Freud, Sigmund (1919-002/1920.en): ”A Child is Being Beaten“

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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
OF
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

VOLUME I 1920 NUMBER 4

“A CHILD IS BEING BEATEN”

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF THE ORIGIN OF SEXUAL
PERVERSIONS

by

SIGM. FREUD, Vienna.

I.

A surprising number of people who have come in search of
analytic treatment on account of an hysteria or of an obsessional
neurosis admit that they have experienced the phantasy: “A child
is being beaten”. Very probably it occurs even more often with
other people who have not been obliged to come to this decision
by an obvious illness.

The phantasy has feelings of pleasure attached to it, and because
of them it has been reproduced on countless occasions in the past
or is even being reproduced still. At the climax of the imaginary
situation there is almost invariably an onanistic gratification, that
is to say, a gratification in the genitals. At first this takes place
in accordance with the will of the person in question, but later
on it does so in spite of his efforts, and with the characteristics
of an obsession.

It is only with hesitation that this phantasy is confessed to.
Its first appearance is recollected with uncertainty. The analytic
treatment of the subject is met by an unmistakable resistance.
Shame and a sense of guilt are perhaps more strongly excited in
this connection than when similar accounts are given of memories
of the beginnings of sexual life.

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At last it becomes possible to establish that the first phantasies
of this kind were entertained very early in life: certainly before
school age, and not later than in the fifth or sixth year. When
the child witnessed at school other children being beaten by the
teacher, then, where the phantasies had become dormant, this
experience called them up again, or, where they were still present,
it reinforced them, and noticeably modified their content. From
that time on it was “an indefinite number” of children that were
being beaten. The influence of the school was so clear that the
patients concerned were at first tempted to trace back their
phantasies of beating exclusively to these impressions of school
life, which dated from later than their sixth year. But it was never
possible for them to maintain this position; the phantasies had
already been in existence before.

Though the children were no longer beaten in the higher forms
at school, the influence of these occasions was then replaced and
more than replaced by the effects of reading, of which the im-
portance was soon to be felt. In my patients’ milieu it was almost
always the same books whose contents gave a new stimulus to
the phantasies of beating: those accessible to young people, such
as the so-called Bibliothèque rose, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, etc. The
child now began to compete with these works of fiction by pro-
ducing its own phantasies and by constructing a wealth of situations
and even whole institutions, in which children were beaten or
were punished and disciplined in some other way because of their
naughtiness and bad behaviour.

This phantasy–“A child is being beaten”–was invariably
charged with a high degree of pleasure and had its issue in an
act of pleasurable, auto-erotic gratification; it might therefore be
expected that the sight of another child being beaten at school
would also be a source of similar enjoyment. But as a matter of
fact this was never so. The experience of real scenes of beating
at school produced in the child who witnessed them a peculiarly
excited feeling which was probably of a mixed character and in
which repugnance had a large share. In a few cases the real ex-
perience of the scenes of beating was felt to be intolerable.
Moreover, it was always a condition even of the artful phantasies
of later years that the punishment should do the children no
serious injury.

The question was bound to arise of what relation there might

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be between the importance of the phantasies of beating and the
part that real corporal punishment might have played in the
education of the child at home. It was impossible, on account of
the one-sidedness of the material, to confirm the first suspicion
that the relation was an inverse one. The individuals from whom
the data for these analyses were derived were very seldom beaten
in their childhood, or were at all events not brought up by the
help of the rod. Naturally, however, each of these children was
bound to have become aware at one time or another of the
superior physical strength of its parents or educators; the fact that
in every nursery the children themselves at times come to blows
requires no special emphasis.

With the early and simple phantasies which could not obviously
be traced to the influence of school impressions or of scenes taken
from books, one wished to carry the investigation farther. Who
was the child that was being beaten? The one who was himself
producing the phantasy or another? Was it always the same child
or as often as not a different one? Who was it that was beating
the child? A grown up person? And if so, who? Or did the child
imagine that he himself was beating another one? No information was
produced for clearing up all these questions, nothing but the one timid
reply: “I know nothing more about it: a child is being beaten.”

Inquiries as to the sex of the child that was being beaten met
with more success, but none the less brought no enlightenment.
Sometimes the answer was: “Always boys”, or “Only girls”; more
often it was: “I don’t know”, or “It doesn’t matter which”. But
the point to which the questions were directed, the discovery of
some constant relation between the sex of the child producing
the phantasy and that of the child that was being beaten, was
never established. Now and again another characteristic detail of
the content of the phantasy came to light: “The small child is
being beaten on its naked bottom”.

In these circumstances it was impossible at first even to decide
whether the pleasure attaching to the phantasy of beating was to
be described as sadistic or masochistic.

II.

A phantasy of this kind which arises in early childhood, owing
perhaps to some accidental occasion, and which is preserved for

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the purpose of auto-erotic gratification, can, in the light of our
present knowledge, only be regarded as a primary trait of per-
version. On this view, one of the components of the sexual function
has developed in advance of the rest, has made itself prematurely
independent, has become “fixed” and in consequence withdrawn
from the later processes of development, but has in this way
given evidence of a peculiar and anomalous constitution in the
individual. We know that an infantile perversion of this sort need
not persist for a whole life-time; it can later on be subjected to
repression, be replaced by a reaction-formation, or be transformed
by sublimation. (It is possible, however, that sublimation arises out
of some special process which would be kept in the background
by repression.) But if these events do not take place, then the
perversion persists to maturity; and whenever we find a sexual
aberration in adults–perversion, fetishism, inversion–we are
justified in expecting that anamnestic investigation will reveal some
such “fixing” experience in childhood. Indeed, long before the
days of psycho-analysis, observers like Binet were able to trace
the remarkable sexual aberrations of maturity back to similar
impressions and to precisely the same period of childhood, namely,
the fifth or sixth year. But at this point the inquiry was brought
up against the limitations of our knowledge; for the “fixing” im-
pressions were without any traumatic force. They were banal for
the most part, and had no exciting effect on other individuals. It
was impossible to say why the sexual impulse had become “fixed”
particularly on to them. It was possible, however, to look for their
significance in the fact that they provided an opportunity of fixation
(even though it was an accidental one) for precisely that sexual
component which was prematurely developed and was ready to
spring forward. We had in any case to be prepared to find a pro-
visional end somewhere or other to the chain of causal connection;
and the congenital constitution seemed just to correspond with
what was required for a stopping place of this kind.

