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THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE 
 SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 BY 
 
 PROF. SIGMUND FREUD, LL.D., 
 
 AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION 
 
 BY 
 
 A. A. BRILL, Ph.B., M.D., 
 
 CLINICAL ASSISTANT DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHIATRY AND NEUROLOGY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY ; 
 
 ASSISTANT IN MENTAL DISEASES, BELLEVUE HOSPITAL; ASSISTANT VISITING PHYSICIAN, 
 
 HOSPITAL FOR NERVOUS DISEASES 
 
 WITH INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES J. PUTNAM, M.D. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE JOURNAL OF NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE 
 
 PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 1910 
 
 V, 
 
NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE 
 
 MONOGRAPH SERIES 
 
 Edited by 
 Drs. SMITH ELY JELL1FFE and WM. A. WHITE 
 
 Numbers Issued 
 i. Outlines of Psychiatry. By Wm. A. White, M.D. 
 a. Studies in Paranoia. 
 
 By Drs. N. Gierlich and II. Friedman 
 
 3. The Psychology of Dementia Praecox. 
 
 By Dr. C. G. Jung. 
 
 4. Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses. 
 
 By Prof. Sigmund Freud. 
 
 5. Wassennann Reaction in Psychiatry. 
 
 By Dr. Felix Plaut. 
 
 6. Epidemic Poliomyelitis. New York Epidemic, 1907. 
 
 7. Three Contributions to Sexual Theory. 
 
 By Prof. Sigmund Freud. 
 
 Copyright, 1910, by 
 
 The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 
 
 Publishing Company, New York 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY 
 
 LAN-ASTER. PA. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The Sexual Aberrations i 
 
 II. The Infantile Sexuality 34 
 
 III. The Transformation of Puberty 59 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE SECOND 
 EDITION 
 
 Although the author is fully aware of the gaps and obscurities 
 contained in this small volume, he has, nevertheless, resisted a 
 temptation to add to it the results obtained from the investiga- 
 tions of the last five years, fearing that thus its unified and docu- 
 mentary character would be destroyed. He accordingly repro- 
 duces the original text with but slight modifications, contenting 
 himself with the addition of a few footnotes. For the rest, it is 
 his ardent wish that this book may speedily become antiquated — 
 to the end that the new material brought forward in it may be 
 universally accepted, while the shortcomings it displays may give 
 place to juster views. 
 
 Vienna, December, 1909. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO TRANSLATION 
 
 The somewhat famous " Three Essays " which Dr. Brill is 
 here bringing to the attention of an English-reading public, 
 occupy — brief as they are — an important position among the 
 achievements of their author, a great investigator and pioneer in 
 an important line. It is not claimed that the facts here gathered 
 are altogether new. The subject of the sexual instinct and its 
 aberrations has long been before the scientific world and the 
 names of many effective toilers in this vast field are known to 
 every student. When one passes beyond the strict domains of 
 science and considers what is reported of the sexual life in folk- 
 lore and art-lore and the history of primitive culture and in 
 romance, the sources of information are immense. Freud has 
 made considerable additions to this stock of knowledge, but he 
 has done also something of far greater consequence than this. 
 He has worked out, with incredible penetration, the part which 
 this instinct plays in every phase of human life and in the devel- 
 opment of human character, and has been able to establish on a 
 firm footing the remarkable thesis that psychoneurotic illnesses 
 never occur with a perfectly normal sexual life. Other sorts of 
 emotions contribute to the result, but some abnormality of the 
 sexual life is always present, as the cause of especially insistent 
 emotions and repressions. 
 
 The instincts with which every child is born furnish desires or 
 cravings which must be dealt with in some fashion. They may 
 be refined ("sublimated"), so far as is necessary and desirable, 
 into energies of other sorts — as happens readily with the play- 
 instinct — or they may remain as the source of perversions and 
 inversions, and of cravings of new sorts substituted for those 
 of the mor^e primitive kinds under the pressure of a conventional 
 / vii 
 
V1U INTRODUCTION TO TRANSLATION 
 
 civilization. The symptoms of the functional psychoneuroses 
 represent, after a fashion, one of these inadequate attempts to 
 find a substitute for the imperative cravings born of the sexual 
 instincts, and their form often depends, in part at least, on the 
 peculiarities of the sexual life in infancy and early childhood. 
 It is Freud's service to have investigated this inadequately chron- 
 icled period of existence with extraordinary acumen. In so doing 
 he made it plain that the " perversions " and " inversions " which 
 reappear later under such striking shapes, belong to the normal 
 sexual life of the young child and are seen, in veiled forms, in 
 almost every case of nervous illness. 
 
 It cannot too often be repeated that these discoveries represent 
 no fanciful deductions, but are the outcome of rigidly careful 
 observations which any one who will sufficiently prepare himself 
 can verify. Critics fret over the amount of " sexuality " that 
 Freud finds evidence of in the histories of his patients, and assume 
 that he puts it there. But such criticisms are evidences of mis- 
 understandings and proofs of ignorance. 
 
 Freud had learned that the amnesias of hypnosis and of hysteria 
 were not absolute but relative and that in covering the lost memo- 
 ries, much more, of unexpected sort, was often found. Others, 
 too, had gone as far as this, and stopped. But this investigator 
 determined that nothing but the absolute impossibility of going 
 further should make him cease from urging his patients into an 
 inexorable scrutiny of the unconscious regions of their memories 
 and thoughts, such as never had been made before. Every species 
 of forgetfulness, even the forgetfulness of childhood's years, was 
 made to yield its hidden stores of knowledge ; dreams, even though 
 apparently absurd, were found to be interpreters of a varied class 
 of thoughts, active, although repressed as out of harmony with 
 the selected life of consciousness; layer after layer, new sets of 
 motives underlying motives were laid bare, and each patient's 
 interest was strongly enlisted in the task of learning to know 
 himself in order more truly and wisely to " sublimate " himself. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO TRANSLATION IX 
 
 Gradually other workers joined patiently in this laborious under- 
 taking, which now stands, for those who have taken pains to com- 
 prehend it, as by far the most important movement in psycho- 
 pathology. 
 
 It must, however, be recognized that these essays, of which Dr. 
 Brill has given a translation that cannot but be timely, concerns 
 a subject which is not only important but unpopular. Few physi- 
 cians read the works of v. Krafft-Ebing, Magnus Hirschfeld, 
 Moll, and others of like sort. The remarkable volumes of Have- 
 lock Ellis were refused publication in his native England. The 
 sentiments which inspired this hostile attitude towards the study 
 of the sexual life are still active, though growing steadily less 
 common. One may easily believe that if the facts which Freud's 
 truth-seeking researches forced him to recognize and to publish 
 had not been of an unpopular sort, his rich and abundant contri- 
 butions to observational psychology, to the significance of dreams, 
 to the etiology and therapeutics of the psychoneuroses, to the 
 interpretation of mythology, would have won for him, by uni- 
 versal acclaim, the same recognition among all physicians that 
 he has received from a rapidly increasing band of followers and 
 colleagues. 
 
 May Dr. Brill's translation help toward this end. 
 
 There are two further points on which some comments should 
 be made. The first is this, that those who conscientiously desire 
 to learn all that they can from Freud's remarkable contributions 
 should not be content to read any one of them alone. His various 
 publications, such as "The Selected Papers on Hysteria and 
 Other Psychoneuroses," 1 " The Interpretation of Dreams," " The 
 Psychopathology of Everyday Life," "Wit and its Relation to 
 the Unconscious," 2 the analysis of the case of the little boy 
 
 1 Translated by A. A. Brill, Nervous and Mental Disease, Monograph 
 Series, No. 4. 
 
 2 Translations of these books in preparation. 
 
X INTRODUCTION TO TRANSLATION 
 
 called Hans, the study of Leonardo da Vinci, and the various 
 short essays in the two Sammlungen kleiner Schriften, not only 
 all hang together, but supplement each other to a remarkable 
 extent. Unless a course of study such as this is undertaken many 
 critics may think various statements and inferences in this volume 
 to be far fetched or find them too obscure for comprehension. 
 
 The other point is the following: One frequently hears the 
 psychoanalytic method referred to as if it was customary for 
 those practicing it to exploit the sexual experiences of their 
 patients and nothing more, and the insistence on the details of 
 the sexual life, presented in this book, is likely to emphasize that 
 notion. But the fact is, as every thoughtful inquirer is aware, 
 that the whole progress of civilization, whether in the individual 
 or the race, consists largely in a "sublimation" of infantile in- 
 stincts, and especially certain portions of the sexual instinct, to 
 other ends than those which they seemed designed to serve. Art 
 and poetry are fed on this fuel and the evolution of character 
 and mental force is largely of the same origin. All the forms 
 which this sublimation, or the abortive attempts at sublimation, 
 may take in any given case, should come out in the course of a 
 thorough psychoanalysis. It is not the sexual life alone, but every 
 interest and every motive, that must be inquired into by the physi- 
 cian who is seeking to obtain all the data about the patient, neces- 
 sary for his reeducation and his cure. But all the thoughts and 
 emotions and desires and motives which appear in the man or 
 woman of adult years were once crudely represented in the 
 obscure instincts of the infant, and among these instincts those 
 which were concerned directly or indirectly with the sexual emo- 
 tions, in a wide sense, are certain to be found in every case to 
 have been the most important for the end-result. 
 
 James J. Putnam. 
 Boston, August 23, 1910. 
 
THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS 1 
 
 The fact of sexual need in man and animal is expressed in 
 biology by the assumption of a " sexual impulse." This impulse 
 is made analogous to the impulse of taking nourishment, and to 
 hunger. The sexual expression corresponding to hunger not 
 being found colloquially, science uses the expression " libido." 2 
 
 Popular conception assumes very different ideas concerning 
 the nature and qualities of this sexual impulse. It is supposed 
 to be absent during childhood and to commence about the time 
 of and in connection with the maturing process of puberty; it is 
 supposed that it manifests itself in irresistible attractions exerted 
 by one sex upon the other, and that its aim is sexual union or at 
 least such actions as would lead to union. 
 
 But we have every reason to see in these assumptions a very 
 untrustworthy picture of reality. On closer examination they 
 are found to abound in errors, inaccuracies and hasty conclusions. 
 
 If we introduce two terms and call the person from whom the 
 sexual attraction emanates the sexual object, and the action 
 towards which the impulse strives the sexual aim, then the scien- 
 tifically examined experience shows us many deviations in refer- 
 
 1 The facts contained in the first " Contribution " have been gathered 
 from the familiar publications of Krafft-Ebing, Moll, Moebius, Havelock 
 Ellis, Schrenk-Notzing, Lowenfeld, Eulenberg, J. Bloch, and M. Hirsch- 
 feld, and from the later works published in the "Jahrbuch fur sexuelle 
 Zwischenstufen." As these publications also mention the other literature 
 bearing on this subject I may forbear giving detailed references. 
 
 The conclusions reached through the investigation of sexual inverts 
 are all based on the reports of J. Sadger and on my own experience. 
 
 ' For general use the word " libido " is best translated by " craving." 
 (Prof. James J. Putnam, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. IV, 6.) 
 
 i 
 
2 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 ence to both sexual object and sexual aim, the relations of which 
 to the accepted standard require thorough investigation. 
 
 i. Deviation in Reference to the Sexual Object 
 The popular theory of the sexual impulse corresponds closely 
 to the poetic fable of dividing the person into two halves — man 
 and woman — who strive to become reunited through love. It is 
 therefore very surprising to hear that there are men for whom 
 the sexual object is not woman but man, and that there are women 
 for whom it is not man but woman. Such persons are called 
 contrary sexuals, or better, inverts ; that is, these form the actuali- 
 ties of inversion. They exist in very considerable numbers, 
 although their definite ascertainment is subject to difficulties. 8 
 
 A. Inversion 
 The Behavior of Inverts. — The above-mentioned persons be- 
 have in many ways quite differently. 
 
 (a) They are absolutely inverted; i. e., their sexual object must 
 be always of the same sex, while the opposite sex can never be to 
 them an object of sexual longing, but leaves them indifferent or 
 may even evoke sexual repugnance. As men they are unable, on 
 account of this repugnance, to perform the normal sexual act or 
 miss all pleasure in its performance. 
 
 (b) They are amphigenously inverted (psychosexually herma- 
 phroditic) ; *. e., their sexual object may belong indifferently to 
 either the same or to the other sex. The inversion lacks the char- 
 acter of exclusiveness. 
 
 (c) They are occasionally inverted; i. e., under certain external 
 conditions, chief among which are the inaccessibility of the normal 
 sexual object and imitation, they are able to take as the sexual 
 object a person of the same sex and thus find sexual gratification. 
 
 * For the difficulties entailed in the attempt to ascertain the proportional 
 number of inverts compare the work of M. Hirschfeld in the Jahrbuch 
 fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen, 1904. , 
 
THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS 3 
 
 The inverted also manifest a manifold behavior in their judg- 
 ment about the peculiarities of their sexual impulse. Some take 
 the inversion as a matter of course, just as the normal looking 
 at his libido does, firmly demanding the same rights as the nor- 
 mal. Others, however, strive against the fact of their inversion 
 and perceive in it a morbid compulsion.* 
 
 Other variations concern the relations of time. The charac- 
 teristics of the inversion in any individual may date back as far 
 as his memory goes, or they may become manifest to him at a 
 definite period before or after puberty. 5 The character is either 
 retained throughout life, or it occasionally recedes or represents 
 an episode on the road to normal development. A periodical 
 fluctuation between the normal and the inverted sexual object 
 has also been observed. Of special interest are those cases in 
 which the libido changes, taking on the character of inversion 
 after a painful experience with the normal sexual object. 
 
 These different categories of variation generally exist indepen- 
 dently of one another. In the most extreme cases it can regu- 
 larly be assumed that the inversion has existed at all times and 
 that the person feels contented with his peculiar state. 
 
 Many authors will hesitate to gather into a unit all the cases 
 enumerated here and will prefer to emphasize the exceptional 
 rather than the customary groups, a view which corresponds with 
 their preferred judgment of inversions. But no matter what 
 divisions may be set up, it cannot be overlooked that all transi- 
 
 4 Such a striving against the compulsion to inversion favors cures by- 
 suggestion or psychoanalysis. 
 
 "Many have justly emphasized the fact that the autobiographic state- 
 ments of inverts, as to the time of the appearance of their tendency to in- 
 version, are untrustworthy as they may have repressed from memory any 
 evidences of heterosexual feelings. 
 
 Psychoanalysis has confirmed this suspicion in all cases of inversion 
 accessible, and has decidedly changed their anamnesis by filling up the 
 infantile amnesias. 
 
4 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 tions are abundantly met with, so that as it were, the formation 
 of series forcibly obtrudes itself. 
 
