Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality

“The popular view of the sexual instinct is beautifully reflected in the poetic fable which tells how the original human beings were cut up into two halves—man and woman—and how these are always striving to unite again in love. It comes as a great surprise therefore to learn that there are men whose sexual object is a man and not a woman, and women whose sexual object is a woman and not a man. People of this kind are described as having ‘contrary sexual feelings,’ or better, as being ‘inverts,’ and the fact is described as ‘inversion.’ The number of such people is very considerable, though there are difficulties in establishing it precisely.”

Freud here introduces the idea of “inversion,” or homosexuality, into his investigation of the sexual impulse. Freud argues that the assumption that the sexual impulse in inherently heterosexual—and by extension, driven by the procreative instinct—is fundamentally wrong. This assumption is belied by the fact that there are men who are attracted sexually only to men, and women who are sexually attracted only to women. Freud’s point is to establish that the sexual instinct, or drive, has no innate object and no innate aim. Instead, the sexual instinct takes various forms and can be directed at various objects.

“Experience of the cases that are considered abnormal has shown us that in them the sexual instinct and the sexual object are merely soldered together—a fact which we have been in danger of overlooking in consequence of the uniformity of the normal picture, where the object appears to form part and parcel of the instinct. We are thus warned to loosen the bond that exists in our thoughts between instinct and object. It seems probable that the sexual instinct is in the first instance independent of its object; nor is its origin likely to be due to its object’s attractions.”

Freud attempts to widen the common understanding of sexuality by arguing that the sexual impulse isn’t always tied to a particular “object,” or person. This will become an increasingly important point as Freud turns to things such as the erotogenic zones of the body and the existence of component instincts. For Freud, the sexual impulse is something inherent and irrepressible but that can take on many forms and be experienced in the body in multiform ways.

“In my experience anyone who is in any way, whether socially or ethically, abnormal mentally is invariably abnormal also in his sexual life. But many people are abnormal in their sexual life who in every other respect approximate to the average, and have, along with the rest, passed through the process of human cultural development, in which sexuality remains the weak spot.”

It is important to note that Freud does not consider sexual dysfunction an automatic devaluation of the individual as a human being, as this passage demonstrates. Just as Freud argued that inverts [homosexuals] were not degenerates, but people of frequently high intellectual and ethical capabilities (15), so too here does Freud acknowledge that many people otherwise function normally and productively in spite of their sexual disorders. Freud’s acknowledgement of this fact is another reminder of the idea of the sexual spectrum: the idea that dysfunction is not always something definitive for an individual, and that the sexually normal and abnormal are not always as easy to tell apart as it may first seem.

“What is substituted for the sexual object is some part of the body (such as the foot or hair) which is in general very inappropriate for sexual purposes, or some inanimate object which bears an assignable relation to the person whom it replaces and preferably to that person’s sexuality (e.g., a piece of clothing or underlinen). Such substitutes are with some justice likened to the fetishes in which savages believe that their gods are embodied.”

Freud explains the concept of the fetish. While Freud does discuss how a minor degree of fetishization is often a part of even normal courtship (see quotation below), the definition he offers here is illuminating, not least due to its allusion to a pagan believer and his idol. Freud explains that a fetish is when someone takes something not inherently sexual (such as a foot) and invests it with a sexual charge. The fetish can challenge or even supplant the achievement of more typical sexual aims, such as intercourse.

“A certain degree of fetishism is thus habitually present in normal love, especially in those stages of it in which the normal sexual aim seems unattainable or its fulfilment prevented.”

It is characteristic of Freud to point out the continuity of perversion with normal life. In this passage, Freud says that the platonic stages of courtship (“wooing”) typically involves forms of fetishization, as full sexual access to the other person is still denied.

“Masochism, in the form of a perversion, seems to be further removed from the normal sexual aim than its counterpart [sadism]; it may be doubted at first whether it can ever occur as a primary phenomenon or whether, on the contrary, it may not invariably arise from a transformation of sadism. It can often be shown that masochism is nothing more than an extension of sadism turned round upon the subject’s own self, which thus, to begin with, takes the place of the sexual object.”