If the sexual component which has broken loose prematurely
is the sadistic one, then we may expect, on the basis of knowledge
derived from other sources, that a disposition to an obsessional
neurosis will result from its subsequent repression. This expectation
cannot be said to be contradicted by the results of inquiry. The
present short paper is based upon the exhaustive study of six
cases (four women and two men). Of these, two were cases of

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obsessional neurosis; one extremely severe and incapacitating, the
other of moderate severity and quite well accessible to influence.
There was also a third case which at all events exhibited clearly
marked individual traits of an obsessional neurosis. The fourth
case, it must be admitted, was one of straightforward hysteria,
with pains and inhibitions; and the fifth patient, who had come
to be analysed merely on account of lack of decision in life, would
not have been classified at all by coarse clinical diagnosis, or
would have been dismissed as “psychasthenic”. There is no need
for feeling disillusioned over these statistics. In the first place, we
know that every predisposition is not necessarily developed into
a disorder; in the second place we ought to be content to explain
the facts before us, and ought as a rule to avoid the additional
task of making it clear why something has not taken place.

The present state of our knowledge would allow us to make
our way so far and no farther towards the comprehension of
phantasies of beating. But in the mind of the analytical physician
there remains an unquiet suspicion that this is not a final solution
of the problem. He is obliged to admit to himself that to a great
extent these phantasies subsist apart from the rest of the content
of the neurosis, and find no true place in its structure. But im-
pressions of this kind, as I know from my own experience, are
only too easily dismissed.

III.

Strictly considered–and why should this question not be
considered with all possible strictness?–analytic work deserves
to be recognised as correct psycho-analysis only when it has
succeeded in removing the amnesia which conceals from the adult
his knowledge of his childhood from its beginning (that is, from
about the second to the fifth year). This cannot be said among
analysts too emphatically or repeated too often. The motives for
disregarding this reminder are, indeed, comprehensible. It would
be desirable to obtain practical results in a shorter time and with
less trouble. But at the present time theoretical knowledge is still
far more important to all of us than therapeutic success, and
anyone who neglects childhood analysis is bound to fall into the
most disastrous errors. The emphasis which is laid here upon the

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importance of the earliest experiences does not imply any under-
estimation of the influence of later ones. But the later impressions
of life speak loudly enough through the mouth of the patient,
while it is the physician who has to raise his voice on behalf of
the claims of childhood.

It is in the years of childhood between the ages of two and
four or five that the congenital libidinous factors are first awakened
by actual experiences and become attached to certain complexes.
The phantasies of beating which are now under discussion show
themselves only towards the end of this period or after its ter-
mination. So it may quite well be that they have an earlier history,
that they go through a process of development, that they represent
an end-product and not an initial expression.

This suspicion is confirmed by analysis. A systematic application
of it shows that phantasies of beating have an historical develop-
ment which is by no means simple, and in the course of which
they are changed in most respects more than once–as regards
their relation to the author of the phantasy, and as regards their
object, their content, and their significance.

In order to make it easier to follow these transformations in
the phantasies of beating I shall venture to confine my descriptions
to the female cases, who, since they are four as against two, in
any case constitute the greater part of my material. Moreover,
phantasies of beating among men are connected with another
subject which I shall leave on one side in this paper. In my de-
scription I shall be careful to avoid being more schematic than is
inevitable in presenting an average case. If then upon further
observation a greater complexity of circumstances should come to
light, I am nevertheless sure that I have secured a typical occurrence
and not one of an uncommon kind.

The first phase of phantasies of beating among girls must
therefore belong to a very early period of childhood. Some features
remain curiously indefinite, as though they were a matter of in-
difference. The scanty information given by the patients in their
first statement, “a child is being beaten”, seems to be justified as
regards this phase. But another of their features can be established
with certainty, and to the same effect in every case. The child
being beaten is never the one producing the phantasy but is in-
variably another child, most often a brother or a sister if there is
any. Since this other child may be a boy or a girl, there is no

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“A CHILD IS BEING BEATEN”

constant relation between the sex of the child producing the
phantasy and that of the child being beaten. The phantasy, then,
is certainly not masochistic. It would be tempting to call it sadistic,
but one cannot neglect the fact that the child producing the
phantasy is never doing the beating himself. The actual identity
of the person beating remains obscure at first. Only this much
can be established: it is not a child but an adult. Later on this
indeterminate grown-up person becomes recognisable clearly and
unambiguously as the (girl’s) father.

This first phase of the phantasy of beating is therefore com-
pletely represented by the phrase: “My father is beating the child”.
I am betraying a great deal of what is to be brought forward
later when instead of this I say: “My father is beating the child
whom I hate”. Moreover one may hesitate to say whether the
characteristics of a “phantasy” can yet be ascribed to this first
step towards the later phantasy of beating. It is perhaps rather a
question of recollections of events which have been witnessed, or
of desires which have arisen on various occasions; but these doubts
are of no importance.

Profound transformations have taken place between this first
phase and the next. It is true that the person beating remains the
same (that is, the father); but the child who is beaten has been
changed into another one and is now invariably the child producing
the phantasy. The phantasy is accompanied by a high degree of
pleasure, and has now acquired a significant content, with the
origin of which we shall be concerned later. Now, therefore, the
wording runs: “I am being beaten by my father”. It is of an un-
mistakably masochistic character.

