touching. The manner in which the libidinous excitement is frequently
awakened is by the optical impression, and selection takes account of
this circumstance--if this teleological mode of thinking be
permitted--by making the sexual object a thing of beauty. The covering
of the body, which keeps abreast with civilization, serves to arouse
sexual inquisitiveness, which always strives to restore for itself the
sexual object by uncovering the hidden parts. This can be turned into
the artistic ("sublimation") if the interest is turned from the genitals
to the form of the body.[20] The tendency to linger at this intermediary
sexual aim of the sexually accentuated looking is found to a certain
degree in most normals; indeed it gives them the possibility of
directing a certain amount of their libido to a higher artistic aim. On
the other hand, the fondness for looking becomes a perversion (_a_) when
it limits itself entirely to the genitals; (_b_) when it becomes connected
with the overcoming of loathing (voyeurs and onlookers at the functions
of excretion); and (_c_) when instead of preparing for the normal sexual
aim it suppresses it. The latter, if I may draw conclusions from a
single analysis, is in a most pronounced way true of exhibitionists, who
expose their genitals so as in turn to bring to view the genitals of
others.
In the perversion which consists in striving to look and be looked at we
are confronted with a very remarkable character which will occupy us
even more intensively in the following aberration. The sexual aim is
here present in twofold formation, in an _active_ and a _passive_ form.
The force which is opposed to the peeping mania and through which it is
eventually abolished is _shame_ (like the former loathing).
*Sadism and Masochism.*--The desire to cause pain to the sexual object
and its opposite, the most frequent and most significant of all
perversions, was designated in its two forms by v. Krafft-Ebing as
sadism or the active form, and masochism or the passive form. Other
authors prefer the narrower term algolagnia which emphasizes the
pleasure in pain and cruelty, whereas the terms selected by v.
Krafft-Ebing place the pleasure secured in all kinds of humility and
submission in the foreground.
The roots of active algolagnia, sadism, can be readily demonstrable in
the normal. The sexuality of most men shows a taint of _aggression_, it
is a propensity to subdue, the biological significance of which lies in
the necessity of overcoming the resistance of the sexual object by
actions other than mere _courting_. Sadism would then correspond to an
aggressive component of the sexual impulse which has become independent
and exaggerated and has been brought to the foreground by displacement.
The conception of sadism fluctuates in the usage of language from a mere
active or impetuous attitude towards the sexual object to the exclusive
attachment of the gratification to the subjection and maltreatment of
the object. Strictly speaking only the last extreme case has a claim to
the name of perversion.
Similarly, the designation of masochism comprises all passive attitude
to the sexual life and to the sexual object; in its most extreme form
the gratification is connected with suffering of physical or mental pain
at the hands of the sexual object. Masochism as a perversion seems to be
still more remote from the normal sexual life by forming a contrast to
it; it may be doubted whether it ever appears as a primary form or
whether it does not more regularly originate through transformation from
sadism. It can often be recognized that the masochism is nothing but a
continuation of the sadism turning against one's own person in which the
latter at first takes the place of the sexual object. Analysis of
extreme cases of masochistic perversions show that there is a
coöperation of a large series of factors which exaggerate and fix the
original passive sexual attitude (castration complex, conscience).
The pain which is here overcome ranks with the loathing and shame which
were the resistances opposed to the libido.
Sadism and masochism occupy a special place among the perversions, for
the contrast of activity and passivity lying at their bases belong to
the common traits of the sexual life.
That cruelty and sexual impulse are most intimately connected is beyond
doubt taught by the history of civilization, but in the explanation of
this connection no one has gone beyond the accentuation of the
aggressive factors of the libido. The aggression which is mixed with the
sexual impulse is according to some authors a remnant of cannibalistic
lust, a participation on the part of the domination apparatus
(Bemächtigungsapparatus), which served also for the gratification of the
great wants of the other, ontogenetically the older impulse.[21] It has
also been claimed that every pain contains in itself the possibility of
a pleasurable sensation. Let us be satisfied with the impression that
the explanation of this perversion is by no means satisfactory and that
it is possible that many psychic efforts unite themselves into one
effect.