Freud called sadomasochism “the most common and the most significant of all the perversions” (23). This passage contains his first detailed study of sadomasochism, a topic to which he would return in other works. It was of particular interest to him precisely because the phenomenon of masochism seems to contradict a basic tenet of his theory—namely, that drives are instincts that closely related to the physiological processes of life and animal survival. This conundrum is, in part, what led to Freud to theorize that masochistic pleasure is sadistic pleasure turned on the self. Later in his career, after Freud developed the theory of the death drive, he postulated that masochism expressed, in a sexualized way, a discharge of the death drive.

“If circumstances favour such an occurrence, normal people too can substitute a perversion of this kind for the normal sexual aim for quite a time, or can find place for the one alongside the other. […] The universality of this finding is in itself enough to show how inappropriate it is to use the word perversion as a term of reproach. In the sphere of sexual life we are brought up against peculiar and, indeed, insoluble difficulties as soon as we try to draw a sharp line to distinguish mere variations within the range of what is physiological from pathological symptoms.”

This passage shows Freud insisting on the continuity between pathological sexuality and normal sexual lives. The perverse element is present in all human beings, and Freud argues that the term “perversion” should not be taken as a term of abuse. Freud’s advocacy of such an idea in the name of scientific rigor speaks to the taboo-breaking nature of his thought, and his propensity for open-minded investigation into all matters sexual.

“If a perversion, instead of appearing merely alongside the normal sexual aim and object, and only when circumstances are unfavourable to them and favourable to it—if, instead of this, it ousts them completely and takes their place in all circumstances—if, in short, a perversion has the characteristics of exclusiveness and fixation—then we shall usually be justified in regarding it as a pathological symptom.”

This passage states succinctly an important aspect of Freud’s understanding of the sexual perversions. As noted above, Freud believes that all humans have the same propensity for perversion, and even individuals who enjoy healthy and typical sexuality are also perverts. Here, he identifies the factors that turn an otherwise innocuous—if bizarre and socially unacceptable—propensity into a “pathological symptom”: the degree and intensity of the obsession. For Freud, if the perversion takes over entirely from normal sexual aims and objects, then it can (“usually”) be considered pathological.

“Our study of the perversions has shown us that the sexual instinct has to struggle against certain mental forces which act as resistances, and of which shame and disgust are the most prominent. It is permissible to suppose that these forces play a part in restraining that instinct within the limits that are regarded as normal; and if they develop in the individual before the sexual instinct has reached its full strength, it is no doubt they that will determine the course of its development.”

For Freud, the sexual instinct meets resistances of all sorts that both block and shape its expression. Freud believes that factors such as “shame and disgust” are internal mechanisms that contribute to this dynamic, developmental system that directs and alters the sexual impulses. Shame and disgust can keep instincts or drives in check—by acting like dams—and thereby prevent the fixation of a perverted tendency.

“[A]ll my experience shows that these psychoneuroses are based on sexual instinctual forces. By this I do not merely mean that the energy of the sexual instinct makes a contribution to the forces that maintain the pathological manifestations (the symptoms). I mean expressly to assert that that contribution is the most important and only constant source of energy of the neurosis and that in consequence the sexual life of the persons in question is expressed—whether exclusively or principally or only partly—in these symptoms. As I have put it elsewhere, the symptoms constitute the sexual activity of the patient.” 

Freud’s to “these psychoneuroses” refers to a kind of psychopathology (“psychoneurotic” or just “neurotic”) that was Freud’s bread and butter as a clinician. The neuroses are unhappy psychological conditions that—psychoanalysis posits—derive from attempts at repressing difficult memories or thoughts or wishes. Neuroses are coping mechanisms, but unsuccessful ones. Among Freud’s patients, there was a preponderance of symptoms such as physical tics, unexplained pains, odd postures, temporary paralyses, and acute anxiety. The symptoms could be resolved, Freud discovered, through psychoanalytical investigation of the repressed material with the patient through free association. In this passage from Three Essays, Freud states two key elements of his theory of neuroses: (1) the symptoms are maintained with libidinal or drive energy diverted from normal drive satisfaction, and (2) the sexual life of the neurotic, as a result of the first point, actually consists in his or her symptoms. Or, to put it another way, the symptoms “constitute the sexual activity of the patient.”