This second phase is the most important of all and the richest
in consequences. But we may say of it in a certain sense that it
has never had a real existence. It is never remembered, it has
never succeeded in becoming conscious. It is a construction of
analysis, but it is no less a necessity on that account.

The third phase once more resembles the first. It has the
wording which is familiar to us from the patient’s statement. The
person beating is never the father, but is either left undetermined
just as in the first phase, or turns in a characteristic way into a
representative of the father, such as a teacher. The figure of the
child who is producing the phantasy of beating no longer itself
appears in it. In reply to pressing inquiries the patients only

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declare: “I am probably looking on”. Instead of the one child that
is being beaten, there are now a number of children present as
a rule. Most frequently it is boys who are being beaten (in girls’
phantasies), but none of them is personally known. The situation
of being beaten, which was originally simple and monotonous,
may go through the most complicated alterations and elaborations;
and punishments and humiliations of another kind may be sub-
stituted for the beating itself. But the essential characteristic which
distinguishes even the simplest phantasies of this phase from those
of the first, and which establishes the connection with the inter-
mediate phase, is this: the phantasy now has strong and un-
ambiguous sexual excitement attached to it, and so provides a
means for onanistic gratification. But this is just what is puzzling:
by what path has the phantasy of strange and unknown boys being
beaten (a phantasy which has by this time become sadistic) found
its way into the permanent possession of the little girl’s libidinous
tendencies?

Nor can we disguise the fact that the inter-relations and
sequence of the three phases of the phantasy of beating, as well
as all its other peculiarities, have so far remained quite incom-
prehensible.

IV.

If the analysis is traced through the early period to which the
phantasies of beating are referred and from which they are re-
collected, it shows us the child involved in the agitations of its
parental complex.

The affections of the little girl are “fixed” upon her father;
while he has probably done all he could to win her love, and
in this way has sown the seeds of an attitude of hatred and
rivalry towards her mother. This attitude exists side by side
with a current of affectionate dependence upon her, and as years
go on it may be destined to come into consciousness more and
more clearly and forcibly, or to give an impetus to an excessive
reaction of devotion to her. But the phantasy of beating is not
connected with the relation to the mother. There are other children
in the nursery, only a few years older or younger, who are disliked
on all sorts of other grounds, but chiefly because the parents’

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love has to be shared with them, and for this reason they are
repulsed with all the wild energy characteristic of the emotional
life of those years. If it is a younger brother or sister (as in three
of my four cases) it is despised as well as hated; and yet it
attracts to itself the share of affection which the blinded parents
are always ready to give to the youngest child, the spectacle of
which cannot be avoided. One soon learns that being beaten, even
if it does not hurt very much, signifies a deprivation of love and
a humiliation. And many children who believed themselves securely
enthroned in the unshakable affection of their parents have been
cast down by a single blow from all the heavens of their imaginary
omnipotence. The idea of the father beating this hateful child is
therefore an agreeable one, quite apart from whether he has
actually been seen doing it. It means: “My father does not love
this other child, he only loves me.”

This then is the content and meaning of the phantasy of beating
in its first phase. The phantasy obviously gratifies the child’s
jealousy and is dependent upon the erotic side of its life, but it
is also powerfully reinforced by its egoistic interests. It remains
doubtful, therefore, whether it ought to be described as purely
“sexual”, nor can one venture to call it “sadistic”. As is well
known, all the signs upon which we are accustomed to base our
distinctions tend to melt as we get nearer to the source. So
perhaps we may say in words like those of the promise given by
the three Witches to Banquo: Not clearly sexual, not in itself sadistic,
but yet the stuff from which both will later come. In any case,
however, there is no ground for suspecting that in this first phase
the phantasy is already at the service of an excitement, which
by involving the genitals finds its outlet in an onanistic act.

It is clear that the sexual life of the child has reached the
stage of genital organisation, now that its incestuous love has
made this premature choice of an object. This can be demonstrated
more easily in the case of boys, but is also indisputable in the
case of girls. Something like a premonition of what are later to
be the final and normal sexual aims governs the libidinous tendencies
of a child; we may justly wonder why this should be so,
but we may regard it as a proof of the fact that the genitals have
already taken on their share in the state of excitement. With boys
the desire to beget a child from their mother is never absent, with
girls the desire to have a child by their father is equally constant;

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and this in spite of their being completely incapable of forming
any clear idea of the means for fulfilling this desire. The child
seems to be convinced that the genitals have something to do
with the matter, even though in its constant brooding it may look
for the essence of the presumed intimacy between its parents in
relations of another sort, such as in their sleeping together,
micturating in each other’s presence, etc.; and material of the latter
kind can be more easily apprehended in verbal images than the
mystery that is connected with the genitals.

But the time comes when this early blossoming is nipped by
the frost. None of these incestuous loves can avoid the fate of
repression. They may succumb to it on the occasion of some dis-
coverable external event which leads to disillusionment – such
as unexpected slights, the unwelcome birth of a new brother or
sister (which is felt as faithlessness), etc.; or the same thing may
happen owing to inner conditions apart from any such events,
perhaps simply because their yearning so long remains un-
satisfied. It is unquestionably true that the events are not the
effective causes, but that these love affairs are bound to be wrecked
sooner or later, though we cannot say upon what. Most probably
they pass because their time is over, because the children have
entered upon a new phase of development, in which they are
compelled to recapitulate from the history of mankind the repression
of the choice of an incestuous object, just as at an earlier stage
they were obliged to choose an object of this very sort.¹ (Cf. the
part played by Fate in the myth of Œdipus). Nothing that is
unconsciously present as a mental product of the incestuous
emotion of love is taken over by consciousness in the new phase;
and whatever had already come into consciousness is expelled
from it. At the same time as this process of repression takes place,
a sense of guilt appears. This is also of unknown origin, but there
is no doubt whatever that it is connected with the incestuous
desires, and that it is justified by the persistence of these desires
in the unconscious.