The most striking peculiarity of this perversion lies in the fact that
its active and passive forms are regularly encountered together in the
same person. He who experiences pleasure by causing pain to others in
sexual relations is also able to experience the pain emanating from
sexual relations as pleasure. A sadist is simultaneously a masochist,
though either the active or the passive side of the perversion may be
more strongly developed and thus represent his preponderate sexual
activity.[22]
We thus see that certain perverted propensities regularly appear in
_contrasting pairs_, a thing which, in view of the material to be
produced later, must claim great theoretical value. It is furthermore
clear that the existence of the contrast, sadism and masochism, can not
readily be attributed to the mixture of aggression. On the other hand
one may be tempted to connect such simultaneously existing contrasts
with the united contrast of male and female in bisexuality, the
significance of which is reduced in psychoanalysis to the contrast of
activity and passivity.
3. GENERAL STATEMENTS APPLICABLE TO ALL PERVERSIONS
*Variation and Disease.*--The physicians who at first studied the
_perversions_ in pronounced cases and under peculiar conditions were
naturally inclined to attribute to them the character of a morbid or
degenerative sign similar to the _inversions_. This view, however, is
easier to refute in this than in the former case. Everyday experience
has shown that most of these transgressions, at least the milder ones,
are seldom wanting as components in the sexual life of normals who look
upon them as upon other intimacies. Wherever the conditions are
favorable such a perversion may for a long time be substituted by a
normal person for the normal sexual aim or it may be placed near it. In
no normal person does the normal sexual aim lack some designable
perverse element, and this universality suffices in itself to prove the
inexpediency of an opprobrious application of the name perversion. In
the realm of the sexual life one is sure to meet with exceptional
difficulties which are at present really unsolvable, if one wishes to
draw a sharp line between the mere variations within physiological
limits and morbid symptoms.
Nevertheless, the quality of the new sexual aim in some of these
perversions is such as to require special notice. Some of the
perversions are in content so distant from the normal that we cannot
help calling them "morbid," especially those in which the sexual
impulse, in overcoming the resistances (shame, loathing, fear, and pain)
has brought about surprising results (licking of feces and violation of
cadavers). Yet even in these cases one ought not to feel certain of
regularly finding among the perpetrators persons of pronounced
abnormalities or insane minds. We can not lose sight of the fact that
persons who otherwise behave normally are recorded as sick in the realm
of the sexual life where they are dominated by the most unbridled of all
impulses. On the other hand, a manifest abnormality in any other
relation in life generally shows an undercurrent of abnormal sexual
behavior.
In the majority of cases we are able to find the morbid character of the
perversion not in the content of the new sexual aim but in its relation
to the normal. It is morbid if the perversion does not appear beside the
normal (sexual aim and sexual object), where favorable circumstances
promote it and unfavorable impede the normal, or if it has under all
circumstances repressed and supplanted the normal; _the exclusiveness_
and _fixation_ of the perversion justifies us in considering it a morbid
symptom.
*The Psychic Participation in the Perversions.*--Perhaps it is precisely
in the most abominable perversions that we must recognize the most
prolific psychic participation for the transformation of the sexual
impulse. In these cases a piece of psychic work has been accomplished in
which, in spite of its gruesome success, the value of an idealization of
the impulse can not be disputed. The omnipotence of love nowhere perhaps
shows itself stronger than in this one of her aberrations. The highest
and the lowest everywhere in sexuality hang most intimately together.
("From heaven through the world to hell.")
