Sigmund Freud Three Essays On the Theory of Sexuality I: The Sexual Aberrations - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 / 39
About This Presentation
Title:

Sigmund Freud Three Essays On the Theory of Sexuality I: The Sexual Aberrations

Description:

It has as its aim sexual union with conspecifics of the opposite sex for the ... While their immediate aims differ, all instincts have the aim of eliminating the ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:2341
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 40
Provided by: josephthom
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: Sigmund Freud Three Essays On the Theory of Sexuality I: The Sexual Aberrations


1
Sigmund FreudThree Essays On the Theory of
SexualityI The Sexual Aberrations
2
The Sexual Instinct
  • A need for sexual union with members of the
    opposite sex that exists in virtue of a
    biological need for procreation.
  • The sexual instinct produces desires and drives
    that are directed towards specific kinds of
    persons (the sexual objects) and manifested in
    particular forms of sexual activity (the sexual
    aim).

3
The Sexual Instinct
  • Popular Misconceptions of the Sexual Instinct
  • It is absent in childhood.
  • It becomes operative at puberty.
  • It manifests as an irresistible attraction to its
    object.
  • It has as its aim sexual union with conspecifics
    of the opposite sex for the purpose of
    procreation.

4
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Object
  • Inversion Inverts are attracted to members of
    their same sex as sexual objects.
  • Absolute inverts All of their sexual objects are
    members of their own sex. They have no interest,
    or a genuine aversion to persons of the opposite
    sex as sexual objects.

5
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Object
  • Amphigenic inverts (Bisexuals) Members of both
    sexes are their normal and usual sexual objects.
  • Contingent inverts Members of the same sex can
    become sexual objects when access to members of
    the same sex is unavailable.

6
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Object
  • Acceptance
  • Some inverts accept their sexual orientation as
    just as natural as that of a noninvert.
  • Others regard their condition as pathological

7
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Object
  • Onset and Dynamics
  • Inversion can appear very early in childhood (at
    least in self-reports).
  • In other cases it may appear later in personal
    development, e.g., at or near puberty.
  • It can make it first appearance late in life.
  • It can be a stage in a developmental processes
    that results in noninverted sexuality.

8
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Object
  • The Nature of Sexual Inversion
  • Inversion as an innate form of sexual degeneracy
  • Degeneracy
  • Freud obsevers that as a diagnostic category
    degeneracy had acquired a broad use that rendered
    it nearly useless.
  • Any mental or behavioral symptoms that seemed not
    due to disease or injury were classed as
    degenerate syndromes.

9
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Object
  • Freud suggests that the diagnosis be limited to
    cases where
  • Several deviations from the normal are found
    together, and
  • These syndromes are severely maladaptive, i. e.,
    where ability to function in life and work are
    severely compromised.

10
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Object
  • So understood, Freud argues that inversion is not
    itself a degeneracy.
  • Inversion is often found in persons who exhibit
    no other significant deviation from the normal.
  • It is found is persons who are quite successful,
    educated, and civilized.
  • It has been manifested around the globe, through
    out time, and in primitive peoples and advanced
    civilizations at the height of their development.

11
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Object
  • Innateness Inversion is inborn
  • This hypothesis is offered by its proponents in
    opposition to the hypothesis that sexual
    inversion is an acquired characteristic.
  • Freud questions whether these alternatives
    exhausts the possible explanations of inversion.

12
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Object
  • The Explanation of Inversion
  • Inversion and Hermaphroditism
  • Perhaps inversion is a residue of an early stage
    of human evolution which was characterized by
    pervasive psychical and somatic hermaphroditism,
    i.e., the presence in one person of the genital
    and secondary sex characteristics of both sexes

13
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Object
  • But these two appear to be independent factors.
    For example, effeminate men are no more likely to
    be sexual inverts than hyper-masculine men.
  • Freud concludes that there is no adequate
    explanation of the phenomenon of inversion
    available to us today.

14
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Object
  • The investigation of inversion sexual objects
    shows that the relationship between the sexual
    instinct and its object is not fixed or certain.

15
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Object
  • As Freud puts it, the two appear to be merely
    soldered together.
  • The view of the looseness of this connection
    reinforces, because it fits well with, Freuds
    proposed explanation of perversions of sexual aim.

16
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Aim
  • Freuds Method for Explaining the Origin of
    Sexual Perversions.
  • The normal end of sexual arousal is sexual
    intercourse.
  • This activity is the end result of a number
    intermediate activities, fixations, touches,
    imaginative activities, etc. that produce,
    intensify, and direct a variety of intermediate
    sexual and nonsexual acts.

17
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Aim
  • These intermediate activities are usually also
    sources of pleasure and gratification.
  • Therefore, in the normal processes of sexual
    arousal the potential for linger over and even
    fixating permanently upon some one or more of
    these intermediate activities and states of
    arousal.

18
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Aim
  • In the developmental history of each persons
    mechanisms of sexual response, there is potential
    for these normal patterns to become stalled at an
    intermediate point or even redirected towards
    different sexual aims.

19
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Aim
  • All perversions of sexual aim are to be explained
    on this model as interruptions and/or
    redirections of the normal path of development of
    the sexual response.

20
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Aim
  • Freuds method of explanation, therefore, assumes
    that our sexual behavior is learned.
  • It is not innate.
  • It does not just grow itself as basic organ
    systems do

21
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Aim
  • Many of the most important stages of the
    development of a mature pattern of sexual
    behavior are hidden behind of veil of infantile
    amnesia.
  • As a consequence, we are never the most reliable
    source of information about the origins of our
    patterns of sexual response

22
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Aim
  • Anatomical Extensions
  • Overvaluation Freud uses this term to refer to a
    kind of spreading effect wherein an erotic
    response to a body part of a sexual object (such
    as the genitals or other erogenous zone) spreads
    to include the rest of body and ultimately all of
    the person both physical and psychological.

