[13] The organic periodicity of the sexual process has persisted, it
is true, but its effect on mental sexual excitation has been almost
reversed. This change is connected primarily with the diminishing
importance of the olfactory stimuli by means of which the menstrual
process produced sexual excitement in the mind of the male. Their
function was taken over by visual stimuli, which could operate
permanently, instead of intermittently like the olfactory ones. The
‘taboo of menstruation’ has its origin in this ‘organic repression’,
which acted as a barrier against a phase of development that had been
surpassed; all its other motivations are probably of a secondary
nature. (Cf. C. D. Daly, ‘Hindu-mythologie und Kastrationskomplex’,
_Imago_, Bd. xiii., 1927.) This process is repeated on a different
level when the gods of a foregone cultural epoch are changed into
demons in the next. The diminution in importance of olfactory stimuli
seems itself, however, to be a consequence of man’s erecting himself
from the earth, of his adoption of an upright gait, which made his
genitals, that before had been covered, visible and in need of
protection and so evoked feelings of shame. Man’s erect posture,
therefore, would represent the beginning of the momentous process
of cultural evolution. The chain of development would run from this
onward, through the diminution in the importance of olfactory stimuli
and the isolation of women at their periods to a time when visual
stimuli became paramount, the genitals became visible, further till
sexual excitation became constant and the family was founded, and so to
the threshold of human culture. This is only a theoretical speculation,
but it is important enough to be worth checking carefully by the
conditions obtaining among the animals closely allied to man.
There is an unmistakable social factor at work in the impulse of
civilization towards cleanliness, which has been subsequently justified
by considerations of hygiene but had nevertheless found expression
before they were appreciated. The impulse towards cleanliness
originates in the striving to get rid of excretions which have become
unpleasant to the sense-perceptions. We know that things are different
in the nursery. Excreta arouse no aversion in children; they seem
precious to them, as being parts of their own bodies which have been
detached from them. The training of children is very energetic in
this particular; its object is to expedite the development that lies
ahead of them, according to which the excreta are to become worthless,
disgusting, horrible and despicable to them. Such a reversal of
values would be almost impossible to bring about, were it not that
these substances expelled from the body are destined by their strong
odours to share the fate that overtook the olfactory stimuli after
man had erected himself from the ground. Anal erotism, therefore, is
from the first subjected to the ‘organic repression’ which opened up
the way to culture. The social factor which has been active in the
further modifications of anal erotism comes into play with the fact
that in spite of all man’s evolutionary progress the smell of his own
excretions is scarcely disagreeable to him yet, but so far only that
of the evacuations of others. The man who is not clean, _i.e._ who
does not eliminate his excretions, therefore offends others, shows no
consideration for them—a fact which is exemplified in the commonest
and most forcible terms of abuse. It would be incomprehensible, too,
that man should use as an abusive epithet the name of his most faithful
friend in the animal world, if dogs did not incur the contempt of men
through two of their characteristics, _i.e._ that they are creatures of
smell and have no horror of excrement, and, secondly, that they are not
ashamed of their sexual functions.
[14] There is a short story, which I valued long ago, by a highly
sensitive writer, the Englishman, John Galsworthy, who to-day enjoys
general recognition; it is called ‘The Apple Tree’. It shows in a very
moving and forcible way how there is no longer any place in present-day
civilized life for a simple natural love between two human beings.
[15] The following considerations would support the view expressed
above. Man, too, is an animal with an unmistakably bisexual
disposition. The individual represents a fusion of two symmetrical
halves, of which, according to many authorities, one is purely male,
the other female. It is equally possible that each half was originally
hermaphroditic. Sex is a biological fact which is hard to evaluate
psychologically, although it is of extraordinary importance in mental
life. We are accustomed to say that every human being displays both
male and female instinctual impulses, needs and attributes, but the
characteristics of what is male and female can only be demonstrated
in anatomy, and not in psychology. Where the latter is concerned, the
antithesis of sex fades away into that of activity and passivity, and
we far too readily identify activity with masculinity and passivity
with femininity, a statement which is by no means universally confirmed
in the animal world. The theory of bisexuality is still very obscure
and in psycho-analysis we must be painfully aware of the disadvantage
we are under as long as it still remains unconnected with the theory of
instincts. However this may be, if we assume it to be a fact that each
individual has both male and female desires which need satisfaction
in his sexual life, we shall be prepared for the possibility that
these needs will not both be gratified on the same object, and that
they will interfere with each other, if they cannot be kept apart so
that each impulse flows into a special channel suited for it. Another
difficulty arises from the circumstance that so often a measure of
direct aggressiveness is coupled with an erotic relationship, over and
above its inherent sadistic components. The love-object does not always
view these complications with the degree of understanding and tolerance
manifested by the peasant woman who complained that her husband did not
love her any more, because he had not beaten her for a week.
