matters. It is not altogether a joke, however. Seriously, it is not so
easy to define what the term sexual includes. Everything connected with
the difference between the two sexes is perhaps the only way of hitting
the mark; but you will find that too general and indefinite. If you take
the sexual act itself as the central point, you will perhaps declare
sexual to mean everything which is concerned with obtaining pleasurable
gratification from the body (and particularly the sexual organs) of the
opposite sex; in the narrowest sense, everything which is directed to
the union of the genital organs and the performance of the sexual act.
In doing so, however, you come very near to reckoning the sexual and the
improper as identical, and childbirth would really have nothing to do
with sex. If then you make the function of reproduction the kernel of
sexuality you run the risk of excluding from it a whole host of things
like masturbation, or even kissing, which are not directed towards
reproduction, but which are nevertheless undoubtedly sexual. However, we
have already found that attempts at definition always lead to
difficulties; let us give up trying to do any better in this particular
case. We may suspect that in the development of the concept “sexual”
something has happened which has resulted in what H. Silberer has aptly
called a ‘covering error.’ On the whole, indeed, we know pretty well
what is meant by sexual.
In the popular view, which is sufficient for all practical purposes in
ordinary life, sexual is something which combines references to the
difference between the sexes, to pleasurable excitement and
gratification, to the reproductive function, and to the idea of
impropriety and the necessity for concealment. But this is no longer
sufficient for science. For painstaking researches (only possible, of
course, in a spirit of self-command maintained by self-sacrifice) have
revealed that classes of human beings exist whose sexual life deviates
from the usual one in the most striking manner. One group among these
“perverts” has, as it were, expunged the difference between the sexes
from its scheme of life. In these people, only the same sex as their own
can rouse sexual desire; the other sex (especially the genital organ of
the other sex) has absolutely no sexual attraction for them, can even in
extreme cases be an object of abhorrence to them. They have thus of
course foregone all participation in the process of reproduction. Such
persons are called homosexuals or inverts. Often, though not always,
they are men and women who otherwise have reached an irreproachably high
standard of mental growth and development, intellectually and ethically,
and are only afflicted with this one fateful peculiarity. Through the
mouths of their scientific spokesmen they lay claim to be a special
variety of the human race, a “third sex,” as they call it, standing with
equal rights alongside the other two. We may perhaps have an opportunity
of critically examining these claims. They are not, of course, as they
would gladly maintain, the “elect” of mankind; they contain in their
ranks at least as many inferior and worthless individuals as are to be
found amongst those differently constituted sexually.
These perverts do at least seek to achieve very much the same ends with
the objects of their desires as normal people do with theirs. But after
them comes a long series of abnormal types, in whom the sexual
activities become increasingly further removed from anything which
appears attractive to a reasonable being. In their manifold variety and
their strangeness these types may be compared to the grotesque
monstrosities painted by P. Breughel to represent the temptations of St.
Anthony, or to the long procession of effete gods and worshippers which
G. Flaubert shows us passing before his pious penitent, and to nothing
else. The chaotic assembly calls out for classification if it is not to
bewilder us completely. We divide them into those in whom the _sexual
object_ has been altered, as with the homosexuals, and those in whom,
first and foremost, the _sexual aim_ has been altered. In the first
group belong those who have dispensed with the mutual union of the
genital organs and who have substituted for the genitals, in one of the
partners in the act, another organ or part of the body (mouth or anus,
in place of the vagina) making light of both the anatomical difficulties
and the suppression of disgust involved. There follow others who, it is
true, still retain the genital organs as object; not, however, by virtue
of their sexual function, but on account of other functions in which
they take part anatomically or by reason of their proximity. These
people demonstrate that the excretory functions, which in the course of
the child’s upbringing are relegated to a limbo as indecent, remain
capable of attracting the entire sexual interest. There are others who
have given up altogether the genital organs as object; and, instead,
have exalted some other part of the body to serve as the object of
desire, a woman’s breast, foot, or plait of hair. There are others yet
to whom even a part of the body is meaningless, while a particle of
clothing, a shoe or a piece of underclothing, will gratify all their
desires; these are the fetichists. Farther on in the scale come those
who indeed demand the object as a whole: but whose requirements in
regard to it take specific forms, of an extraordinary or horrible
nature—even to the point of seeking it as a defenceless corpse and,
urged on by their criminal obsessions, of making it one in order so to
enjoy it. But enough of these horrors!
