is quite generally adopted, that the accumulation of sexual substance
produces and maintains the sexual tension. The pressure of these
products on the walls of their receptacles acts as an excitant on the
spinal center, the state of which is then perceived by the higher
centers which then produce in consciousness the familiar feeling of
tension. If the excitation of erogenous zones increases the sexual
tension, it can only be due to the fact that the erogenous zones are
connected with these centers by previously formed anatomical
connections. They increase there the tone of the excitation, and with
sufficient sexual tension they set in motion the sexual act, and with
insufficient tension they merely stimulate a production of the sexual
substance.
The weakness of the theory which one finds adopted, _e.g._, in v.
Krafft-Ebing's description of the sexual process, lies in the fact that
it has been formed for the sexual activity of the mature man and pays
too little heed to three kinds of relations which should also have been
elucidated. We refer to the relations as found in the child, in the
woman, and in the castrated male. In none of the three cases can we
speak of an accumulation of sexual products in the same sense as in the
man, which naturally renders difficult the general application of this
scheme; still it may be admitted without any further ado that ways can
be found to justify the subordination of even these cases. Nevertheless
one should be cautious about burdening the factor of accumulation of
sexual products with actions which it seems incapable of supporting.
*Overestimation of the Internal Genitals.*--That sexual excitement can
be independent to a considerable extent of the production of sexual
substance seems to be shown by observations on castrated males, in whom
the libido sometimes escapes the injury caused by the operation,
although the opposite behavior, which is really the motive for the
operation, is usually the rule. It is therefore not at all surprising,
as C. Rieger puts it, that the loss of the male germ glands in maturer
age should exert no new influence on the psychic life of the individual.
The germ glands are really not the sexuality, and the experience with
castrated males only verifies what we had long before learned from the
removal of the ovaries, namely that it is impossible to do away with the
sexual character by removing the germ glands. To be sure, castration
performed at a tender age, before puberty, comes nearer to this aim, but
it would seem in this case that besides the loss of the sexual glands we
must also consider the inhibition of development and other factors
which are connected with that loss.
*Chemical Theories.*--The truth remains, however, that we are unable to
give any information about the nature of the sexual excitement for the
reason that we do not know with what organ or organs sexuality is
connected, since we have seen that the sexual glands have been
overestimated in this significance. Since surprising discoveries have
taught us the important rôle of the thyroid gland in sexuality, we may
assume that the knowledge of the essential factors of sexuality are
still withheld from us. One who feels the need of filling up the large
gap in our knowledge with a preliminary assumption may formulate for
himself the following theory based on the active substances found in the
thyroid. Through the appropriate excitement of erogenous zones, as well
as through other conditions under which sexual excitement originates, a
material which is universally distributed in the organism becomes
disintegrated, the decomposing products of which supply a specific
stimulus to the organs of reproduction or to the spinal center connected
with them. Such a transformation of a toxic stimulus in a particular
organic stimulus we are already familiar with from other toxic products
introduced into the body from without. To treat, if only hypothetically,
the complexities of the pure toxic and the physiologic stimulations
which result in the sexual processes is not now our appropriate task. To
be sure, I attach no value to this special assumption and I shall be
quite ready to give it up in favor of another, provided its original
character, the emphasis on the sexual chemism, were preserved. For this
apparently arbitrary statement is supported by a fact which, though
little heeded, is most noteworthy. The neuroses which can be traced only
to disturbances of the sexual life show the greatest clinical
resemblance to the phenomena of intoxication and abstinence which result
from the habitual introduction of pleasure-producing poisonous
substances (alkaloids.)
THE THEORY OF THE LIBIDO
These assumptions concerning the chemical basis of the sexual excitement
are in full accord with the auxiliary conception which we formed for the
purpose of mastering the psychic manifestations of the sexual life. We
have determined the concept of _libido_ as that of a force of variable
quantity which has the capacity of measuring processes and
transformations in the spheres of sexual excitement. This libido we
distinguished from the energy which is to be generally adjudged to the
psychic processes with reference to its special origin and thus we
attribute to it also a qualitative character. In separating libidinous
from other psychic energy we give expression to the assumption that the
sexual processes of the organism are differentiated from the nutritional
processes through a special chemism. The analyses of perversions and
psychoneuroses have taught us that this sexual excitement is furnished
not only from the so-called sexual parts alone but from all organs of
the body. We thus formulate for ourselves the concept of a
libido-quantum whose psychic representative we designate as the
ego-libido; the production, increase, distribution and displacement of
this ego-libido will offer the possible explanation for the observed
psycho-sexual phenomena.