The phantasy of the period of incestuous love had said: “He
(my father) loves only me, and not the other child, for he is
beating it.” The sense of guilt can discover no punishment more
severe than the reversal of this triumph: “No, he does not love

¹ For an account of the phylogenetic equivalents of these two phases see
The Psycho-Analytic Study of the Family, by J. C. Flügel. [Ed.]

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you, for he is beating you.” In this way the phantasy of the
second phase, that of being beaten by the father, is a direct ex-
pression of the sense of guilt, to which the love for the father
is now subordinated. The phantasy, therefore, has become masochistic.
So far as I know this is always so; a sense of guilt is invariably
the factor that transforms sadism into masochism. But this is
certainly not the whole content of masochism. The sense of guilt
cannot have won the field alone; a share must also fall to the
emotion of love. We must remember that we are dealing with
children in whom the sadistic component was able for constitutional
reasons to develop prematurely and in isolation. We need not
abandon this point of view. It is just those children who find it
particularly easy to hark back to the pregenital, sadistic-anal
organisation of their sexual life. If the genital organisation, when
it has scarcely been effected, is met by repression, it not only
follows that every mental counterpart of the incestuous love becomes
unconscious, or remains so, but there is another result as well,
a regressive debasement of the genital organisation itself to a
lower level. “My father loves me” was meant in a genital sense;
owing to the regression it is turned into “My father is beating
me (I am being beaten by my father)”. This being beaten is now
a meeting place between the sense of guilt and sexual love. It is
not only the punishment for the forbidden genital relation, but also
the regressive substitute for it, and from this latter source it derives
the libidinous excitement which is from this time forward attached
to it, and which finds its outlet in onanistic acts. Here for the first
time we have the essence of masochism.

This second phase–the child’s phantasy of being itself beaten
by its father–remains as a rule unconscious, probably in conse-
quence of the intensity of the repression. I cannot explain why
nevertheless in one of my six cases, that of a male, it was
consciously remembered. This man, now grown up, had preserved
the fact clearly in his memory that he used to employ the idea
of being beaten by his mother for the purpose of onanism; though
to be sure he soon substituted for his own mother the mothers
of his school-fellows or other women who in some way resembled
her. It must not be forgotten that when a boy’s incestuous phantasy
is transformed into the corresponding masochistic one, one more
reversal has to take place than in the case of a girl, namely the
substitution of passivity for activity; and this additional degree of

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distortion may save the phantasy from having to remain un-
conscious as a result of repression. In this way the sense of guilt
would be satisfied by regression instead of by repression. In the
female cases the sense of guilt, in itself perhaps more exacting,
could be appeased only by a combination of the two.

In two of my four female cases an artistic superstructure
of day-dreams, which was of great significance for the life of
the person concerned, had grown up over the masochistic phan-
tasy of beating. The function of this superstructure was to make
possible the feeling of gratified excitement, even though the
onanistic act was abstained from. In one of these cases the
content–being beaten by the father–was allowed to venture again
into consciousness, so long as the person’s own ego was made
unrecognisable by a thin disguise. The hero of these stories was
invariably beaten (or later only punished, humiliated, etc.) by
his father.

I repeat, however, that as a rule the phantasy remains un-
conscious, and has first to be reconstructed in the course of the ana-
lysis. This fact perhaps vindicates patients who say they remember
that with them onanism made its appearance before the third
phase of the beating phantasy (shortly to be discussed), and that
this phase was only a later addition, made perhaps under the
impression of scenes at school. Every time we gave credit to
these statements, we always felt inclined to assume that the
onanism was at first under the dominion of unconscious phantasies
for which conscious ones were substituted later.

We look upon the phantasy of beating in its familiar third
phase, which is its final form, as a substitute of this sort. Here
the child who produces the phantasy now appears at most as a
spectator, while the father persists in the shape of a teacher or
some other person in authority. The phantasy, which now resembles
that of the first phase, seems to have become sadistic once more.
It appears as though in the phrase, “My father is beating the
other child, he loves only me”, the stress has been shifted back
on to the first part after the second part has undergone repression.
But only the form of this phantasy is sadistic; the gratification
which is derived from it is masochistic. Its significance lies in the
fact that it has taken over the libidinous “charge” of the repressed
portion and at the same time the sense of guilt which is attached
to its content. All of the many indeterminate children who are

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being beaten by the teacher are after all nothing more than sub-
stitutes for the child itself.
We find here for the first time too something like a constant
relation of sex among the persons who play a part in the phantasy.
The children who are being beaten are almost invariably boys,
in the phantasies of boys just as much as in those of girls. This
characteristic is naturally not to be explained by any rivalry
between the sexes, as otherwise of course in the phantasies of
boys it would be girls who were being beaten; and it has nothing
to do with the sex of the child who was hated in the first phase,
but it points to a complication in the case of girls. When they
turn away from their incestuous love for their father, with its
genital significance, they easily abandon their feminine rôle. They
spur their “masculine complex” (v. Ophuijsen) into activity, and
from that time forward only want to be boys. For that reason
the whipping-boys who represent them are boys too. In both the
cases of day-dreaming–one of which almost rose to the level of
a work of art–the heroes were always young men; indeed women
used never to come into these creations at all, and only made
their first appearance after many years, and then in minor parts.

V.

I hope I have brought forward my analytic observations in
sufficient detail, and I should only like to remark that the six
cases I have mentioned so often do not exhaust my material.
Like other analysts, I have at my disposal a far larger number
of cases which have been investigated less thoroughly. These
observations can be made use of along various lines: for eluci-
dating the genesis of the perversions in general and of masochism
in particular, and for estimating the part played by difference of
sex in the dynamics of neurosis.

