aid us in unravelling the original relations of the sexual impulse, but
rather confuses our understanding of the same, inasmuch as it
prematurely supplies the child with the sexual object at a time when the
infantile sexual impulse does not yet evince any desire for it. We must
admit, however, that the infantile sexual life, though mainly under the
control of erogenous zones, also shows components in which from the very
beginning other persons are regarded as sexual objects. Among these we
have the impulses for looking and showing off, and for cruelty, which
manifest themselves somewhat independently of the erogenous zones and
which only later enter into intimate relationship with the sexual life;
but along with the erogenous sexual activity they are noticeable even in
the infantile years as separate and independent strivings. The little
child is above all shameless, and during its early years it evinces
definite pleasure in displaying its body and especially its sexual
organs. A counterpart to this desire which is to be considered as
perverse, the curiosity to see other persons' genitals, probably appears
first in the later years of childhood when the hindrance of the feeling
of shame has already reached a certain development. Under the influence
of seduction the looking perversion may attain great importance for the
sexual life of the child. Still, from my investigations of the childhood
years of normal and neurotic patients, I must conclude that the impulse
for looking can appear in the child as a spontaneous sexual
manifestation. Small children, whose attention has once been directed to
their own genitals--usually by masturbation--are wont to progress in
this direction without outside interference, and to develop a vivid
interest in the genitals of their playmates. As the occasion for the
gratification of such curiosity is generally afforded during the
gratification of both excrementitious needs, such children become
_voyeurs_ and are zealous spectators at the voiding of urine and feces
of others, After this tendency has been repressed, the curiosity to see
the genitals of others (one's own or those of the other sex) remains as
a tormenting desire which in some neurotic cases furnishes the strongest
motive power for the formation of symptoms.
The cruelty component of the sexual impulse develops in the child with
still greater independence of those sexual activities which are
connected with erogenous zones. Cruelty is especially near the childish
character, since the inhibition which restrains the impulse to mastery
before it causes pain to others--that is, the capacity for
sympathy--develops comparatively late. As we know, a thorough
psychological analysis of this impulse has not as yet been successfully
accomplished; we may assume that the cruel feelings emanate from the
impulse to mastery and appear at a period in the sexual life before the
genitals have taken on their later rôle. It then dominates a phase of
the sexual life, which we shall later describe as the pregenital
organization. Children who are distinguished for evincing especial
cruelty to animals and playmates may be justly suspected of intensive
and premature sexual activity in the erogenous zones; and in a
simultaneous prematurity of all sexual impulses, the erogenous sexual
activity surely seems to be primary. The absence of the barrier of
sympathy carries with it the danger that the connections between cruelty
and the erogenous impulses formed in childhood cannot be broken in later
life.
An erogenous source of the passive impulse for cruelty (masochism) is
found in the painful irritation of the gluteal region which is familiar
to all educators since the confessions of J.J. Rousseau. This has justly
caused them to demand that physical punishment, which usually concerns
this part of the body, should be withheld from all children in whom the
libido might be forced into collateral roads by the later demands of
cultural education.[19]
THE INFANTILE SEXUAL INVESTIGATION
*Inquisitiveness.*--At the same time when the sexual life of the child
reaches its first bloom, from the age of three to the age of five, it
also evinces the beginning of that activity which is ascribed to the
impulse for knowledge and investigation. The desire for knowledge can
neither be added to the elementary components of the impulses nor can it
be altogether subordinated under sexuality. Its activity corresponds on
the one hand to a sublimating mode of acquisition and on the other hand
it labors with the energy of the desire for looking. Its relations to
the sexual life, however, are of particular importance, for we have
learned from psychoanalysis that the inquisitiveness of children is
attracted to the sexual problems unusually early and in an unexpectedly
intensive manner, indeed it perhaps may first be awakened by the sexual
problems.
