something to add. Condemned as they are, sharply as they are contrasted
with the normal sexual activity, simple observation shows that rarely is
normal sex-life entirely free from one or another of the perverse
traits. Even the kiss can be claimed to be perverse, for it consists in
the union of two erogenous mouth zones in place of the respective
genitals. But no one outlaws it as perverse, it is, on the contrary,
admitted in theatrical performances as a modified suggestion of the
sexual act. This very kissing may easily become a complete perversion
if it results in such intensity that it is immediately followed by an
emission and orgasm--a thing that is not at all unusual. Further, we can
learn that handling and gazing upon the object becomes an essential
prerequisite to sexual pleasure; that some, in the height of sexual
excitation, pinch and bite, that the greatest excitation is not always
called forth in lovers by the genitals, but rather by other parts of the
body, and so forth. There is no sense in considering persons with single
traits of this kind abnormal, and counting them among the perverts.
Rather, we recognize more and more clearly that the essential nature of
perversion does not consist in overstepping the sexual aim, nor in a
substitution for the genitals, not even in the variety of objects, but
simply in the exclusiveness with which these deviations are carried out
and by means of which the sexual act that serves reproduction is pushed
aside. When the perverse activities serve to prepare or heighten the
normal sexual act, they are really no longer perversions. To be sure,
the chasm between normal and perverse sexuality is practically bridged
by such facts. The natural result is that normal sexuality takes its
origin from something existing prior to it, since certain components of
this material are thrown out and others are combined in order to make
them subject to a new aim--that of reproduction.
Before we make use of our knowledge of perversions to concentrate anew
and with clearer perspective on the study of infantile sexuality, I must
call your attention to an important difference between the two. Perverse
sexuality is as a rule extraordinarily centralized, its whole action is
directed toward one, usually an isolated, goal. A partial instinct has
the upper hand. It is either the only one that can be demonstrated or it
has subjected the others to its purposes. In this respect there is no
difference between normal and perverse sexuality other than that the
ruling partial instincts, and with them the sexual goals, are different.
In the one case as well as in the other there is, so to say, a well
organized tyranny, excepting that here one family and there another has
appropriated all the power to itself. Infantile sexuality, on the other
hand, is on the whole devoid of such centralization and organization,
its individual component impulses are of equal power, and each
independently goes in search of the acquisition of pleasurable
excitement. The lack as well as the presence of centralization fit in
well with the fact that both the perverse and the normal sexuality
originated from the infantile. There are also cases of perverse
sexuality that have much more similarity with the infantile, where,
independently of one another, numerous partial instincts have forced
their way, insisted on their aims, or rather perpetuated them. In these
cases it is more correct to speak of infantilism of sexual life than of
perversions.
Thus prepared we can consider a question which we certainly shall not be
spared. People will say to us: "Why are you so set on including within
sexuality those manifestations of childhood, out of which the sexual
later develops, but which, according to your own admission, are of
uncertain origin? Why are you not satisfied rather with the
physiological description, and simply say that even in the suckling one
may notice activities, such as sucking objects or holding back
excrements, which show us that he strives towards an _organic pleasure_?
In that way you would have avoided the estranging conception of sexual
life in the tiniest child." I have nothing to say against organic
pleasure; I know that the most extreme excitement of the sexual union is
only an organic pleasure derived from the activity of the genitals. But
can you tell me when this organic pleasure, originally not
differentiated, acquires the sexual character that it undoubtedly does
possess in the later phases of development? Do you know more about the
"organic pleasure" than about sexuality? You will answer, the sexual
character is acquired when the genitals begin to play their role; sexual
means genital. You will even reject the contrary evidence of the
perversions by confronting me with the statement that in most
perversions it is a matter of achieving the genital orgasm, although by
other means than a union of the genitals. You would really command a
much better position if you did not regard as characteristic of the
sexual that untenable relation to reproduction seen in the perversions,
if you replaced it by activity of the genitals. Then we no longer differ
very widely; the genital organs merely replace other organs. What do you
make of the numerous practices which show you that the genitals may be
represented by other organs in the attainment of gratification, as is
the case in the normal kiss, or the perverse practices of "fast life,"
or the symptoms of hysteria? In these neuroses it is quite usual for
stimulations, sensations and innervations, even the process of erection,
which is localized in the genitals, to be transferred to other distant
parts of the body, so that you have nothing to which you can hold as
characteristics of the sexual. You will have to decide to follow my
example and expand the designation "sexual" to include the strivings of
early childhood toward organic pleasure.
