the act of sucking at its mother’s breast is far and away the most
important thing in life. It would not be wrong in this, for by this act
it gratifies at the same moment the two greatest needs in life. Then we
learn from psycho-analysis, not without astonishment, how much of the
mental significance of this act is retained throughout life. Sucking at
the mother’s breast (_saugen_) becomes the point of departure from which
the whole sexual life develops, the unattainable prototype of every
later sexual satisfaction, to which in times of need phantasy often
enough reverts. The desire to suck includes within it the desire for the
mother’s breast, which is therefore the first _object_ of sexual desire;
I cannot convey to you any adequate idea of the importance of this first
object in determining every later object adopted, of the profound
influence it exerts, through transformation and substitution, upon the
most distant fields of mental life. First of all, however, as the infant
takes to sucking for its own sake (_lutschen_) this object is given up
and is replaced by a part of its own body; it sucks its thumb or its own
tongue. For purposes of obtaining pleasure it thus makes itself
independent of the concurrence of the outer world and, in addition, it
extends the region of excitation to a second area of the body, thus
intensifying it. The erotogenic zones are not all equally capable of
yielding enjoyment; it is therefore an important experience when, as Dr.
Lindner says, the infant in feeling about on its own body discovers the
particularly excitable region of its genitalia, and so finds the way
from sucking (_lutschen_) to onanism.
This assessment of the nature of sucking (_lutschen_) has now brought to
our notice two of the decisive characteristics of infantile sexuality.
It appears in connection with the satisfaction of the great organic
needs, and it behaves _auto-erotically_, that is to say, it seeks and
finds its objects in its own person. What is most clearly discernible in
regard to the taking of nourishment is to some extent repeated with the
process of excretion. We conclude that infants experience pleasure in
the evacuation of urine and the contents of the bowels, and that they
very soon endeavour to contrive these actions so that the accompanying
excitation of the membranes in these erotogenic zones may secure them
the maximum possible gratification. As Lou Andreas has pointed out, with
fine intuition, the outer world first steps in as a hindrance at this
point, a hostile force opposed to the child’s desire for pleasure—the
first hint he receives of external and internal conflicts to be
experienced later on. He is not to pass his excretions whenever he likes
but at times appointed by other people. To induce him to give up these
sources of pleasure he is told that everything connected with these
functions is “improper,” and must be kept concealed. In this way he is
first required to exchange pleasure for value in the eyes of others. His
own attitude to the excretions is at the outset very different. His own
fæces produce no disgust in him; he values them as part of his own body
and is unwilling to part with them, he uses them as the first “present”
by which he can mark out those people whom he values especially. Even
after education has succeeded in alienating him from these tendencies,
he continues to feel the same high regard for his “presents” and his
“money”; while his achievements in the way of urination appear to be the
subject of particular pride.
I know that for some time you have been longing to interrupt me with
cries of: “Enough of these monstrosities! The motions of the bowels a
source of pleasurable sexual satisfaction exploited even by infants!
Fæces a substance of great value and the anus a kind of genital organ!
We do not believe it; but we understand why children’s physicians and
educationists have emphatically rejected psycho-analysis and its
conclusions!” Not at all; you have merely forgotten for the moment that
I have been endeavouring to show you the connection between the actual
facts of infantile sexual life and the actual facts of the sexual
perversions. Why should you not know that in many adults, both
homosexual and heterosexual, the anus actually takes over the part
played by the vagina in sexual intercourse? And that there are many
persons who retain the pleasurable sensations accompanying evacuations
of the bowels throughout life and describe them as far from
insignificant? You may hear from children themselves, when they are a
little older and able to talk about these things, what an interest they
take in the act of defæcation and what pleasure they find in watching
others in the act. Of course if you have previously systematically
intimidated these children they will understand very well that they are
not to speak of such things. And for all else that you refuse to believe
I refer you to the evidence brought out in analysis and to the direct
observation of children and I tell you that it will require the exercise
of considerable ingenuity to avoid seeing all this or to see it in a
different light. Nor am I at all averse from your thinking the
relationship between childish sexual activities and the sexual
perversions positively striking. It is a matter of course that there
should be this relationship; for if a child has a sexual life at all it
must be of a perverted order, since apart from a few obscure indications
he is lacking in all that transforms sexuality into the reproductive
function. Moreover, it is a characteristic common to all the perversions
that in them reproduction as an aim is put aside. This is actually the
criterion by which we judge whether a sexual activity is perverse—if it
departs from reproduction in its aims and pursues the attainment of
gratification independently. You will understand therefore that the gulf
and turning-point in the development of the sexual life lies at the
point of its subordination to the purposes of reproduction. Everything
that occurs before this conversion takes place, and everything which
refuses to conform to it and serves the pursuit of gratification alone,
is called by the unhonoured title of “perversion” and as such is
despised.