 Conception of Inversion. — The first attention bestowed upon 
 inversion gave rise to the conception that it was a congenital 
 sign of nervous degeneration. This harmonized with the fact 
 that doctors first met it among the nervous, or among persons 
 giving such an impression. There are two elements which should 
 be considered independently in this conception : the congeniality, 
 and the degeneration. 
 
 Degeneration. — This term degeneration is open to the objec- 
 tions which may be urged against the promiscuous use of this 
 word in general. It has in fact become customary to designate 
 all morbid manifestations not of traumatic or infectious origin 
 as degenerative. Indeed, Magnan's classification of degenerates 
 makes it conceivable that the highest general configuration of 
 nervous accomplishment need not exclude the application of the 
 concept of degeneration. Under the circumstances it is a ques- 
 tion what use and what new content the meaning of "degenera- 
 tion" still possesses. It would seem more appropriate not to 
 speak of degeneration: (i) Where there are not many marked 
 deviations from the normal; (2) where the capabilities and the 
 capacity to exist do not in general appear markedly impaired.' 
 
 That the inverted are not degenerates in this qualified sense 
 can be seen from the following facts : 
 
 1. The inversion is found among persons who otherwise show 
 no marked deviation from the normal. 
 
 2. It is found also among persons whose capabilities are not 
 
 'With what reserve the diagnosis of degeneration should be made and 
 what slight practical significance can be attributed to it can be gathered 
 from the discussions of Moebius (Ueber Entartung; Grenzfragen des 
 Nerven- und Seelenlebens, No. Ill, 1900). He says: "If we review the 
 wide sphere of degeneration upon which we have here turned some 
 light we can conclude without further ado that it is really of little value 
 to diagnose degeneration." 
 
THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS 
 
 disturbed, who on the contrary are distinguished by especially 
 high intellectual development and ethical culture. 7 
 
 3. If one disregards the patients of one's own practice and 
 strives to comprehend a wider field of experience, he will in two 
 directions encounter facts which will prevent him from assuming 
 inversions as a degenerative sign. 
 
 (a) It must be considered that inversion was a frequent mani- 
 festation among the ancient nations at the height of their culture. 
 It was an institution endowed with important functions, (fe) It 
 is found to be unusually prevalent among savages and primitive 
 races, whereas the term degeneration is generally limited to higher 
 civilization (I. Bloch). Even among the most civilized nations 
 of Europe, climate and race have a most powerful influence on 
 the distribution of, and attitude toward, inversion. 8 
 
 Innateness. — Only for the first and most extreme class of 
 inverts, as can be imagined, has innateness been claimed, and this 
 from their own assurance that at no time in their life has their 
 sexual impulse followed a different course. The fact of the exist- 
 ence of two other classes, especially of the third, speaks against 
 the assumption of its being congenital. Hence, the propensity of 
 those holding this view to separate the group of absolute inverts 
 from the others results in the abandonment of the general con- 
 ception of inversion. Accordingly in a number of cases the 
 inversion would be of a congenital character, while in others it 
 might originate from other causes. 
 
 7 We must agree with the spokesman of " Uranism " that some of the 
 most prominent men known have been inverts and perhaps absolute 
 inverts. 
 
 8 In the conception of inversion the pathological features have been 
 separated from the anthropological. For this credit is due to J. Bloch 
 (Beitrage zur Atiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, 2 Teile, 1902—3) who 
 has also brought into prominence the existence of inversion in the old 
 civilized nations. 
 
6 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 ,In contradistinction to this conception is that which assumes 
 inversion to be an acquired character of the sexual impulse. It 
 is based on the following facts, (i) In many inverts (even abso- 
 lute ones) an early effective sexual impression can be demon- 
 strated, as a result of which the homosexual inclination devel- 
 oped. (2) In many others outer favoring and inhibiting influ- 
 ences of life can be demonstrated, which in earlier or later life 
 led to a fixation of the inversion — among which are exclusive 
 relations with the same sex, companionship in war, detention in 
 prison, dangers of hetero-sexual intercourse, celibacy, sexual 
 weakness, etc. (3) Hypnotic suggestion may remove the inver- 
 sion, which would be surprising in that of a congenital character. 
 
 In view of all this, the existence of congenital inversion can 
 certainly be questioned. The objection may be made to it that 
 a more accurate examination of those claimed to be congenitally 
 inverted will probably show a determination of the direction of 
 the libido by a definite experience of early childhood, which has 
 not, indeed, been retained in the conscious memory of the person, 
 but which can be brought back to memory by proper influences 
 (Havelock Ellis). According to that author inversion can be 
 designated only as a frequent variation of the sexual desire which 
 may be determined by a number of external circumstances of life. 
 
 The apparent certainty thus reached is, however, overthrown 
 by the retort that manifestly there are many persons who have 
 experienced even in their early youth those very sexual influences, 
 such as seduction, mutual onanism, without becoming inverts, or 
 without constantly remaining so. Hence, one is forced to assume 
 that the alternative between congenital and acquired inversion is 
 either incomplete or does not cover the circumstances present in 
 inversions. 
 
 Explanation of Inversion. — The nature of inversion is ex- 
 plained by neither the assumption that it is congenital or that it 
 is acquired. In the first case, we need to be told what there is 
 
THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS 7 
 
 in it of the congenital, unless we are satisfied with the roughest 
 explanation, namely, that a person brings along a congenital 
 sexual desire connected with a definite sexual object. In the 
 second case it is a question whether the manifold accidental influ- 
 ences suffice to explain the acquisition unless there is something 
 in the individual to meet them half way. The negation of this 
 last factor is inadmissible according to our former conclusions. 
 
 The Relation of Bisexuality. — Since the time of Frank Lyds- 
 ton, Kiernan, and Chevalier, a new stream of thought has been 
 introduced for the explanation of the possibility of sexual inver- 
 sion. This contains a new contradiction to the popular belief 
 which assumes that a human being is either a man or a woman. 
 Science shows cases in which the sexual characteristic appears 
 blurred and thus the sexual distinction is made difficult, espe- 
 cially on an anatomical basis. The genitals of such persons unite 
 the male and female characteristics (hermaphroditism). In rare 
 cases both parts of the sexual apparatus are well developed (true 
 hermaphroditism), but usually both are stunted. 9 
 
 The importance of these abnormalities lies in the fact that they 
 unexpectedly facilitate the understanding of the normal forma- 
 tion. A certain degree of anatomical hermaphroditism really 
 belongs to the normal. In no normally formed male or female 
 are traces of the apparatus of the other sex lacking; these either 
 continue functionless as rudimentary organs, or they are trans- 
 formed for the purpose of assuming other functions. 
 
 The conception which we gather from this long known anatom- 
 ical fact is the original predisposition to bisexuality, which in the 
 course of development has changed to monosexuality, leaving 
 slight remnants of the stunted sex. 
 
 'Compare the last detailed discussion of somatic hermaphroditism 
 (Taruffi, Hermaphroditismus und Zeugungunfahigkeit, German edit, by 
 R. Teuscher, 1903), and the works of Neugebauer in many volumes of 
 the Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen. 
 
8 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 It was natural to transfer this conception to the psychic sphere 
 and to conceive the inversion in its aberrations as an expression 
 of psychic hermaphroditism. In order to bring the question to a 
 decision, it was only necessary to have one other circumstance, 
 viz., a regular concurrence of the inversion with the psychic and 
 somatic signs of hermaphroditism. 
 
 But the expectation thus formed was not realized." The rela- 
 tions between the assumed psychical and the demonstrable ana- 
 tomical androgyny should never be conceived as being so close. 
 There is frequently found in the inverted a diminution of the 
 sexual impulse (H. Ellis) and a slight anatomical stunting of the 
 organs. This, however, is found frequently but by no means 
 regularly or preponderately. Thus we must recognize that inver- 
 sion and somatic hermaphroditism are totally independent of each 
 other. 
 
 Great value has also been placed on the so-called secondary and 
 tertiary sex characteristics, and their aggregate occurrence in the 
 inverted has been emphasized (H. Ellis). There is much truth 
 in this but it should not be forgotten that the secondary and ter- 
 tiary sex characteristics very frequently manifest themselves in 
 the other sex, thus indicating androgyny without, however, in- 
 volving changes in the sexual object in the sense of an inversion. 
 
 Psychic hermaphroditism would gain in substantiality if par-, 
 allel with the inversion of the sexual object there should be at 
 least a change in the other psychic qualities, such as in the im- 
 pulses and distinguishing traits characteristic of the other sex. 
 But such inversion of character can be expected with some regu- 
 larity only in inverted women; in men the most perfect psychic 
 manliness may be united with the inversion. If one firmly 
 adheres to the hypothesis of a psychic hermaphroditism, one must 
 add that in certain spheres its manifestations allow the recogni- 
 tion of only a very slight contrary determination. The same also 
 holds true in the somatic androgyny. According to Halban, the 
 
THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS 9 
 
 appearance of individual stunted organs and secondary sex char- 
 acter are quite independent of each other. 10 
 
 A spokesman of the masculine inverts stated the bisexual 
 theory in its crudest form in the following words : " It is a female 
 brain in a male body." But we do not know the characteristics 
 of a " female brain." The substitution of the anatomical for the 
 psychological is as frivolous as it is unjustified. The attempted 
 explanation Dy v. Krafft-Ebing seems to be more precisely formu- 
 lated than that of Ulrich but does not essentially differ from it. 
 v. Krafft-Ebing thinks that the bisexual predisposition gives to 
 the individual male and female brain cells as well as somatic 
 sexual organs. These centers develop first towards puberty 
 mostly under the influence of the independent sex glands. We 
 can, however, say the same of the male and female " centers " as 
 of the male and female brains; and moreover, we do not even 
 know whether we can assume for the sexual functions separate 
 brain locations (" centers ") such as we may assume for language. 
 
 After this discussion, two thoughts, as it were, remain; first, 
 that a bisexual predisposition is to be presumed for the inversion 
 also, only we do not know wherein it exists beyond the anatomical 
 formations; and, second, that we are dealing with disturbances 
 which are experienced by the sexual impulse during its devel- 
 opment. 11 
 
 M J. Halban, " Die Entstehung der Geschlechts Charaktere," Arch, fiir 
 Gynakologie, Bd. 70, 1903. See also there the literature on the subject. 
 
 11 According to a report in Vol. 6 of the Jahrbuch f . sexuelle Zwischen- 
 stufen, E. Gley is supposed to have been the first to mention bisexuality as 
 an explanation of inversion. He published a paper (Les Aberrations de 
 l'instinct Sexuel) in the Revue Philosophique as early as January, 1884. 
 It is moreover noteworthy that the majority of authors who trace the 
 inversion to bisexuality assume this factor not only for the inverts but 
 also for those who have developed, normally, and justly interpret the 
 inversion as a result of a disturbance in development. Among these 
 authors are Chevalier (Inversion Sexuelle, 1893), and v. Krafft-Ebing 
 (" Zur Erklarung der kontraren Sexualempfindung," Jahrbiicher f. Psy- 
 
IO THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 The Sexual Object of Inverts. — The theory of psychic herma- 
 phroditism presupposed that the sexual object of the inverted is 
 the reverse of the normal. The inverted man, like the woman, 
 "succumbs to the charms emanating from manly qualities of body 
 and mind; he feels himself like a woman and seeks a man. 
 
 But however true this may be for a great number of inverts it 
 by no means indicates the general character of inversion. There 
 is no doubt that a great part of the male inverted have retained 
 the psychic character of virility, that proportionately they show 
 but little the secondary characters of the other sex, and that they 
 really look for real feminine psychic features in their sexual 
 object. If that were not so it would be incomprehensible why 
 masculine prostitution, in offering itself to inverts, copies in all its 
 exterior, to-day as in antiquity, the dress and attitudes of woman. 
 This imitation would otherwise be an insult to the ideal of the 
 inverts. Among the Greeks, where the most manly men were 
 found among inverts, it is quite obvious that it was not the mas- 
 culine character of the boy which kindled the love of man, but it 
 was his physical resemblance to woman as well as his feminine 
 psychic qualities, such as shyness, demureness, and the need of 
 
 chiatrie u. Nervenheilkunde, XII) who states that there are a number of 
 observations " from which at least the virtual and continued existence of 
 this second center (of the underlying sex) results." A Dr. Arduin (Die 
 Frauenfrage und die sexuellen Zwischenstufen, 2d vol. of the Jahrbuch f. 
 sexuelle Zwischenstufen, 1900) states that " in every man there exist 
 male and female elements." See also the same Jahrbuch, Bd. I, 1899 
 ("Die objektive Diagnose der Homosexualitat " by M. Hirschfeld, pp. 
 8-9). In the determination of sex, as far as heterosexual persons are 
 concerned some are disproportionately more strongly developed than 
 others. G. Herman is firm in his belief " that in every woman there are 
 male, and in every man there are female germs and qualities " (Genesis, 
 das Gesetz der Zeugung, 9 Bd., Libido und Manie, 1903). As recently as 
 1906 has W. Fliess (Der Ablauf des Lebens) claimed ownership of the 
 idea of bisexuality (in the sense of double sex). 
 
THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS II 
 
 instruction and help. As soon as the boy himself became a man 
 he ceased to be a sexual object for men and in turn became a 
 lover of boys. The sexual object in this case as in many others 
 is therefore not of the like sex, but it unites both sex characters, 
 a compromise between the impulses striving for the man and for 
 the woman, but firmly conditioned by the masculinity of body 
 (the genitals). 12 
 
 The conditions in the woman are more definite ; here the active 
 inverts, with special frequency, show the somatic and psychic 
 characters of man and desire femininity in their sexual object; 
 though even here greater variation will be found on more inti- 
 mate investigation. 
 
 The Sexual Aim of Inverts. — The important fact to bear in 
 mind is that no uniformity of the sexual aim can be attributed 
 
 "Although psychoanalysis has not yet given us a full explanation for 
 the origin of inversion, it has revealed the psychic mechanism of its 
 genesis and has essentially enriched the problems in question. In all the 
 cases examined we have ascertained that the later inverts go through in 
 their childhood a phase of very intense but short-lived fixation on the 
 woman (usually on the mother) and after overcoming it they identify 
 themselves with the woman and take themselves as the sexual object; that 
 is, following narcissism they look for young men resembling themselves 
 in person who .shall love them as their mother has loved them. We 
 have, moreover, frequently found that alleged inverts are by no means. 
 indifferent to the charms of women, but the excitation evoked by the 
 woman is always transferred to a male object. They thus repeat through 
 life the mechanism which gave origin to their inversion. Their obsessive 
 striving for the man proves to be determined by their restless flight from 
 the woman. It must be remembered, however, that until now only one 
 type of inversion has been subjected to psychoanalysis, viz., that of per- 
 sons with a general stunted sexual activity, the remnant of which mani- 
 fested itself as inversion. The problem of inversion is very complex and 
 embraces many diverse types of sexual activity and development. Na- 
 tionally it should be strictly distinguished whether the inversion reverses, 
 the sex character of the object or of the subject. 
 