The most striking result of such a discussion concerns the
origin of the perversions. The view which brought into the fore-
ground in this connection the constitutional reinforcement or
premature growth of a single sexual component is not shaken,
indeed; but it does not comprise the whole truth. The perversion
is no longer an isolated fact in the child’s sexual life, but falls

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into its place among the typical, not to say normal, processes of
development which are familiar to us. It is brought into relation
with the child's incestuous object-love, with its Œdipus complex.
It first comes into prominence in the sphere of this complex, and
after the complex has broken down it remains over, often quite
by itself, the inheritor of its store of libido, and weighed down
by the sense of guilt that was attached to it. The abnormal sexual
constitution, finally, has shown its strength by forcing the Œdipus
complex into a particular direction, and by compelling it to leave
an unusual residue behind.

A perversion in childhood, as is well known, can become the
basis for the construction of a perversion having a similar sense
and persisting throughout life, one which eats up the person's
whole sexual life. On the other hand the perversion can be broken
off and remain in the background of a normal sexual development,
from which, however, it continues to withdraw a certain amount
of energy. The former case is the one which was already known
before the days of analysis, but the gulf between the two is almost
filled up by the analytic investigation of fully developed per-
versions of this sort. For we find often enough with these perverts
that they too made an attempt at developing normal sexual activity,
usually at the age of puberty. But their attempt had not enough
force in it and was abandoned in the face of the first obstacles
which inevitably arise, whereupon they fell back upon their in-
fantile fixation once and for all.

It would naturally be important to know whether the origin
of the infantile perversions from the Œdipus complex can be
maintained as a general principle. While this cannot be decided
without further investigation, it does not seem impossible. When
we recall the anamneses which have been obtained in adult cases
of perversion we cannot fail to notice that the decisive impression,
the “first experience”, of all these perverts, fetishists, etc. is scarcely
ever referred back to a time earlier than the sixth year. At this
time, however, the supremacy of the Œdipus complex is already
over; the experience which is recalled, and which has been effective
in such a puzzling way, may very well have represented the legacy
of that complex. The connections between the experience and the
complex which is by this time repressed are bound to remain
obscure so long as analysis has not thrown any light on the time
before the first “pathogenic” impression. So it may be imagined

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how little value is to be attached, for instance, to an assertion
that a case of homosexuality is congenital, when the ground given
for this belief is that ever since his eighth or sixth year the person
in question has felt inclinations only towards his own sex.

If, however, the derivation of perversions from the Œdipus
complex can be generally established, our estimate of its importance
will have gained added strength. For in our opinion the Œdipus
complex is the nucleus itself of a neurosis, and the infantile
sexuality which culminates in this complex is the true determinant
of the neurosis. What remains of the complex in the unconscious
represents the predisposition to the later development of neuroses
in the adult. In this way the phantasy of beating and other ana-
logous perverse fixations would also only be precipitates of the
Œdipus complex, so to say scars after the process is completed,
just as the notorious “feeling of inferiority” corresponds to a
narcissistic scar of the same sort. In taking this view of the matter
I must express my unreserved agreement with Marcinowski, who
has recently put it forward most happily.¹ As is well known, this
neurotic delusion of insignificance is only a partial one, and is
completely compatible with the existence of a self-overestimation
derived from other sources. The origin of the Œdipus complex
itself, and the destiny which compels man, probably alone among
all animals, to begin his sexual life twice over, first like all
other creatures in his early childhood, and then after a long inter-
ruption once more at the age of puberty–all the problems that
are connected with man’s “archaic heritage”– have been discussed
by me elsewhere, and I have no intention of going into them in
this place.

Little light is thrown upon the genesis of masochism by our
discussion of the phantasy of beating. To begin with there seems
to be a confirmation of the view that masochism is not the
primary expression of an impulse, but originates from sadism which
has been turned round and directed against the self, that is to
say, by means of regression from an object to the ego.² Impulses
with a passive aim must from the first be admitted to exist,
especially among women. But passivity is not the whole of

¹ “Die erotischen Quellen der Minderwertigkeitsgefühle”, Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, 1918, IV.

² Cf. “Triebe und Triebschicksale” in Sammlung kleiner Schriften, IV. Folge, 1918.

386

masochism. The characteristic of “pain” (Unlust) belongs to it as
well, one so strange in the case of the gratification of an instinct.
The transformation of sadism into masochism appears to be due
to the influence of the sense of guilt concerned in the act of
repression. Repression, therefore, is operative here in three ways:
it renders the consequences of the genital organisation unconscious,
it compels this organisation itself to regress to the earlier sadistic-
anal stage, and it transforms the sadism of this stage into masochism,
which is passive and again in a certain sense narcissistic. The
second of these three effects is made possible by the weakness
of the genital organisation, which must be presupposed in these
cases. The third becomes necessary because the sense of guilt
takes the same objection to sadism as to the incestuous choice
of an object with its genital implication. Again, the analyses do
not tell us the origin of the sense of guilt itself. It seems to be
brought along by the new phase upon which the child is entering,
and if it afterwards persists it seems to correspond to a scar-like
structure similar to the feeling of inferiority. According to our
present orientation in the structure of the ego, which is as yet
uncertain, we should assign it to that grade in the mental hierarchy
(Instanz) which sets itself up as a critical conscience over against
the rest of the ego, which produces Silberer’s functional phenomenon
in dreams, and which cuts itself loose from the ego in delusions
of observation.

We may note too in passing that the analysis of the childish
perversion dealt with here is also of help in solving an old riddle
– one which, it is true, has always troubled those who have not
accepted psycho-analysis more than analysts themselves. Yet still
recently even E. Bleuler regarded it as a remarkable and in-
explicable fact that neurotics make onanism into the central point
of their sense of guilt. We have long assumed that this sense of
guilt relates to the onanism of early childhood and not to that of
puberty, and that in the main it is to be connected not with the
act of onanism but with the phantasy which, although unconscious,
lies at its root–that is to say, with the Œdipus complex.

