Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality 1925 I. The Sexual Aberrations II. Infantile Sexuality

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Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1925)I.
The Sexual Aberrations II. Infantile Sexuality

• Psy 250.
• Human Sexuality

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Nancy Chodorows introduction argues for Freuds
contemporary relevance. See especially pages,
vii, xiii, xv, xviii
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Sexual Instinct libido
Normal toward a person of the
opposite sex
Perverse toward someone/thing else
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Sexual Aim Sexual act
Sexual Object Who/what you are attracted to
Normal person of opposite sex
Normal copulation Sexual union
Perverse something else
Perverse something else
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Mental forces which act as resistances Disgust S
hame
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• Inverts wrong sexual object?
• Absolute, p. 2
• Amphigenic, p.2
• Contingent, p. 3

But see p. 5 comments! And then the footnote on
p. 11- 12
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It has been brought to our notice that we have
been in the habit of regarding the connection
between the sexual instinct and the sexual object
as more intimate than it in fact is p. 13
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The study of inverts and the changes possible
over the life cycle brings Freud to this radical
conclusion 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 origins likely to be due
to its objects attractions, p. 14
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Freud finds perversions more readily in the
sexual aim rather than the sexual object.
But ONLY if it is extreme is it perverse
or neurotic because Freud finds elements of these
present in normal sexuality. For example,
kissing, touching and looking, sadism and
masochism(causing pain and being hurt),
voyeurism and exhibitionism (exposing oneself
and looking at ones lover)... Notice that Freud
theorizes each of these as two sides of the same
coin and all occur in normal sexuality. P. 16.
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Attentive examination always shows that even what
seem to be the strangest of these new aims are
already hinted at in the normal sexual process.
P. 22
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Thus the extraordinarily wide dissemination of
the perversions forces us to suppose that the
disposition to perversions is itself of no great
rarity but must form a part of what passes as the
normal constitution p. 37.
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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 p. 37. (emphasis
Freud)
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II. Infantile Sexuality
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The finding of an object is in fact a refinding
of it. P. 88
Why do people have sex? How does sexuality
develop?
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Psychology is still so much in the dark in
questions of pleasure and unpleasure that the
most cautious assumption is the one to be
recommendedp. 49
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Stages

• oral
• anal
• phallic
• latency
• genital

PREGENITAL
early childhood
childhood
GENITAL
puberty
adolescence
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• Traces the play of influences which govern the
  evolution of infantile sexuality till its outcome
  in either
• perversion
• neurosis
• normal sex life

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The Strange Absence

• Freud found it strange that the sexual instinct
  in childhood was thought to be absent until
  puberty
• He believed that was a grave error with
  consequences in ignorance of fundamental
  conditions of sexual life
• The roots of sexuality were to be found in
  childhood and without the study of childhood
  later sexual life could not be well understood

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• No chapter of sexual development in childhood
  development texts?
• More attention given to heredity than to
  childhood
• infantile amnesia of the first 6 years
• It is during these years that (3 - 5) sexual life
  begins

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Manifestations of Sexual Life

• Thumb sucking (or sensual sucking) as a form of
  auto-erotisism
• stimulation of erotogenic zones -- a part of the
  skin or mucous membrane in which stimuli of a
  certain sort evoke a feeling of pleasure
  possessing a particular quality
• masturbation

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Sexual Aim in Childhood

• Obtaining satisfaction
• autoerotic (finds its object in the infants own
  body)

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Penis Envy

• Little girls...are overcome by envy for the
  penis--an envy culminating in the wish, which is
  so important in its consequences, to be boys
  themselves. p. 61

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models of sexuality

• simple
• vs.
• complex

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satisfaction
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Transformations of Puberty
sexual tension
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Libido
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politics
sexuality
Attachment
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Your own models