12 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 to inversion. Intercourse per anurrf in men by no means goes 
 with inversion; masturbation is just as frequently the exclusive 
 aim; and the limitation of the sexual aim to mere effusion of 
 feelings is here even more frequent than in hetero-sexual love. 
 In women, too, the sexual aims of the inverted are manifold, 
 among which contact with the mucous membrane of the mouth 
 seems to be preferred- 
 
 Conclusion. — Though from the material on hand we are by no 
 means in a position satisfactorily to explain the origin of inver- 
 sion, we can say that through this investigation we have obtained 
 an insight which can become of greater significance to us than 
 the solution of the above problem. Our attention is called to the 
 fact that we have assumed a too close connection between the 
 sexual impulse and the sexual object. The experience gained 
 from the so called abnormal cases teaches us that there exists 
 between the sexual impulse and the sexual object a connection 
 which we are in danger of overlooking in the uniformity of 
 normal states where the impulse seems to bring with it the object. 
 We are thus instructed to fix our attention upon this connection 
 between the impulse and the object. The sexual impulse is prob- 
 ably entirely independent of its object and does not depend on the 
 stimuli of the same for its origin. 
 
 B. The' Sexually Immature and Animals as Sexual Objects 
 
 Whereas those sexual inverts whose sexual object does not 
 belong to the normally adapted sex appear to the observer as a 
 collective number of perhaps otherwise normal individuals, the 
 persons who choose for their sexual object the sexually immature 
 (children) are apparently from the first sporadic aberrations. 
 Only exceptionally are children the exclusive sexual objects. 
 They are mostly drawn into this role by a faint-hearted and impo- 
 tent individual who makes use of such substitutes, or when an 
 
THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS I 3 
 
 impulsive urgent desire cannot at the time secure the proper 
 object. Still it throws some light on the nature of the sexual 
 impulse, that it should suffer such great variation and deprecia- 
 tion of its object, a thing which hunger, adhering more energet- 
 ically to its object, would allow only in the most extreme cases. 
 The same may be said of sexual relations with animals — a thing 
 not at all rare among farmers — where the sexual attraction goes 
 beyond the limits of the species. 
 
 For esthetic reasons one would fain attribute this and other 
 excessive aberrations of the sexual desire to the insane, but this 
 cannot be done. Experience teaches that among the latter no 
 disturbances of the sexual impulse can be found other than those 
 observed among the sane, or among whole races and classes. 
 Thus we find with gruesome frequency sexual abuse of children 
 by teachers and servants merely because they have the best oppor- 
 tunities for it. The insane present the aforesaid aberration only 
 in a somewhat intensified form ; or what is of special significance 
 is the fact that the aberration becomes exclusive and takes the 
 place of the normal sexual gratification. 
 
 This very remarkable relation of sexual variations ranging 
 from the normal to the insane gives material for reflection. It 
 seems to me that the explanatory fact would show that the im- 
 pulses of the sexual life belong to those which even normally are 
 most poorly controlled by the higher psychic activities. He who 
 is in any way psychically abnormal, be it in social or ethical 
 conditions, is, according to my experience, regularly so in his 
 sexual life. But many are abnormal in their sexual life who in 
 every other respect correspond to the average; they have fol- 
 lowed the human cultural development but sexuality remains as 
 their weak point. 
 
 As a general result of these discussions we come to see that, 
 under numerous conditions and among a surprising number of 
 individuals, the nature and value of the sexual object steps into 
 
14 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 the background. There is something else in the sexual impulse 
 which is the essential and constant. 18 
 
 2. Deviation in Reference to the Sexual Aim 
 The union of the genitals in the characteristic act of copulation 
 is taken as the normal sexual aim. It serves to loosen the sexual 
 tension and temporarily to quench the sexual desire (gratification 
 analogous to satiation of hunger). Yet even in the most normal 
 sexual process those additions are distinguishable, the develop- 
 ment of which leads to the aberrations described as perversions. 
 Thus certain intermediary relations to the sexual object connected 
 with copulation, such as touching and looking, are recognized as 
 preliminary to the sexual aim. These activities are on the one 
 hand themselves connected with pleasure and on the other hand 
 they enhance the excitement which persists until the definite 
 sexual aim is reached. One definite kind of contiguity, consisting 
 of mutual approximation of the mucous membranes of the lips 
 in the form of a kiss, has among the most civilized nations received 
 a sexual value, though the parts of the body concerned do not 
 belong to the sexual apparatus but form the entrance to the diges- 
 tive tract. This therefore supplies the factors which allow us 
 to bring the perversions into relation with the normal sexual life, 
 and which are available also for their classification. The perver- 
 sions are either (a) anatomical transgressions of the bodily 
 regions destined for the sexual union, or (b) a lingering At the 
 intermediary relations to the sexual object which should normally 
 be rapidly passed on the way to the definite sexual aim. ; 
 
 13 The most pronounced difference between the sexual life (Liebesleben) 
 of antiquity and ours lies in the fact that the ancients placed the emphasis 
 on the impulse itself, while we put it on its object. The ancients extolled 
 the impulse and were ready to ennoble through it even an inferior object, 
 while we disparage the activity of the impulse as such and only counten- 
 ance it on account of the merits of the object. 
 
THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS 15 
 
 (a) Anatomical Transgression 
 
 Overestimation of the Sexual Object. — The psychic estima- 
 tion in which the sexual object as a wish-aim of the sexual impulse 
 participates, is only in the rarest cases , limited to the genitals ; 
 generally it embraces the whole body and tends to include all 
 sensations emanating from the sexual object. The same over- 
 estimation spreads over the psychic sphere and manifests itself as 
 a logical blinding (diminished judgment) in the face of the psy- 
 chic attainments and perfections of the sexual object, as well as a 
 blind obedience to the judgments issuing from the latter. The 
 full faith of love thus becomes an important, if not the most 
 primordial source of authority. 1 * 
 
 It is this sexual over- valuation, which is at such variance with 
 the limitation of the sexual aim to the union of the genitals only, 
 that assists other parts of the body to participate as sexual aims. 
 In the development of this most manifold anatomical over- 
 estimation there is an unmistakable desire towards variation, a 
 thing denominated by Hoche as "excitement-hunger" (Reiz- 
 hunger). 15 
 
 Sexual Utilization of the Mucous Membrane of the Lips and 
 Mouth. — The significance of the factor of sexual over-estimation 
 
 14 1 must mention here that the blind obedience evinced by the hypno- 
 tized subject to the hypnotist causes me to think that the nature of hyp- 
 nosis is to be found in the unconscious fixation of the libido on the person 
 of the hypnotiser (by means of the masochistic component of the sexual 
 impulse). 
 
 Ferenczi connects this character of suggestibility with the " parent com- 
 plex" (Jahrbuch fur Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische For- 
 schungen, I, 1909). 
 
 "Further investigations lead to the conclusion that I. Bloch has over- 
 estimated the factor of excitement-hunger (Reizhunger). The various 
 roads upon which the libido moves behave to each other from the very 
 beginning like communicating pipes; the factor of collateral streaming 
 must also be considered. 
 
1 6 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 can be best studied in the man, in whom alone the sexual life is 
 accessible to investigation, whereas in the woman it is veiled in 
 impenetrable darkness, partly in consequence of cultural stunting 
 and partly on account of the conventional reticence and dishon- 
 esty of women. 
 
 The employment of the mouth as a sexual organ is considered 
 as a perversion if the lips (tongue) of the one are brought into 
 contact with the genitals of the other, but not when the mucous 
 membrane of the lips of both touch each other. In the latter 
 exception we find the connection with the normal. He who 
 abhors the former as perversions, though these since antiquity 
 have been common practices among mankind, yields to a distinct 
 feeling of loathing which protects him from adopting such sexual 
 aims. The limit of such loathing is frequently purely conven- 
 tional; he who kisses fervently the lips of a pretty girl will per- 
 haps be able to use her tooth brush only with a sense of loathing, 
 though there is no reason to assume that his own oral cavity for 
 which he entertains no loathing is cleaner than that of the girl. 
 Our attention is here called to the factor of loathing which stands 
 in the way of the libidinous over-estimation of the sexual aim, 
 but which may in turn be vanquished by the libido. In the loath- 
 ing we may observe one of the forces which have brought about 
 the limitations of the sexual aim. As a rule these forces halt at 
 the genitals; there is, however, no doubt that even the genitals 
 of the other sex themselves may be an object of loathing. Such 
 behavior is characteristic of all hysterics, especially women. The 
 power of the sexual impulse by preference occupies itself with ' 
 the overcoming of this loathing (see below). 
 
 Sexual Utilization of the Anal Opening.— It is even more 
 obvious than in the former case that it is the loathing which 
 stamps as a perversion the use of the anus as a sexual aim. But 
 it should not be interpreted as espousing a cause when I observe 
 that the basis of this loathing— namely, that this part of the body 
 
THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS I? 
 
 serves for the excretion and comes in contact with the loathsome 
 excrement — i#not more plausible than the basis which hysterical 
 girls have for the disgust which they entertain for the male genital 
 because it serves for urination. 
 
 The sexual role of the mucous membrane of the anus is by no 
 means limited to intercourse between men; its preference has 
 nothing characteristic of the inverted feeling. On the contrary, 
 it seems that the pedicatio of the man owes its role to the analogy 
 with the act in the woman, whereas among inverts it is mutual 
 masturbation which is the most common sexual aim. 
 
 The Significance of Other Parts of the Body. — Sexual in- 
 fringement on the other parts of the body, in all its variations, 
 offers nothing new; it adds nothing to our knowledge of the 
 sexual impulse which herein only announces its intention to 
 occupy the sexual object in every way. Besides the sexual over- 
 valuation, a second factor may be mentioned among the anatom- 
 ical transgressions which is generally unknown. Certain parts 
 of the body, like the mucous membrane of the mouth and anus, 
 which repeatedly appear in such practices, lay claim as it were 
 to be considered and treated as genitals. We shall hear how this 
 claim is justified by the development of the sexual impulse, and 
 how it is fulfilled in the symptomatology of certain morbid 
 conditions. 
 
 Unfit Substitutes for the Sexual Object. Fetichism. — We 
 are especially impressed by those cases in which for the normal 
 sexual object is substituted another which is related to it but 
 which is totally unfit for the normal sexual aim. According to 
 the scheme of the introduction we should have done better to 
 mention this most interesting group of aberrations of the sexual 
 impulse among the deviations in reference to the sexual object, 
 but we have deferred mention of these until we became acquainted 
 with the factor of sexual over-estimation, upon which these 
 
1 8 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 manifestations, connected with the relinquishing of the sexual 
 aim, depend. 
 
 The substitution for the sexual object is in general a part of 
 the body but little adapted for sexual purposes, such as the foot, 
 or hair, or an inanimate object which is in demonstrable relation 
 with the sexual person, and mostly with the sexuality of the same 
 (fragments of clothing, white underwear). This substitution is 
 not unjustly compared with the fetich in which the savage sees 
 the embodiment of his god. 
 
 The transition to the cases of fetichism, with a renunciation of 
 the normal sexual aim or with a perverted sexual aim, is formed 
 by cases in which a fetichistic determination is demanded in the 
 sexual object if the sexual aim is to be attained (definite color of 
 hair, clothing, even physical blemishes). No other variation of 
 the sexual impulse verging on the pathological is so clear to us in 
 every respect as this one, in spite of the peculiarity occasioned by 
 its manifestations. A certain diminution in the striving for the 
 normal sexual aim may be presupposed in all these cases (execu- 
 tive weakness of the sexual apparatus). The connection with 
 the normal is occasioned by the psychologically necessary over- 
 estimation of the sexual object, which inevitably encroaches upon 
 everything associatively related to it (sexual object). A certain 
 degree of such fetichism therefore regularly belongs to the nor- 
 mal, especially during those stages of wooing when the normal 
 sexual aim seems inaccessible or its realization deferred. 
 
 " Get me a handkerchief from her bosom — a garter of my love." 
 
 — Faust. 
 
 The case becomes pathological only when the striving for the 
 fetich fixes itself beyond such determinations and takes the place 
 of the normal sexual aim ; or again, when the fetich disengages 
 itself from the person concerned and itself becomes a sexual 
 object. These are the general determinations for the transition 
 of mere variations of the sexual impulse into pathological 
 aberrations. 
 
THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS 1 9 
 
 The persistent influence of a sexual impress mostly received in 
 early childhood often shows itself in the selection of a fetich, as 
 Binet first asserted, and as was later proven by many illustra- 
 tions, — a thing which may be placed parallel to the proverbial 
 attachment to a first love in the normal ("On revient toujours a 
 ses premiers amours"). Such a connection is especially seen in 
 cases with only fetichistic determinations of the sexual object. 
 The significance of early sexual impressions will be met again 
 in other places.. 
 
 In other cases it was mostly a symbolic thought association, 
 unconscious to the person concerned, which led to the substitution 
 of the object by means of a fetich. The paths of these connec- 
 tions can not always be definitely demonstrated. The foot is a 
 very primitive sexual symbol already found in myths. 16 Fur is 
 used as a fetich probably on account of its association with the 
 hairiness of the mons veneris. Such symbolism seems often to 
 depend on sexual experiences in childhood. 17 
 
 (b) Fixation of Precursory Sexual Aims 
 The Appearance of Newer Intentions. — All the outer and 
 inner determinations which impede or hold at a distance the 
 attainment of the normal sexual aim, such as impotence, costli- 
 ness of the sexual object, and dangers of the sexual act, will con- 
 
 111 The shoe or slipper is accordingly a symbol for the female genital. 
 
 " Psychoanalysis has filled up the gap in the understanding of fetich- 
 isms by showing that the selection of the fetich depends on a coprophilic 
 smell-desire which has been lost by repression. Feet and hair are strong 
 smelling objects which are raised to fetiches after the renouncing of the 
 now unpleasant sensation of smell. Accordingly, only the filthy and ill— 
 smelling foot is the sexual object in the perversion which corresponds to 
 the foot fetichism. Another contribution to the explanation of the fetich- 
 Btic preference of the foot is found in the Infantile Sexual Theories (see 
 /ater). The foot replaces the penis which is so much missed in the 
 woman. 
 
20 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 ceivably strengthen the inclination to linger at the preparatory 
 acts and to form them into new sexual aims which may take the 
 place of the normal. On closer investigation it is always seen 
 that the ostensibly most peculiar of these new intentions have 
 already been indicated in the normal sexual act. 
 
 Touching and Looking. — At least a certain amount of touch- 
 ing is indispensable for a person in order to attain the normal 
 sexual aim. It is also generally known that the touching of the 
 skin of the sexual object causes much pleasure and produces a 
 supply of new excitement. Hence, the lingering at the touching 
 can hardly be considered a perversion if the sexual act is pro- 
 ceeded with. 
 