Foremost in the second group are those perverts whose sexual desires aim
at the performance of an act which normally is but an introductory or
preparatory one. They are those who seek gratification in looking and
touching, or in watching the other person’s most intimate doings; or
those who expose parts of their own bodies which should be concealed, in
the vague expectation of being rewarded by a similar action on the part
of the other. Then come the incomprehensible sadists, in whom all
affectionate feeling strains towards the one goal of causing their
object pain and torture, ranging in degree from mere indications of a
tendency to humiliate the other up to the infliction of severe bodily
injuries. Then, as though complementary to these, come the masochists
whose only longing is to suffer, in real or in symbolic form,
humiliations and tortures at the hands of the loved object. There are
others yet, in whom several abnormal characteristics of this kind are
combined and interwoven with one another. Finally, we learn that the
persons belonging to each of these groups may be divided again: into
those who seek their particular form of sexual satisfaction in reality
and those who are satisfied merely to imagine it in their own minds,
needing no real object at all but being able to substitute for it a
creation of phantasy.
There is not the slightest possible doubt that these mad, extraordinary
and horrible things do actually constitute the sexual activities of
these people. Not merely do they themselves so regard them, recognizing
their substitutive character; but we also have to acknowledge that they
play the same part in their lives as normal sexual satisfaction plays in
ours, exacting the same, often excessive, sacrifices. It is possible to
trace out, both broadly and in great detail, where these abnormalities
merge into the normal and where they diverge from it. Nor will it escape
you that that quality of impropriety which adheres inevitably to a
sexual activity is not absent from these forms of it: in most of them it
is intensified to the point of odium.
Well, now, what attitude are we to take up to these unusual forms of
sexual satisfaction? Indignation and expressions of our personal
disgust, together with assurances that we do not share these appetites,
will obviously not carry us very far. That is not the point at issue.
After all, this is a field of phenomena like any other; attempts to turn
away and flee from it, on the pretext that these are but rarities and
curiosities, could easily be rebutted. On the contrary, the phenomena
are common enough and widely distributed. But if it is objected that our
views on the sexual life of mankind require no revision on this account,
since these things are one and all aberrations and divagations of the
sexual instinct, a serious reply will be necessary. If we do not
understand these morbid forms of sexuality and cannot relate them to
what is normal in sexual life, then neither can we understand normal
sexuality. It remains, in short, our undeniable duty to account
satisfactorily in theory for the existence of all the perversions
described and to explain their relation to normal sexuality, so-called.
In this task we can be helped by a point of view, and by two new
evidential observations. The first we owe to Ivan Bloch; according to
him, the view that all the perversions are “signs of degeneration” is
incorrect; because of the evidence existing that such aberrations from
the sexual aim, such erratic relationships to the sexual object, have
been manifested since the beginning of time through every age of which
we have knowledge, in every race from the most primitive to the most
highly civilized, and at times have succeeded in attaining to toleration
and general prevalence. The two evidential observations have been made
in the course of psycho-analytic investigations of neurotic patients;
they must undoubtedly influence our conception of sexual perversions in
a decisive manner.
We have said that neurotic symptoms are substitutes for sexual
satisfactions and I have already indicated that many difficulties will
be met with in proving this statement from the analysis of symptoms. It
is, indeed, only accurate if the “perverse” sexual needs, so-called, are
included under the sexual satisfactions; for an interpretation of the
symptoms on this basis is forced upon us with astonishing frequency. The
claim made by homosexuals or inverts, that they constitute a select
class of mankind, falls at once to the ground when we discover that in
every single neurotic evidence of homosexual tendencies is forthcoming
and that a large proportion of the symptoms are expressions of this
latent inversion. Those who openly call themselves homosexuals are
merely those in whom the inversion is conscious and manifest; their
number is negligible compared with those in whom it is latent. We are
bound, in fact, to regard the choice of an object of the same sex as a
regular type of offshoot of the capacity to love, and are learning every
day more and more to recognize it as especially important. The
differences between manifest homosexuality and the normal attitude are
certainly not thereby abrogated; they have their practical importance,
which remains, but theoretically their value is very considerably
diminished. In fact, we have even come to the conclusion that one
particular mental disorder, paranoia, no longer to be reckoned among the
transference neuroses, invariably arises from an attempt to subdue
unduly powerful homosexual tendencies. Perhaps you will remember that
one of our patients,[47] in her obsessive act, played the part of a
man—of her own husband, that is, whom she had left; such symptoms,
representing the impersonation of a man, are very commonly produced by
neurotic women. If this is not actually attributable to homosexuality,
it is certainly very closely connected with its origins.