*Two Results.*--In the study of perversions we have gained an insight
into the fact that the sexual impulse has to struggle against certain
psychic forces, resistances, among which shame and loathing are most
prominent. We may presume that these forces are employed to confine the
impulse within the accepted normal limits, and if they have become
developed in the individual before the sexual impulse has attained its
full strength, it is really they which have directed it in the course of
development.[23]
We have furthermore remarked that some of the examined perversions can
be comprehended only by assuming the union of many motives. If they are
amenable to analysis--disintegration--they must be of a composite
nature. This may give us a hint that the sexual impulse itself may not
be something simple, that it may on the contrary be composed of many
components which detach themselves to form perversions. Our clinical
observation thus calls our attention to _fusions_ which have lost their
expression in the uniform normal behavior.
4. THE SEXUAL IMPULSE IN NEUROTICS
*Psychoanalysis.*--A proper contribution to the knowledge of the sexual
impulse in persons who are at least related to the normal can be gained
only from one source, and is accessible only by one definite path. There
is only one way to obtain a thorough and unerring solution of problems
in the sexual life of so-called psychoneurotics (hysteria, obsessions,
the wrongly-named neurasthenia, and surely also dementia præcox, and
paranoia), and that is by subjecting them to the psychoanalytic
investigations propounded by J. Breuer and myself in 1893, which we
called the "cathartic" treatment.
I must repeat what I have said in my published work, that these
psychoneuroses, as far as my experience goes, are based on sexual motive
powers. I do not mean that the energy of the sexual impulse merely
contributes to the forces supporting the morbid manifestations
(symptoms), but I wish distinctly to maintain that this supplies the
only constant and the most important source of energy in the neurosis,
so that the sexual life of such persons manifests itself either
exclusively, preponderately, or partially in these symptoms. As I have
already stated in different places, the symptoms are the sexual
activities of the patient. The proof for this assertion I have obtained
from the psychoanalysis of hysterics and other neurotics during a period
of twenty years, the results of which I hope to give later in a detailed
account.
Psychoanalysis removes the symptoms of hysteria on the supposition that
they are the substitutes--the transcriptions as it were--for a series of
emotionally accentuated psychic processes, wishes, and desires, to which
a passage for their discharge through the conscious psychic activities
has been cut off by a special process (repression). These thought
formations which are restrained in the state of the unconscious strive
for expression, that is, for _discharge_, in conformity to their
affective value, and find such in hysteria through a process of
_conversion_ into somatic phenomena--the hysterical symptoms. If, _lege
artis_, and with the aid of a special technique, retrogressive
transformations of the symptoms into the affectful and conscious
thoughts can be effected, it then becomes possible to get the most
accurate information about the nature and origin of these previously
unconscious psychic formations.
*Results of Psychoanalysis.*--In this manner it has been discovered that
the symptoms represent the equivalent for the strivings which received
their strength from the source of the sexual impulse. This fully concurs
with what we know of the character of hysterics, which we have taken as
models for all psycho-neurotics, before they have become diseased, and
with what we know concerning the causes of the disease. The hysterical
character evinces a part of sexual repression which reaches beyond the
normal limits, an exaggeration of the resistances against the sexual
impulse which we know as shame and loathing. It is an instinctive flight
from intellectual occupation with the sexual problem, the consequence of
which in pronounced cases is a complete sexual ignorance, which is
preserved till the age of sexual maturity is attained.[24]
This feature, so characteristic of hysteria, is not seldom concealed in
crude observation by the existence of the second constitutional factor
of hysteria, namely, the enormous development of the sexual craving. But
the psychological analysis will always reveal it and solves the very
contradictory enigma of hysteria by proving the existence of the
contrasting pair, an immense sexual desire and a very exaggerated sexual
rejection.
The provocation of the disease in hysterically predisposed persons is
brought about if in consequence of their progressive maturity or
external conditions of life they are earnestly confronted with the real
sexual demand. Between the pressure of the craving and the opposition of
the sexual rejection an outlet for the disease results, which does not
remove the conflict but seeks to elude it by transforming the libidinous
strivings into symptoms. It is an exception only in appearance if a
hysterical person, say a man, becomes subject to some banal emotional
disturbance, to a conflict in the center of which there is no sexual
interest. Psychoanalysis will regularly show that it is the sexual
components of the conflict which make the disease possible by
withdrawing the psychic processes from normal adjustment.