23
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Aim
  • Sexual use of the lips and mouth
  • Use of the lips and mouth is considered (by some)
    perverse if it involves contact of these parts
    with the genitals of another person.
  • The typical mark of perversion is a feeling of
    disgust at experiencing or witnessing sexual
    activity of this kind.

24
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Aim
  • What is or is not disgusting seems largely
    conventional.
  • Some element of learning is involved in directing
    the response towards particular body parts and
    particular kinds of activities.
  • What a person finds disgusting varies over time.
  • There is much variation between cultures in what
    is found disgusting.

25
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Aim
  • Sexual use of the anal orifice.
  • This is a frequent target of disgust.
  • But again, Freud insists, the explanation is
    conventional, for the feeling is not due merely
    to the function of this body part in excretion.
  • This is explained more fully in Freuds
    discussion of infantile and childhood sexuality
    and in his account of the development of
    erogenous zones.

26
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Aim
  • Fetishism
  • Here objects unsuited to fulfill the role of the
    ultimate sexual aim nevertheless substitute for
    its normal objects.
  • A transitional stage in the development of a
    fetish occurs when the object of a persons
    erotic interest must display some feature (large
    feet, particular style of undergarments,
    amputations, etc.) as a precondition of the
    successful completion of the sexual aim.

27
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Aim
  • The situation only becomes pathological when the
    longing for the fetish passes beyond the point of
    being merely a necessary condition attached to
    the sexual object and actually takes the place of
    the normal aim, and, further, when the fetish
    becomes detached from a particular individual and
    becomes the sole sexual object. (p. 20)

28
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Aim
  • Determination of the fetish object
  • Early childhood experience (usually long
    forgotten) is a frequent basis of attachment to a
    particular kind of object.
  • In many cases some symbolic connection, the
    meaning of which is usually not conscious,
    determines the fetish object.

29
Deviations in Respect of Sexual Aim
  • Sadism and Masochism
  • These are common sexual perversions because they
    have their basis in the character of normal
    sexuality.
  • Aggressiveness or passivity in response to the
    sexual object is quite common.
  • These perversions often co-occur in the very same
    person.

30
The Perversions and Psychoanalysis
  • Perversion and Pathology
  • Perverse should not be a term of reproach
    because most normal persons incorporate some
    aspect of perversion into their normal sexual
    expression.
  • Perversion is pathological when it replaces
    normal sexuality, rather than augmenting it, and
    becomes exclusive and fixated.

31
The Perversions and Psychoanalysis
  • The Conception of the Sexual Instincts.
  • The old conception A need for sexual union with
    members of the opposite sex that exists in virtue
    of a biological need for procreation.

32
The Perversions and Psychoanalysis
  • The New Conception
  • By instinct is provisionally to be understood
    the psychical representative of an endosomatic
    (inside the body), continuously flowing source of
    stimulation, as contrasted with a stimulus,
    which is set up by single excitations coming from
    without. (p. 34)

33
The Perversions and Psychoanalysis
  • The source of this stimulation is an organ, or
    organ system, within the body.
  • Instincts are distinguished one from another by
  • The organ that is their source, and
  • Their aim.
  • While their immediate aims differ, all instincts
    have the aim of eliminating the stimulation which
    is the cause of their manifestation.

34
The Perversions and Psychoanalysis
  • The organs of sexual tension and excitation are
    the erotogenic (or erogenous) zones.
  • The sexual instincts must overcome the resistance
    of feelings of guilt, shame, and fear to fulfill
    their sexual end.

35
The Perversions and Psychoanalysis
  • Neurotic and Hysterical symptoms arise from the
    repression of instincts, especially, sexual
    instincts.
  • Repression prevents urges, tensions, hostility,
    and fantasies of neurotic life from becoming
    aspects of our conscious mental life.

36
The Perversions and Psychoanalysis
  • Repressed desires,values, and thoughts are
    redirected into channels of activity which can be
    displayed in public.
  • Discovering the relation that these symptoms have
    to the processes that caused them is the job of
    psychoanalysis.

37
The Freudian Unconscious
  • Some Features of the Unconscious Mind
  • It contains beliefs and attitudes that the person
    is not aware of holding or adopting.
  • It has desires and aims that person does not, and
    probably would, acknowledge.
  • It undertakes actions (such as the exhibition of
    neurotic symptoms) that the person has not willed.

38
The Freudian Unconscious
  • It is aware of the beliefs, desires, and
    attitudes of the person even though the person is
    not aware of its existence or operations. This is
    necessary for mechanisms of repression to be
    effective.
  • The more sick the person, the more effective and
    comprehensive the influence of the unconscious.
  • Psychoanalytic therapy can reveal to the person
    the existence of the unconscious, it contents,
    and its modes of operation.

39
The Freudian Unconscious
  • How is the Freudian Unconscious Embodied? Some
    Possibilities
  • There are parts of the brain that are
    functionally similar to the parts that implement
    conscious thought and deliberation, but which are
    not accessible by the usual introspective means.
  • There is no anatomically separated mechanisms of
    unconscious thought, memory, or planning. Rather
    the unconscious makes offline or downtime use
    the regular faculties of thought and planning to
    process repressed desires and fantasies.
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com