Now, for my justification, I should like you to give me the time for two
more considerations. As you know, we call the doubtful and indefinable
pleasure activities of earliest childhood sexual because our analysis of
the symptoms leads us to them by way of material that is undeniably
sexual. We admit that it need not for that reason in itself be sexual.
But take an analogous case. Suppose there were no way to observe the
development of two dicotyledonous plants from their seeds--the apple
tree and the bean. In both cases, however, imagine it possible to follow
their evolution from the fully developed plant backwards to the first
seedling with two leaf-divisions. The two little leaves are
indistinguishable, in both cases they look exactly alike. Shall I
conclude from this that they really are the same and that the specific
differences between an apple tree and bean plant do not appear until
later in the history of the plant? Or is it biologically more correct to
believe that this difference is already present in the seedling,
although the two little leaves show no differences? We do the same thing
when we term as sexual the pleasure derived from the activities of the
suckling. Whether each and every organic enjoyment may be called sexual,
or if besides the sexual there is another that does not deserve this
name, is a matter I cannot discuss here. I know too little about organic
pleasure and its conditions, and will not be at all surprised if the
retrogressive character of the analysis leads us back finally to a
generalized factor.
One thing more. You have on the whole gained very little for what you
are so anxious to maintain, the sexual purity of the child, even when
you can convince me that the activities of the suckling had better not
be called sexual. For from the third year on, there is no longer any
doubt concerning the presence of a sexual life in the child. At this
time the genitals already begin to become active; there is perhaps
regularly a period of infantile masturbation, in other words, a
gratification by means of the genitals. The psychic and social
expressions of the sexual life are no longer absent; choice of an
object, affectionate preference for certain persons, indeed, a leaning
toward one of the two sexes, jealousy--all these have been established
independently by unprejudiced observation, prior to the advent of
psychoanalysis, and confirmed by every careful observer. You will say
that you had no doubt as to the early awakening of affection, you will
take issue only with its sexual nature. Children between the ages of
three and eight have already learned to hide these things, but if you
look sharply you can always gather sufficient evidence of the "sexual"
purpose of this affection. What escapes you will be amply supplied by
investigation. The sexual goals of this period of life are most
intimately connected with the contemporaneous sexual theories, of which
I have given you some examples. The perverse nature of some of these
goals is the result of the constitutional immaturity of the child, who
has not yet discovered the goal of the act of copulation.
From about the sixth or the eighth year on a pause in, and reversion of,
sexual development is noticeable, which in the cases that reach the
highest cultural standard deserves the name of a latent period. The
latent period may also fail to appear and there need not be an
interruption of sexual activity and sexual interests at any period. Most
of the experiences and impulses prior to the latent period then fall
victim to the infantile amnesia, the forgetting we have already
discussed, which cloaks our earliest childhood and makes us strangers to
it. In every psychoanalysis we are confronted with the task of leading
this forgotten period of life back into memory; one cannot resist the
supposition that the beginning of sexual life it contains furnishes the
motive for this forgetting, namely, that this forgetting is a result of
suppression.
The sexual life of the child shows from the third year that it has much
in common with that of the adult; it is distinguished from the latter,
as we already know, by the lack of stable organization under the primacy
of the genitals, by the unavoidable traits of perversion, and,
naturally, by the far lesser intensity of the whole impulse.
Theoretically the most interesting phases of the sexual development or,
as we would rather say, the libido-development, so far as theory is
concerned, lie back of this period. This development is so rapidly gone
through that perhaps it would never have been possible for direct
observation to grasp its fleeting pictures. Psychoanalytic investigation
of the neuroses has for the first time made it possible to discover more
remote phases of the libido-development. These are, to be sure, nothing
but constructions, but if you wish to carry on psychoanalysis in a
practical way you will find that they are necessary and valuable
constructions. You will soon understand why pathology may disclose
conditions which we would have overlooked in the normal object.