*Neurosis and Perversion.*--A great part of the opposition to my
assertion is explained by the fact that the sexuality from which I
deduce the psychoneurotic symptoms is thought of as coincident with the
normal sexual impulse. But psychoanalysis teaches us better than this.
It shows that the symptoms do not by any means result at the expense
only of the so called normal sexual impulse (at least not exclusively or
preponderately), but they represent the converted expression of impulses
which in a broader sense might be designated as _perverse_ if they could
manifest themselves directly in phantasies and acts without deviating
from consciousness. The symptoms are therefore partially formed at the
cost of abnormal sexuality. _The neurosis is, so to say, the negative of
the perversion._[25]
The sexual impulse of the psychoneurotic shows all the aberrations which
we have studied as variations of the normal and as manifestations of
morbid sexual life.
(_a_) In all the neurotics without exception we find feelings of inversion
in the unconscious psychic life, fixation of libido on persons of the
same sex. It is impossible, without a deep and searching discussion,
adequately to appreciate the significance of this factor for the
formation of the picture of the disease; I can only assert that the
unconscious propensity to inversion is never wanting and is particularly
of immense service in explaining male hysteria.[26]
(_b_) All the inclinations to anatomical transgression can be demonstrated
in psychoneurotics in the unconscious and as symptom-creators. Of
special frequency and intensity are those which impart to the mouth and
the mucous membrane of the anus the rôle of genitals.
(_c_) The partial desires which usually appear in contrasting pairs play
a very prominent rôle among the symptom-creators in the psychoneuroses.
We have learned to know them as carriers of new sexual aims, such as
peeping mania, exhibitionism, and the actively and passively formed
impulses of cruelty. The contribution of the last is indispensable for
the understanding of the morbid nature of the symptoms; it almost
regularly controls some portion of the social behavior of the patient.
The transformation of love into hatred, of tenderness into hostility,
which is characteristic of a large number of neurotic cases and
apparently of all cases of paranoia, takes place by means of the union
of cruelty with the libido.
The interest in these deductions will be more heightened by certain
peculiarities of the diagnosis of facts.
Alpha. There is nothing in the unconscious streams of thought of
the neuroses which would correspond to an inclination towards fetichism;
a circumstance which throws light on the psychological peculiarity of
this well understood perversion.
Beta. Wherever any such impulse is found in the unconscious which
can be paired with a contrasting one, it can regularly be demonstrated
that the latter, too, is effective. Every active perversion is here
accompanied by its passive counterpart. He who in the unconscious is an
exhibitionist is at the same time a voyeur, he who suffers from sadistic
feelings as a result of repression will also show another reinforcement
of the symptoms from the source of masochistic tendencies. The perfect
concurrence with the behavior of the corresponding positive perversions
is certainly very noteworthy. In the picture of the disease, however,
the preponderant rôle is played by either one or the other of the
opposing tendencies.
Gamma. In a pronounced case of psychoneurosis we seldom find the
development of one single perverted impulse; usually there are many and
regularly there are traces of all perversions. The individual impulse,
however, on account of its intensity, is independent of the development
of the others, but the study of the positive perversions gives us the
accurate counterpart to it.
PARTIAL IMPULSES AND EROGENOUS ZONES
Keeping in mind what we have learned from the examination of the
positive and negative perversions, it becomes quite obvious that they
can be referred to a number of "partial impulses," which are not,
however, primary but are subject to further analysis. By an "impulse" we
can understand in the first place nothing but the psychic representative
of a continually flowing internal somatic source of excitement, in
contradistinction to the "stimulus" which is produced by isolated
excitements coming from without. The impulse is thus one of the concepts
marking the limits between the psychic and the physical. The simplest
and most obvious assumption concerning the nature of the impulses would
be that in themselves they possess no quality but are only taken into
account as a measure of the demand for effort in the psychic life. What
distinguishes the impulses from one another and furnishes them with
specific attributes is their relation to their somatic _sources_ and to
their _aims_. The source of the impulse is an exciting process in an
organ, and the immediate aim of the impulse lies in the elimination of
this organic stimulus.