As regards the third and apparently sadistic phase of the
phantasy of beating, I have already discussed the significance that
it gains from carrying with it an excitement impelling towards
onanism; and I have shown how it arouses activities of phantasy,
which on the one hand continue the phantasy along the same

387

line, and on the other hand neutralise it by way of compensation.
Nevertheless the second phase, the unconscious and masochistic
one, in which the child itself is being beaten by its father, is
incomparably the more important. Not only because it continues
to operate through the agency of the phase that takes its place,
but we can also detect effects upon the character which are
directly derived from its unconscious setting. People who harbour
phantasies of this kind develop a special sensitiveness and ir-
ritability towards anyone whom they can put among the class of
fathers. They allow themselves to be easily offended by a person
of this kind, and in this way (to their own sorrow and cost)
bring about the realisation of the imagined situation of being beaten
by their father. I should not be surprised if it were one day
possible to prove that the same phantasy is the basis of the
querulous delusions of paranoia.

VI.

It would have been quite impossible to give a clear description
of the infantile phantasies of beating if I had not limited it, except
in one or two connections, to the state of things in women. I will
repeat the facts shortly: the little girl’s phantasy of beating goes
through three phases, of which the first and third are consciously
remembered, the middle one remaining unconscious. The two
conscious phases appear to be sadistic, whereas the middle and
unconscious one is undoubtedly of a masochistic nature; its content
consists in being beaten by the father, and it carries with it the
store of libido and the sense of guilt. In the first and third
phantasies the child who is being beaten is always someone else;
in the middle phase it is only the child itself; in the third phase
it is almost invariably only boys who are being beaten. The person
beating is from the first the father, but is later on a substitute
taken from the class of fathers. The unconscious phantasy of the
middle phase had primarily a genital significance, and developed
by means of repression and regression out of an incestuous desire
to be loved by the father. Another fact, though its connection
with the rest does not appear to be close, is that between the
second and third phases the girls change their sex, for in the
phantasies of the latter phase they turn into boys.

388

I have not been able to get so far in my knowledge of
phantasies of beating among boys, perhaps because my material
was unfavourable. I naturally expected to find a complete analogy
between the state of things in the case of boys and in that of
girls, the mother taking the father’s place in the phantasy. This
expectation seemed to be fulfilled; for the content of the boy’s
phantasy which was taken to be the corresponding one was ac-
tually his being beaten by his mother (or later on by a substitute
for her). But this phantasy, in which the boy’s own self was
retained as the object, differed from the second phase in the girl’s
in that it was able to become conscious. If on this account,
however, an attempt was made to draw a parallel between it and
the third phase of the girl’s phantasy, a new difference was found,
for the boy’s own person was not replaced by many, unknown,
and undetermined children, least of all by many girls. Therefore
the expectation of a complete parallelism was mistaken.

My male cases with an infantile phantasy of beating comprised
only a few who did not exhibit some other gross injury to their
sexual activities, but on the other hand a fairly large number of
persons who would have to be described as true masochists in
the sense of a sexual perversion. They were either people who
obtained their sexual gratification exclusively from onanism
accompanied by masochistic phantasies; or they were people who
had succeeded in combining masochism with their genital activity
in such a way ‘as to bring about erection and emission, or to
carry out normal coitus with the help of masochistic contrivances
and under similar conditions. In addition to this there was the
rarer case in which a masochist is interfered with in his perverse
activities by the appearance of obsessional ideas of unbearable
intensity. Now perverts who can obtain gratification rarely have
occasion to come in search of analysis. But as regards the three
classes of masochists that have been mentioned there may be
strong motives to induce them to go to an analyst. The masochistic
onanist finds that he is absolutely impotent if after all he does
attempt coitus with a woman; and the man who has hitherto
effected coitus with the help of a masochistic idea or contrivance
may suddenly make the discovery that the alliance which was so
convenient for him has broken down, his genital organs no
longer reacting to the masochistic stimulus. We are accustomed
confidently to promise recovery to psychically impotent patients

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who come to us for treatment; but we ought to be more guarded
in making this prognosis so long as the dynamics of the disturbance
are unknown to us. It comes as a disagreeable surprise if the
analysis reveals the cause of the “merely psychical” impotence to
be a perfect masochistic attitude, perhaps deeply embedded since
infancy.

As regards these masochistic men, however, a discovery is
made at this point which warns us not to pursue the analogy
between their case and that of women any further at present, but
to judge the matter independently. For the fact emerges that in
their masochistic phantasies, as well as in the contrivances they
adopt for their realisation, they invariably transfer themselves into
the part of a woman; that is to say, their masochistic attitude
coincides with a feminine one. This can easily be demonstrated
from details of the phantasies; but many patients are even aware
of it themselves, and give expression to it as a subjective con-
viction. It makes no difference if in a fanciful embellishment of
the masochistic scene they keep up the fiction that a mischievous
boy, or page, or apprentice is going to be punished. But the
persons who administer chastisement are always women, both in
the phantasies and in the contrivances. This is confusing enough;
and the further question must be asked whether this feminine
attitude already forms the basis of the masochistic element in the
infantile phantasy of beating.

Let us therefore leave aside consideration of the state of things
in cases of adult masochism, which it is so hard to clear up, and
turn to the infantile phantasy of beating in the male sex. Analysis
of the earliest years of childhood once more allows us to make
a surprising discovery in this field. The phantasy which has as its
content being beaten by the mother, and which is conscious or
can become so, is not a primary one. It possesses a preceding
stage which is invariably unconscious and has as its content:
“I am being beaten by my father”. This preliminary stage, then,
really corresponds to the second phase of the phantasy in the
girl. The familiar and conscious phantasy: “I am being beaten by
my mother,” takes the place of the third phase in the girl, in
which, as has been mentioned already, unknown boys are the objects
that are being beaten. I was not able to demonstrate among boys
a preliminary stage of a sadistic nature that could be set beside
the first phase of the phantasy in girls, but I will not now express

390

any final disbelief in its existence, for I can readily see the
possibility of meeting with more complicated types.