As you probably know, the neurosis of hysteria can create its symptoms
in all systems of the body (circulatory, respiratory, etc.) and may thus
disturb all the functions. Analysis shows that all those impulses,
described as perverse, which aim at replacing the genital organ by
another come to expression in these symptoms. These organs thus behave
as substitutes for the genital organs: it is precisely from the study of
hysterical symptoms that we have arrived at the view that, besides their
functional rôle, a sexual—_erotogenic_—significance must be ascribed to
the bodily organs; and that the needs of the former will be interfered
with if the demands of the latter upon them are too great. Countless
sensations and innervations, which we meet as hysterical symptoms, in
organs apparently not concerned with sexuality, are thus discovered to
be essentially fulfilments of perverse sexual desires, by the other
organs having usurped the function of the genitalia. In this way also
the very great extent to which the organs of nutrition and of excretion,
in particular, may serve in yielding sexual excitement is brought home
to us. It is indeed the same thing as is manifested in the perversions;
except that in the latter it is unmistakable and recognizable without
any difficulty, whereas in hysteria we have to make the _détour_ of
interpreting the symptom, and then do not impute the perverse sexual
impulse in question to the person’s consciousness, but account it to the
unconscious part of his personality.
Of the many types of symptom characteristic of the obsessional neurosis
the most important are found to be brought about by the undue strength
of one group of sexual tendencies with a perverted aim, i.e. the
sadistic group. These symptoms, in accordance with the structure of the
obsessional neurosis, serve mainly as a defence against these wishes or
else they express the conflict between satisfaction and rejection.
Satisfaction does not find short shrift, however; it knows how to get
its own way by a roundabout route in the patient’s behaviour, by
preference turning against him in self-inflicted torment. Other forms of
this neurosis are seen in excessive “worry” and brooding; these are the
expressions of an exaggerated sexualization of acts which are normally
only preparatory to sexual satisfaction: the desire to see, to touch and
to investigate. In this lies the explanation of the very great
importance dread of contact and obsessive washing attains to in this
disease. An unsuspectedly large proportion of obsessive actions are
found to be disguised repetitions and modifications of masturbation,
admittedly the only uniform act which accompanies all the varied flights
of sexual phantasy.
It would not be difficult to show you the connections between perversion
and neurosis in a much more detailed manner, but I believe that I have
said enough for our purposes. We must beware, however, of overestimating
the frequency and intensity of the perverse tendencies in mankind, after
these revelations of their importance in the interpretation of symptoms.
You have heard that _privation_ in normal sexual satisfactions may lead
to the development of neurosis. In consequence of this privation in
reality the need is forced into the abnormal paths of sexual excitation.
Later you will be able to understand how this happens. You will at any
rate understand that a “collateral” damming-up of this kind must swell
the force of the perverse impulses, so that they become more powerful
than they would have been had no hindrance to normal sexual satisfaction
been present in reality. Incidentally, a similar factor may be
recognized also in the manifest perversions. In many cases they are
provoked or activated by the unduly great difficulties in the way of
normal satisfaction of the sexual instinct which are produced either by
temporary conditions or by permanent social institutions. In other
cases, certainly, perverse tendencies are quite independent of such
conditions; they are, as it were, the natural kind of sexual life for
the individual concerned.
Perhaps you are momentarily under the impression that all this tends to
confuse rather than to explain the relations between normal and
perverted sexuality. But keep in mind this consideration. If it is
correct that real obstacles to sexual satisfaction or privation in
regard to it bring to the surface perverse tendencies in people who
would otherwise have shown none, we must conclude that something in
these people is ready to embrace the perversions; or, if you prefer it,
the tendencies must have been present in them in a latent form. Thus we
come to the second of the new evidential observations of which I spoke.
Psycho-Analytic investigation has found it necessary also to concern
itself with the sexual life of children, for the reason that in the
analysis of symptoms the forthcoming reminiscences and associations
invariably lead back to the earliest years of childhood. That which we
discovered in this way has since been corroborated point by point by the
direct observation of children. In this way it has been found that all
the perverse tendencies have their roots in childhood, that children are
disposed towards them all and practise them all to a degree conforming
with their immaturity; in short, _perverted sexuality_ is nothing else
but _infantile sexuality_, magnified and separated into its component
parts.
Now you will see the perversions in an altogether different light and no
longer ignore their connection with the sexual life of mankind; but what
distressing emotions these astonishing and grotesque revelations will
provoke in you! At first you will certainly be tempted to deny
everything—the fact that there is anything in children which can be
termed sexual life, the accuracy of our observations, and the
justification of our claim to see in the behaviour of children any
connection with that which in later years is condemned as perverted.