The conjecture which leads furthest, however, is that—and here we come
back to the remarks in the footnote on p. 66—the whole of sexuality
and not merely anal erotism is threatened with falling a victim to the
organic repression consequent upon man’s adoption of the erect posture
and the lowering in value of the sense of smell; so that since that
time the sexual function has been associated with a resistance not
susceptible of further explanation, which puts obstacles in the way
of full satisfaction and forces it away from its sexual aim towards
sublimations and displacements of libido. I am aware that Bleuler
(in ‘Der Sexualwiderstand’, _Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und
psychopathologische Forschungen_, Bd. v., 1913) once pointed out the
existence of a fundamental tendency of this kind towards rejecting
sexual life. All neurotics, and many others too, take exception to
the fact that ‘inter urinas et faeces nascimur’. The genitals, too,
excite the olfactory sense strongly in a way that many people cannot
tolerate and which spoils sexual intercourse for them. Thus we should
find, as the deepest root of the sexual repression that marches with
culture, the organic defence of the new form of life that began with
the erect posture against the earliest type of animal existence—a
result of scientific researches that coincides in a curious way with
often expressed vulgar prejudices. At the present time, nevertheless,
these results are but unconfirmed possibilities, not yet scientifically
substantiated. Nor should we forget that, in spite of the undeniable
diminution in the importance of olfactory stimuli, there exist even in
Europe races who prize highly as aphrodisiacs the strong genital odours
so objectionable to us and who will not renounce them. (Cf. the reports
of folkloristic information obtained by Iwan Bloch’s ‘Questionnaire’,
appearing under the title of ‘Über den Geruchssinn in der vita
sexualis’ in various volumes of Friedrich S. Krauss’ _Anthropophyteia_.)
V
Psycho-analytic work has shown that these frustrations in respect of
sexual life are especially unendurable to the so-called neurotics among
us. These persons manufacture substitute-gratifications for themselves
in their symptoms, which, however, are either painful in themselves or
become the cause of suffering owing to the difficulties they create
with the person’s environment and society at large. It is easy to
understand the latter fact, but the former presents us with a new
problem. But culture demands other sacrifices besides that of sexual
gratifications.
We have regarded the difficulties in the development of civilization as
part of the general difficulty accompanying all evolution, for we have
traced them to the inertia of libido, its disinclination to relinquish
an old position in favour of a new one. It is much the same thing if we
say that the conflict between civilization and sexuality is caused by
the circumstance that sexual love is a relationship between two people,
in which a third can only be superfluous or disturbing, whereas
civilization is founded on relations between larger groups of persons.
When a love-relationship is at its height no room is left for any
interest in the surrounding world; the pair of lovers are sufficient
unto themselves, do not even need the child they have in common to make
them happy. In no other case does Eros so plainly betray the core of
his being, his aim of making one out of many; but when he has achieved
it in the proverbial way through the love of two human beings, he is
not willing to go further.
From all this we might well imagine that a civilized community could
consist of pairs of individuals such as this, libidinally satisfied in
each other, and linked to all the others by work and common interests.
If this were so, culture would not need to levy energy from sexuality.
But such a desirable state of things does not exist and never has
existed; in actuality culture is not content with such limited ties as
these; we see that it endeavours to bind the members of the community
to one another by libidinal ties as well, that it makes use of every
means and favours every avenue by which powerful identifications can be
created among them, and that it exacts a heavy toll of aim-inhibited
libido in order to strengthen communities by bonds of friendship
between the members. Restrictions upon sexual life are unavoidable if
this object is to be attained. But we cannot see the necessity that
forces culture along this path and gives rise to its antagonism to
sexuality. It must be due to some disturbing influence not yet detected
by us.
