206

The arrogance of consciousness which for example rejects
dreams so lightly, belongs—quite generally—to the strongest
protective apparatus which guards us against the breaking
through of the unconscious complexes, and as a result it is hard
to convince people of the reality of the unconscious, and to
teach them anew, what their conscious knowledge contra-
dicts.

FOURTH LECTURE

Ladies and Gentlemen: At this point you will be asking
what the technique which I have described has taught us of
the nature of the pathogenic complexes and repressed wishes
of neurotics.

One thing in particular: psychoanalytic investigations trace
back the symptoms of disease with really surprising regularity
to impressions from the sexual life, show us that the pathogenic
wishes are of the nature of erotic impulse-components (Trieb-
komponente), and necessitate the assumption that to disturb-
ances of the erotic sphere must be ascribed the greatest
significance among the etiological factors of the disease. This
holds of both sexes.

I know that this assertion will not willingly be credited.
Even those investigators who gladly follow my psychological
labors, are inclined to think that I overestimate the etiological
share of the sexual moments. They ask me why other mental
excitations should not lead to the phenomena of repression
and surrogate-creation which I have described. I can give
them this answer; that I do not know why they should not
do this, I have no objection to their doing it, but experience
shows that they do not possess such a significance, and that
they merely support the effect of the sexual moments, without
being able to supplant them. This conclusion was not a theo-
retical postulate; in the Studien über Hysterie, published in
1895 with Dr. Breuer, I did not stand on this ground. I was
converted to it when my experience was richer and had led me
deeper into the nature of the case. Gentlemen, there are
among you some of my closest friends and adherents, who
have travelled to Worcester with me. Ask them, and they
will tell you that they all were at first completely sceptical of
the assertion of the determinative significance of the sexual
etiology, until they were compelled by their own analytic
labors to come to the same conclusion.

The conduct of the patients does not make it any easier to
convince one’s self of the correctness of the view which I have
expressed. Instead of willingly giving us information con-
cerning their sexual life, they try to conceal it by every means
in their power. Men generally are not candid in sexual mat-
ters.

207

ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS

ters. They do not show their sexuality freely, but they wear
a thick overcoat—a fabric of lies—to conceal it, as though it
were bad weather in the world of sex. And they are not
wrong; sun and wind are not favorable in our civilized society
to any demonstration of sex life. In truth no one can freely
disclose his erotic life to his neighbor. But when your patients
see that in your treatment they may disregard the conventional
restraints, they lay aside this veil of lies, and then only are
you in a position to formulate a judgment on the question in
dispute. Unfortunately physicians are not favored above the
rest of the children of men in their personal relationship to the
questions of the sex life. Many of them are under the ban of
that mixture of prudery and lasciviousness which determines
the behaviour of most Kulturmenschen in affairs of sex.

Now to proceed with the communication of our results. It
is true that in another series of cases psychoanalysis at first
traces the symptoms back not to the sexual, but to banal trau-
matic experiences. But the distinction loses its significance
through other circumstances. The work of analysis which is
necessary for the thorough explanation and complete cure of a
case of sickness does not stop in any case with the experience
of the time of onset of the disease, but in every case it goes
back to the adolescence and the early childhood of the patient.
Here only do we hit upon the impressions and circumstances
which determine the later sickness. Only the childhood ex-
periences can give the explanation for the sensitivity to later
traumata and only when these memory traces, which almost
always are forgotten, are discovered and made conscious, is the
power developed to banish the symptoms. We arrive here at
the same conclusion as in the investigation of dreams—that it
is the incompatible, repressed wishes of childhood which lend
their power to the creation of symptoms. Without these the
reactions upon later traumata discharge normally. But we
must consider these mighty wishes of childhood very generally
as sexual in nature.

Now I can at any rate be sure of your astonishment. Is
there an infantile sexuality? you will ask. Is childhood not
rather that period of life which is distinguished by the lack of
the sexual impulse? No, gentlemen, it is not at all true that
the sexual impulse enters into the child at puberty, as the
devils in the gospel entered into the swine. The child has his
sexual impulses and activities from the beginning, he brings
them with him into the world, and from these the so-called
normal sexuality of adults emerges by a significant develop-
ment through manifold stages. It is not very difficult to ob-
serve the expressions of this childish sexual activity; it needs