 The same holds true with looking which is analogous to touch- 
 ing. The manner in which the libidinous excitement is fre- 
 quently awakened is by the optical impression, and selection takes 
 account of this circumstance by making the sexual object a thing 
 of beauty. The covering of the body, which keeps abreast with 
 civilization, serves to arouse sexual inquisitiveness, which always 
 strives to restore for itself the sexual object by uncovering the 
 hidden parts. This can be turned into the artistic (" sublima- 
 tion") if the interest is turned from the genitals to the form of 
 the body. The tendency to linger at this intermediary sexual 
 aim of the sexually accentuated looking is found to a certain 
 degree in most normals; indeed it gives them the possibility of 
 directing a certain amount of their libido to a higher artistic aim. 
 On the other hand, the fondness for looking becomes a perver- 
 sion (a) when it limits itself entirely to the genitals; (b) when it 
 becomes connected with the overcoming of loathing (voyeurs 
 and onlookers at the functions of excretion) ; and (c) when in- 
 stead of preparing for the normal sexual aim it suppresses ia 
 The latter, if I may draw conclusions from a single analysis, is} 
 in a most pronounced way true of exhibitionists, who' exposf 
 their genitals so as in turn to bring to view the genitals of othen 
 
 In the perversion which consists in striving to look and b< 
 
THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS 21 
 
 looked at we are confronted with a very remarkable character 
 which will occupy us even more intensively in the following aber- 
 ration. The sexual aim is here present in twofold formation, 
 in an active and a passive form. 
 
 The force which is opposed to the peeping mania and through 
 which it is eventually abolished is shame (like the former 
 loathing) . 
 
 Sadism and Masochism. — The desire to cause pain to the 
 sexual object and its opposite, the most frequent and most sig- 
 nificant of all perversions, was designated in its two forms by 
 v. Krafft-Ebing as sadism or the active form, and masochism or 
 the passive form. Other authors prefer the narrower term algo- 
 lagnia which emphasizes the pleasure in pain and cruelty, 
 whereas the terms selected by v. Krafft-Ebing place the pleasure 
 secured in all kinds of humility and submission in the foreground. 
 
 The roots of active algolagnia, sadism, can be readily demon- 
 strable in the normal. The sexuality of most men shows a taint 
 of aggression, it is a propensity to subdue, the biological signifi- 
 cance of which lies in the necessity of overcoming the resistance 
 of the sexual object by actions other than mere courting. Sadism 
 would then correspond to an aggressive component of the sexual 
 impulse which has become independent and exaggerated and has 
 been brought to the foreground by displacement. 
 
 The origin of at least one of the roots of masochism is just as 
 certain. It originates from the sexual over-estimation as a nec- 
 essary psychic sequence of the selection of a sexual object. The , 
 pain which is here overcome ranks with the loathing and shame 
 which were the resistances opposed to the libido. 
 
 That cruelty and sexual impulse are most intimately connected 
 ; is beyond doubt taught by the history of civilization, but in the 
 explanation of this connection no one has gone beyond the accen- 
 tuation of the aggressive factors of the libido. The aggression 
 which is mixed with the sexual impulse is ! according to some 
 authors a remnant of cannibalistic lust, a participation on the part 
 
22 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 of the acquisition apparatus (Bemachtigungsapparatus) which 
 served also for the gratification of the great wants of the other, 
 ontogenetically the older impulse. It has also been claimed that 
 every pain contains in itself the possibility of a pleasurable sen- 
 sation. Let us be satisfied with the impression that the explana- 
 tion of this perversion is by no means satisfactory and that it is 
 possible that many psychic efforts unite themselves into one effect. 
 
 The most striking peculiarity of this perversion lies in the fact 
 that its active and passive forms are regularly encountered 
 together in the same person. He who experiences pleasure by 
 causing pain to others in sexual relations is also able to expe- 
 rience the pain emanating from sexual relations as pleasure. A 
 sadist is simultaneously a masochist, though either the active or 
 the passive side of the perversion may be more strongly developed 
 and thus represent his preponderate sexual activity. 18 
 
 We thus see that certain perverted propensities regularly ap- 
 pear in contrasting pairs, a thing which, in view of the material 
 to be produced later, must claim great theoretical value. It is 
 furthermore clear that the existence of the contrast, sadism and 
 masochism, can not readily be attributed to the mixture of aggres- 
 sion. On the other hand it may be attempted to connect such 
 simultaneously existing contrasts with the united contrast of male 
 and female in bisexuality. 
 
 3. General Statements Applicable' to all Perversions 
 Variation and Disease. — The physicians who at first studied 
 the perversions in pronounced cases and under peculiar condi- 
 tions were naturally inclined to attribute to them the character of 
 a morbid or degenerative sign similar to the inversions. This 
 
 18 Instead of substantiating this statement by many examples I will 
 merely cite Havelock Ellis (The Sexual Impulse, 1903) : " All known 
 cases of sadism and masochism, even those cited by v. Krafft-Ebmg, 
 always show (as has already been shown by Colin, Scott, and F6re) traces 
 of both groups of manifestations in the same individual." 
 
THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS 23 
 
 view, however, is easier to refute in this than in the former case. 
 Everyday experience has shown that most of these transgressions, 
 at least the milder ones, are seldom wanting as components in the 
 sexual life of normals who look upon them as upon other inti- 
 macies. Wherever the conditions are favorable such a perver- 
 sion may for a long time be substituted by a normal person for 
 the normal sexual aim or it may be placed near it. In no normal 
 person does the normal sexual aim lack some designable perverse 
 element, and this universality suffices in itself to prove the inex- 
 pediency of an opprobrious application of the name perversion. 
 In the realm of the sexual life one is sure to meet with excep- 
 tional difficulties which are at present really unsolvable, if one 
 wishes to draw a sharp line between the mere variations within 
 physiological limits and morbid symptoms. 
 
 Nevertheless, the quality of the new sexual aim in some of 
 these perversions is such as to require special notice. Some of 
 the perversions are in content so distant from the normal that 
 we cannot help calling them " morbid," especially those in which 
 the sexual impulse, in overcoming the resistances (shame, loathing, 
 fear, and pain) has brought about surprising results (licking of 
 feces and violation of cadavers). Yet even in these cases one 
 ought not to feel certain of regularly finding among the perpe- 
 trators persons of pronounced abnormalities or insane minds. 
 We can not lose sight of the fact that persons who otherwise 
 behave normally are recorded as sick in the realm of the sexual 
 life where they are dominated by the most unbridled of all im- 
 pulses. On the other hand, a manifest abnormality in any other 
 relation in life generally shows an undercurrent of abnormal 
 sexual behavior. 
 
 Ill the majority of cases we are able to find the morbid char- 
 acter of the perversion not in the content of the new sexual aim 
 but in its relation to the normal. It is morbid if the perversion 
 
 es not appear beside the normal (sexual aim and sexual object), 
 
 ere favorable circumstances promote it and unfavorable im- 
 
24 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 pede the normal, or if it has under all circumstances repressed 
 and supplanted the normal ; the exclusiveness and fixation of the 
 perversion justifies us in considering it a morbid symptom. 
 
 The Psychic Participation in the Perversions. — Perhaps 
 even in the most abominable perversions we must recognize the 
 most prolific psychic participation for the transformation of the 
 sexual impulse. In these cases a piece of psychic work has been 
 accomplished in which, in spite of its gruesome success, the value 
 of an idealization of the impulse can not be disputed. The 
 omnipotence of love nowhere perhaps shows itself stronger than 
 in this one of her aberrations. The highest and the lowest every- 
 where in sexuality hang most intimately together. (" From 
 heaven through the world to hell.") 
 
 Two Results. — In the study of perversions we have gained an 
 insight into the fact that the sexual impulse has to struggle against 
 certain psychic forces, resistances, among which shame and loath- 
 ing are most prominent. We may presume that these forces are 
 employed to confine the impulse within the accepted normal limits, 
 and if they have become developed in the individual before the 
 sexual impulse has attained its full strength, it is really they 
 which have directed in the course of development. 
 
 We have furthermore remarked that some of the examined 
 perversions can be comprehended only by assuming the union of 
 many motives. If they are amenable to analysis — disintegrat- 
 tion — they must be of a composite nature. This may give us a 
 hint that the sexual impulse itself may not be something simple, 
 that it may on the contrary be composed of many components 
 which detach themselves to form perversions. Our clinicaj 
 observation thus calls our attention to fusions which have lis j| 
 feited their expression in the uniform normal behavior. ... 1 
 
 Vn .) 
 4. The Sexual Impulse in Neurotics \ ' 
 
 Psychoanalysis. — A proper contribution to the knowledge <) 
 the sexual impulse in persons who are at least related to (J 
 
THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS 25 
 
 normal can be gained only from one source, and is accessible 
 only by one definite path. There is only one way to obtain a 
 thorough and unerring solution of problems in the sexual life of 
 so-called psychoneurotics (hysteria, obsessions, the wrongly- 
 named neurasthenia, and probably also paranoia), and that is by 
 subjecting them to the psychoanalytic investigations propounded 
 by J. Breuer and myself in 1893, which we called the " cathartic " 
 treatment. 
 
 I must repeat what I have said in my published work, that these 
 psychoneuroses, as far as my experience goes, are based on sexual 
 motive powers. I do not mean that the energy of the sexual 
 impulse contributes to the forces supporting the morbid mani- 
 festations (symptoms), but I wish distinctly to maintain that 
 this supplies the only constant and the mpst important source of 
 energy in the neurosis, so that the sexual life of such persons 
 manifests itself either exclusively, preponderate^, or partially in 
 these symptoms. As I have already stated in different places, 
 the symptoms are the sexual activities of the patient. The proof 
 for this assertion I have obtained from the psychoanalysis of 
 hysterics and other neurotics during a period of fifteen years, the 
 results of which I hope to give later in a detailed account. 
 
 The psychoanalysis removes the symptoms of hysteria on the 
 supposition that they are the substitutes — the transcriptions as it 
 were — for a series of emotionally accentuated psychic processes, 
 wishes, and desires, to which a passage for their discharge through 
 the conscious psychic activities has been cut off by a special 
 process (repression). These thought formations which are re- 
 strained in the state of the unconscious strive for expression, that 
 iex is, for discharge, in conformity to their affective value, and find 
 ■i jsuch in hysteria through a process of conversion into somatic 
 ^.phenomena — the hysterical symptoms. If, lege artis, and with 
 h the aid of a special technique, retrogressive transformations of 
 jj the symptoms into the affectful and conscious thoughts can be 
 i (affected, it then becomes possible to get the most accurate in for- 
 
26 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 mation about the nature and origin of these previously uncon- 
 scious psychic formations. 
 
 Results of Psychoanalysis. — In this manner it has been dis- 
 covered that the symptoms represent the equivalent for the striv- 
 ings which received their strength from the source of the sexual 
 impulse. This fully concurs with what we know of the char- 
 acter of hysterics, which we have taken as models for all psycho- 
 neurotics, before it has become diseased, and with what we know 
 concerning the causes of the disease. The hysterical character 
 evinces a part of sexual repression which reaches beyond the 
 normal limits, an exaggeration of the resistances against the 
 sexual impulse which we know as shame and loathing. It is an 
 instinctive flight from intellectual occupation with the sexual 
 problem, the consequence of which in pronounced cases is a com- 
 plete sexual ignorance, which is preserved till the age of sexual 
 maturity is attained. 19 
 
 This feature so characteristic of hysteria is not seldom con- 
 cealed in crude observation by the existence of the second con- 
 stitutional factor of hysteria, namely, the enormous development 
 of the sexual craving. But the psychological analysis will always 
 reveal it and solves the very contradictory enigma of hysteria by 
 proving the existence of the contrasting pair, an immense sexual 
 desire and a very exaggerated sexual rejection. 
 
 The provocation of the disease in hysterically predisposed per- 
 sons is brought about if in consequence of their progressive 
 maturity or external conditions of life they are earnestly con- 
 fronted with the real sexual demand. Between the pressure of 
 the craving and the opposition of the sexual rejection an outlet 
 for the disease results, which does not remove the conflict but 
 seeks to elude it by transforming the libidinous strivings into 
 
 "Studien tiber Hysterie, 1895, J- Breuer tells of the patient on whom 
 he first practiced the cathartic method: "The sexual moment was sur- 
 prisingly undeveloped." 
 
THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS 27 
 
 symptoms. It is an exception only in appearance if a hysterical 
 person, say a man, becomes subject to some banal emotional dis- 
 turbance, to a conflict in the center of which there is no sexual 
 interest. The psychoanalysis will regularly show that it is the 
 sexual components of the conflict which make the disease possible 
 by withdrawing the psychic processes from normal adjustment. 
 
 Neurosis and Perversion. — A great part of the opposition to 
 my assertion is explained by the fact that the sexuality from 
 which I deduce the psychoneurotic symptoms is thought of as 
 coincident with the normal sexual impulse. But the psycho- 
 analysis teaches us better than this. It shows that the symptoms 
 do not by any means result at the expense only of the so called 
 normal sexual impulse (at least not exclusively or preponder- 
 ately), but they represent the converted expression of impulses 
 which in a broader sense might be designated as perverse if they 
 could manifest themselves directly in phantasies and acts without 
 deviating from consciousness. The symptoms are therefore par- 
 tially formed at the cost of abnormal sexuality. The neurosis is, 
 so to say, the negative of the perversion. 20 
 
 The sexual impulse of the psychoneurotic shows all the aber- 
 rations which we have studied as variations of the normal and as 
 manifestations of morbid sexual life. 
 
 (a) In all the neurotics without exception we find feelings of 
 inversion in the unconscious psychic life, fixation of libido on 
 persons of the same sex. It is impossible, without a deep and 
 searching discussion, adequately to appreciate the significance of 
 this factor for the formation of the picture of the disease ; I can 
 only assert that the unconscious propensity to inversion is never 
 
 "The well-known fancies of perverts which under favorable conditions 
 are changed into contrivances, the delusional fears of paranoiacs which 
 are in a hostile manner projected on others, and the unconscious fancies 
 of hyster cs which are discovered in their symptoms by psychoanalysis, 
 agree as to content in the minutest details. 
 
28 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 wanting and is particularly of immense service in explaining male 
 hysteria. 21 
 
 (b) All the inclinations to anatomical transgression can be 
 demonstrated in psychoneurotics in the unconscious and as symp- 
 tom-creators. Of special frequency and intensity are those which 
 impart to the mouth and the mucous membrane of the anus the 
 role of genitals. 
 
