!

54 . AN OUTLINE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS

tective 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
contradicts.
Fourth Lecture

Ladies and Gentlemen: At this point you will be ask-
ing 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 lıfe, show us
that the pathogenic wishes are of the nature of erotic
impulse-components (Triebkomponente), and necessitate
the assumption that to disturbances of the erotic sphere
must be ascribed the greatest significance among the etio-
logical 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 psycho-
logical 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 de-
scribed. 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 theoretical postulate; in
the Studien über Fysterie, 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
traveled to Worcester with me. Ask them, and they will
tell you that they all were at first completely skeptical of

ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT 55

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 infor-
mation concerning their sexual life, they try to conceal it
by every means in their power. Men generally are not
candid in sexual matters. 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 dis-
pute. 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 behavior 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 traumatic 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 deter-
mine the later sickness. Only the childhood experiences
can give the explanation for the sensitivity to later trau-

56 AN OUTLINE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS

mata 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 ar-
tive here at the same conclusion as in the investigation of
ilreams—that it is the incompatible, repressed wishes of
childhood which lend their power to the creation of symp-
toms. Without these the reactions upon later traumata
discharge normally. But we must consider these mighty
wishes of childhood very generally as sexual 1n 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 be-
ginning, he brings them with him into the world, and from
these the so-called normal sexuality of adults emerges by
a significant development through manifold stages. It is
not very difficult to observe the expressions of this childish
sexual activity; it needs rather a certain art to overlook
them or to fail to interpret them.*®

As fate would have it, ] 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
American Journal of Psychology. The author was a fel-
low of Clark University, the same institution within whose
walls we now stand. In this thesis, entitled A Prelimi-
nary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes,
which appeared three years before my “Drei Abhandlun-
gen zur Sexualtheorie,” the author says just what I have
been saying to you: “The emotion 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

18 Three Contributions to a Sexual Theory. Nerv. and Ment.
Dis. Monogr. Ser., N. Y.

ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT 57

gathered not less than 2,500 positive observations in the
course of fifteen years, among them 800 of his own. He
says of the signs by which this amorous condition mani-
fests itself: “The unprejudiced mind, in observing these
manifestations in hundreds of couples of children, cannot
escape 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 mem-
ories 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
observations of a fellow-countryman rather than my own.
Fortunately 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,’* I
succeeded in getting a fairly complete picture of the bodily
expressions of the impulse and the mental productions of
an early stage of childish sexual life. And I must remind
you that my friend, Dr. C. G. Jung, read you a few hours
ago in thisroom an observation on a still younger girl who
from the same cause as my patient—the birth of a little
child in the family—betrayed certainly almost the same
secret excitement, wish and complex-creation. Accord-
-ingly I am not without hope that you may feel friendly
toward this idea of infantile sexuality that was so strange
at first. I might also quote the remarkable example of the
Zurich psychiatrist, E. Bleuler, who said a few years 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.’® If it 1s tru¢

14 Analyse der Phobie eines 5-jährigen Knaben. Jahrb. f. Psy:
choanalyt. u. Psychopath. Forschungen, Vol. I, No. 1.

15 Bleuler, Sexuelle Abnormitäten der Kinder, Jahrbuch det
schweizer, Gesellschaft für Schulgesundheitspflege 1X, 1908.

i ee ee
Th +7 s; 53
S ” d ~% «

58 AN OUTLINE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS oe

‘that most men, medical observers and others, do not want
to know anything 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-analvsis, by an interpretation of your own childhood
memories.