But this ego-libido becomes conveniently accessible to psychoanalytic
study only when the psychic energy is employed on sexual objects, that
is when it becomes object libido. Then we see it as it concentrates and
fixes itself on objects, or as it leaves those objects and passes over
to others from which positions it directs the individual's sexual
activity, that is, it leads to partial and temporary extinction of the
libido. Psychoanalysis of the so-called transference neuroses (hysteria
and compulsion neurosis) offers us here a reliable insight.
Concerning the fates of the object libido we also state that it is
withdrawn from the object, that it is preserved floating in special
states of tension and is finally taken back into the ego, so that it
again becomes ego-libido. In contradistinction to the object-libido we
also call the ego-libido narcissistic libido. From psychoanalysis we
look over the boundary which we are not permitted to pass into the
activity of the narcissistic libido and thus form an idea of the
relations between the two. The narcissistic or ego-libido appears to us
as the great reservoir from which the energy for the investment of the
object is sent out and into which it is drawn back again, while the
narcissistic libido investment of the ego appears to us as the realized
primitive state in the first childhood, which only becomes hidden by the
later emissions of the libido, and is retained at the bottom behind
them.
The task of a theory of libido of neurotic and psychotic disturbances
would have for its object to express in terms of the libido-economy all
observed phenomena and disclosed processes. It is easy to divine that
the greater significance would attach thereby to the destinies of the
ego-libido, especially where it would be the question of explaining the
deeper psychotic disturbances. The difficulty then lies in the fact that
the means of our investigation, psychoanalysis, at present gives us
definite information only concerning the transformation of the
object-libido, but cannot distinguish without further study the
ego-libido from the other effective energies in the ego.[3]
DIFFERENTIATION BETWEEN MAN AND WOMAN
It is known that the sharp differentiation of the male and female
character originates at puberty, and it is the resulting difference
which, more than any other factor, decisively influences the later
development of personality. To be sure, the male and female dispositions
are easily recognizable even in infantile life; thus the development of
sexual inhibitions (shame, loathing, sympathy, etc.) ensues earlier and
with less resistance in the little girl than in the little boy. The
tendency to sexual repression certainly seems much greater, and where
partial impulses of sexuality are noticed they show a preference for the
passive form. But, the autoerotic activity of the erogenous zones is the
same in both sexes, and it is this agreement that removes the
possibility of a sex differentiation in childhood as it appears after
puberty. In respect to the autoerotic and masturbatic sexual
manifestations, it may be asserted that the sexuality of the little girl
has entirely a male character. Indeed, if one could give a more definite
content to the terms "masculine and feminine," one might advance the
opinion that _the libido is regularly and lawfully of a masculine
nature, whether in the man or in the woman; and if we consider its
object, this may be either the man or the woman_.[4]
Since becoming acquainted with the aspect of bisexuality I hold this
factor as here decisive, and I believe that without taking into account
the factor of bisexuality it will hardly be possible to understand the
actually observed sexual manifestations in man and woman.
*The Leading Zones in Man and Woman.*--Further than this I can only add
the following. The chief erogenous zone in the female child is the
clitoris, which is homologous to the male penis. All I have been able to
discover concerning masturbation in little girls concerned the clitoris
and not those other external genitals which are so important for the
later sexual functions. With few exceptions I myself doubt whether the
female child can be seduced to anything but clitoris masturbation. The
frequent spontaneous discharges of sexual excitement in little girls
manifest themselves in a twitching of the clitoris, and its frequent
erections enable the girl to understand correctly even without any
instruction the sexual manifestations of the other sex; they simply
transfer to the boys the sensations of their own sexual processes.
If one wishes to understand how the little girl becomes a woman, he must
follow up the further destinies of this clitoris excitation. Puberty,
which brings to the boy a great advance of libido, distinguishes itself
in the girl by a new wave of repression which especially concerns the
clitoris sexuality. It is a part of the male sexual life that sinks into
repression. The reënforcement of the sexual inhibitions produced in the
woman by the repression of puberty causes a stimulus in the libido of
the man and forces it to increase its capacity; with the height of the
libido there is a rise in the overestimation of the sexual, which can be
present in its full force only when the woman refuses and denies her
sexuality. If the sexual act is finally submitted to and the clitoris
becomes excited its rôle is then to conduct the excitement to the
adjacent female parts, and in this it acts like a chip of pine wood
which is utilized to set fire to the harder wood. It often takes some
time for this transference to be accomplished; during which the young
wife remains anesthetic. This anesthesia may become permanent if the
clitoris zone refuses to give up its excitability; a condition brought
on by abundant activities in infantile life. It is known that anesthesia
in women is often only apparent and local. They are anesthetic at the
vaginal entrance but not at all unexcitable through the clitoris or even
through other zones. Besides these erogenous causes of anesthesia there
are also psychic causes likewise determined by the repression.