We may find the clue in one of the so-called ideal standards of
civilized society. It runs: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself’. It is world-renowned, undoubtedly older than Christianity
which parades it as its proudest profession, yet certainly not very
old; in historical times men still knew nothing of it. We will adopt
a naïve attitude towards it, as if we were meeting it for the first
time. Thereupon we find ourselves unable to suppress a feeling of
astonishment, as at something unnatural. Why should we do this? What
good is it to us? Above all, how can we do such a thing? How could it
possibly be done? My love seems to me a valuable thing that I have
no right to throw away without reflection. It imposes obligations on
me which I must be prepared to make sacrifices to fulfil. If I love
someone, he must be worthy of it in some way or other. (I am leaving
out of account now the use he may be to me, as well as his possible
significance to me as a sexual object; neither of these two kinds of
relationship between us come into question where the injunction to
love my neighbour is concerned.) He will be worthy of it if he is so
like me in important respects that I can love myself in him; worthy of
it if he is so much more perfect than I that I can love my ideal of
myself in him; I must love him if he is the son of my friend, since the
pain my friend would feel if anything untoward happened to him would be
my pain—I should have to share it. But if he is a stranger to me and
cannot attract me by any value he has in himself or any significance he
may have already acquired in my emotional life, it will be hard for me
to love him. I shall even be doing wrong if I do, for my love is valued
as a privilege by all those belonging to me; it is an injustice to them
if I put a stranger on a level with them. But if I am to love him (with
that kind of universal love) simply because he, too, is a denizen of
the earth, like an insect or an earthworm or a grass-snake, then I fear
that but a small modicum of love will fall to his lot and it would be
impossible for me to give him as much as by all the laws of reason I
am entitled to retain for myself. What is the point of an injunction
promulgated with such solemnity, if reason does not recommend it to us?
When I look more closely I find still further difficulties. Not merely
is this stranger on the whole not worthy of love, but, to be honest,
I must confess he has more claim to my hostility, even to my hatred.
He does not seem to have the least trace of love for me, does not
show me the slightest consideration. If it will do him any good, he
has no hesitation in injuring me, never even asking himself whether
the amount of advantage he gains by it bears any proportion to the
amount of wrong done to me. What is more, he does not even need to
get an advantage from it; if he can merely get a little pleasure out
of it, he thinks nothing of jeering at me, insulting me, slandering
me, showing his power over me; and the more secure he feels himself,
or the more helpless I am, with so much more certainty can I expect
this behaviour from him towards me. If he behaved differently, if he
showed me consideration and did not molest me, I should in any case,
without the aforesaid commandment, be willing to treat him similarly.
If the high-sounding ordinance had run: ‘Love thy neighbour as thy
neighbour loves thee’, I should not take objection to it. And there is
a second commandment that seems to me even more incomprehensible, and
arouses still stronger opposition in me. It is: ‘Love thine enemies’.
When I think it over, however, I am wrong in treating it as a greater
imposition. It is at bottom the same thing.[16]
I imagine now I hear a voice gravely adjuring me: ‘Just because thy
neighbour is not worthy of thy love, is probably full of enmity towards
thee, thou shouldst love him as thyself’. I then perceive the case to
be like that of _Credo quia absurdum_.