In the male phantasy–as I shall call it briefly, and, I hope,
without any risk of being misunderstood–the being beaten also
stands for being loved (in a genital sense), though this has been
reduced to a lower level owing to regression. So the original
form of the unconscious male phantasy was not the provisional
one that we have hitherto given: “I am being beaten by my
father”, but rather: “I am loved by my father”. The phantasy has
been transformed by the processes with which we are acquainted
into the conscious phantasy: “I am being beaten by my mother”.
The boy’s phantasy of beating is, therefore, passive from the very
beginning, and is derived from a feminine attitude towards his
father. It corresponds to the Œdipus complex just as the feminine
one (that of the girl) does; only the parallel relation which we
expected to find between the two must be given up in favour of
a common character of another kind. In both cases the phantasy
of being beaten has its origin in an incestuous attachment to the
father.

It will help to make matters clearer if at this point I enumerate
the other similarities and differences between the phantasies of
beating in the two sexes. In the case of the girl the unconscious
masochistic phantasy starts from the normal attitude of the
Œdipus Complex; in that of the boy it starts from the inverted
attitude, in which the father is taken as the object of love. In the
case of the girl there is a first step towards the phantasy (the first
phase), in which the beating figures without any special significance
and is performed upon a person who is viewed with jealous hatred.
Both of these features are absent in the case of the boy, but this
is precisely a difference which might be removed by more fortunate
observation. In her transition to the conscious phantasy which
takes the place of the unconscious one the girl retains the figure
of her father, and in that way keeps unchanged the sex of the
person beating; but she changes the figure and sex of the person
being beaten, so that eventually a man is beating male children.
The boy, on the contrary, changes the figure and sex of the person
beating, by putting his mother in the place of his father; but he
retains his own figure, with the result that the person beating
and the person being beaten are of opposite sexes. In the case
of the girl the situation which was originally masochistic (passive)

391

is transformed into a sadistic one by means of repression, and its
sexual quality is effaced. In the case of the boy the situation
remains masochistic, and shows a greater resemblance to the
original phantasy with its genital significance, since there is a
difference of sex between the person beating and the person being
beaten. The boy evades his homosexuality by repressing and
remodelling his unconscious phantasy; and the remarkable thing
about his later conscious phantasy is that it has for its content
a feminine attitude without the homosexual choice of object. By
the same process, on the other hand, the girl escapes from the
demands of the erotic side of her life altogether. She turns herself
in phantasy into a man, without herself becoming active in a
masculine way, and is no longer anything but a spectator of the
event which takes the place of a sexual act.

We are justified in assuming that no great change is effected
by the repression of the original unconscious phantasy. Whatever
is repressed from consciousness or replaced in it by something
else remains intact and potentially operative in the unconscious.
The effect of regression to an earlier stage of the sexual organi-
sation is quite another matter. As regards this we are led to
believe that the state of things changes in the unconscious as
well: so that in both sexes the masochistic phantasy of being beaten
by the father, though not the passive phantasy of being loved by
him, lives on in the unconscious after repression has taken place.
There are, besides, plenty of indications that the repression has
only very incompletely attained its object. The boy who has
wanted to escape from the homosexual choice of object, and
who has not changed his sex, nevertheless feels like a woman in
his conscious phantasies, and endows the women who are beating
him with masculine attributes and characteristics. The girl, who
has even renounced her sex, and who has upon the whole ac-
complished a more fundamental work of repression, nevertheless
does not get free from her father; she does not venture to do
the beating herself; and since she has herself become a boy, it is
principally boys whom she causes to be beaten.

I am aware that the differences that I have here described
between the two sexes in regard to the nature of the phantasy
of beating have not been cleared up sufficiently. But I shall not
make the attempt to unravel these complications by tracing out
their dependence upon other factors, as I do not consider that

392

the material for observation is exhaustive. So far as it goes,
however, I should like to make use of it as a test for two theories.
These theories stand in opposition to one another, though both
of them deal with the relation between repression and sexual
character, and each, according to its own view, represents the
relation as a very intimate one. I may say beforehand that I have
always regarded both theories as incorrect and misleading.

The first of these theories is anonymous. It was brought to
my notice many years ago by a colleague with whom I was at
that time on friendly terms. The theory is so attractive on account
of its simplicity and comprehensiveness that the only wonder is
that it should not have found its way into the literature hitherto
except in a few scattered allusions. It is based upon the fact of
the bisexual constitution of human beings, and asserts that the
motive force of repression in each individual is a struggle between
the two sexual characters. The dominating sex of the person, that
which is the more strongly developed, has repressed the mental
representation of the subordinated sex into the unconscious.
Therefore the nucleus of the unconscious (that is to say, what is
repressed) is in each human being that side of him which belongs
to the opposite sex. Such a theory as this can only have an
intelligible meaning if we assume that a person’s sex is to be
determined by the formation of his genitals; for otherwise it
would not be certain which is the stronger sex of a person, and
we should run the risk of reaching from the results of our inquiry
the very fact which has to serve as its point of departure. To put
the theory briefly: with men, what is unconscious and repressed
can be traced back to the activity of feminine impulses; and
conversely with women.