*The Riddle of the Sphinx.*--It is not theoretical but practical
interests which start the work of the investigation activity in the
child. The threat to the conditions of his existence through the actual
or expected arrival of a new child, the fear of the loss in care and
love which is connected with this event, cause the child to become
thoughtful and sagacious. Corresponding with the history of this
awakening, the first problem with which it occupies itself is not the
question as to the difference between the sexes, but the riddle: from
where do children come? In a distorted form, which can easily be
unraveled, this is the same riddle which was given by the Theban Sphinx.
The fact of the two sexes is usually first accepted by the child without
struggle and hesitation. It is quite natural for the male child to
presuppose in all persons it knows a genital like his own, and to find
it impossible to harmonize the lack of it with his conception of others.
*The Castration Complex.*--This conviction is energetically adhered to
by the boy and tenaciously defended against the contradictions which
soon result, and are only given up after severe internal struggles
(castration complex). The substitutive formations of this lost penis of
the woman play a great part in the formation of many perversions.
The assumption of the same (male) genital in all persons is the first of
the remarkable and consequential infantile sexual theories. It is of
little help to the child when biological science agrees with his
preconceptions and recognizes the feminine clitoris as the real
substitute for the penis. The little girl does not react with similar
refusals when she sees the differently formed genital of the boy. She
is immediately prepared to recognize it, and soon becomes envious of the
penis; this envy reaches its highest point in the consequentially
important wish that she also should be a boy.
*Birth Theories.*--Many people can remember distinctly how intensely
they interested themselves, in the prepubescent period, in the question
where children came from. The anatomical solutions at that time read
very differently; the children come out of the breast or are cut out of
the body, or the navel opens itself to let them out. Outside of analysis
one only seldom remembers the investigation corresponding to the early
childhood years; it had long merged into repression but its results were
thoroughly uniform. One gets children by eating something special (as in
the fairy tale) and they are born through the bowel like a passage.
These infantile theories recall the structures in the animal kingdom,
especially do they recall the cloaca of the types which stand lower than
the mammals.
*Sadistic Conception of the Sexual Act.*--If children of so delicate an
age become spectators of the sexual act between grown-ups, for which an
occasion is furnished by the conviction of the grown-ups that little
children cannot understand anything sexual, they cannot help conceiving
the sexual act as a kind of maltreating or overpowering, that is, it
impresses them in a sadistic sense. Psychoanalysis also teaches us that
such an early childhood impression contributes much to the disposition
for a later sadistic displacement of the sexual aim. Besides this
children also occupy themselves with the problem of what the sexual act
consists in or, as they grasp it, of what marriage consists, and seek
the solution of the mystery mostly in an association to which the
functions of urination and defecation give occasion.
*The Typical Failure of the Infantile Sexual Investigation.*--It can be
stated in general about the infantile sexual theories that they are
reproductions of the child's own sexual constitution, and that despite
their grotesque mistakes they evince more understanding of the sexual
processes than is credited to their creators. Children also perceive the
pregnancy of the mother and know how to interpret it correctly; the
stork fable is very often related before auditors who confront it with a
deep, but mostly mute suspicion. But as two elements remain unknown to
the infantile sexual investigation, namely, the rôle of the propagating
semen and the female genital opening--precisely the same points in which
the infantile organization is still backward--the effort of the
infantile investigator regularly remains fruitless, and ends in a
renunciation which not infrequently leaves a lasting injury to the
desire for knowledge. The sexual investigation of these early childhood
years is always conducted alone, it signifies the first step towards
independent orientation in the world, and causes a marked estrangement
between the child and the persons of his environment who formerly
enjoyed its full confidence.
*The Phases of Development of the Sexual Organization.*--As
characteristics of the infantile sexuality we have hitherto emphasized
the fact that it is essentially autoerotic (it finds its object in its
own body), and that its individual partial impulses, which on the whole
are unconnected and independent of one another, are striving for the
acquisition of pleasure. The end of this development forms the so-called
normal sexual life of the adult in which the acquisition of pleasure has
been put into the service of the function of propagation, and the
partial impulses, under the primacy of one single erogenous zone, have
formed a firm organization for the attainment of the sexual aim in a
strange sexual object.