208

rather a certain art to overlook them or to fail to interpret
them.¹⁾

As fate would have it, I am in a position to call a witness
for my assertions from your own midst. I show you here the
work of one Dr. Sanford Bell, published in 1902 in the Ameri-
can Journal of Psychology. The author was a fellow of Clark
University, the same institution within whose walls we now
stand. In this thesis, entitled “A Preliminary Study of the
Emotion of Love between the Sexes,” which appeared three
years before my “Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie,” the
author says just what I have been saying to you: “The emo-
tion of sex love . . . does not make its appearance for
the first time at the period of adolescence as has been thought.”
He has, as we should say in Europe, worked by the American
method, and has gathered not less than 2,500 positive observa-
tions in the course of fifteen years, among them 800 of his
own. He says of the signs by which this amorous condition
manifests itself: “The unprejudiced mind, in observing these
manifestations in hundreds of couples of children, cannot es-
cape referring them to sex origin. The most exacting mind is
satisfied when to these observations are added the confessions
of those who have as children experienced the emotion to a
marked degree of intensity, and whose memories of childhood
are relatively distinct.” Those of you who are unwilling to
believe in infantile sexuality will be most astonished to hear
that among those children who fell in love so early not a few
are of the tender ages of three, four, and five years.

It would not be surprising if you should believe the obser-
vations of a fellow-countryman rather than my own. For-
tunately a short time ago from the analysis of a five-year-old
boy who was suffering from anxiety, an analysis undertaken
with correct technique by his own father,²⁾ I succeeded in get-
ting a fairly complete picture of the bodily expressions of the
impulse and the mental productions of an early stage of child-
ish sexual life. And I must remind you that my friend, Dr.
C. G. Jung, read you a few hours ago in this room an observa-
tion on a still younger girl who from the same cause as my
patient–the birth of a little child in the family–betrayed cer-
tainly almost the same secret excitement, wish and complex-
creation. Accordingly I am not without hope that you may
feel friendly towards this idea of infantile sexuality that was so
strange at first. I might also quote the remarkable example
of the Zürich psychiatrist, E. Bleuler, who said a few years

¹Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie. Wien, F. Deuticke, 1908,
2d ed.

²Analyse der Phobie eines 5-jährigen Knaben. Jahrbuch f. Psycho-
analytische u. psychopathologische Forschungen. B. I, H. I., 1909.

209

ago openly that he faced my sexual theories incredulous and
bewildered, and since that time by his own observations had
substantiated them in their whole scope.¹⁾ If it is true that most
men, medical observers and others, do not want to know any-
thing about the sexual life of the child, the fact is capable of
explanation only too easily. They have forgotten their own
infantile sexual activity under the pressure of education for
civilization and do not care to be reminded now of the repressed
material. You will be convinced otherwise if you begin the
investigation by a self-
analysis, by an interpretation of your
own childhood memories.

Lay aside your doubts and let us evaluate the infantile
sexuality of the earliest years.²⁾ The sexual impulse of the
child manifests itself as a very complex one, it permits of an
analysis into many components, which spring from different
sources. It is entirely disconnected from the function of re-
production which it is later to serve. It permits the child to
gain different sorts of pleasure sensations, which we include,
by the analogues and connections which they show, under the
term sexual pleasures. The great source of infantile sexual
pleasure is the auto-
excitation of certain particularly sensitive
parts of the body; besides the genitals are included the rectum
and the opening of the urinary canal, and also the skin and other
sensory surfaces. Since in this first phase of child sexual life
the satisfaction is found on the child’s own body and has noth-
ing to do with any other object, we call this phase after a
word coined by Havelock Ellis, that of “auto-
erotism.” The
parts of the body significant in giving sexual pleasure we call
“erogenous zones.” The thumb-
sucking (Wohnesaugen) or passion-
ate sucking (Ludeln) of very young children is a good
example of such an auto-
erotic satisfaction of an erogenous
zone. The first scientific observer of this phenomenon, a
specialist in children’s diseases in Budapest by the name of
Lindner, interpreted these rightly as sexual satisfaction and
described exhaustively their transformation into other and
higher forms of sexual gratification.³⁾ Another sexual satis-
faction of this time of life is the excitation of the genitals by
masturbation, which has such a great significance for later life
and, in the case of many individuals, is never fully overcome.
Besides this and other auto-
erotic manifestations we see very
early in the child the impulse-
components of sexual pleasure,
or, as we may say, of the libido, which presupposes a second
person as its object. These impulses appear in opposed pairs,

¹⁾Bleuler: Sexuelle Abnormitäten der Kinder. Jahrbuch der schwei-
zer Gesellschaft für Schulgesundheitspflege, IX, 1908.

