to the term sublimation to make the point that sexual curiosity (about one’s body) can be entirely deviated (sublimated) towards other activities, such as creativity and work, in the direction of meeting “artistic goals.” Gazing can be considered perversion when fixed only in the genitals, or involves overcoming disgust, or when it represses (instead of instigating) the sexual goal – such as in the cases of exhibitionists, that have pleasure only by seeing/being seen, in what Freud classified in active and passive forms of sexual goal. A reserve is a force against the pleasure in gazing, often associated with appropriate social behavior and respect for oneself and others.
Sadism and masochism: refer to the typical inclination to inflict (or feel) pain on a sexual object. In its active form, sadism, a degree of normality is found in the somewhat aggressive element encountered in sexuality or the sexual act. Sadism relates to an aggressive sexual instinct that became independent (displaced) and exacerbated. Masochism is its passive version, where satisfaction is bound to physical or psychic pain. Every sadic is also a masochist, and between the two, masochism seems farther away from the sexual goal considered normal. For Freud, the history of culture shows that aggressiveness and sexual instinct are intimately bound, denoting an aggressive element in the libido.
General observations about Perversion: Every individual displays some degree of perversion, which condemns the negative connotation popularly attributed to the term. However, some types of perversion are indeed considered pathological, such as when the sexual instinct does dreadful actions (sex with dead bodies or licking excrement), overcoming disgust. Still, even in such cases, these individuals cannot always be considered mentally ill. Perversion, therefore, is only considered pathological when it replaces the meeting of a sexual goal entirely.
The sexual instinct in neurotics: according to Freud, there’s only one way to gain solid knowledge about the sexual life of those considered to be psychoneurotics (hysterical, obsessives, phobics), which is to subject them to the psychoanalytical quest, under a method he (and Josef Breuer) coined as cathartic. Freud goes on to make what is perhaps one of the most vital points in this text by articulating his discovery that these psychoneuroses rest on the claims of libidinal instincts (instinctual sexual forces), meaning that the sexual life of neurotics is the very symptom, just as the objections made by the I (and the reactions to them).
Psychoanalysis eliminates the symptoms in hysterical patients under the premise they are a substitute for a series of psychic processes, tendencies, and desires invested by affects, all subjected to repression that is deprived of resolution through the psychic activity that is conscience. - Freud
Therefore, the repressed content seeks an adequate expression of its affective value, a discharge, and translates into (i.g., in the case of hysteria) the conversion in somatic symptoms. Through analysis, the symptoms are brought back into conscious ideas charged with affects that the patient can resolve. Psychoanalysis discovered that sexual repression plays a significant role in all neurotics, often translated into shame, disgust, and moral impediments, and in an instinctive retreat from intellectual consideration of the sexual problem. The analysis reveals the pressure between the enormous sexual necessity and its matching rejection of sexuality is what causes suffering. When the conflict is still unresolved, the pressure escapes transforming the (sexual) impulses into symptoms.
Neurosis and Perversion: Freud famously coined the expression “neurosis is the negative of perversion,” meaning that what manifests in the sexual instinct in perversive actions instead gets repressed in neurosis (unrealized).
Freud discovers that in all neurotics – without exception – an unconscious impulse of inversion or a fixation on people of the same sex.
Partial instincts are crucial in forming symptoms, such as the pair of opposites as sexual goals (see and be seen active and passive cruelty).
Partial Instincts and Erogenous Zones: in a footnote added in 1924, Freud acknowledges that the theory of instincts is one of psychoanalysis’s main pillars yet still the most incomplete, whereas at the time of publishing (1905), he had still added contributions to this theory, to clarify that, by “instinct,” he means the psychic representatives of somatic stimuli, as opposed to “stimulus” being produced by isolated excitations from outside. Therefore, “instinct” is one concept that distinguishes between the psychic and the physical. The aspects that differentiate instincts from each other concern sources and goals, in that a source is the excitatory process in an organ, and a goal consists in removing such stimulus/excitation. Some organs can produce sexual excitation beyond the one intrinsically associated with them (receiving the name of erogenous zone), such as in the cases of both mouth and anus. Each degree of psychoneurosis carries a particular re-signification of what constitutes erogenous zones, for example, in the circumstances of the eyes (in the pleasure of seeing and being seen – voyeurism) and the skin (in the pleasure of feeling or inflicting pain in others – masochism and sadism, respectively). These would also be considered erogenous zones (therefore subjected to the sexual apparatus).
Explanation of the apparent predominance of perverse sexuality in psychoneuroses: in most psychoneurotics, symptoms appear after puberty, under the requirements of normal sexual life – against which repression acts – or later in life, when the sexual libido is frustrated via standard ways. What Freud means is that internal sexual repression (unconscious) must be equated with external sexual inhibitors such as freedom restriction, inaccessibility of the sexual object, dangers in the normal sexual act, etc., leading to the formation of perversive symptoms. Neurosis always produces its effects when innate conditions (meaning, repression) and life experiences (external inhibitors) work in a coordinated fashion.
Indication of the infantilism of sexuality: the origins of all perversions can be evidenced only in childhood. However, sexual instincts in children appear only in modest intensity. Moreover, Freud states that all neurotics somehow maintain the infantile state of their sexuality or are referred to it. Therefore, it is of utmost interest that the focus shifts to sexual life in children, where the influences govern the evolution of infantile sexuality until its resolution in perversions, neuroses, or normal sexual life.
There’s something congenital in perversion, that all humans have in common that, given predisposition, vary in intensity and can be emphasized under the influences of life. – Freud
A PERSONAL TAKE
Although not a long text, I’ve chosen to break down Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality into three parts due to the density of its content; therefore, I’ll share my take on the whole of it at the end of Essay III.
With care,
Gui