1910 THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 27

the psyche nothing trifling, nothing arbitrary and
lawless. . . .

Fourth Lecture. . . . Psycho-analytic 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, and necessitate
the assumption that to disturbances 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 labours, are
inclined to think that I overestimate the ætiological
share of the sexual factors. 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 factors,
without being able to supplant them. . . .

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 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 favourable in our civilized society to any demon-
stration of sex life. In truth no one can freely disclose

28 THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 1910

his erotic life to his neighbour. But when your
patients see that in your treatment they may dis-
regard 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 favoured 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. . . .

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 experi-
ence 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 experiences
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. . . .

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 . . . it is not at all true that the sexual impulse

1910 THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 29

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 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.! . .

Lay aside your doubts and let us evaluate the
infantile sexuality of the earliest years. 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 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 nothing 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 “ erotogenic zones”. The
thumb-sucking or passionate sucking of very young
children is a good example of such an auto-erotic
satisfaction of an erotogenic zone. The first scientific

1 See Three Contributions to the Theory of Sexuality.

30 THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 1910

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.!
Another sexual satisfaction 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 clearly 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, 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. 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 manifesta-
tions 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
råle. One may attribute 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 direc-
tions, so that by the close of puberty the definite

1 7b. Kinderheilkunde, 1879.

1910 THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 31

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 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 satisfied 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 resist-
ances. These guide the outflow into the so-called
normal channels, and make it impossible to revivify
the impulses which have undergone repression. . . .

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 complications. It is not smoothly
completed in all individuals, and may leave behind
either abnormalities or disposition to later diseases
by the way of later falling back or regression. 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

32 THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 1910

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 disturbances 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 per-
versions 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 un-
conscious. They have undergone a repression, but
in spite of this they maintain themselves in the un-
conscious. Psycho-analysis teaches us that over-
strong expression of the impulse in very early life
leads to a sort of fixation, 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

1910 THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 33

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
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 psycho-analyst 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. It first
attaches to all persons to whom he is accustomed, but
soon these give way in favour of his parents. The
relation of the child to his parents is, as both direct
observation of the child and later analytic investiga-
tion of adults agree, not at all free from elements of
sexual accessory-excitation. 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

34 THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 1910

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
Oedipus, 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 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 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 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 influence 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 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 con-
stitution 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

1910 THE ORIGIN OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS 35

investigation itself as well as the infant sex theories
created by it are of determinative 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 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. . . .

Do not think that with these explanations of the
sexual life and the sexual development of the child
we have too far departed from psycho-analysis and
the cure of neurotic disturbances. If you like, you
may regard the psycho-analytic treatment only as
a continued education for the overcoming of child-
hood-remnants.

Fifth Lecture. . . . With the discovery of infantile
sexuality and the tracing back of the neurotic
symptoms to erotic impulse-components we have
arrived at several unexpected formula for expressing
the nature and tendencies of neurotic disease. We
see that the individual falls ill when in consequence
of outer hindrances or inner lack of adaptability the