So let me continue my brief account of infantile sexuality. I could
supplement what I have told you concerning two of the bodily systems by
extending the same scrutiny to the others. The sexual life of the child
consists entirely in the activities of a series of component-instincts
which seek for gratification independently of one another, some in his
own body and others already in an external object. Among the organs of
these bodily systems the genitalia rapidly take the first place; there
are people in whom pleasurable gratification in their own genital organ,
without the aid of any other genital organ or object, is continued
without interruption from the onanism habitual in the suckling period of
infancy to the onanism of necessity occurring in the years of puberty,
and then maintained indefinitely beyond that. Incidentally, the subject
of onanism is not so easily exhausted; it contains material for
consideration from various angles.
In spite of my wish to limit the extent of this discussion I must still
say something about sexual curiosity in children. It is too
characteristic of childish sexuality and too important for the
symptom-formation of the neuroses to be omitted. Infantile sexual
curiosity begins very early, sometimes before the third year. It is not
connected with the difference between the sexes, which is nothing to
children, since they—boys, at least—ascribe the same male genital organ
to both sexes. If then a boy discovers the vagina in a little sister or
play-mate he at once tries to deny the evidence of his senses; for he
cannot conceive of a human being like himself without his most important
attribute. Later, he is horrified at the possibilities it reveals to
him; the influence of previous threats occasioned by too great a
preoccupation with his own little member now begins to be felt. He comes
under the dominion of the castration complex, which will play such a
large part in the formation of his character if he remains healthy, and
of his neurosis if he falls ill, and of his resistances if he comes
under analytic treatment. Of little girls we know that they feel
themselves heavily handicapped by the absence of a large visible penis
and envy the boy’s possession of it; from this source primarily springs
the wish to be a man which is resumed again later in the neurosis, owing
to some mal-adjustment to a female development. The clitoris in the
girl, moreover, is in every way equivalent during childhood to the
penis; it is a region of especial excitability in which auto-erotic
satisfaction is achieved. In the transition to womanhood very much
depends upon the early and complete relegation of this sensitivity from
the clitoris over to the vaginal orifice. In those women who are
sexually anæsthetic, as it is called, the clitoris has stubbornly
retained this sensitivity.
The sexual interest of children is primarily directed to the problem of
birth—the same problem that lies behind the riddle of the Theban Sphinx.
This curiosity is for the most part aroused by egoistic dread of the
arrival of another child. The answer which the nursery has ready for the
child, that the stork brings the babies, meets with incredulity even in
little children much more often than we imagine. The feeling of having
been deceived by grown-up people, and put off with lies, contributes
greatly to a sense of isolation and to the development of independence.
But the child is not able to solve this problem on his own account. His
undeveloped sexual constitution sets definite limits to his capacity to
understand it. He first supposes that children are made by mixing some
special thing with the food taken; nor does he know that only women can
have children. Later, he learns of this limitation and gives up the idea
of children being made by food, though it is retained in fairy tales. A
little later he soon sees that the father must have something to do with
making babies, but he cannot discover what it is. If by chance he is
witness of the sexual act he conceives it as an attempt to overpower the
woman, as a combat, the sadistic misconception of coitus; at first,
however, he does not connect this act with the creation of children; if
he discovers blood on the mother’s bed or underlinen he takes it as
evidence of injury inflicted by the father. In still later years of
childhood he probably guesses that the male organ of the man plays an
essential part in the procreation of children, but cannot ascribe to
this part of the body any function but that of urination.
Children are all united from the outset in the belief that the birth of
a child takes place by the bowel; that is to say, that the baby is
produced like a piece of fæces. Not until all interest has been weaned
from the anal region is this theory abandoned and replaced by the
supposition that the navel opens, or that the area between the two
nipples is the birthplace of the child. In some such manner as this the
enquiring child approaches some knowledge of the facts of sex, unless,
misled by his ignorance, he overlooks them until he receives an
imperfect and discrediting account of them, usually in the period before
puberty, which not infrequently affects him traumatically.
Now you will probably have heard that the term “sexual” has suffered an
unwarrantable expansion of meaning at the hands of psycho-analysis, in
order that its assertions regarding the sexual origin of the neuroses
and the sexual significance of the symptoms may be maintained. You can
now judge for yourselves whether this amplification is justified or not.
We have extended the meaning of the concept “sexuality” only so far as
to include the sexual life of perverted persons and also of children;
that is to say, we have restored to it its true breadth of meaning. What
is called sexuality outside psycho-analysis applies only to the
restricted sexual life that is subordinated to the reproductive function
and is called normal.
TWENTY-FIRST LECTURE
DEVELOPMENT OF THE LIBIDO AND SEXUAL ORGANIZATIONS
It is my impression that I have not succeeded in bringing home to you
with complete conviction the importance of the perversions for our
conception of sexuality. I wish therefore, as far as I am able, to
review and improve upon what I have already said on this subject.