²⁾Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, Vienna, 1910, 2d ed.

³⁾Jahrbuch f. Kinderheilkunde, 1879.

210

as active and passive. The most important representatives of
this group are the pleasure in inflicting pain (sadism) with its
passive opposite (masochism) and active and passive exhibition-
pleasure (Schaulust). From the first of these later pairs splits
off the curiosity for knowledge, as from the latter the impulse
toward artistic and theatrical representation. Other sexual
manifestations of the child can already be regarded from the
view-point of object-choice, in which the second person plays
the prominent part. The significance of this was primarily based
upon motives of the impulse of self-preservation. The differ-
ence between the sexes plays, however, in the child no very
great rôle. One may attribute to every child, without wrong-
ing him, a bit of the homosexual disposition.
The sexual life of the child, rich, but dissociated, in which
each single impulse goes about the business of arousing pleas-
ure independently of every other, is later correlated and organ-
ized in two general directions, so that by the close of puberty
the definite sexual character of the individual is practically
finally determined. The single impulses subordinate them-
selves to the overlordship of the genital zone, so that the
whole sexual life is taken over into the service of procreation,
and their gratification is now significant only so far as they
help to prepare and promote the true sexual act. On the other
hand, object-choice prevails over auto-erotism, so that now in
the sexual life all components of the sexual impulse are satis-
fied in the loved person. But not all the original impulse-
components are given a share in the final shaping of the sexual
life. Even before the advent of puberty certain impulses have
undergone the most energetic repression under the impulse of
education, and mental forces like shame, disgust and morality
are developed, which, like sentinels, keep the repressed wishes
in subjection. When there comes, in puberty, the high tide of
sexual desire it finds dams in this creation of reactions and
resistances. These guide the outflow into the so-called normal
channels, and make it impossible to revivify the impulses
which have undergone repression.
The most important of these repressed impulses are kopro-
philism, that is, the pleasure in children connected with the
excrements; and, further, the tendencies attaching themselves
to the persons of the primitive object-choice.
Gentlemen, a sentence of general pathology says that every
process of development brings with it the germ of pathological
dispositions in so far as it may be inhibited, delayed, or incom-
pletely carried out. This holds for the development of the
sexual function, with its many complications. It is not
smoothly completed in all individuals, and may leave behind
either abnormalities or disposition to later diseases by the way

211

of later falling back or regression. It may happen that not all
the partial impulses subordinate themselves to the rule of the
genital zone. Such an impulse which has remained discon-
nected brings about what we call a perversion, which may
replace the normal sexual goal by one of its own. It may
happen, as has been said before, that the auto-erotism is not
fully overcome, as many sorts of disturbances testify. The
originally equal value of both sexes as sexual objects may be
maintained and an inclination to homosexual activities in adult
life result from this, which, under suitable conditions, rises to
the level of exclusive homosexuality. This series of disturb-
ances corresponds to the direct inhibition of development of
the sexual function; it includes the perversions and the general
infantilism of the sex life that are not seldom met with.

The disposition to neuroses is to be derived in another way
from an injury to the development of the sex life. The neuroses
are related to the perversions as the negative to the positive; in
them we find the same impulse-components as in perversions,
as bearers of the complexes and as creators of the symptoms;
but here they work from out the unconscious. They have
undergone a repression, but in spite of this they maintain
themselves in the unconscious. Psychoanalysis teaches us
that overstrong expression of the impulse in very early life
leads to a sort of fixation (Fixirung), which then offers a weak
point in the articulation of the sexual function. If the exercise of
the normal sexual function meets with hindrances in later life,
this repression, dating from the time of development, is broken
through at just that point at which the infantile fixation took
place.

You will now perhaps make the objection: “But all that is not
sexuality.” I have used the word in a very much wider sense
than you are accustomed to understand it. This I willingly
concede. But it is a question whether you do not rather use
the word in much too narrow a sense when you restrict it to
the realm of procreation. You sacrifice by that the under-
standing of perversions; of the connection between perversion,
neurosis and normal sexual life; and have no means of recog-
nizing, in its true significance, the easily observable beginning
of the somatic and mental sexual life of the child. But
however you decide about the use of the word, remember that
the psychoanalyst understands sexuality in that full sense to
which he is led by the evaluation of infantile sexuality.