“By an ‘instinct’ is provisionally to be understood the psychical representative of an endosomatic, continuously flowing source of stimulation, as contrasted with a ‘stimulus,’ which is set up by single excitations coming from without. The concept of instinct is thus one of those lying on the frontier between the mental and the physical. The simplest and likeliest assumption as to the nature of instincts would seem to be that in itself an instinct is without quality. [...] What distinguishes the instincts from one another and endows them with specific qualities is their relation to their somatic sources and to their aims. The source of an instinct is a process of excitation occurring in an organ and the immediate aim of the instinct lies in the removal of this organic stimulus.”

Freud elaborates on his theory of instinct (or drive). He argued early in this essay that the idea that the sexual instinct had an innate object, such as the opposite sex, is erroneous. Rather, the sexual instinct exists independently of any particular sexual object at all. In this passage, he explains that the instinct has its source in the body and manifests as a “continuously flowing source of stimulation.” Itself without qualities, whatever provisional qualities it takes emerge from the relation between the somatic source (such as the various erotogenic zones of the body) and the general aim of discharging or relieving the libidinally-sourced excitation.

“The conclusion now presents itself to us that there is indeed something innate lying behind the perversions but that it is something innate in everyone, though as a disposition it may vary in its intensity and may be increased by the influences of actual life.”

Freud again reiterates his belief that perversion is innate to all human beings. He believes it develops into a form of dysfunction only when it overtakes the individual’s “normal” sexual life. This claim, although stated more than once by Freud and in a fairly matter-of-fact manner, is one of the boldest elements in these essays.

“What is in question are the innate constitutional roots of the sexual instinct. […] This postulated constitution, containing the germs of all the perversions, will only be demonstrable in children, even though in them it is only with modest degrees of intensity that any of the instincts can emerge. […] Thus our interest turns to the sexual life of children, and we will now proceed to trace the play of influences which govern the evolution of infantile sexuality till its outcome in perversion, neurosis or normal sexual life.”

The closing passage of the essay forms the segue to the second essay, called “Infantile Sexuality.” Having explored the nature of sexual perversion and some of its forms and the role of the sexual instinct in neuroses, Freud has arrived at the postulation of “innate constitutional roots” or a postulated “constitution” containing all the “germs” of the perversions. He will now turn his attention to children because he thinks that this primordial constitution, with its “germs” of future sexual formations, is discoverable there. The component instincts and the erotogenic zones, introduced in essay one, will play prominent roles in his discussion of the sexual instinct in infants.

“One feature of the popular view of the sexual instinct is that it is absent in childhood and only awakens in the period of life described as puberty. This, however, is not merely a simple error but one that has had grave consequences, for it is mainly to this idea that we owe our present ignorance of the fundamental conditions of sexual life. A thorough study of the sexual manifestations of childhood would probably reveal the essential characters of the sexual instinct and would show us the course of its development and the way in which it is put together from various sources.” 

As in the opening of the prior essay, Freud reiterates his strong belief in the importance of understanding the role of childhood in human sexual development. He gestures here to the lack of knowledge about childhood sexuality. This refers not only to a dearth of research but also to the resistances that we have to thinking about childhood sexuality, preferring instead the illusion of childhood innocence.

“What I have in mind is the peculiar amnesia which, in the case of most people, though by no means all, hides the earliest beginnings of their childhood up to their sixth or eighth year.”

Freud discusses the fact that most adults cannot remember their earliest years of life, yet there can no doubt of the formative quality of every impression and experience. He encourages the reader to consider how strange this is. There was a long-standing supposition that memories of early childhood—or infancy, or before—can be recalled, and Freud’s presentation of “amnesia” seems to support this. After all, the work of psychanalysis, in Freud’s view, is to uncover these latent memories and discover their significance for the individual patient.

“What is it that goes to the making of these constructions which are so important for the growth of a civilized and normal individual? They probably emerge at the cost of the infantile sexual impulses themselves. Thus the activity of those impulses does not cease even during this period of latency, though their energy is diverted, wholly or in great part, from their sexual use and directed to other ends. Historians of civilization appear to be at one in assuming that powerful components are acquired for every kind of cultural achievement by this diversion of sexual instinctual forces from sexual aims and their direction to new ones—a process which deserves the name of ‘sublimation.’ To this we would add, accordingly, that the same process plays a part in the development of the individual and we would place its beginning in the period of sexual latency of childhood. The historians of civilization seem to be unanimous in the opinion that such deviation of sexual motive powers from sexual aims to new aims, a process which merits the name sublimation [and] has furnished powerful components for all cultural accomplishments.”