 (c) The partial desires which usually appear in contrasting 
 pairs play a very prominent role among the symptom-creators in 
 the psychoneuroses. We have learned to know them as carriers 
 of new sexual aims, such as peeping mania, exhibitionism, and the 
 actively and passively formed impulses of cruelty. The contri- 
 bution of the last is indispensable for the understanding of the 
 morbid nature of the symptoms ; it almost regularly controls some 
 portion of the social behavior of the patient. The transformation 
 of love into hatred, of tenderness into hostility, which is charac- 
 teristic of a large number of neurotic cases and apparently of all 
 cases of paranoia, takes place by means of the union of cruelty 
 with the libido. 
 
 The interest in these deductions is heightened on account of 
 certain peculiar circumstances, as follows : 
 
 a- There is nothing in the unconscious streams of thought in 
 the neuroses which would correspond, to an inclination towards 
 fetichism; a circumstance which throws light on the psycholog- 
 ical peculiarity of this well understood perversion. 
 
 p. Wherever any such impulse is found in the unconscious 
 which can be paired with a contrasting one, it can regularly be 
 demonstrated that the latter, too, is effective. Every active per- 
 
 21 A psychoneurosis very often associates itself with a manifest inver- 
 sion in which the heterosexual feeling becomes subjectec* to complete 
 repression. — It is but just to state that the necessity of a general recog- 
 nition of the tendency to inversion in psychone' -}tics was fi> t imparted 
 to me personally by Wilh. Fliess, of Berlin, after I had myself discovered 
 it in some cases. 
 
THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS 20. 
 
 version is here accompanied by its passive opponent. He who in 
 the unconscious is an exhibitionist is at the same time a voyeur, 
 he who suffers from sadistic feelings as a result of repression will 
 also show another reinforcement of the symptoms from the source 
 of masochistic tendencies. The perfect concurrence with the 
 behavior of the corresponding positive perversions is certainly 
 very noteworthy. In the picture of the disease, however, the 
 preponderant role is played by either one or the other of the 
 opposing tendencies. 
 
 •y. In a pronounced case of psychoneurosis we seldom find the 
 development of one single perverted impulse; usually there are 
 many and regularly there are traces of all perversions. The in- 
 dividual impulse, however, on account of its intensity, is inde- 
 pendent of the development of the others, but the study of the 
 positive perversions gives us the accurate opponent to it. 
 
 Partial Impulses and Erogenous Zones 
 Keeping in mind what we have learned from the examination 
 of the positive and negative perversions, it becomes quite obvious 
 that they can be referred to a number of "partial impulses," 
 which are not, however, primary but are subject to further anal- 
 ysis. In a non-sexual "impulse" originating from impulses of 
 motor sources we can distinguish a contribution from a stimulus- 
 receiving organ, such as the skin, mucous membrane, and sensory 
 organs. This we shall here designate as an erogenous zone; it 
 is that organ the stimulus of which bestows on the impulse the 
 sexual character. In the perversions which claim sexual signifi- 
 cance for the oral cavity and the anal opening the part played 
 by the erogenous zone is quite obvious. It behaves in every way ' 
 like a part of the sexual apparatus. In hysteria these parts of 
 the body, as well as their tracks of mucous membrane, become 
 the seat of new sensations and innervating changes in a manner 
 similar to the real gt.iitals when under the excitement of normal 
 sexual 1 rocesses. 
 
30 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 The significance of the erogenous zones in the psychoneuroses, 
 as additional apparatus and substitutes for the genitals, appears 
 to be most prominent in hysteria though that does not signify that 
 it is of lesser validity in the other morbid forms. It is not so 
 recognizable in compulsion neurosis and paranoia because here 
 the symptom formation takes place in regions of the psychic 
 apparatus which lie at a great distance from the central locations 
 for bodily control. The more remarkable thing in the compul- 
 sion neurosis is the significance of the impulses- which create new 
 sexual aims and appear independently of the erogenous zones. 
 Nevertheless, the eye corresponds to an erogenous zone in the 
 looking and exhibition mania, while the skin takes on the same 
 part in the pain and cruelty components of the sexual impulse. 
 The skin, which in special parts of the body becomes differen- 
 tiated as sensory organs and modified by the mucous membrane, 
 is the erogenous zone, KaT'egoxrfv, 22 
 
 Explanation of the Manifest Preponderance of Sexual 
 Perversions in the Psychoneuroses 
 The sexuality of psychoneurotics has perhaps been placed in a 
 false light by the above discussions. It appears that the sexual 
 behavior of the psychoneurotic approaches in predisposition to 
 the pervert and deviates by just so much from the normal. 
 Nevertheless, it is very possible that the constitutional disposition 
 of these patients besides containing an immense amount of sexual 
 repression and a predominant force of sexual impulse also pos- 
 sesses an unusual tendency to perversions in the broadest sense. 
 However, an examination of milder cases shows that the last 
 assumption is not an absolute requisite, or at least that in pro- 
 
 a One should here think of Moll's assertion, who divides the sexual im- 
 pulse into the impulses of contrectation and detumescence. Contrectation 
 signifies a desire to touch the skin. In one of his cases Strohmayer has 
 very correctly found the origin of obsessive reproaches in suppressed 
 sadistic feelings. 
 
THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS 3 I 
 
 nouncing judgment on the morbid effects one ought to discount 
 the effect of this latter factor. In most psychoneurotics the dis- 
 ease first appears after puberty following the demands of the 
 normal sexual life, but against this the repression directs itself. 
 Or the disease comes on later, owing to the fact that the libido 
 is unable to attain normal sexual gratification. In both cases the 
 libido behaves like a stream the principal bed of which is dammed ; 
 it fills the collateral roads which until now perhaps have been 
 empty. Thus the manifestly great (though to be sure negative) 
 tendency to perversion in psychoneurotics may be collaterally 
 conditioned; at any rate, it is certainly collaterally increased. 
 The fact of the matter is that the sexual repression has to be 
 added as an inner moment to such external ones as limitation of 
 freedom, inaccessibility to the normal sexual object, dangers of 
 the normal sexual act, etc., which cause the origin of perversions 
 in individuals who might have otherwise remained normal. 
 
 In individual cases of neurosis the behavior may be different; 
 now the congenital force of the tendency to perversion may be 
 more decisive arid at other times more influence may be exerted 
 by the collateral increase of the same through the deviation of 
 the libido from the normal sexual aim and object. It would be 
 unjust to construe a contrast where a cooperation exists. The 
 greatest effect will always be brought about in a neurosis if there 
 is a collaboration of constitution and experience working in the 
 same direction. A pronounced constitution may perhaps be able 
 to dispense with the assistance of impressions, while a profound 
 disturbance in life may perhaps bring on a neurosis even in an 
 average constitution. These views similarly hold true in the 
 etiological significance of the congenital and the accidental expe- 
 riences in otbvir spheres. 
 
 If, however, preference is given to the assumption that an 
 especially formed tendency to perversions is characteristic of the 
 psychoneurotic constitution, there is a prospect of being able to 
 distinguish a multiformity of such constitutions in accordance 
 
32 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 with the congenital preponderance of this or that erogenous zone, 
 or of this or that partial impulse. Whether there is a special 
 relationship between the perverted predisposition and the selec- 
 tion of the morbid picture has not, like many other things in this 
 realm, been investigated! 
 
 Reference to the Infantilism of Sexuality 
 By demonstrating the perverted feelings as symptomatic for- 
 mations in psychoneurotics, we have enormously increased the 
 number of persons who can be added to the perverts. This is 
 not only because neurotics represent a very large proportion of 
 humanity, but we must consider also that the neuroses in all 
 their gradations run in an uninterrupted series to the normal 
 state. Moebius was quite justified in saying that we are all some- 
 what hysterical. Hence, the very wide dissemination of perver- 
 sions urged us to assume that the predisposition to perversions is 
 no rare peculiarity but must form a part of the normally accepted 
 constitution. 
 
 We have heard that it is a question whether perversions should 
 be referred to congenital determinations or whether they origi- 
 nate from accidental experiences, just as Binet showed in fetich- 
 isms. Now we are confronted with the conclusion that there is 
 indeed something congenital at the basis of perversions, but it is 
 something which is congenital in all persons, which as a predis- 
 position may fluctuate in intensity and is brought into prominence 
 by influences of life. We deal here with congenital roots in the 
 constitution of the sexual impulse which in one series of cases 
 develop into real carriers of sexual activity (perverts) ; while in 
 other cases they undergo an insufficient supp/resc'on (repression), 
 so that as morbid symptoms they are enabled to attract to them- 
 selves in a round-about way a considerable part o." the sexual 
 energy; while again in favorable cases between the two extremes 
 they cause the origin of the normal sexual life through \ffective 
 limitations and other elaborations. 
 
THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS 33 
 
 But we must also remember that the assumed constitution 
 which shows the roots of all perversions will be demonstrable 
 only in the child, though all impulses can be manifested in it only 
 in moderate intensity. If we are led to suppose that neurotics 
 conserve the infantile state of their sexuality or return to it, our 
 interest must then turn to the sexual life of the child, and we will 
 then follow the play of influences which control the processes of 
 development of the infantile sexuality up to its termination in a 
 perversion, a neurosis, or a normal sexual life. 
 
II 
 
 THE INFANTILE SEXUALITY 
 
 It is a part of popular belief about the sexual impulse that it 
 is absent in childhood and that it first appears in the period of 
 life known as puberty. This, though an obvious error, is a 
 serious one in its consequences and is chiefly due to our present 
 ignorance of the fundamental principles of the sexual life. A 
 comprehensive study of the sexual manifestations of childhood 
 would probably reveal to us the existence of the essential fea- 
 tures of the sexual impulse, and would make us acquainted with 
 its development and its composition from various sources. 
 
 The Neglect of the Infantile. — It is remarkable that those 
 writers who endeavor to explain the qualities and reactions of 
 the adult individual have given so much more attention to the 
 ancestral period than to the period of the individual's own exist- 
 ence — that is, they have attributed more influence to heredity 
 than to childhood. As a matter of fact, it might well be supposed 
 that the influence of the latter period would be easier to under- 
 stand, and that it would be entitled to more consideration than 
 heredity. To be sure, one occasionally finds in medical literature 
 notes on the premature sexual activities of small children, about 
 erections and masturbation and evn actions resembling coitus, 
 but these are referred to merely as exceptional occurrences, as 
 curiosities, or as deterring examples of premature perversity. 
 No author has to my knowledge recognized the lawfulness of the 
 sexual impulse in childhood, and in the numerous writings on the 
 development of the child the chapter on " Sexual Development " 
 is usually passed over. 1 \ 
 
 "This assertion on revision seemed even to myself so bold (hat I de- 
 cided to test its correctness by again reviewing the literature. TVie result 
 
 34 
 
THE INFANTILE SEXUALITY 35 
 
 Infantile Amnesia. — This remarkable negligence is due partly 
 to conventional considerations, which influence the writers on 
 account of their own bringing up, and partly to a psychic phe- 
 nomenon which has thus far remained unexplained. I refer to 
 
 of this second review did not warrant any change in my original statement. 
 The scientific elaboration of the physical as well as the psychic phenomena 
 of the infantile sexuality is still in its initial stages. One author (S. Bell, 
 " A Preliminary Study of the Emotions of Love Between the Sexes," 
 American Journal of Psychology, XIII, 1902) says : " I know of no scien- 
 tist who has given a careful analysis of the emotion as it is seen in the 
 adolescent." The only attention given to somatic sexual manifestations 
 occurring before the age of puberty was in connection with degenerative 
 manifestations, and these were referred to as a sign of degeneration. A 
 chapter on the sexual life of children is not to be found in all the repre- 
 sentative psychologies of this age which I have read. Among these works 
 I can mention the following: Preyer; Baldwin (The Development of the 
 Mind in the Child and in the Race, 1898) ; Perez (L'enfant de 3-7 ans, 
 1894) ; Striimpel (Die padagogische Pathologie, 1899) ; Karl Groos (Das 
 Seelenleben des Kindes, 1904) ; Th. Heller (Grundriss der Heilpadagogic, 
 1904); Sully (Observations Concerning Childhood, 1897). The best im- 
 pression of the present situation of this sphere can be obtained from the 
 journal Die Kinderfehler (issued since 1896). On the other hand one 
 gains the impression that the existence of love in childhood is in no need 
 of demonstration.. Perez (1. c.) speaks for it; K. Groos (Die Spiele der 
 Menschen, 1899) states that some children are very early subject to sexual 
 emotions, and show a desire to touch the other sex (p. 336) ; S. Bell 
 observed the earliest appearance of sex-love in a child during the middle 
 part of its third year. See also Havelock Ellis, The Sexual Impulse, 
 Appendix II. 
 
 The above-mentioned judgment concerning the literature of infantile 
 sexuality no longer tjlds true since the appearance of the great and im- 
 portant work of j. Stanley Hall (Adolescence, Its Psychology and its 
 Relation to Plr siology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, 
 and Educatip-i 2 vols., New York, 1908). The recent book of A. Moll, 
 Das Sexual^Den des Kindes, Berlin, 1909, offers no occasion for such a 
 modification. See, on the other hand, Bleuler, Sexuelle abnormitaten der 
 ' Kinder ({Jahrbuch der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft fur Schulgesund- 
 heitspfl'te, IX, 1908). 
 
36 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 the peculiar amnesia which veils from most people (not from 
 all!) the first years of their childhood, usually the first six or 
 eight years. So far it has not occurred to us that this amnesia 
 ought to surprise us, though we have in fact good reasons for sur- 
 prise. For we are informed that in those years from which we 
 later obtain nothing except a few incomprehensible memory frag- 
 ments, we have vividly reacted to impressions, that we have mani- 
 fested pain and pleasure like any human being, that we have 
 evinced love, jealousy, and other passions as they then affected 
 us ; indeed we are told that we have uttered remarks which proved 
 to grown-ups that we possessed understanding and a budding 
 power of judgment. Still we know nothing of all this when we 
 become older. Why does our memory lag behind all our other' 
 psychic activities? We really have reason to believe that at no 
 time of life are we more capable of impressions and reproductions 
 than during the years of childhood. 2 
 
 On the other hand we must assume, or we may convince our- 
 selves through psychological observations on others, that the very 
 impressions which we have forgotten have nevertheless left the 
 deepest traces in our psychic life, and acted as determinants for 
 our whole future development. We conclude therefore that we 
 do not deal with a real forgetting of infantile impressions but 
 rather with an amnesia similar to that observed in neurotics for 
 later experiences, the nature of which consists in their being 
 detained from consciousness (repression). But what forces bring 
 about this repression of the infantile impressions? He who can 
 solve this riddle will also explain hysterical mnesia. 
 
 We shall not, however, hesitate to assert thV the existence of 
 the infantile amnesia gives us a new point of comparison be- 
 tween the psychic states of the child and those of the psycho- 
 neurotic. We have already encountered another point of com- 
 
 3 1 have attempted to solve the problems presented by the Earliest in- 
 fantile recollections in a paper, " Uber Deckerinnerungen " 'Monats- 
 schrift fur Psychiatrie und Neurologie, VI, 1899). 
 