We can now declare what form the sexual life of the child takes before
the primacy of the genitals is established. This primacy is prepared in
the first infantile epoch prior to the latent period, and is
continuously organized from puberty on. There is in this early period a
sort of loose organization, which we shall call _pre-genital_. In the
foreground of this phase, however, the partial instincts of the genitals
are not prominent, rather the _sadistic_ and _anal_. The contrast
between _masculine_ and _feminine_ plays no part as yet, its place is
taken by the contrast between _active_ and _passive_, which we may
designate as the forerunner of sexual polarity, with which it is later
fused. That which appears masculine to us in the activity of this phase,
observed from the standpoint of the later genital stage, is the
expression of an instinct to mastery, which may border on cruelty.
Impulses with passive goals attach themselves to the erogenous zone of
the rectal opening. Most important at this time, curiosity and the
instinct to watch are powerful. The genital really takes part in the
sexual life only in its role as excretory organ for the bladder. Objects
are not lacking to the partial impulses of this period, but they do not
necessarily combine into a single object. The sadistico-anal
organization is the step antecedent to the phase of genital primacy. A
more penetrating study furnishes proof how much of this is retained for
the later and final form, and in what ways its partial instincts are
forced into line under the new genital organization. Back of the
sadistico-anal phase of libido-development, we get a view of an earlier,
even more primitive phase of organization, in which the erogenous
mouth-zone plays the chief role. You may surmise that the sexual
activity of sucking belongs to it, and may wonder at the intuition of
the ancient Egyptians, whose art characterized the child, as well as
the god Horus, with the finger in his month. Abraham only recently
published material concerning the traces which this primitive oral phase
has left upon the sexual life of later years.
I can surmise that these details about sexual organization have burdened
your mind more than they have informed you. Perhaps I have again gone
into detail too much. But be patient; what you have heard will become
more valuable through the uses to which it is later put. Keep well in
mind the impression that sexual life, as we call it, the function, of
the libido, does not make its appearance as a completed whole, nor does
it develop in its own image, but goes through a series of successive
phases which are not similar to each other. In fact, it is a
developmental sequence, like that from the grub to the butterfly. The
turning point of the development is the subordination of all sexual
partial-instincts to the primacy of the genitals, and thereby the
subjection of sexuality to the function of reproduction. Originally it
is a diffused sexual life, one which consists of independent activities
of single partial instincts which strive towards organic gratification.
This anarchy is modified by approaches to pre-genital organization,
first of all the sadistico-anal phase, prior to this the oral phase,
which is perhaps the most primitive. Added to this there are the various
processes, as yet not well known, which carry over one organization
level to the later and more advanced phase. The significance, for the
understanding of the neuroses, of the long evolutionary path of the
libido which carries it over so many grades we shall discuss on another
occasion.
Today we shall look at another angle of the development, namely the
relation of the partial instinct to the object. We shall make a hurried
survey of this development in order to spend more time upon a relatively
later product. Some of the components of the sex instincts have had an
object from the very beginning and hold fast to it; such are the
instinct to mastery (sadism), curiosity, and the impulse to watch. Other
impulses which are more clearly attached to specific erogenous zones of
the body have this object only in the beginning, as long as they adhere
to the functions which are not sexual; they release this object when
they free themselves from these non-sexual functions. The first object
of the oral component of the sexual impulse is the mother's breast,
which satisfies the hunger of the infant. By the act of sucking, the
erotic component which is also satisfied by the sucking becoming
independent, it gives up the foreign object and replaces it by some part
of its own body. The oral impulse becomes _auto-erotic_, just as the
anal and other erogenous impulses are from the very beginning. Further
development, to express it most briefly, has two goals--first, to give
up auto-eroticism, and, again, to substitute for the object of one's own
body a foreign object; second, to unify the different objects into a
single impulse, replace them by a single object. To be sure, that can
happen only if this single object is itself complete, a body similar to
one's own. Nor can it be consummated without leaving behind as useless a
large number of the auto-erotic instinctive impulses.
The processes of finding the object are rather involved, and have as yet
had no comprehensive exposition. For our purpose, let us emphasize the
fact that when the process has come to a temporary cessation in the
childhood years, before the latent period, the object it has found is
seen to be practically identical with the first object derived from its
relation to the object of the oral pleasure impulse. It is, if not the
mother's breast, the mother herself. We call the mother the first
_object of love_. For we speak of love when we emphasize the psychic
side of sex-impulses, and disregard or for a moment wish to forget the
fundamental physical or "sensual" demands of the instincts. At the time
when the mother becomes the object of love, the psychic work of
suppression which withdraws the knowledge of a part of his sexual goal
from his consciousness has already begun in the child. The selection of
the mother as the object of love involves everything we understand by
the Oedipus complex which has come to have such great significance in
the psychoanalytic explanation of neuroses, and which has had no small
part in arousing opposition to psychoanalysis.