Another preliminary assumption in the theory of the impulse which we
cannot relinquish, states that the bodily organs furnish two kinds of
excitements which are determined by differences of a chemical nature.
One of these forms of excitement we designate as the specifically sexual
and the concerned organ as the _erogenous zone_, while the sexual
element emanating from it is the partial impulse.[27]
In the perversions which claim sexual significance for the oral cavity
and the anal opening the part played by the erogenous zone is quite
obvious. It behaves in every way like a part of the sexual apparatus. In
hysteria these parts of the body, as well as the tracts of mucous
membrane proceeding from them, become the seat of new sensations and
innervating changes in a manner similar to the real genitals when under
the excitement of normal sexual processes.
The significance of the erogenous zones in the psychoneuroses, as
additional apparatus and substitutes for the genitals, appears to be
most prominent in hysteria though that does not signify that it is of
lesser validity in the other morbid forms. It is not so recognizable in
compulsion neurosis and paranoia because here the symptom formation
takes place in regions of the psychic apparatus which lie at a great
distance from the central locations for bodily control. The more
remarkable thing in the compulsion neurosis is the significance of the
impulses which create new sexual aims and appear independently of the
erogenous zones. Nevertheless, the eye corresponds to an erogenous zone
in the looking and exhibition mania, while the skin takes on the same
part in the pain and cruelty components of the sexual impulse. The skin,
which in special parts of the body becomes differentiated as sensory
organs and modified by the mucous membrane, is the erogenous zone,
[Greek: kat] ex ogen.[28]
EXPLANATION OF THE MANIFEST PREPONDERANCE OF SEXUAL PERVERSIONS IN THE
PSYCHONEUROSES
The sexuality of psychoneurotics has perhaps been placed in a false
light by the above discussions. It appears that the sexual behavior of
the psychoneurotic approaches in predisposition to the pervert and
deviates by just so much from the normal. Nevertheless, it is very
possible that the constitutional disposition of these patients besides
containing an immense amount of sexual repression and a predominant
force of sexual impulse also possesses an unusual tendency to
perversions in the broadest sense. However, an examination of milder
cases shows that the last assumption is not an absolute requisite, or at
least that in pronouncing judgment on the morbid effects one ought to
discount the effect of one of the factors. In most psychoneurotics the
disease first appears after puberty following the demands of the normal
sexual life. Against these the repression above all directs itself. Or
the disease comes on later, owing to the fact that the libido is unable
to attain normal sexual gratification. In both cases the libido behaves
like a stream the principal bed of which is dammed; it fills the
collateral roads which until now perhaps have been empty. Thus the
manifestly great (though to be sure negative) tendency to perversion in
psychoneurotics may be collaterally conditioned; at any rate, it is
certainly collaterally increased. The fact of the matter is that the
sexual repression has to be added as an inner factor to such external
ones as restriction of freedom, inaccessibility to the normal sexual
object, dangers of the normal sexual act, etc., which cause the origin
of perversions in individuals who might have otherwise remained normal.
In individual cases of neurosis the behavior may be different; now the
congenital force of the tendency to perversion may be more decisive and
at other times more influence may be exerted by the collateral increase
of the same through the deviation of the libido from the normal sexual
aim and object. It would be unjust to construe a contrast where a
cooperation exists. The greatest results will always be brought about by
a neurosis if constitution and experience cooperate in the same
direction. A pronounced constitution may perhaps be able to dispense
with the assistance of daily impressions, while a profound disturbance
in life may perhaps bring on a neurosis even in an average constitution.
These views similarly hold true in the etiological significance
of the congenital and the accidental experiences in other spheres.