Now we turn again to the sexual development of the child.
We still have much to say here, since we have given more
attention to the somatic than to the mental expressions of the
sexual life. The primitive object-choice of the child, which
is derived from his need of help, demands our further interest.

212

It first attaches to all persons to whom he is accustomed, but
soon these give way in favor of his parents. The relation of
the child to his parents is, as both direct observation of the
child and later analytic investigation of adults agree, not at all
free from elements of sexual accessory-excitation (Miterregung).
The child takes both parents, and especially one, as an object
of his erotic wishes. Usually he follows in this the stimulus
given by his parents, whose tenderness has very clearly the
character of a sex manifestation, though inhibited so far as its
goal is concerned. As a rule, the father prefers the daughter,
the mother the son; the child reacts to this situation, since, as
son, he wishes himself in the place of his father, as daughter,
in the place of the mother. The feelings awakened in these
relations between parents and children, and, as a resultant of
them, those among the children in relation to each other, are
not only positively of a tender, but negatively of an inimical
sort. The complex built up in this way is destined to quick
repression, but it still exerts a great and lasting effect from
the unconscious. We must express the opinion that this with
its ramifications presents the nuclear complex of every neurosis,
and so we are prepared to meet with it in a not less effectual
way in the other fields of mental life. The myth of King
Œdipus, who kills his father and wins his mother as a wife is
only the slightly altered presentation of the infantile wish, re-
jected later by the opposing barriers of incest. Shakespeare’s
tale of Hamlet rests on the same basis of an incest complex,
though better concealed. At the time when the child is still
ruled by the still unrepressed nuclear complex, there begins a
very significant part of his mental activity which serves sexual
interest. He begins to investigate the question of where chil-
dren come from and guesses more than adults imagine of the
true relations by deduction from the signs which he sees.
Usually his interest in this investigation is awakened by the
threat to his welfare through the birth of another child in the
family, in whom at first he sees only a rival. Under the in-
fluence of the partial impulses which are active in him he
arrives at a number of “infantile sexual theories,” as that the
same male genitals belong to both sexes, that children are
conceived by eating and born through the opening of the in-
testine, and that sexual intercourse is to be regarded as an
inimical act, a sort of overpowering.
But just the unfinished nature of his sexual constitution and
the gaps in his knowledge brought about by the hidden condi-
tion of the feminine sexual canal, cause the infant investigator
to discontinue his work as a failure. The facts of this childish
investigation itself as well as the infant sex theories created by

213

it are of determina-
tive significance in the building of the
child's character, and in the content of his later neuroses.
It is unavoidable and quite normal that the child should make
his parents the objects of his first object-choice. But his
libido must not remain fixed on these first chosen objects, but
must take them merely as a prototype and transfer from these
to other persons in the time of definite object-choice. The
breaking loose (Ablösung) of the child from his parents is
thus a problem impossible to escape if the social virtue of the
young individual is not to be impaired. During the time that
the repressive activity is making its choice among the partial
sexual impulses and later, when the influence of the parents,
which in the most essential way has furnished the material for
these repressions, is lessened, great problems fall to the work
of education, which at present certainly does not always solve
them in the most intelligent and economic way.

Gentlemen, do not think that with these explanations of the
sexual life and the sexual development of the child we have
too far departed from psychoanalysis and the cure of neurotic
disturbances. If you like, you may regard the psychoanalytic
treatment only as a continued education for the overcoming
of childhood-remnants (Kindheitsresten).

FIFTH LECTURE

Ladies and Gentlemen: With the discovery of infantile sex-
uality and the tracing back of the neurotic symptoms to erotic
impulse-components we have arrived at several unexpected
formulæ for expressing the nature and tendencies of neurotic
diseases. We see that the individual falls ill when in conse-
quence of outer hindrances or inner lack of adaptability the
satisfaction of the erotic needs in the sphere of reality is de-
nied. We see that he then flees to sickness, in order to find
with its help a surrogate satisfaction for that denied him. We
recognize that the symptoms of illness contain fractions of the
sexual activity of the individual, or his whole sexual life, and
we find in the turning away from reality the chief tendency
and also the chief injury of the sickness. We may guess that
the resistance of our patients against the cure is not a simple
one, but is composed of many motives. Not only does the
ego of the patient strive against the giving up of the repres-
sions by which it has changed itself from its original constitu-
tion into its present form, but also the sexual impulses may
not renounce their surrogate satisfaction so long as it is not
certain that they can be offered anything better in the sphere
of reality.

The flight from the unsatisfying reality into what we call,