Here is a little experience which took place during the present war: A
brave young disciple of psychoanalysis is a doctor at the German front
somewhere in Poland, and attracts the attention of his colleagues by the
fact that he occasionally exercises an unexpected influence in the case
of a patient. Upon being questioned he admits that he works by means of
psychoanalysis and is finally induced to impart his knowledge to his
colleagues. Every evening the physicians of the corps, colleagues and
superiors, gather in order to listen to the inmost secrets of analysis.
For a while this goes on nicely, but after he has told his audience of
the Oedipus-complex, a superior rises and says he does not believe it,
that it is shameful for the lecturer to tell such things to them, brave
men who are fighting for their fatherland, and who are the fathers of
families, and he forbade the continuation of the lectures. This was the
end.
Now you will be impatient to discover what this frightful
Oedipus-complex consists of. The name tells you. You all know the Greek
myth of King Oedipus, who is destined by the fates to kill his father,
and take his mother to wife, who does everything to escape the oracle
and then does penance by blinding himself when he discovers that he has,
unknowingly, committed these two sins. I trust many of you have
yourselves experienced the profound effect of the tragedy in which
Sophocles handles this material. The work of the Attic poet presents the
manner in which the deed of Oedipus, long since accomplished, is finally
brought to light by an artistically prolonged investigation,
continuously fed with new evidence; thus far it has a certain similarity
to the process of psychoanalysis. In the course of the dialogue it
happens that the infatuated mother-wife, Jocasta, opposes the
continuation of the investigation. She recalls that many men have
dreamed that they have cohabited with their mothers, but one should lay
little stress on dreams. We do not lay little stress on dreams, least of
all typical dreams such as occur to many men, and we do not doubt that
this dream mentioned by Jocasta is intimately connected with the strange
and frightful content of the myth.
It is surprising that Sophocles' tragedy does not call forth much
greater indignation and opposition on the part of the audience, a
reaction similar to, and far more justified, than the reaction to our
simple military physician. For it is a fundamentally immoral play, it
dispenses with the moral responsibility of men, it portrays godlike
powers as instigators of guilt, and shows the helplessness of the moral
impulses of men which contend against sin. One might easily suppose that
the burden of the myth purposed accusation against the gods and Fate,
and in the hands of the critical Euripides, always at odds with the
gods, it would probably have become such an accusation. But there is no
trace of this in the work of the believer Sophocles. A pious sophistry
which asserts that the highest morality is to bow to the will of the
gods, even if they command a crime, helps him over the difficulty. I do
not think that this moral constitutes the power of the drama, but so far
as the effect goes, that is unimportant; the listener does not react to
it, but to the secret meaning and content of the myth. He reacts as
though through self-analysis he had recognized in himself the
Oedipus-complex, and had unmasked the will of the gods, as well as the
oracle, as sublime disguises of his own unconsciousness. It is as though
he remembered the wish to remove his father, and in his place to take
his mother to wife, and must be horrified at his own desires. He also
understands the voice of the poet as if it were telling him: "You revolt
in vain against your responsibility, and proclaim in vain the efforts
you have made to resist these criminal purposes. In spite of these
efforts, you are guilty, for you have not been able to destroy the
criminal purposes, they will persist unconsciously in you." And in that
there is psychological truth. Even if man has relegated his evil
impulses to the unconscious, and would tell himself that he is no longer
answerable for them, he will still be compelled to experience this
responsibility as a feeling of guilt which he cannot trace to its
source.
It is not to be doubted for a moment that one may recognize in the
Oedipus-complex one of the most important sources for the consciousness
of guilt with which neurotics are so often harassed. But furthermore, in
a study of the origins of religion and morality of mankind which I
published in 1913, under the title of _Totem and Taboo_, the idea was
brought home to me that perhaps mankind as a whole has, at the beginning
of its history, come by its consciousness of guilt, the final source of
religion and morality, through the Oedipus-complex. I should like to say
more on this subject, but perhaps I had better not. It is difficult to
turn away from this subject now that I have begun speaking of it, but we
must return to individual psychology.