THE INFANTILE SEXUALITY 37 
 
 parison when confronted by the fact that the sexuality of the 
 psychoneurotic preserves the infantile character or has returned 
 to it. May there not be an ultimate connection between the 
 infantile and the hysterical amnesias ? 
 
 The connection between the infantile and the hysterical am- 
 nesias is really more than a mere play of wit. The hysterical 
 amnesia which serves the repression can only be explained by the 
 fact that the individual already possesses a sum of recollections 
 which have been withdrawn from conscious disposal and which 
 by associative connection now seize that which is acted upon by 
 the repelling forces of the repression emanating from conscious- 
 ness. We may say that without infantile amnesia there would 
 be no hysterical amnesia. 
 
 I believe that the infantile amnesia which causes the individual 
 to look upon his childhood as if it were a prehistoric time and 
 conceals from him the beginning of his own sexual life — that this 
 amnesia is responsible for the fact that one does not usually 
 attribute any value to the infantile period in the development of 
 the sexual life.' One single observer cannot fill the gap which 
 has been thus produced in our knowledge. As early as 1896 I 
 had already emphasized the significance of childhood for the 
 origin of certain important phenomena connected with the sexual 
 life, and since then I have not ceased to put into the foreground 
 the importance of the infantile factor for sexuality. 
 
 The Sexual Latency Period of Childhood and its 
 Emergence 
 
 The extraordinary frequent discoveries of apparently abnormal 
 and exceptional sexual manifestations in childhood, as well as 
 the discovery of infantile reminiscences in neurotics, which were 
 hitherto unconscious, allow us to sketch the following picture of 
 the sexual behavior of childhood. 3 
 
 ' The use of the latter material is justified by the fact that the age of 
 childhood of those who are later neurotics need not necessarily differ 
 from that of those who are later normal. 
 
38 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 It seems certain that the newborn child brings with it the germs 
 of sexual feelings which continue to develop for some time and 
 then succumb to a progressive suppression, which is in turn 
 broken through by the proper advances of the sexual development 
 and which can be checked by individual idiosyncrasies. Nothing 
 definite is known concerning the lawfulness and periodicity of 
 this oscillating course of development. It seems, however, that 
 the sexual life of the child mostly manifests itself in the third 
 or fourth year in some form accessible to observation.* 
 
 The Sexual Inhibition. — It is during this period of total or 
 at least partial latency that the psychic forces develop which 
 later act as inhibitions on the sexual life, and narrow its direc- 
 tion like dams. These psychic forces are loathing, shame, and 
 moral and esthetic ideation masses. We may gain the impression 
 that the erection of these dams in the civilized child is the work 
 of education; and surely education contributes much to it. In 
 reality, however, this development is organically determined and 
 can occasionally be produced without the help of education. In- 
 deed education remains properly within its assigned realm only 
 if it strictly follows the path sketched for it by the organic deter- 
 minant and impresses it somewhat cleaner and deeper. 
 
 Reaction Formation and Sublimation. — What are the means 
 that accomplish these very important constructions so significant 
 for the later personal culture and normality? They are prob- 
 ably brought about at the cost of the infantile sexuality itself, 
 the influx of which has not stopped even in this latency period — 
 
 4 An anatomic analogy to the behavior of the infantile sexual function 
 formulated by me is perhaps given by Bayer (Deutsches Archiv fur klin- 
 ische Medizin, Bd. 73) who claims that the internal genitals (uterus) 
 are regularly larger in newborn than in older children. However Hal- 
 ban's conception, that after birth there is also an involution of the other 
 parts of the sexual apparatus, has not been verified. According to Halban 
 (Zeitschrift fur Geburtshilfe u. Gynakologie, LIII, 1904) this process of 
 involution ends after a' few weeks of extra-uterine life. 
 
THE INFANTILE SEXUALITY 39 
 
 the energy of which indeed has been turned away either wholly 
 or partially from sexual utilization and conducted to other aims. 
 The historians of civilization seem to be unanimous in the opin- 
 ion that such deviation of sexual motive powers from sexual aims 
 to new aims, a process which merits the name of sublimation, has 
 furnished powerful components for all cultural accomplishments. 
 We will therefore add that the same process acts in the devel- 
 opment of every individual, and that it begins to act in the sexual 
 latency period. 5 
 
 We can also venture an opinion about the mechanisms of such 
 sublimation. The sexual feelings of these infantile years on the 
 one hand could not be utilizable, since the procreating functions 
 are postponed, — this is the chief character of the latency period; 
 on the other hand, they would in themselves be perverse, as they 
 would emanate from erogenous zones and would be born of im- 
 pulses which in the individual's course of development could only 
 evoke a feeling of displeasure. They therefore awaken contrary 
 forces (feelings of reaction), which in order to suppress such 
 displeasure, build up the above mentioned psychic dams : loathing, 
 shame, and morality. 
 
 The Emergence of the Latency Period. — Without deluding 
 ourselves as to the hypothetical nature and deficient clearness of 
 our understanding regarding the infantile period of latency and 
 delay, we will return to reality and state that such a - utilization 
 of the infantile sexuality represents an ideal bringing up from 
 which the development of the individual usually deviates in some 
 measure and often very considerably. A portion of the sexual 
 manifestation 'occasionally breaks through which has withdrawn 
 from sublimation, or a sexual activity remains throughout the 
 whole duration of the latency period until the reinforced breaking 
 through of the sexual impulse in puberty. In so far as they have 
 paid any attention to infantile sexuality the educators behave as 
 5 The expression " sexual latency period " (sexuelle latenz-periode ") 
 I have borrowed from W. Fliess. 
 4 
 
40 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 if they shared our views concerning the formation of the moral 
 forces of defence at the cost of sexuality, and as if they knew 
 that sexual activity makes the child uneducable; for the educa- 
 tors consider all sexual manifestations of the child as an "evil" 
 in the face of which little can be accomplished. We have, how- 
 ever, every reason for directing our attention to those phenomena 
 so much feared by the educators, for we expect to find in them 
 the solution of the primitive formation of the sexual impulse. 
 
 The Manifestations of the Infantile Sexuality 
 For reasons which we shall discuss later we will take as a 
 model of the infantile sexual manifestations thumbsucking 
 (pleasure-sucking), to which the Hungarian pediatrist, Lindner, 
 has devoted an excellent essay. 6 
 
 Thumbsucking. — Thumbsucking, which manifests itself in the 
 nursing baby and which may be continued till maturity or through- 
 out life, consists in a rhythmic repetition of sucking contact with 
 the mouth (the lips), wherein the purpose of taking nourishment 
 is excluded. A part of the lip itself, the tongue, which is another 
 preferable skin region within reach, and even the big toe — may 
 be taken as objects for sucking. Simultaneously, there is also a 
 desire to grasp things, which manifests itself in a rhythmical 
 pulling of the ear lobe and which may cause the child to grasp 
 a part of another person (generally the ear) for the same pur- 
 pose. The pleasure-sucking is connected with an entire exhaus- 
 tion of attention and leads to sleep or even to a motor reaction 
 in the form of an orgasm. 7 Pleasure-sucking is often combined 
 with a rubbing contact with certain sensitive parts of the body, 
 such as the breast and external genitals. It is by this road that 
 many children go from thumb-sucking to masturbation. 
 
 "Jahrbuch fur Kinderheilkunde, N. F., XIV, 1879. 
 
 * This already shows what holds true for the whole life, namely that 
 sexual gratification is the best hypnotic. Most nervous insomnias are 
 traced to lack of sexual gratification. It is also known that unscrupulous 
 nurses calm crying children to sleep by stroking their genitals. 
 
THE INFANTILE SEXUALITY 41 
 
 No investigator has yet doubted the sexual nature of this 
 action. 8 Still, the best theories based on the observations of 
 adults leave us in the lurch in the face of this manifestation of 
 infantile sexual activity. If we think of Moll's division of the 
 sexual impulse, the detumescence and contrectation impulses, we 
 find that the first factor is here out of question, and that the 
 second can be recognized only with difficulty, as Moll later appar- 
 ently describes this also as a detumescence impulse directed 
 against other persons. 
 
 Autoerotism. — It is our duty here to arrange this state of 
 affairs differently. Let us insist that the most striking character 
 of this sexual activity is that the impulse is not directed against 
 other persons but that it gratifies itself on its own body; to use 
 the happy term invented by Havelock Ellis, we will say that it 
 is autoerotic. 8 
 
 It is, moreover, clear that the action of the thumbsucking child 
 is determined by the fact that it seeks a pleasure which has already 
 been experienced and is now remembered. Through the rhythmic 
 sucking on a portion of the skin or mucous membrane it finds the 
 gratification in the simplest way. It is also easy to conjecture 
 on what occasions the child first experienced this pleasure which 
 it now strives to renew. The first and most important activity 
 in the child's life, the sucking from the mother's breast (or its 
 substitute), must have acquainted it with this pleasure. We 
 would say that the child's lips behaved like an erogenous zone, 
 and that the excitement through the warm stream of milk was 
 really the cause of the pleasurable sensation. To be sure, the 
 gratification of the erogenous zone was at first united with the 
 gratification of taking nourishment. He who sees a satiated child 
 sink back from the mother's breast, and merge into sleep with 
 
 "A recent exception is Moll (Das Sexualleben des Kindes). 
 
 'Ellis spoils, however, the sense of his invented term by comprising 
 under the phenomena of autoerotism the whole of hysteria and masturba- 
 tion in its full extent. 
 
42 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 reddened cheeks and blissful smile, will have to admit that this 
 picture remains as a guide for the expression of sexual gratifica- 
 tion in later life. But the desire for repetition of the sexual 
 gratification is separated from the desire for taking nourishment ; 
 a separation which becomes unavoidable with the appearance of 
 the teeth when the nourishment is no longer sucked in but 
 chewed. The child does not make use of a strange object for 
 sucking but prefers its own skin because it is more convenient, 
 because it thus makes itself independent of the outer world 
 which it cannot yet control, and because in this way it creates 
 for itself, as it were, a second, even if an inferior, erogenous 
 zone. The inferiority of this second region urges it later to seek 
 the same parts, the lips of another person. (" It is a pity that 
 I cannot kiss myself," might be attributed to it.) 
 
 Not all children suck their thumbs. It may be assumed that 
 it is found only in children in whom the erogenous significance of 
 the lip-zone is constitutionally reen forced. Children in whom this 
 is retained are habitual kissers as adults and show a tendency to 
 perverse kissing, or as men they have a marked desire for drink- . 
 ing and smoking. But if repression comes into play they expe- 
 rience disgust for eating and evince hysterical vomiting. By 
 virtue of the community of the lip-zone the repression encroaches 
 upon the impulse of nourishment. Many of my female patients 
 showing disturbances in eating, such as hysterical globus, chok- 
 ing sensations, and vomiting, have been energetic thumbsuckers 
 during infancy. 
 
 In the thumbsucking or pleasure-sucking we have already been 
 able to observe the two essential characters of one infantile 
 sexual manifestation. This manifestation does not yet know any 
 sexual object, it is autoerotic and its sexual aim is under the con- 
 trol of an erogenous zone. Let us assume for the present that 
 these characters also hold true for most of the other activities 
 of the infantile sexual impulse. 
 
the infantile sexuality 43 
 
 The Sexual Aim of the Infantile Sexuality 
 The Characters of the Erogenous Zones. — From the example 
 of thumbsucking we may gather a great many points useful for 
 the distinguishing of an erogenous zone. It is a portion of skin 
 or mucous membrane in which the stimuli produce a feeling of 
 pleasure of definite quality. There is no doubt that the pleasure- 
 producing stimuli are governed by special determinants which we 
 do not know. The rhythmic characters must play some part in 
 them and this strongly suggests an analogy to tickling. It does 
 not, however, appear so certain whether the character of the 
 pleasurable feeling evoked by the stimulus can be designated as 
 " peculiar," and in what part of this peculiarity the sexual factor 
 exists. Psychology is still groping in the dark when it concerns 
 matters of pleasure and pain, and the most cautious assumption 
 is therefore the most advisable. We may perhaps later come 
 upon reasons which seem to support the peculiar quality of the 
 sensation of pleasure. 
 
 The erogenous quality may adhere most notably to definite 
 regions of the body. As is shown by the example of thumb- 
 sucking, there are predestined erogenous zones. But the same 
 example also shows that any other region of skin or mucous mem- 
 brane may assume the function of an erogenous zone; it must 
 therefore carry along a certain adaptability. The production of 
 the sensation of pleasure therefore depends more on the quality 
 of the stimulus than on the nature of the bodily region. The 
 thumbsucking child looks around on his body and selects any por- 
 tion of it for pleasure-sucking, and becoming accustomed to it, 
 he then prefers it. If he accidentally strikes upon a predestined 
 region, such as breast, nipple or genitals, it naturally has the pref- 
 erence. A quite analogous tendency to displacement is again 
 found in the symptomatology of hysteria. In this neurosis the 
 repression mostly concerns the genital zones proper; these in 
 turn transmit their excitation to the other erogenous zones, usually 
 dormant in mature life, which the* behave exactly like genitals. 
 
44 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 But besides this, just as in thumbsucking, any other region of the 
 body may become endowed with the excitation of the genitals and 
 raised to an erogenous zone. Erogenous and hysterogenous zones 
 show the same characters. 10 
 
 The Infantile Sexual Aim. — The sexual aim of the infantile 
 impulse consists in the production of gratification through the 
 proper excitation of this or that selected erogenous zone. In 
 order to leave a desire for its repetition this gratification must 
 have been previously experienced, and we may be sure that nature 
 has devised definite means so as not to leave this occurrence to 
 mere chance. The arrangement which has fulfilled this purpose 
 for the lip-zone we have already discussed ; it is the simultaneous 
 connection of this part of the body with the taking of nourish- 
 ment. We shall also meet other similar mechanisms as sources 
 of sexuality. The state of desire for repetition of gratification 
 can be recognized through a peculiar feeling of tension which in 
 itself is rather of a painful character, and through a centrally- 
 determined feeling of itching or sensitiveness which is projected 
 into the peripheral erogenous zone. The sexual aim may there- 
 fore be formulated as follows: the chief object is to substitute 
 for the projected feeling of sensitiveness in the erogenous zone 
 that outer stimulus which removes the feeling of sensitiveness 
 by evoking the feeling of gratification. This external stimulus 
 consists usually in a manifestation which is analogous to sucking. 
 
 It is in full accord with our physiological knowledge if the 
 desire happens to be awakened also peripherally through an 
 actual change in the erogenous zone. The action is only to some 
 extent strange, as one stimulus for its suppression seems to want 
 another applied to the same place. 
 