Now I do not wish you to think that it was the perversions alone that
required us to make the alteration in the meaning of the term sexuality
which has aroused such vehement opposition. The study of infantile
sexuality has contributed even more to it, and the unanimity between the
two was decisive. But, however unmistakable they may be in the later
years of childhood, the manifestations of infantile sexuality in its
earliest forms do seem to fade away indefinably. Those who do not wish
to pay attention to evolution and to the connections brought out by
analysis will dispute the sexual nature of them, and will ascribe in
consequence some other, undifferentiated character to them. You must not
forget that as yet we have no generally acknowledged criterion for the
sexual nature of a phenomenon, unless it is some connection with the
reproductive function—a definition which we have had to reject as too
narrow. The biological criteria, such as the periodicities of
twenty-three and twenty-eight days, suggested by W. Fliess, are
exceedingly debatable; the peculiar chemical features which we may
perhaps assume for sexual processes are yet to be discovered. The sexual
perversions in adults, on the other hand, are something definite and
unambiguous. As their generally accepted description implies, they are
unquestionably of a sexual nature; whether you call them marks of
degeneration or anything else, no one has yet been so bold as to rank
them anywhere but among the phenomena of sexual life. In view of them
alone we are justified in maintaining that sexuality and the
reproductive function are not identical, for they one and all abjure the
aim of reproduction.
I notice a not uninteresting parallel here. Whereas, for most people,
the word ‘mental’ means ‘conscious,’ we found ourselves obliged to widen
the application of the term ‘mental’ to include a part of the mind that
is not conscious. In a precisely similar way, most people declare
‘sexual’ identical with ‘pertaining to reproduction’—or, if you like it
expressed more concisely, with ‘genital’; whereas we cannot avoid
admitting things as ‘sexual’ that are not ‘genital’ and have nothing to
do with reproduction. It is only a formal analogy, but it is not without
deeper significance.
However, if the existence of sexual perversions is such a forcible
argument on this point, why has it not long ago done its work and
settled the question? I really am unable to say. It seems to me that the
sexual perversions have come under a very special ban, which insinuates
itself into the theory, and interferes even with scientific judgement on
the subject. It seems as if no one could forget, not merely that they
are detestable, but that they are also something monstrous and
terrifying; as if they exerted a seductive influence; as if at bottom a
secret envy of those who enjoy them had to be strangled—the same sort of
feeling that is confessed by the count who sits in judgement in the
famous parody of _Tannhäuser_:
So in the Mount of Venus conscience, duty, are forgot!
—Remarkable that such a thing has never been my lot!
In reality, perverts are more likely to be poor devils who have to pay
most bitterly for the satisfactions they manage to procure with such
difficulty.
That which makes perverse activities so unmistakably sexual, in spite of
all that seems unnatural in their objects or their aims, is the fact
that in perverse satisfaction the act still terminates usually in a
complete orgasm with evacuation of the genital product. This is of
course only the consequence of adult development in the persons
concerned; in children, orgasm and genital excretion are not very well
possible; as substitutes they have approximations to them which are
again not recognized definitely as sexual.
I must still add something more in order to complete our assessment of
the sexual perversions. Abominated as they are, sharply distinguished
from normal sexual activity as they may be, simple observation will show
that very rarely is one feature or another of them absent from the
sexual life of a normal person. The kiss to begin with has some claim to
be called a perverse act, for it consists of the union of the two
erotogenic mouth zones instead of the two genital organs. But no one
condemns it as perverse; on the contrary, in the theatre it is permitted
as a refined indication of the sexual act. Nevertheless, kissing is a
thing that can easily become an absolute perversion—namely, when it
occurs in such intensity that orgasm and emission directly accompany it,
which happens not at all uncommonly. Further, it will be found that
gazing at and handling the object are in one person an indispensable
condition of sexual enjoyment, while another at the height of sexual
excitement pinches or bites; that in another lover not always the
genital region, but some other bodily region in the object, provokes the
greatest excitement, and so on in endless variety. It would be absurd to
exclude people with single idiosyncrasies of this kind from the ranks of
the normal and place them among perverts; rather, it becomes more and
more clear that what is essential to the perversions lies, not in the
overstepping of the sexual aim, not in the replacement of the genitalia,
not always even in the variations in the object, but solely in the
_exclusiveness_ with which these deviations are maintained, so that the
sexual act which serves the reproductive process is rejected altogether.
In so far as perverse performances are included in order to intensify or
to lead up to the performance of the normal sexual act, they are no
longer actually perverse. Facts of the kind just described naturally
tend to diminish the gulf between normal and perverse sexuality very
considerably. The obvious inference is that normal sexuality has arisen,
out of something existing prior to it, by a process of discarding some
components of this material as useless, and by combining the others so
as to subordinate them to a new aim, that of reproduction.