Now it is, of course, very probable that my neighbour, when he is
commanded to love me as himself, will answer exactly as I have done
and reject me for the same reasons. I hope he will not have the same
objective grounds for doing so, but he will hope so as well. Even so,
there are variations in men’s behaviour which ethics, disregarding the
fact that they are determined, classifies as ‘good’ and ‘evil’. As long
as these undeniable variations have not been abolished, conformity to
the highest ethical standards constitutes a betrayal of the interests
of culture, for it puts a direct premium on wickedness. One is
irresistibly reminded here of an incident in the French Chamber when
capital punishment was being discussed; the speech of a member who had
passionately supported its abolition was being applauded with loud
acclamation, when suddenly a voice was heard calling out from the back
of the room, ‘_Que messieurs les assassins commencent!_’
The bit of truth behind all this—one so eagerly denied—is that men are
not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend
themselves if they are attacked, but that a powerful measure of
desire for aggression has to be reckoned as part of their instinctual
endowment. The result is that their neighbour is to them not only a
possible helper or sexual object, but also a temptation to them to
gratify their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work
without recompense, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize
his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and
to kill him. _Homo homini lupus_; who has the courage to dispute it
in the face of all the evidence in his own life and in history? This
aggressive cruelty usually lies in wait for some provocation, or else
it steps into the service of some other purpose, the aim of which might
as well have been achieved by milder measures. In circumstances that
favour it, when those forces in the mind which ordinarily inhibit it
cease to operate, it also manifests itself spontaneously and reveals
men as savage beasts to whom the thought of sparing their own kind is
alien. Anyone who calls to mind the atrocities of the early migrations,
of the invasion by the Huns or by the so-called Mongols under Jenghiz
Khan and Tamurlane, of the sack of Jerusalem by the pious Crusaders,
even indeed the horrors of the last world-war, will have to bow his
head humbly before the truth of this view of man.
The existence of this tendency to aggression which we can detect in
ourselves and rightly presume to be present in others is the factor
that disturbs our relations with our neighbours and makes it necessary
for culture to institute its high demands. Civilized society is
perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility
of men towards one another. Their interests in their common work would
not hold them together; the passions of instinct are stronger than
reasoned interests. Culture has to call up every possible reinforcement
in order to erect barriers against the aggressive instincts of men
and hold their manifestations in check by reaction-formations in
men’s minds. Hence its system of methods by which mankind is to be
driven to identifications and aim-inhibited love-relationships; hence
the restrictions on sexual life; and hence, too, its ideal command
to love one’s neighbour as oneself, which is really justified by the
fact that nothing is so completely at variance with original human
nature as this. With all its striving, this endeavour of culture’s has
so far not achieved very much. Civilization expects to prevent the
worst atrocities of brutal violence by taking upon itself the right
to employ violence against criminals, but the law is not able to lay
hands on the more discreet and subtle forms in which human aggressions
are expressed. The time comes when every one of us has to abandon
the illusory anticipations with which in our youth we regarded our
fellow-men, and when we realize how much hardship and suffering we
have been caused in life through their ill-will. It would be unfair,
however, to reproach culture with trying to eliminate all disputes
and competition from human concerns. These things are undoubtedly
indispensable; but opposition is not necessarily enmity, only it may be
misused to make an opening for it.
The Communists believe they have found a way of delivering us from this
evil. Man is wholeheartedly good and friendly to his neighbour, they
say, but the system of private property has corrupted his nature.
The possession of private property gives power to the individual and
thence the temptation arises to ill-treat his neighbour; the man who
is excluded from the possession of property is obliged to rebel in
hostility against the oppressor. If private property were abolished,
all valuables held in common and all allowed to share in the enjoyment
of them, ill-will and enmity would disappear from among men. Since all
needs would be satisfied, none would have any reason to regard another
as an enemy; all would willingly undertake the work which is necessary.
I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communistic
system; I cannot enquire into whether the abolition of private property
is advantageous and expedient.[17] But I am able to recognize that
psychologically it is founded on an untenable illusion. By abolishing
private property one deprives the human love of aggression of one
of its instruments, a strong one undoubtedly, but assuredly not the
strongest. It in no way alters the individual differences in power
and influence which are turned by aggressiveness to its own use, nor
does it change the nature of the instinct in any way. This instinct
did not arise as the result of property; it reigned almost supreme in
primitive times when possessions were still extremely scanty; it shows
itself already in the nursery when possessions have hardly grown out
of their original anal shape; it is at the bottom of all the relations
of affection and love between human beings—possibly with the single
exception of that of a mother to her male child. Suppose that personal
rights to material goods are done away with, there still remain
prerogatives in sexual relationships, which must arouse the strongest
rancour and most violent enmity among men and women who are otherwise
equal. Let us suppose this were also to be removed by instituting
complete liberty in sexual life, so that the family, the germ-cell of
culture, ceased to exist; one could not, it is true, foresee the new
paths on which cultural development might then proceed, but one thing
one would be bound to expect and that is that the ineffaceable feature
of human nature would follow wherever it led.