*Pregenital Organizations.*--The study, with the help of
psychoanalysis, of the inhibitions and disturbances in this course of
development now permits us to recognize additions and primary stages of
such organization of the partial impulses which likewise furnish a sort
of sexual regime. These phases of the sexual organization normally will
pass over smoothly and will only be recognizable by slight indications.
Only in pathological cases do they become active and discernible to
coarse observation.
Organizations of the sexual life in which the genital zones have not yet
assumed the dominating rôle we would call the _pregenital_ phase. So far
we have become acquainted with two of them which recall reversions to
early animal states.
One of the first of such pregenital sexual organizations is the _oral_,
or if we wish, the cannibalistic. Here the sexual activity is not yet
separated from the taking of nourishment, and the contrasts within the
same not yet differentiated. The object of the one activity is also that
of the other, the sexual aim consists in the _incorporating_ into one's
own body of the object, it is the prototype of that which later plays
such an important psychic rôle as _identification_. As a remnant of this
fictitious phase of organization forced on us by pathology we can
consider thumbsucking. Here the sexual activity became separated from
the nourishment activity and the strange object was given up in favor of
one from his own body.
A second pregenital phase is the sadistic-anal organization. Here the
contrasts which run through the whole sexual life are already developed,
but cannot yet be designated as _masculine_ and _feminine_, but must be
called _active_ and _passive_. The activity is supplied by the
musculature of the body through the mastery impulse; the erogenous
mucous membrane of the bowel manifests itself above all as an organ with
a passive sexual aim, for both strivings there are objects present,
which however do not merge together. Besides them there are other
partial impulses which are active in an autoerotic manner. The sexual
polarity and the strange object can thus already be demonstrated in this
phase. The organization and subordination under the function of
propagation are still lacking.
*Ambivalence.*--This form of the sexual organization could be retained
throughout life and continue to draw to itself a large part of the
sexual activity. The prevalence of sadism and the rôle of the cloaca of
the anal zone stamps it with an exquisitely archaic impression. As
another characteristic belonging to it we can mention the fact that the
contrasting pair of impulses are developed in almost the same manner, a
behavior which was designated by Bleuler with the happy name of
_ambivalence_.
The assumption of the pregenital organizations of the sexual life is
based on the analysis of the neuroses and hardly deserves any
consideration without a knowledge of the same. We may expect that
continued analytic efforts will furnish us with still more disclosures
concerning the structure and development of the normal sexual function.
To complete the picture of the infantile sexual life one must add that
frequently or regularly an object selection takes place even in
childhood which is as characteristic as the one we have represented for
the phase of development of puberty. This object selection proceeds in
such a manner that all the sexual strivings proceed in the direction of
one person in whom they wish to attain their aim. This is then the
nearest approach to the definitive formation of the sexual life after
puberty, that is possible in childhood. It differs from the latter only
in the fact that the collection of the partial impulses and their
subordination to the primacy of the genitals is very imperfectly or not
at all accomplished in childhood. The establishment of this primacy in
the service of propagation is therefore the last phase through which the
sexual organization passes.
*The Two Periods of Object Selection.*--That the object selection takes
place in two periods, or in two shifts, can be spoken of as a typical
occurrence. The first shift has its origin between the age of three and
five years, and is brought to a stop or to retrogression by the latency
period; it is characterized by the infantile nature of its sexual aims.
The second shift starts with puberty and determines the definitive
formation of the sexual life.