The point of view thus gained in regard to the perversions can now be
employed by us in penetrating more deeply, with a clearer perspective,
into the problem of infantile sexuality; but before doing this I must
draw your attention to an important difference between the two. Perverse
sexuality is as a rule exceedingly concentrated, its whole activity is
directed to one—and mostly to only one—aim; one particular
component-impulse is supreme; it is either the only one discernible or
it has subjected the others to its own purposes. In this respect there
is no difference between perverse and normal sexuality, except that the
dominating component-impulse, and therefore the sexual aim, is a
different one. Both of them constitute a well-organized tyranny; only
that in one case one ruling family has usurped all the power, and in the
other, another. This concentration and organization, on the other hand,
is in the main absent from infantile sexuality; its component-impulses
are equally valid, each of them strives independently after its own
pleasure. Both the lack of this concentration (in childhood) and the
presence of it (in the adult) correspond well with the fact that both
normal and perverse sexuality are derived from the same source, namely,
infantile sexuality. There are indeed also cases of perversion which
correspond even more closely to infantile sexuality in that numerous
component-instincts, independently of one another, with their aims, are
developed or, better, perpetuated in them. With these cases it is more
correct to speak of infantilism than of perversion of the sexual life.
Thus prepared we may now go on to consider a suggestion which we shall
certainly not be spared. It will be said: “Why are you so set upon
declaring as already belonging to sexuality those indefinite
manifestations of childhood out of which what is sexual later develops,
and which you yourself admit to be indefinite? Why are you not content
rather to describe them physiologically and simply to say that
activities, such as sucking for its own sake and the retaining of
excreta, may be observed already in young infants, showing that they
seek _pleasure in their organs_? In that way you would have avoided the
conception of a sexual life even in babies which is so repugnant to all
our feelings.” Well, I can only answer that I have nothing against
pleasure derived from the organs of the body; I know indeed that the
supreme pleasure of the sexual union is also only a bodily pleasure,
derived from the activity of the genital organ. But can you tell me when
this originally indifferent bodily pleasure acquires the sexual
character that it undoubtedly possesses in later phases of development?
Do we know any more about this ‘organ-pleasure’ than we know about
sexuality? You will answer that the sexual character is added to it when
the genitalia begin to play their part; sexuality simply means genital.
You will even evade the obstacle of the perversions by pointing out that
after all with most of them a genital orgasm occurs, although brought
about by other means than the union of the genitalia. If you were to
eliminate the relation to reproduction from the essential
characteristics of sexuality since this view is untenable in consequence
of the existence of the perversions, and were to emphasize instead
activity of the genital organs, you would actually take up a much better
position. But then we should no longer differ very widely; it would be a
case of the genital organs _versus_ the other organs. What do you now
make of the abundant evidence that the genital organs may be replaced by
other organs for the purpose of gratification, as in the normal kiss, or
the perverse practices of loose living, or in the symptomatology of
hysteria? In this neurosis it is quite usual for stimulation phenomena,
sensations, innervations, and even the processes of erection, which
properly belong to the genitalia to be displaced on to other distant
areas of the body (e.g. the displacement from below upwards to the head
and face). Thus you will find that nothing is left of all that you cling
to as essentially characteristic of sexuality; and you will have to make
up your minds to follow my example and extend the designation ‘sexual’
to include those activities of early infancy which aim at
‘organ-pleasure.’
And now will you permit me to bring forward two further considerations
in support of my view. As you know, we call the doubtful and indefinable
activities of earliest infancy towards pleasure ‘sexual,’ because in the
course of analysing symptoms we reach them by way of material that is
undeniably sexual. They would not thereby necessarily be sexual
themselves, let us grant; but let us take an analogous case. Suppose
that there were no way to observe the development from seed of two
dicotyledonous plants—the apple-tree and the bean; but imagine that in
both it was possible to follow back its development from the
fully-developed plant to the first seedling with two cotyledons. The two
cotyledons are indistinguishable in each; they look exactly alike in
both plants. Shall I conclude from this that they actually are exactly
alike and that the specific differences between apple-tree and
bean-plant arise _later_ in the plant’s development? Or is it not more
correct biologically to believe that this difference exists _already_ in
the seedlings, although I cannot see any in the cotyledons? This is what
we do when we call infantile pleasurable activities sexual. Whether each
and every organ-pleasure may be called sexual or whether there exists,
besides the sexual, another kind of pleasure that does not deserve this
name is a matter I cannot discuss here. I know too little about
organ-pleasure and its conditions; and I am not at all surprised that in
consequence of the retrogressive character of analysis I arrive finally
at factors which at the present time do not permit of definite
classification.