 10 The biological problems connected with the formation of the ero- 
 genous zones are discussed by Alfred Adler in his Studien iiber Minder- ' 
 wertigkeit von Organen, Wien, 1907. 
 
the infantile sexuality 45 
 
 The Masturbatic Sexual Manifestations 11 
 It is a matter of great satisfaction to know that there is nothing 
 further of greater importance to learn about the sexual activity 
 of the child after the impulse of one erogenous zone has become 
 comprehensible to us. The most pronounced differences are 
 found in the action necessary for the gratification, which consists 
 in sucking for the lip-zone and which must be replaced by other 
 muscular actions according to the situation and nature of the 
 other zones. 
 
 The Activity of the Anal Zone. — Like the lip zone the anal 
 zone is, through its position, adapted to conduct the sexuality 
 to the other functions of the body. It should be assumed that 
 the erogenous significance of this region of the body was origi- 
 nally very large. Through psychoanalysis one finds, not without 
 surprise, the many transformations that are normally undertaken 
 with the usual excitations emanating from here, and that this 
 zone often retains for life a considerable fragment of genital irri- 
 tability. 12 The intestinal catarrhs so frequent during infancy 
 produce intensive irritations in this zone, and we often hear it 
 said that intestinal catarrh at this delicate age causes "nervous- 
 ness." In later neurotic diseases they exert a definite influence 
 on the symptomatic expression of the neurosis, placing at its dis- 
 posal the whole sum of intestinal disturbances. Considering the 
 erogenous significance of the anal zone which has been retained 
 at least in transformation, one should not laugh at the hemor- 
 rhoidal influences to which the old medical literature attached so 
 much weight in the explanation of neurotic states. 
 
 Children utilizing the erogenous sensitiveness of the anal zone 
 can be recognized by their holding back of fecal, masses until 
 through accumulation there result violent muscular contractions ; 
 
 "Compare here the very comprehensive but confusing literature on 
 onanism, e. g., Rohleder, Die Masturbation, 1899. 
 
 u Compare here the essay on " Charakter und Analerotic " in the Samm- 
 lung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, Zweite Folge, 1909. 
 
46 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 the passage of these masses through the anus is apt to produce a 
 marked irritation on the mucus membrane. Besides the pain this 
 must produce also a sensation of pleasure. One of the surest 
 premonitions of later eccentricity or nervousness "is when an in- 
 fant obstinately refuses to empty his bowel when placed on the 
 chamber by the nurse and reserves this function at its own 
 pleasure. It does not concern him that he will soil his bed; all 
 he cares for is not to lose the subsidiary pleasure while defecat- 
 ing. The educators have again the right inkling when they des- 
 ignate children who withhold these functions as bad. 
 
 The retention of fecal masses, which is at first intentional in 
 order to utilize them, as it were, for masturbatic excitation of the 
 anal zone, is at least one of the roots of constipation so frequent 
 in neuropaths. The whole significance of the anal zone is mir- 
 rored in the fact that there are but few neurotics who have not 
 their special scatologic customs, ceremonies, etc., which they 
 retain with cautious secrecy. 
 
 Real masturbatic irritation of the anal zone by means of the 
 fingers, evoked through either centrally or peripherally supported 
 itching, is not at all rare in older children. 
 
 The Activity of the Genital Zone. — Among the erogenous 
 zones of the child's body there is one which certainly does not 
 play the main role, and which cannot be the carrier of earliest 
 sexual feeling — which, however, is destined for great things in 
 the later life. In both male and female it is connected with the 
 voiding of urine (penis, clitoris), and in the former it is enclosed 
 in a sack of mucous membrane, probably in order not to miss 
 the irritations caused by the secretions which may arouse the 
 sexual excitement at an early age. The sexual activities of this 
 erogenous zone, which belongs to the real genitals, are the begin- 
 ning of the later normal sexual life. 
 
 Owing to the anatomical position, the overflowing of secre- 
 tions, the washing and rubbing of the body, and to certain acci- 
 dental excitements (the wandering of intestinal worms in the 
 
THE INFANTILE SEXUALITY 47 
 
 girl), it happens that the pleasurable feeling which these parts of 
 the body are capable of producing makes itself noticeable to the 
 child even during the sucking age, and thus awakens desire for 
 its repetition. When we review all the actual arrangements, 
 and bear in mind that the measures for cleanliness have the same 
 effect as the uncleanliness itself, we can then scarcely mistake 
 nature's , intention, which is to establish the future primacy of 
 these erogenous zones for the sexual activity through the infan- 
 tile onanism from which hardly an individual escapes) The 
 action removing the stimulus and setting free the gratification 
 consists in a rubbing contiguity with the hand or in a certain 
 previously-formed pressure reflex effected by the closure of the 
 thighs. The latter procedure seems to be the more primitive and 
 is by far the more common in girls. The preference for the hand 
 in boys already indicates what an important part of the male 
 sexual activity will be accomplished in the future by the acquisi- 
 tion impulse (Bemachtigungstrieb). - — 
 
 The infantile onanism seems to disappear with the onset of the 
 latency period, but it may continue uninterruptedly till puberty 
 and thus represent the first marked deviation from the develop- 
 ment desirable for civilized man. At some time during child- 
 hood after the nursing period, the sexual impulse of the genitals 
 reawakens and continues active for some time until it is again 
 suppressed, or it may continue without interruption. The pos- 
 sible relations are very diverse and can only be elucidated through 
 a more precise analysis of individual cases. The details, how- 
 ever, of this second infantile sexual activity leave behind the 
 profoundest (unconscious) impressions in the person's memory; 
 if the individual remains healthy they determine his character 
 and if he becomes sick after puberty they determine the symp- 
 tomatology of his neurosis. In the latter case it is found that 
 this sexual period is forgotten and the conscious reminiscences 
 pointing to them are displaced ; I have already mentioned that I 
 
48 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 would like to connect the normal infantile amnesia with this 
 infantile sexual activity. By psychoanalytic investigation it is 
 possible to bring to consciousness the forgotten material, and 
 thereby to remove a compulsion which emanates from the uncon- 
 scious psychic material. 
 
 The Return of the Infantile Masturbation. — The sexual ex- 
 citation of the infantile period returns during childhood (we have 
 not yet succeeded in establishing definite periods), either as a 
 centrally determined tickling sensation demanding onanistic grati- 
 fication, or as a pollution-like process which, analogous to the 
 pollution of maturity, may attain gratification without the aid of 
 any action. The latter case is more frequent in girls and in the 
 second half of childhood; its determinants are not well under- 
 stood, but it often, though not regularly seems to have as a basis 
 a period of early active onanism. The symptomatology of this 
 sexual manifestation is poor; the genital apparatus is still unde- 
 veloped and all signs are therefore displayed by the urinary appa- 
 ratus which is, so to say, the guardian of the genital appa- 
 ratus. Most of the so-called bladder disturbances of this period 
 are of a sexual nature; whenever the enuresis nocturna does not 
 represent an epileptic attack it corresponds to a pollution. 
 
 The return of the sexual activity is determined by inner and 
 outer causes which can be conjectured from the formation of the 
 symptoms of neurotic diseases and definitely revealed by psycho- 
 analytic investigations. The internal causes will be discussed 
 later; the accidental outer causes attain at this time a great and 
 permanent significance. As the first outer cause we have the 
 influence of seduction which prematurely treats the child as a 
 sexual object ; under conditions favoring impressions this teaches 
 the child the gratification of the genital zones, and thus usually 
 forces it to repeat this gratification in onanism. Such influences 
 can come from adults or other children. I cannot admit that I 
 over-estimated its frequency or its significance in my contribu- 
 
THE INFANTILE SEXUALITY 49 
 
 tions to the etiology of hysteria, 13 though I did not know then 
 that normal individuals may have the same experiences in their 
 childhood, and hence placed a higher value on seductions than 
 on the factors found in the sexual constitution and development. 1 * 
 It is' quite obvious that no seduction is necessary to awaken the 
 sexual life of the child, that such an awakening may come on 
 spontaneously from inner sources. 
 
 Polymorphous-perverse Disposition. — It is instructive to know 
 that under the influence of seduction the child may become 
 polymorphous-perverse and may be misled into all sorts of trans- 
 gressions. This goes to show that it carries along the adaptation 
 for them in its disposition. The formation of such perversions 
 meets but slight resistance because the psychic dams against sexual 
 excesses, such as shame, loathing and morality — which depend on 
 the age of the child — are not yet erected or are only in the process 
 of formation. In this respect the child perhaps does not behave 
 differently from the average uncivilized woman in whom the 
 same polymorphous-perverse disposition exists. Such a woman 
 may remain sexually normal under usual conditions, but under 
 the guidance of a clever seducer she will find pleasure in every 
 perversion, and will retain the same as her sexual activity. The 
 same polymorphous or infantile disposition fits the prostitute for 
 her professional activity, and in the enormous number of prosti- 
 
 13 Freud, Selected Papers on Hysteria & Other Psychoneuroses, trans- 
 lated by A. A. Brill, Ph.B., M.D.; N. Y. Jour. Nerv. & Ment. Dis. Pub. 
 Co. Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph, Series No. 4. 
 
 "Havelock Ellis in an appendix to his study on the Sexual Impulse, 
 1903, gives a number of autobiographic reports of normal persons treat- 
 ing their first sexual feelings in childhood and the causes of the same. 
 These reports naturally show the deficiency due to infantile amnesia; they 
 do not cover the prehistoric time in the sexual life and therefore must 
 be supplemented by psychoanalysis of individuals who became neurotic. 
 Notwithstanding this these reports are valuable in more than one respect, 
 and information of a similar nature has urged me to modify my etiological 
 assumption. a\ mentioned in the text. 
 4 
 
50 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 tutes and of women to whom we must attribute an adaptation for 
 prostitution, even if they do not follow this calling, it is abso- 
 lutely impossible not to recognize in their uniform disposition 
 for all perversions the universal and primitive human. 
 
 Partial Impulses. — For the rest, the influence of seduction 
 does not aid us in unravelling the original relations of the sexual 
 impulse, but rather confuses our understanding of the same, inas- 
 much as it prematurely supplies the child with the sexual object 
 at a time when the infantile sexual impulse does not yet evince 
 any desire for it. We must admit, however, that the infantile 
 sexual life, though mainly under the control of erogenous zones, 
 also shows components in which from the very beginning other 
 persons are regarded as sexual objects. Among these we have 
 the impulses for looking and showing, and for cruelty, which 
 manifest themselves somewhat independently of the erogenous 
 zones and which only later enter into intimate relationship with 
 the sexual life ; but along with the erogenous sexual activity they 
 are noticeable even in the infantile years as separate and inde- 
 pendent strivings. The little child is above all shameless, and 
 during its early years it sometimes evinces pleasure in displaying 
 its body and especially its sexual organs. A counterpart to this 
 desire which is to be considered as perverse, the curiosity to see 
 other persons' genitals, probably appears first in the later years 
 of childhood when the hindrance of the feeling of shame has 
 already reached a certain development. Under the influence of 
 seduction the looking perversion may attain great importance for 
 the sexual life of the child. Still, from my investigations of the 
 childhood years of normal and neurotic patients, I must conclude 
 that the impulse for looking can appear in the child as a spon- 
 taneous sexual manifestation. Small children, whose attention 
 has once been directed to their own genitals — usually by mastur- 
 bation — are wont to progress in this direction without outside 
 interference, and to develop a vivid interest in the genitals of 
 their playmates. As the occasion for the gratifies aon of such 
 
THE INFANTILE SEXUALITY SI 
 
 curiosity is generally afforded during the gratification of both 
 excrementitious needs, such children become voyeurs and are 
 zealous spectators at the voiding of urine and feces of others. 
 After this tendency has been repressed, the curiosity to see the 
 genitals of others (one's own or those of the other sex), remains 
 as a tormenting desire which in some neurotic cases furnishes the 
 strongest motive power for the formation of symptoms. 
 
 The cruelty component of the sexual impulse develops in the 
 child with still greater independence of those sexual activities 
 which are connected with erogenous zones. Cruelty is especially 
 near the childish character, since the inhibition which restrains 
 the acquisition impulse through the influence of others — that is, 
 the capacity for sympathy — develops comparatively late. As we 
 know, a thorough psychological analysis of this impulse has not 
 as yet been successfully accomplished; we may assume that the 
 cruel feelings emanate from sources which are actually indepen- 
 dent of sexuality but with which an early connection is formed 
 through an anastomosis near the origins of both. But observa- 
 tion shows that relations exist between the sexual development 
 and the looking and cruelty impulses which restrict the pre- 
 tended independence of both impulses. Children who are dis- 
 tinguished for evincing especial cruelty to animals and playmates 
 may be justly suspected of intensive and premature sexual activity 
 in the erogenous zones ; and in a simultaneous prematurity of all 
 sexual impulses, the erogenous sexual activity surely seems to be 
 primary. The absence of the barrier of sympathy carries with it 
 the danger that the connections between cruelty and the erogenous 
 impulses formed in childhood cannot be broken in later life. 
 
 An erogenous source of the passive impulse for cruelty (maso- 
 chism) is found in the painful irritation of the gluteal region 
 which is familiar to all educators since the confessions of J. J. 
 Rousseau. This has justly caused them to demand that physical 
 punishment, which usually concerns this part of the body, should 
 
52 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 be withheld from all children in whom the libido might be forced 
 into collateral roads by the later demands of cultural education. 15 
 
 The Sources of the Infantile Sexuality 
 
 In our effort to follow up the origins of the sexual impulse, we 
 
 have thus far found that the sexual excitement originates (a) 
 
 in an imitation of a gratification which has been experienced in 
 
 conjunction with other organic processes; (b) through the appro- 
 
 15 The above-mentioned assertions concerning the infantile sexuality were 
 justified in 1905, in the main through the results of psychoanalytic in- 
 vestigations in adults. Direct observation of the child could not at the 
 time be utilized to its full extent and resulted only in individual indi- 
 cations and valuable confirmations. Since then it has become possible 
 through the analysis of some cases of nervous disease in the delicate 
 age of childhood to gain a direct understanding of the infantile psychosex- 
 uality (Jahrbuch fiir psychoanalytische und psych opathische Forschungen, 
 Bd. 1, 2, 1909). I can point with satisfaction to the fact that direct ob- 
 servation has fully confirmed the conclusion drawn from psychoanalysis, 
 and thus furnishes good evidence for the reliability of the latter method 
 of investigation. 
 
 Moreover the " Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy " (Jahr- 
 buch, Bd. I) has taught us something new for which psychoanalysis had 
 not prepared us to wit, that sexual symbolism, the representation of the 
 sexual by non-sexual objects and relations — reaches back into the years 
 when the child is first learning to master the language. My attention 
 has also been directed to a deficiency in the above-cited statement which 
 for the sake of clearness described any conceivable separation between 
 the two phases of autoerotism and object love as a temporal separation. 
 From the cited analysis (as well as from the above-mentioned work of 
 Bell) we learn that children from three to five are capable of evincing a 
 very strong object-selection which is accompanied by strong affects. 
 