Lay aside your doubts and let us evaluate the infantile
sexuality of the earliest years.1° 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 reproduction which it is later to serve. It
permits the child to gain different sorts of pleasure sen-
sations, 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-excita-
tion of certain particularly sensitive parts of the body;
besides the genitals are included the rectum and the open-
ing of the urinary canal, and also the skin and other sen-
sory surfaces. Since in this first phase of child sexual
life the satisfaction is found on the child’s own body and
has nothing to do with any other object, we call this phase
after a word coined by Havelock Ellis, that of “auto-
eroticism.” The parts of the body significant in giving
sexual pleasure we call “erogenous zones.” The thumb-
sucking (Ludeln) or passionate sucking (Wonnesaugen)
of very young children is a good example of such an auto-
erotic satisfaction of an erogenous zone. The first scien-
tific 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 exhaus-
tively their transformation into other and higher forms of

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

lh! F
’

‘2. ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT St

sexual gratification.'" Another sexual satisfaction of this
time of life is the excitation of the genitals by masturba-
tion, which has such a great significance for later life and,
in the case of many individuals, is never fully overconie.
Besides this and other auto-erotic manifestations we see
very early in the child the impulse-components of sexua!
pleasure, or, as we may say, of the libido, which presup-
poses a second person as its object. These impulses appear
in opposed pairs, as active and passive. The most impor-
tant representatives of this group are the pleasure in
inflicting pain (sadism) with its passive opposite (mas-
ochism) and active and passive exhibition-pleasure (Schau-
lust). 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 viewpoint 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 difference between the sexes plays,
however, in the child no very great role. One may at-
tribute to every child, without wronging 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 pleasure independently of every other, is later
correlated and organized 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 themselves to the overlordship of the
genital zone, so that the whole sexual life 1s 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-eroticism, so that now in the sex-
ual life all components of the sexual impulse are satisfied in

17 Jahrbuch f. Kinderheilkunde, 1879.

‚50 AN OUTLINE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS

the loved person. But not all the original impulse-com-
ponents 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, dis-
gust 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
coprophilism, that is, the pleasure in children connected
with the excrements; and, further, the tendencies attach-
ing 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 incompletely carried out. This holds for the
development of the sexual function, with its many com-
- plications. It is not smoothly completed in all individuals,
and may leave behind either abnormalities or disposition
to later diseasessby the way of later falling back or regres-
sion. It may happen that not all the partial impulses sub-
ordinate themselves to the rule of the genital zone. Such
an impulse which has remained disconnected 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-eroticism 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 dis-
turbances corresponds to the direct: inhibition of develop-

ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT 6]

ment of the sexual function, it includes the perversions
and the general infantilism of the sex life that are not sel-
dom 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-com-
ponents 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 articu-
lation of the sexual function. If the exercise of the nor-
mal 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 thar
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 understanding of perversions; of the
connection between perversion, neurosis, and normal sexual
life; and have no means of recognizing, In its true signifi-
cance, 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 psychoana-
lyst 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 expres-
sions of the sexual Jife. The primitive object-choice of

62 AN OUTLINE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS

the child, which is derived from his need of help, demands
pur further interest. 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 1s,
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. Asa rule, the father prefers the
daughter, the mother the son; the child reacts to this situa-
tion, since, as son, he wishes himself in the place of his
father, as daughter, in the place of the mother. The feel-
ings awakened in these relations between parents and chil-
dren, 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 pre-
pared to meet with it in a not less effectual way in the other
fields of mental life. The myth of King C£dipus, who
kills his father and wins his mother as a wife is only the
slightly altered presentation of the infantile wish, rejected
later by the opposing barriers of incest. Shakespeare’s
tale of Hamlet rests on the same basis of an incest com-
plex, 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 ques-
tion of where children 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 investi-
gation is awakened by the threat to his welfare through

Fe

17.51

ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT 63

the birth of another child in the family, in whom at first
he sees only a rival. Under the influence of the partial
impulses which are active in him he arrives at a number
of “infantile sexual theories,” as that the same male geni-
tals belong to both sexes, that children are conceived by
eating and born through the opening of the intestine, 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
condition 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 it are of determinative sig-
nificance 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 (Abldsung) 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 im-
paired. 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 repres-
sions, is lessened, great problems fall to the work of edu-.
cation, 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).