The second theory is of more recent origin. It is in agreement
with the first one in so far as it too represents the struggle
between the two sexes as being the decisive cause of repression.
In other respects it comes into conflict with the former theory;
moreover it looks for support to sociological rather than bio-
logical sources. According to this theory of the “masculine protest”,
formulated by Alfred Adler, every individual makes efforts not to
remain on the inferior “feminine line of development”, and struggles
towards the masculine line of development, from which gratification
can alone be derived. Adler makes the masculine protest respon-
sible for the whole formation of character and neuroses. Un-
 

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fortunately he makes so little distinction between the two processes,
which certainly have to be kept separate, and sets altogether so
little store in general by the fact of repression, that to attempt
to apply the doctrine of the masculine protest to repression brings
with it the risk of being misunderstood. In my opinion such an
attempt could only lead us to infer that the masculine protest,
the desire to break away from the feminine line of development,
was in every case the motive force of repression. What represses,
therefore, would always be the activity of a masculine impulse,
and what is repressed would be that of a feminine one. But
symptoms would also be the result of a feminine activity, for we
cannot discard the characteristic feature of symptoms – that
they are substitutes for what is repressed, substitutes that have
made their way out in spite of repression.

Now let us take these two theories, which may be said to
have in common a sexualisation of the process of repression, and
test them by applying them to the example of the phantasy of
beating which we have been studying. The original phantasy,
“I am being beaten by my father”, corresponds, in the case of
the boy, to a feminine attitude, and is therefore an expression of
that part of his disposition which belongs to the opposite sex. If
this part of him undergoes repression the first theory seems shown
to be correct; for this theory set it up as a rule that what belongs
to the opposite sex is identical with what is repressed. It scarcely
answers to our expectations, it is true, when we find that the
conscious phantasy, which arises after repression has been ac-
complished, nevertheless exhibits the feminine attitude once more,
though this time directed towards the mother. But we will not go
into these doubtful points, when the whole question can be so
quickly decided. There can be no doubt that the original phantasy
in the case of the girl, “I am being beaten (i. e. I am loved) by
my father”, represents a feminine attitude, and corresponds to her
dominating and manifest sex; according to the theory, therefore,
it ought to escape repression, and there would be no need for
its becoming unconscious. But as a matter of fact it does become
unconscious, and is replaced by a conscious phantasy which
disavows the girl’s manifest sexual character. The theory is there-
fore useless as an explanation of phantasies of beating and is
contradicted by the facts. It might be objected that it is precisely
in unmanly boys and unwomanly girls that these phantasies of

394

beating appeared and had this history; or that it was a trait of
femininity in the boy and of masculinity in the girl which must
be made reponsible–that is, for the production of a passive
phantasy in the boy, and its repression in the girl. We should be
inclined to agree with this view, but it would be none the less
impossible to defend the supposed relation between manifest
sexual character and the choice of what is destined for repression.
In the last resort we can only see that both in male and female
individuals the activity of masculine as well as of feminine impulses
is found, and that each can equally well undergo repression and
so become unconscious.

The theory of the masculine protest seems to maintain its
ground very much better on being tested in regard to the
phantasies of beating. In the case of both boys and girls the
phantasy of beating corresponds to a feminine attitude–one, that
is, in which the individual is lingering upon the feminine line of
development–and both sexes hasten to get free from this attitude
by repressing the phantasy. Nevertheless it seems to be only with
the girl that the masculine protest is attended with complete
success, and in that instance indeed an ideal example is to be
found of the operation of the masculine protest. With the boy
the result is not entirely satisfactory; the feminine line of develop-
ment is not given up, and the boy is certainly not “on the top”
in his conscious masochistic phantasy. It would therefore agree
with the expectations derived from the theory if we were to
recognise that this phantasy was a symptom which had come into
existence through the failure of the masculine protest. It is a
disturbing fact, to be sure, that the girl’s phantasy originating in
repression should also have the value and meaning of a symptom.
In this instance, where the masculine protest has completely achieved
its object, surely the determining condition for the construction
of a symptom should be absent.

Before we are led by this difficulty to form a suspicion that
the whole conception of the masculine protest is inadequate to
meet the problem of neuroses and perversions, and that its appli-
cation to them is unfruitful, we will for a moment leave the
passive phantasies of beating and turn our attention to the mani-
festations of other impulses in the sexual life of the child,–
manifestations which have equally undergone repression. No one
can doubt that there are also desires and phantasies which keep

395

to the masculine line of development from the very start, and
which are the expression of the activity of masculine impulses–
sadistic tendencies, for instance, or a boy's lustful feelings towards
his mother, which arise out of the normal Œdipus complex. It is
no less certain that these impulses are also overtaken by repression.
If the masculine protest is to be taken as having satisfactorily
explained the repression of passive phantasies (which later become
masochistic), then it becomes for that very reason totally inappli-
cable to the opposite case of active phantasies. That is to say,
the doctrine of the masculine protest is altogether incompatible
with the fact of repression. Only those who are prepared to throw
away all that has been acquired in psychology since Breuer's first
cathartic treatment and by means of it can expect that the
principle of the masculine protest will acquire any significance in
the elucidation of the neuroses and perversions.

The theory of psycho-analysis (a theory based upon observation)
holds firmly to the view that the motive forces of repression must
not be sexualised. Man's archaic heritage forms the nucleus of the
unconscious mind; and whatever part of that heritage has to be
left behind in the advance to later phases of development because
it is useless, or incompatible with what is new and harmful to it,
falls a victim to the process of repression. This selection is made
more successfully with one group of impulses than with the other.
In virtue of special circumstances which have often been pointed
out already, the latter group, that of the sexual impulses, are able
to defeat the intentions of repression, and to enforce their re-
presentation by substitutive structures of a disturbing kind. For
this reason infantile sexuality, which is held under repression, acts
as the chief impulsive force in the construction of symptoms; and
the essential part of its content, the Œdipus complex, is the
nuclear complex of neuroses. I hope that in this paper I have
raised an expectation that the sexual aberrations of childhood,
as well as those of mature life, are ramifications of the same
complex.