The fact of the double object selection which is essentially due to the
effect of the latency period, becomes most significant for the
disturbance of this terminal state. The results of the infantile object
selection reach into the later period; they are either preserved as such
or are even refreshed at the time of puberty. But due to the development
of the repression which takes place between the two phases they turn out
as unutilizable. The sexual aims have become softened and now represent
what we can designate as the _tender_ streams of the sexual life. Only
psychoanalytic investigation can demonstrate that behind this
tenderness, such as honoring and esteeming, there is concealed the old
sexual strivings of the infantile partial impulses which have now become
useless. The object selection of the pubescent period must renounce the
infantile objects and begin anew as a sensuous stream. The fact that the
two streams do not meet often enough has as a result that one of the
ideals of the sexual life, namely, the union of all desires in one
object, can not be attained.
THE SOURCES OF THE INFANTILE SEXUALITY
In our effort to follow up the origins of the sexual impulse, we have
thus far found that the sexual excitement originates (_a_) as an imitation
of a gratification which has been experienced in conjunction with other
organic processes; (_b_) through the appropriate peripheral stimulation of
erogenous zones; (_c_) and as an expression of some "impulse," like the
looking and cruelty impulses, the origin of which we do not yet fully
understand. The psychoanalytic investigation of later life which leads
back to childhood and the contemporary observation of the child itself
coöperate to reveal to us still other regularly-flowing sources of the
sexual excitement. The observation of childhood has the disadvantage of
treating easily misunderstood material, while psychoanalysis is made
difficult by the fact that it can reach its objects and conclusions only
by great detours; still the united efforts of both methods achieve a
sufficient degree of positive understanding.
In investigating the erogenous zones we have already found that these
skin regions merely show the special exaggeration of a form of
sensitiveness which is to a certain degree found over the whole surface
of the skin. It will therefore not surprise us to learn that certain
forms of general sensitiveness in the skin can be ascribed to very
distinct erogenous action. Among these we will above all mention the
temperature sensitiveness; this will perhaps prepare us for the
understanding of the therapeutic effects of warm baths.
*Mechanical Excitation.*--We must, moreover, describe here the
production of sexual excitation by means of rhythmic mechanical shaking
of the body. There are three kinds of exciting influences: those acting
on the sensory apparatus of the vestibular nerves, those acting on the
skin, and those acting on the deep parts, such as the muscles and
joints. The sexual excitation produced by these influences seems to be
of a pleasurable nature--it is worth emphasizing that for some time we
shall continue to use indiscriminately the terms "sexual excitement" and
"gratification" leaving the search for an explanation of the terms to a
later time--and that the pleasure is produced by mechanical stimulation
is proved by the fact that children are so fond of play involving
passive motion, like swinging or flying in the air, and repeatedly
demand its repetition.[20] As we know, rocking is regularly used in
putting restless children to sleep. The shaking sensation experienced in
wagons and railroad trains exerts such a fascinating influence on older
children, that all boys, at least at one time in their lives, want to
become conductors and drivers. They are wont to ascribe to railroad
activities an extraordinary and mysterious interest, and during the age
of phantastic activity (shortly before puberty) they utilize these as a
nucleus for exquisite sexual symbolisms. The desire to connect railroad
travelling with sexuality apparently originates from the pleasurable
character of the sensation of motion. When the repression later sets in
and changes so many of the childish likes into their opposites, these
same persons as adolescents and adults then react to the rocking and
rolling with nausea and become terribly exhausted by a railroad journey,
or they show a tendency to attacks of anxiety during the journey, and by
becoming obsessed with railroad phobia they protect themselves against a
repetition of the painful experiences.
This also fits in with the not as yet understood fact that the
concurrence of fear with mechanical shaking produces the severest
hysterical forms of traumatic neurosis. It may at least be assumed that
inasmuch as even a slight intensity of these influences becomes a source
of sexual excitement, the action of an excessive amount of the same will
produce a profound disorder in the sexual mechanism.