Freud says that the sexual instinct must be diverted and channeled through various mechanisms to form the psychological makeup of a normal, functioning human person, but that the energy of the instincts is always at the base of our life. Among these mechanism is sublimation. This is a process in which the diversion of the sexual impulse energizes a creative impulse instead. Unlike repression and other mechanisms that Freud discusses, sublimation is especially satisfying to the individual and can also result in the productions of art and culture—a boon to everyone.

“It is an instructive fact that under the influence of seduction children can become polymorphously perverse, and can be led into all possible kinds of sexual irregularities. This shows that an aptitude for them is innately resent in their disposition. There is consequently little resistance towards carrying them out, since the mental dams against sexual excesses—shame, disgust and morality—have either not yet been constructed at all or are only in course of construction, according to the age of the child. In this respect children behave in the same kind of way as an average uncultivated woman in whom the same polymorphously perverse disposition persists. Under ordinary conditions she may remain normal sexually, but if she is led on by a clever seducer she will find every sort of perversion to her taste, and will retain them as part of her own sexual activities. Prostitutes exploit the same polymorphous, that is, infantile, disposition for the purposes of their profession; and, considering the immense number of women who are prostitutes or who must be supposed to have an aptitude for prostitution without becoming engaged in it, it becomes impossible not to recognize that this same disposition to perversions of every kind is a general and fundamental human characteristic.” 

Earlier, we saw Freud positing the existence of some bed of “constitutional roots” (38) or a primordial constitution that is the source for later amalgamations of sexual energy resulting in the adult formation of perverts, neurotics, and normals. He said then that it should be discoverable in children. Here, Freud describes what he calls the “polymorphously perverse disposition” that calls a “fundamental human characteristic.” In this passage, we can clearly see an important aspect of Freud’s method: he studies the pathological and the abnormal in order to find out about the normal and the universally human. In this case, he discovers the existence of a “general and fundamental” aspect of human sexuality by considering the sex lives of abused children and prostitutes, respectively.

“The cruel component of the sexual instinct develops in childhood even more independently of the sexual activities that are attached to erotogenic zones. Cruelty in general comes easily to the childish nature, since the obstacle that brings the instinct for mastery to a halt at another person’s pain—namely a capacity for pity—is developed relatively late. The fundamental psychological analysis of this instinct has, as we know, not yet been satisfactorily achieved. It may be assumed that the impulse of cruelty arises from the instinct for mastery…” 

Freud drastically deromanticizes our ideas about childhood. His insistence on the sexual element in children is still disturbing to many readers, and here he also suggests that children are far from innocent in yet another respect: they are capable of great cruelty. Across his career, Freud was interested in the roots of aggression. In this passage, he suggests an “instinct to mastery” of others.

“It is self-evident to a male child that a genital like his own is to be attributed to everyone he knows, and he cannot make its absence tally with his picture of these other people. This conviction is energetically maintained by boys, is obstinately defended against the contradictions which soon result from observation, and is only abandoned after severe internal struggles (the castration complex). […] The assumption that all human beings have the same (male) form of genital is the first of the many remarkable and momentous sexual theories of children. It is of little use to a child that the science of biology justifies his prejudice and has been obliged to recognize the female clitoris as a true substitute for the penis. Little girls do not resort to denial of this kind when they see that boys’ genitals are formed differently from their own. They are ready to recognize them immediately and are over-come by envy for the penis—an envy culminating in the wish, which is so important in its consequences, to be boys themselves.”