Men clearly do not find it easy to do without satisfaction of this
tendency to aggression that is in them; when deprived of satisfaction
of it they are ill at ease. There is an advantage, not to be
undervalued, in the existence of smaller communities, through which the
aggressive instinct can find an outlet in enmity towards those outside
the group. It is always possible to unite considerable numbers of men
in love towards one another, so long as there are still some remaining
as objects for aggressive manifestations. I once interested myself in
the peculiar fact that peoples whose territories are adjacent, and are
otherwise closely related, are always at feud with and ridiculing each
other, as, for instance, the Spaniards and the Portuguese, the North
and South Germans, the English and the Scotch, and so on. I gave it
the name of ‘narcissism in respect of minor differences’, which does
not do much to explain it. One can now see that it is a convenient and
relatively harmless form of satisfaction for aggressive tendencies,
through which cohesion amongst the members of a group is made easier.
The Jewish people, scattered in all directions as they are, have in
this way rendered services which deserve recognition to the development
of culture in the countries where they settled; but unfortunately not
all the massacres of Jews in the Middle Ages sufficed to procure peace
and security for their Christian contemporaries. Once the apostle Paul
had laid down universal love between all men as the foundation of his
Christian community, the inevitable consequence in Christianity was
the utmost intolerance towards all who remained outside of it; the
Romans, who had not founded their state on love, were not given to lack
of religious toleration, although religion was a concern of the state
and the state was permeated through and through with it. Neither was
it an unaccountable chance that the dream of a German world-dominion
evoked a complementary movement towards anti-semitism; and it is quite
intelligible that the attempt to establish a new communistic type of
culture in Russia should find psychological support in the persecution
of the bourgeois. One only wonders, with some concern, however, how
the Soviets will manage when they have exterminated their bourgeois
entirely.
If civilization requires such sacrifices, not only of sexuality but
also of the aggressive tendencies in mankind, we can better understand
why it should be so hard for men to feel happy in it. In actual fact
primitive man was better off in this respect, for he knew nothing
of any restrictions on his instincts. As a set-off against this,
his prospects of enjoying his happiness for any length of time were
very slight. Civilized man has exchanged some part of his chances of
happiness for a measure of security. We will not forget, however, that
in the primal family only the head of it enjoyed this instinctual
freedom; the other members lived in slavish thraldom. The antithesis
between a minority enjoying cultural advantages and a majority who are
robbed of them was therefore most extreme in that primeval period of
culture. With regard to the primitive human types living at the present
time, careful investigation has revealed that their instinctual life is
by no means to be envied on account of its freedom; it is subject to
restrictions of a different kind but perhaps even more rigorous than is
that of modern civilized man.
In rightly finding fault, as we thus do, with our present state of
civilization for so inadequately providing us with what we require to
make us happy in life, and for the amount of suffering of a probably
avoidable nature it lays us open to—in doing our utmost to lay bare
the roots of its deficiencies by our unsparing criticisms, we are
undoubtedly exercising our just rights and not showing ourselves
enemies of culture. We may expect that in the course of time changes
will be carried out in our civilization so that it becomes more
satisfying to our needs and no longer open to the reproaches we have
made against it. But perhaps we shall also accustom ourselves to the
idea that there are certain difficulties inherent in the very nature
of culture which will not yield to any efforts at reform. Over and
above the obligations of putting restrictions upon our instincts,
which we see to be inevitable, we are imminently threatened with
the dangers of a state one may call ‘_la misère psychologique_’ of
groups. This danger is most menacing where the social forces of
cohesion consist predominantly of identifications of the individuals
in the group with one another, whilst leading personalities fail to
acquire the significance that should fall to them in the process of
group-formation.[18] The state of civilization in America at the
present day offers a good opportunity for studying this injurious
effect of civilization which we have reason to dread. But I will resist
the temptation to enter upon a criticism of American culture; I have
no desire to give the impression that I would employ American methods
myself.