Permit me first to explain to you the motives of your antagonism and
then to put before you a summary of our observations. That children
should have no sexual life—sexual excitement, needs, and gratification
of a sort—but that they suddenly acquire these things in the years
between twelve and fourteen would be, apart from any observations at
all, biologically just as improbable, indeed, nonsensical, as to suppose
that they are born without genital organs which first begin to sprout at
the age of puberty. What does actually awake in them at this period is
the reproductive function, which then makes use for its own purposes of
material lying to hand in body and mind. You are making the mistake of
confounding sexuality and reproduction with each other and thus you
obstruct your own way to the comprehension of sexuality, the
perversions, and the neuroses. This mistake, moreover, has a meaning in
it. Strange to say, its origin lies in the fact that you yourselves have
all been children and as children were subject to the influences of
education. For it is indeed one of the most important social tasks of
education to restrain, confine, and subject to an individual control
(itself identical with the demands of society) the sexual instinct when
it breaks forth in the form of the reproductive function. In its own
interests, accordingly, society would postpone the child’s full
development until it has attained a certain stage of intellectual
maturity, since educability practically ceases with the full onset of
the sexual instinct. Without this the instinct would break all bounds
and the laboriously erected structure of civilization would be swept
away. Nor is the task of restraining it ever an easy one; success in
this direction is often poor and, sometimes, only too great. At bottom
society’s motive is economic; since it has not means enough to support
life for its members without work on their part, it must see to it that
the number of these members is restricted and their energies directed
away from sexual activities on to their work—the eternal primordial
struggle for existence, therefore, persisting to the present day.
Experience must have taught educators that the task of moulding the
sexual will of the next generation can only be carried out by beginning
to impose their influence very early, and intervening in the sexual Life
of children before puberty, instead of waiting till the storm bursts.
Consequently almost all infantile sexual activities are forbidden or
made disagreeable to the child; the ideal has been to make the child’s
life asexual, and in course of time it has come to this that it is
really believed to be asexual, and is given out as such, even at the
hands of science. In order then to avoid any contradiction with
established beliefs and aims, the sexual activity of children is
overlooked—no small achievement, by the way—while science contents
itself with otherwise explaining it away. The little child is supposed
to be pure and innocent; he who says otherwise shall be condemned as a
hardened blasphemer against humanity’s tenderest and most sacred
feelings.
The children alone take no part in this convention; they assert their
animal nature naïvely enough and demonstrate persistently that they have
yet to learn their “purity.” Strange to say, those who deny sexuality in
children are the last to relax educative measures against it; they
follow up with the greatest severity every manifestation of the
“childish tricks” the existence of which they deny. Moreover, it is
theoretically of great interest that the time of life which most
flagrantly contradicts the prejudice about asexual childhood, the years
of infancy up to five or six, is precisely the period which is veiled by
oblivion in most people’s memories; an oblivion which can only be
dispelled completely by analytic investigation but which is nevertheless
sufficiently penetrable to allow of the formation of single dreams.
I will now tell you the most clearly recognizable of the child’s sexual
activities. It will be expedient if I first introduce you to the term
LIBIDO. In every way analogous to _hunger_, Libido is the force by means
of which the instinct, in this case the sexual instinct, as, with
hunger, the nutritional instinct, achieves expression. Other terms, such
as sexual excitation and satisfaction, require no definition.
Interpretation finds most to do in regard to the sexual activities of
the infant, as you will easily perceive; and no doubt you will find it a
reason for objections. This interpretation is formed on the basis of
analytic investigation, working backwards from a given symptom. The
infant’s first sexual excitations appear in connection with the other
functions important for life. Its chief interest, as you know, is
concerned with taking nourishment; as it sinks asleep at the breast,
utterly satisfied, it bears a look of perfect content which will come
back again later in life after the experience of the sexual orgasm. This
would not be enough to found a conclusion upon. However, we perceive
that infants wish to repeat, without really getting any nourishment, the
action necessary to taking nourishment; they are therefore not impelled
to this by hunger. We call this action “_lutschen_” or “_ludeln_”
(German words signifying the enjoyment of sucking for its own sake—as
with a rubber “comforter”); and as when it does this the infant again
falls asleep with a blissful expression we see that the action of
sucking is sufficient in itself to give it satisfaction. Admittedly, it
very soon contrives not to go to sleep without having sucked in this
way. An old physician for children in Budapest, Dr. Lindner, was the
first to maintain the sexual nature of this procedure. Nurses and people
who look after children appear to take the same view of this kind of
sucking (_lutschen_), though without taking up any theoretic attitude
about it. They have no doubt that its only purpose is in the pleasure
derived; they account it one of the child’s “naughty tricks”; and take
severe measures to force it to give it up, if it will not do so of its
own accord. And so we learn that an infant performs actions with no
other object but that of obtaining pleasure. We believe that this
pleasure is first of all experienced while nourishment is being taken,
but that the infant learns rapidly to enjoy it apart from this
condition. The gratification obtained can only relate to the region of
the mouth and lips; we therefore call these areas of the body
_erotogenic zones_ and describe the pleasure derived from sucking
(_lutschen_) as a _sexual_ one. To be sure, we have yet to discuss the
justification for the use of this term.