Freud outlines two important theories: the castration complex and penis envy. In Freud’s view, young boys are alarmed by the sight of female genitalia, because it appears to them as if the woman has “lost” her penis (as opposed to never having one in the first place). This apparent loss induces anxiety in the child, who worries that he too could be emasculated. A young girl, however, on learning that boys have penises, experiences envy of the male part. Feminist critics have pointed out the primacy of the penis in this passage and that he describes female experience as nothing but an experience of lack, and they have taken Freud to task for this. The subject is complicated because Freud is presenting these two ideas as nothing more than descriptions of what the children he has studied think. He also observes that men take the presence of the penis as a sign of their superiority and women’s lack of a penis as the sign of their inferiority, an observation that doesn’t suggest Freud is justifying patriarchal constructs but rather explaining how they work. However, to the extent that he incorporated castration anxiety (the Oedipus complex) into a framework of development that culminates in the “normal,” these thoughts also appear in his work as somehow prescriptive or necessary. As Freud’s investment in the Oedipus complex and castration anxiety grew, he made room for women, too, to experience it by a series of substitutions.

“The characteristics of infantile sexual life which we have hitherto emphasized are the facts that it is essentially auto-erotic (i.e., that it finds its object in the infant’s own body) and that its individual component instincts are upon the whole disconnected and independent of one another in their search for pleasure. The final outcome of sexual development lies in what is known as the normal sexual life of the adult, in which the pursuit of pleasure comes under the sway of the reproductive function and in which the component instincts, under the primacy of a single erotogenic zone, form a firm organization directed towards a sexual aim attached to some extraneous sexual object.”

This passage summarizes in compact form Freud’s theory of psychosexual development. Infantile sexual drives are initially nothing more that the excitations of that occur in some bodily zones, called erotogenic, like the lips and mouth. Freud calls this the pregenital phase. At first, Freud identified two pregenital stages: the oral and the anal. Later, he added the phallic. The pregenital phase finds the infant or child focusing on self-pleasure; it is autoerotic. Having postulated a mobile, nonunitary sexual energy experienced in the infant in these different bodily zones, Freud posits that the sexual instinct must eventually become organized and focused on the genitals, the task of later childhood and adolescence.

“With the arrival of puberty, changes set in which are destined to give infantile sexual life its final, normal shape. The sexual instinct has hitherto been predominantly auto-erotic; it now finds a sexual object. Its activity has hitherto been derived from a number of separate instincts and erotogenic zones, which, independently of one another, have pursued a certain sort of pleasure as their sole sexual aim. Now, however, a new sexual aim appears, and all the component instincts combine to attain it, while the erotogenic zones become subordinated to the primacy of the genital zone”

In this passage, Freud singles out the most important characteristic of the adolescent phase of sexual development compared to the earlier phases of childhood: adolescent desire goes outward to another person. Simultaneously, the variable and partial sexual instincts that were experienced in the erotogenic zones of early childhood are subordinated to the genitals.

“At the same time as these plainly incestuous phantasies are overcome and repudiated, one of the most significant, but also one of the most painful, psychical achievements of the pubertal period is completed: detachment from parental authority, a process that alone makes possible the opposition, which is so important for the progress of civilization, between the new generation and the old.”

Puberty is notable for the break it represents away from the family. With the turning of attention toward outer sexual objects, the adolescent also instinctively builds “the incest barrier” that enables him or her to turn away from the family as the main source of bonding or satisfaction of the instinct and to seek satisfaction in nonrelated human beings. This process is also the source of some rebellion, as Freud notes in the above passage, as the process of becoming more independent allows the adolescent to start forming an identity no longer wholly dependent on the family unit.

“At a time at which the first beginnings of sexual satisfaction are still linked with the taking of nourishment, the sexual instinct has a sexual object outside the infant’s own body in the shape of his mother’s breast. It is only later that the instinct loses that object, just at the time, perhaps, when the child is able to form a total idea of the person to whom the organ that is giving him satisfaction belongs. As a rule the sexual instinct then becomes auto-erotic, and not until the period of latency has been passed through is the original relation restored. There are thus good reasons why a child sucking at his mother’s breast has become the prototype of every relation of love. The finding of an object is in fact a refinding of it.”

The infant turns to thumb-sucking in the absence of the mother’s breast. The experience of lack that motivates the discovery of the substitution is the prototype for the adolescent or young adult in their choice of a sexual object. Just as the infant relates to the thumb as if it were the mother’s breast, the young person experiences the spouse as a substitute, harking back all the way to the initial infantile experience. Freud’s formulation here touching on this phantasmatic yearning—”[t]he finding of an object is in fact a refinding of it”—is both evocative and succinct.