If the transference of the erogenous excitability from the clitoris to
the vagina has succeeded, the woman has thus changed her leading zone
for the future sexual activity; the man on the other hand retains his
from childhood. The main determinants for the woman's preference for the
neuroses, especially for hysteria, lie in this change of the leading
zone as well as in the repression of puberty. These determinants are
therefore most intimately connected with the nature of femininity.
THE OBJECT-FINDING
While the primacy of the genital zones is being established through the
processes of puberty, and the erected penis in the man imperiously
points towards the new sexual aim, _i.e._, towards the penetration of a
cavity which excites the genital zone, the object-finding, for which
also preparations have been made since early childhood, becomes
consummated on the psychic side. While the very incipient sexual
gratifications are still connected with the taking of nourishment, the
sexual impulse has a sexual object outside its own body in his mother's
breast. This object it loses later, perhaps at the very time when it
becomes possible for the child to form a general picture of the person
to whom the organ granting him the gratification belongs. The sexual
impulse later regularly becomes autoerotic, and only after overcoming
the latency period is there a resumption of the original relation. It is
not without good reason that the suckling of the child at its mother's
breast has become a model for every amour. The object-finding is really
a re-finding.[5]
*The Sexual Object of the Nursing Period.*--However, even after the
separation of the sexual activity from the taking of nourishment, there
still remains from this first and most important of all sexual relations
an important share, which prepares the object selection and assists in
reestablishing the lost happiness. Throughout the latency period the
child learns to love other persons who assist it in its helplessness and
gratify its wants; all this follows the model and is a continuation of
the child's infantile relations to his wet nurse. One may perhaps
hesitate to identify the tender feelings and esteem of the child for his
foster-parents with sexual love; I believe, however, that a more
thorough psychological investigation will establish this identity beyond
any doubt. The intercourse between the child and its foster-parents is
for the former an inexhaustible source of sexual excitation and
gratification of erogenous zones, especially since the parents--or as a
rule the mother--supplies the child with feelings which originate from
her own sexual life; she pats it, kisses it, and rocks it, plainly
taking it as a substitute for a full-valued sexual object.[6] The mother
would probably be terrified if it were explained to her that all her
tenderness awakens the sexual impulse of her child and prepares its
future intensity. She considers her actions as asexually "pure" love,
for she carefully avoids causing more irritation to the genitals of the
child than is indispensable in caring for the body. But as we know the
sexual impulse is not awakened by the excitation of genital zones alone.
What we call tenderness will some day surely manifest its influence on
the genital zones also. If the mother better understood the high
significance of the sexual impulse for the whole psychic life and for
all ethical and psychic activities, the enlightenment would spare her
all reproaches. By teaching the child to love she only fulfills her
function; for the child should become a fit man with energetic sexual
needs, and accomplish in life all that the impulse urges the man to do.
Of course, too much parental tenderness becomes harmful because it
accelerates the sexual maturity, and also because it "spoils" the child
and makes it unfit to temporarily renounce love or be satisfied with a
smaller amount of love in later life. One of the surest premonitions of
later nervousness is the fact that the child shows itself insatiable in
its demands for parental tenderness; on the other hand, neuropathic
parents, who usually display a boundless tenderness, often with their
caressing awaken in the child a disposition for neurotic diseases. This
example at least shows that neuropathic parents have nearer ways than
inheritance by which they can transfer their disturbances to their
children.