*Muscular Activity.*--It is well known that the child has need for
strong muscular activity, from the gratification of which it draws
extraordinary pleasure. Whether this pleasure has anything to do with
sexuality, whether it includes in itself sexual satisfaction? or can be
the occasion of sexual excitement; all this may be refuted by critical
consideration, which will probably be directed also to the position
taken above that the pleasure in the sensations of passive movement are
of sexual character or that they are sexually exciting. The fact
remains, however, that a number of persons report that they experienced
the first signs of excitement in their genitals during fighting or
wrestling with playmates, in which situation, besides the general
muscular exertion, there is an intensive contact with the opponent's
skin which also becomes effective. The desire for muscular contest with
a definite person, like the desire for word contest in later years, is a
good sign that the object selection has been directed toward this
person. "Was sich liebt, das neckt sich."[21] In the promotion of sexual
excitement through muscular activity we might recognize one of the
sources of the sadistic impulse. The infantile connection between
fighting and sexual excitement acts in many persons as a determinant for
the future preferred course of their sexual impulse.[22]
*Affective Processes.*--The other sources of sexual excitement in the
child are open to less doubt. Through contemporary observations, as well
as through later investigations, it is easy to ascertain that all more
intensive affective processes, even excitements of a terrifying nature,
encroach upon sexuality; this can at all events furnish us with a
contribution to the understanding of the pathogenic action of such
emotions. In the school child, fear of a coming examination or exertion
expended in the solution of a difficult task can become significant for
the breaking through of sexual manifestations as well as for his
relations to the school, inasmuch as under such excitements a sensation
often occurs urging him to touch the genitals, or leading to a
pollution-like process with all its disagreeable consequences. The
behavior of children at school, which is so often mysterious to the
teacher, ought surely to be considered in relation with their
germinating sexuality. The sexually-exciting influence of some painful
affects, such as fear, shuddering, and horror, is felt by a great many
people throughout life and readily explains why so many seek
opportunities to experience such sensations, provided that certain
accessory circumstances (as under imaginary circumstances in reading, or
in the theater) suppress the earnestness of the painful feeling.
If we might assume that the same erogenous action also reaches the
intensive painful feelings, especially if the pain be toned down or held
at a distance by a subsidiary determination, this relation would then
contain the main roots of the masochistic-sadistic impulse, into the
manifold composition of which we are gaining a gradual insight.
*Intellectual Work.*--Finally, is is evident that mental application or
the concentration of attention on an intellectual accomplishment will
result, especially often in youthful persons, but in older persons as
well, in a simultaneous sexual excitement, which may be looked upon as
the only justified basis for the otherwise so doubtful etiology of
nervous disturbances from mental "overwork."
If we now, in conclusion, review the evidences and indications of the
sources of the infantile sexual excitement, which have been reported
neither completely nor exhaustively, we may lay down the following
general laws as suggested or established. It seems to be provided in the
most generous manner that the process of sexual excitement--the nature
of which certainly remains quite mysterious to us--should be set in
motion. The factor making this provision in a more or less direct way is
the excitation of the sensible surfaces of the skin and sensory organs,
while the most immediate exciting influences are exerted on certain
parts which are designated as erogenous zones. The criterion in all
these sources of sexual excitement is really the quality of the stimuli,
though the factor of intensity (in pain) is not entirely unimportant.
But in addition to this there are arrangements in the organism which
induce sexual excitement as a subsidiary action in a large number of
inner processes as soon as the intensity of these processes has risen
above certain quantitative limits. What we have designated as the
partial impulses of sexuality are either directly derived from these
inner sources of sexual excitation or composed of contributions from
such sources and from erogenous zones. It is possible that nothing of
any considerable significance occurs in the organism that does not
contribute its components to the excitement of the sexual impulse.
It seems to me at present impossible to shed more light and certainty on
these general propositions, and for this I hold two factors responsible;
first, the novelty of this manner of investigation, and secondly, the
fact that the nature of the sexual excitement is entirely unfamiliar to
us. Nevertheless, I will not forbear speaking about two points which
promise to open wide prospects in the future.