*Infantile Fear.*--The children themselves behave from their early
childhood as if their attachment to their foster-parents were of the
nature of sexual love. The fear of children is originally nothing but an
expression for the fact that they miss the beloved person. They
therefore meet every stranger with fear, they are afraid of the dark
because they cannot see the beloved person, and are calmed if they can
grasp that person's hand. The effect of childish fears and of the
terrifying stories told by nurses is overestimated if one blames the
latter for producing the fear in children. Children who are predisposed
to fear absorb these stories, which make no impression whatever upon
others; and only such children are predisposed to fear whose sexual
impulse is excessive or prematurely developed, or has become exigent
through pampering. The child behaves here like the adult, that is, it
changes its libido into fear when it cannot bring it to gratification,
and the grown-up who becomes neurotic on account of ungratified libido
behaves in his anxiety like a child; he fears when he is alone, _i.e._,
without a person of whose love he believes himself sure, and who can
calm his fears by means of the most childish measures.[7]
*Incest Barriers.*--If the tenderness of the parents for the child has
luckily failed to awaken the sexual impulse of the child prematurely,
_i.e._, before the physical determinations for puberty appear, and if
that awakening has not gone so far as to cause an unmistakable breaking
through of the psychic excitement into the genital system, it can then
fulfill its task and direct the child at the age of maturity in the
selection of the sexual object. It would, of course, be most natural for
the child to select as the sexual object that person whom it has loved
since childhood with, so to speak, a suppressed libido.[8] But owing to
the delay of sexual maturity time has been gained for the erection
beside the sexual inhibitions of the incest barrier, that moral
prescription which explicitly excludes from the object selection the
beloved person of infancy or blood relation. The observance of this
barrier is above all a demand of cultural society which must guard
against the absorption by the family of those interests which it needs
for the production of higher social units. Society, therefore, uses
every means to loosen those family ties in every individual, especially
in the boy, which are authoritative in childhood only.[9]
The object selection, however, is first accomplished in the imagination,
and the sexual life of the maturing youth has hardly any escape except
indulgence in phantasies or ideas which are not destined to be brought
to execution. In the phantasies of all persons the infantile
inclinations, now reënforced by somatic emphasis, reappear, and among
them one finds in regular frequency and in the first place the sexual
feeling of the child for the parents. This has usually already been
differentiated by the sexual attraction, the attraction of the son for
the mother and of the daughter for the father.[10] Simultaneously with
the overcoming and rejection of these distinctly incestuous phantasies
there occurs one of the most important as well as one of the most
painful psychic accomplishments of puberty; it is the breaking away from
the parental authority, through which alone is formed that opposition
between the new and old generations which is so important for cultural
progress. Many persons are detained at each of the stations in the
course of development through which the individual must pass; and
accordingly there are persons who never overcome the parental authority
and never, or very imperfectly, withdraw their affection from their
parents. They are mostly girls, who, to the delight of their parents,
retain their full infantile love far beyond puberty, and it is
instructive to find that in their married life these girls are incapable
of fulfilling their duties to their husbands. They make cold wives and
remain sexually anesthetic. This shows that the apparently non-sexual
love for the parents and the sexual love are nourished from the same
source, _i.e._, that the first merely corresponds to an infantile
fixation of the libido.
The nearer we come to the deeper disturbances of the psychosexual
development the more easily we can recognize the evident significance of
the incestuous object-selection. As a result of sexual rejection there
remains in the unconscious of the psychoneurotic a great part or the
whole of the psychosexual activity for object finding. Girls with an
excessive need for affection and an equal horror for the real demands of
the sexual life experience an uncontrollable temptation on the one hand
to realize in life the ideal of the asexual love and on the other hand
to conceal their libido under an affection which they may manifest
without self reproach; this they do by clinging for life to the
infantile attraction for their parents or brothers or sisters which has
been repressed in puberty. With the help of the symptoms and other
morbid manifestations, psychoanalysis can trace their unconscious
thoughts and translate them into the conscious, and thus easily show to
such persons that they are in love with their consanguinous relations in
the popular meaning of the term. Likewise when a once healthy person
falls sick after an unhappy love affair, the mechanism of the disease
can distinctly be explained as a return of his libido to the persons
preferred in his infancy.
*The After Effects of the Infantile Object Selection.*--Even those who
have happily eluded the incestuous fixation of their libido have not
completely escaped its influence. It is a distinct echo of this phase of
development that the first serious love of the young man is often for a
mature woman and that of the girl for an older man equipped with
authority--_i.e._, for persons who can revive in them the picture of the
mother and father. Generally speaking object selection unquestionably
takes place by following more freely these prototypes. The man seeks
above all the memory picture of his mother as it has dominated him since
the beginning of childhood; this is quite consistent with the fact that
the mother, if still living, strives against this, her renewal, and
meets it with hostility. In view of this significance of the infantile
relation to the parents for the later selection of the sexual object, it
is easy to understand that every disturbance of this infantile relation
brings to a head the most serious results for the sexual life after
puberty. Jealousy of the lover, too, never lacks the infantile sources
or at least the infantile reinforcement. Quarrels between parents and
unhappy marital relations between the same determine the severest
predispositions for disturbed sexual development or neurotic diseases in
the children.
The infantile desire for the parents is, to be sure, the most important,
but not the only trace revived in puberty which points the way to the
object selection. Other dispositions of the same origin permit the man,
still supported by his infancy, to develop more than one single sexual
series and to form different determinations for the object
selection.[11]