 Another amplification of our knowledge of the sexual life of children 
 not hitherto mentioned in the text is found in the infantile sexual in- 
 vestigations (compare the paper " Concerning Infantile Sexual Theories/' 
 in the Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, zweite Folge). 
 This paper treats of the theories held by the children themselves, the im- 
 portance of these theories for later neuroses, the fate of these childish 
 investigations, and their relations to the development of the infantile mind. 
 
THE INFANTILE SEXUALITY 53 
 
 priate peripheral stimulation of erogenous zones; (c) and as an 
 expression of some " impulse," like the looking and cruelty im- 
 pulses, the origin of which we do not yet fully understand. The 
 psychoanalytic investigation of later life which leads back to child- 
 hood and the contemporary observation of the child itself cooper- 
 ate to reveal to us still other regularly-flowing sources of the 
 sexual excitement. The observation of childhood has the disad- 
 vantage of treating easily misunderstood material, while psycho- 
 analysis is made difficult by the fact that it can reach its objects 
 and conclusions only by great detours ; still the united efforts of 
 both methods achieve a sufficient degree of positive understanding. 
 
 In investigating the erogenous zones we have already found 
 that these skin regions merely show the special exaggeration of 
 a form of sensitiveness which is to a certain degree found over 
 the whole surface of the skin. It will therefore not surprise us 
 to learn that certain forms of general sensitiveness in the skin 
 can be ascribed to very distinct erogenous action. Among these 
 we will above all mention the temperature sensitiveness ; this will 
 perhaps prepare us for the understanding of the therapeutic 
 effects of warm baths. 
 
 Mechanical Excitation. — We must, moreover, describe here 
 the production of sexual excitation by means of rhythmic mechan- 
 ical shaking of the body. There are three kinds of exciting influ- 
 ences: those acting on the sensory apparatus of the vestibular 
 nerves, those acting on the skin, and those acting on the deep 
 parts, such as the muscles and joints. The sexual excitation 
 produced by these influences seems to be of a pleasurable nature — 
 a problem to which we will direct our attention later — and that 
 the pleasure is produced by mechanical stimulation is proved by 
 the fact that children are so fond of play involving passive mo- 
 tion, like swinging or flying in the air, and repeatedly demand its 
 repetition. 16 As we know, rocking is regularly used in putting 
 
 18 Some persons can recall that the contact of the moving air in swinging 
 caused them direct sexual pleasure in the genitals. 
 
54 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 to sleep restless children. The shaking sensation experienced in 
 wagons and railroad trains exerts such a fascinating influence on 
 older children, that all boys, at least at one time in their lives, want 
 to become conductors and drivers. They are wont to ascribe to 
 railroad activities an extraordinary and mysterious interest, and 
 during the age of phantastic activity (shortly before puberty) 
 they utilize these as a nucleus for exquisite sexual symbolisms. 
 The desire to connect railroad travelling with sexuality appar- 
 ently originates from the pleasurable character of the sensation 
 of motion. .When the repression later sets in and changes so 
 many of the childish likes into their opposites, these same persons 
 as adolescents and adults then react to the rocking and rolling 
 with nausea and become terribly exhausted by a railroad journey, 
 or they show a tendency to attacks of anxiety during the journey, 
 and by becoming obsessed with railroad phobia they protect them- 
 selves against a repetition of the painful experiences. 
 
 This also fits in with the not as yet understood fact that the 
 concurrence of fear with mechanical shaking produces the sever- 
 est hysterical forms of traumatic neurosis. It may at least be 
 assumed that inasmuch as even a slight intensity of these influ- 
 ences becomes a source of sexual excitement, the action of an 
 excessive amount of the same will produce a profound disorder in 
 the sexual mechanism. 
 
 Muscular Activity. — It is well known that the child has need 
 for strong muscular activity, from the gratification of which it 
 draws extraordinary pleasure. Whether this pleasure has any- 
 thing to do with sexuality, whether it includes in itself sexual 
 gratification, or can become a cause of sexual excitement, all 
 these problems may be solved by critical reflection, which will no 
 doubt also be directed toward the statements made above, namely, 
 that the sensations of passive motion are of a sexual nature or 
 produce sexual excitement. The fact remains, however, that a 
 number of persons report that they experienced the first signs 
 of excitement in their genitals during fighting or wrestling with 
 
THE INFANTILE SEXUALITY 55 
 
 playmates, in which situation, besides the general muscular exer- 
 tion, there is an intensive contact with the opponent's skin which 
 also becomes effective. The desire for muscular contest with a 
 definite person, like the desire for word contest in later years, 
 is a good sign that the object selection has been directed upon 
 this person. " Was sich liebt, das neckt sich." 17 In the promo- 
 tion of sexual excitement through muscular activity we might 
 recognize one of the sources of the sadistic impulse. The infan- 
 tile connection between fighting and sexual excitement acts in 
 many persons as a future determinant for the preferred course of 
 their sexual impulse. 18 
 
 Affective Processes. — The other sources of sexual excitement 
 in the child are open to less doubt. Through simultaneous obser- 
 vations, as well as through later investigations, it is easy to ascer- 
 tain that all more intensive affective processes, even excitements 
 of a terrifying nature, encroach upon sexuality; this can at all 
 events furnish us with a contribution to the understanding of the 
 pathogenic action of such emotions. In the school child, fear of 
 a coming examination or exertion expended in the solution of a 
 difficult task can become significant for the breaking through of 
 sexual manifestations as well as for his relations to the school, 
 inasmuch as under such excitements a sensation often occurs 
 urging him to touch the genitals, or leading to a pollution-like 
 process with all its disagreeable consequences. The behavior of 
 children at school, which is so often mysterious to the teacher, 
 ought surely to be considered in relation with their germinating 
 sexuality. The sexually-exciting influence of some painful affects, 
 
 ""Those who love each other tease each other." 
 
 18 The analyses of neurotic disturbances of walking and of agoraphobia 
 remove all doubt as to the sexual nature of the pleasure of motion. As 
 everybody knows modern cultural education utilizes sports to a great ex- 
 tent in order to turn away the youth from sexual activity; it would be 
 more proper to say that it replaces the sexual pleasure by motion pleasure, 
 and forces the sexual activity back upon one of its autoerotic components. 
 
 5 
 
56 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 such as fear, shuddering, and horror, is felt by a great many 
 people throughout life and readily explains why so many seek 
 opportunities to experience such sensations, provided that certain 
 accessory circumstances (as in fiction, reading, the theater) sup- 
 press the earnestness of the painful feeling. 
 
 If we might assume that the same erogenous action also 
 reaches the intensive painful feelings, especially if the pain be 
 toned down or held at a distance by a subsidiary determination, 
 this relation would then contain the main roots of the masochistic- 
 sadistic impulse, into the manifold composition of which we are 
 gaining a gradual insight. 
 
 Intellectual Work. — Finally, it is evident that mental appli- 
 cation or the concentration of attention on an intellectual accom- 
 plishment will result, especially often in youthful persons, but 
 in older persons as well, in a simultaneous sexual excitement, 
 which may be looked upon as the only justified basis for the 
 otherwise so doubtful etiology of nervous disturbances from 
 mental " overwork." 
 
 If we now, in conclusion, review the evidences and indications 
 of the sources of the infantile sexual excitement, which have been 
 reported neither completely nor exhaustively, we may lay down 
 the following general laws as suggested or established. It seems 
 to be provided in the most generous manner that the process of 
 sexual excitement — the nature of which certainly remains quite 
 mysterious to us — should be set in motion. The factor making 
 this provision in a more or less direct way is the excitation of the 
 sensible surfaces of the skin and sensory organs, while the most 
 indirect exciting influences are exerted on certain parts which are 
 designated as erogenous zones. The criterion in all these sources 
 of sexual excitement is really the quality of the stimuli, though 
 the factor of intensity (in pain) is not entirely unimportant. But 
 in addition to this there are arrangements in the organism which 
 cause the origin of the sexual excitement as a subsidiary action 
 in a large number of inner processes as soon as the intensity of 
 
THE INFANTILE SEXUALITY 57 
 
 these processes has risen above certain quantitative limits. What 
 we have designated as the partial impulses of sexuality are either 
 directly derived from these inner sources of sexual excitation or 
 composed of contributions from such sources and from erogenous 
 zones. It is possible that nothing of any considerable significance 
 occurs in the organism that does not contribute its components to 
 the excitement of the sexual impulse. 
 
 It seems to me at present impossible to shed more light and 
 certainty on these general propositions, and for this I hold two 
 factors responsible; first, the novelty of this manner of investi- 
 gation, and secondly, the fact that the nature of the sexual excite- 
 ment is entirely unfamiliar to us. Nevertheless, I will not forbear 
 speaking about two points which promise to open wide prospects 
 in the future. 
 
 Diverse Sexual Constitutions. — (o) We have considered above 
 the possibility of establishing the manifold character of congenital 
 sexual constitutions through the diverse formation of the eroge- 
 nous zones ; we may now attempt to do the same in dealing with 
 the indirect sources of sexual excitement. We may assume that,: 
 although these different sources furnish contributions in all indi- 
 viduals, they are not all equally strong in all persons; and that 
 a further contribution to the differentiation of the diverse sexual 
 constitution will be found in the preferred developments of the 
 individual sources of sexual excitement. • 
 
 The Roads of Opposite Influences. — (b) Since we are now 
 dropping the figurative manner of expression hitherto employed, 
 by which we spoke of sources of sexual excitement, we may now 
 assume that all the connecting ways leading from other functions 
 to sexuality must also be passable in the reverse direction. For 
 example, if the lip zone, the common possession of both func- 
 tions, is responsible for the fact that the sexual gratification origi- 
 nates during the taking of nourishment, the same factor offers, 
 also an explanation for the disturbances in the taking of nourish- 
 ment if the erogenous functions of the common zone are dis- 
 
58 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 turbed. As soon as we know that concentration of attention may 
 produce sexual excitement, it is quite natural to assume that 
 acting on the same road, but in a contrary direction, the state of 
 sexual excitement will be able to influence the availability of the 
 voluntary attention. A good part of the symptomatology of the 
 neuroses which I trace to disturbance of sexual processes mani- 
 fests itself in other non-sexual bodily functions, and this hitherto 
 incomprehensible action becomes less mysterious if it only repre- 
 sents the counterpart of the influences controlling the production 
 of the sexual excitement. 
 
 However the same roads through which sexual disturbances 
 encroach upon the other functions of the body must in health 
 be supposed to serve another important function. It must be 
 through these roads that the attraction of the sexual motive 
 powers to other than sexual aims, the sublimation of sexuality, 
 is accomplished. We must conclude with the admission that very 
 little is definitely known concerning the roads beyond the fact 
 that they exist, and that they are probably passable in both 
 directions. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE TRANSFORMATION OF PUBERTY 
 
 With the beginning of puberty the changes set in which trans- 
 form the infantile sexual life into its definite normal form. Hith- 
 erto the sexual impulse has been preponderately autoerotic; it 
 now finds the sexual object. Thus far it has manifested itself 
 in single impulses and in erogenous zones seeking a certain 
 pleasure as a single sexual aim. A new sexual aim now appears 
 for the production of which all partial impulses cooperate, while 
 the erogenous zones subordinate themselves under the primacy 
 of the genital zone. As the new sexual aim assigns very different 
 functions to the two sexes their sexual developments now part 
 company. The sexual development of the man is more con- 
 sistent and easier to understand, while in the woman there even 
 appears a form of regression. The normality of the sexual life 
 is guaranteed only by the exact concurrence of the two streams 
 directed to the sexual object and sexual aim. It is like the 
 piercing of a tunnel from opposite sides. 
 
 The new sexual aim in the man consists in the discharging qf 
 the sexual products ; it is not markedly different from the former 
 sexual aim in its manner of obtaining pleasure ; on the contrary, 
 the highest amount of pleasure is connected with this final act in 
 the sexual process. The sexual impulse now enters into the ser- 
 vice of the function of propagation ; it becomes, so to say, altru- 
 istic. If this transformation is to succeed its process must be 
 adjusted to the original dispositions and all the peculiarities of 
 t'he impulses. 
 
 \ Just as on every other occasion where new connections and 
 compositions are to be formed in complicated mechanisms, here, 
 
 59 
 
60 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 too, there is a possibility of morbid disturbance if the new order 
 of things does not take place. 
 
 The Primacy of the Genital Zones and the Fore-pleasure 
 
 From the course of development as described we can clearly 
 see the issue and the end aim. The intermediary transitions are 
 still quite obscure and many a riddle will have to be solved in 
 them. 
 
 The most striking process of puberty has been selected as its 
 most characteristic; it is the manifest growth of the external 
 genitals which have shown a relative inhibition of growth during 
 the latency period of childhood. Simultaneously the inner geni- 
 tals develop to such an extent as to be able to furnish sexual 
 products for the reception and formation of a new living being. 
 A most complicated apparatus is thus formed which waits to be 
 claimed. 
 
 This apparatus can be set in motion by stimuli, and observa- 
 tion teaches that the stimuli can affect it in three ways : from the 
 outer world through the familiar erogenous zones ; from the inner 
 organic world by ways still to be investigated; and from the 
 psychic life, which merely represents a depository of external 
 impressions and a receptacle of inner excitations. The same 
 result follows in all three cases, namely, a state which can be 
 designated as " sexual excitation " and which manifests itself in 
 psychic and somatic signs. The psychic sign consists in a pecu- 
 liar feeling of tension of a most urgent character, and among 
 the manifold somatic signs the many changes in the genitals stand 
 first. They have a definite meaning, that of readiness ; they con- 
 stitute a preparation for the sexual act (the erection of the penis, 
 and the glandular activity of the vagina). 
 
 The Sexual Tension. — The character of the tension of sexual i 
 excitation is connected with a problem the solution of whiq h 
 would be difficult but important for the conception of the sexuf al 
 process. Despite all divergence of opinion regarding it in ps^- 
 
THE TRANSFORMATION OF PUBERTY 6 1 
 
 chology, I must firmly maintain that a feeling of tension must 
 carry with it the character of displeasure. For me it is conclu- 
 sive that such a feeling carries with it the impulse to alter the 
 psychic situation, and acts incitingly, which is quite contrary 
 to the nature of perceived pleasure. But if we ascribe the ten- 
 sion of the sexual excitation to the feelings of displeasure we 
 encounter the fact that it is undoubtedly pleasurably perceived. 
 The tension produced by sexual excitation is everywhere accom- 
 panied by pleasure ; even in the preparatory changes of the geni- 
 tals there is a distinct feeling of satisfaction. What relation is 
 there between this unpleasant tension and this feeling of pleasure ? 
 Everything relating to the problem of pleasure and pain touches 
 one of the weakest spots of present-day psychology. We shall 
 try if possible to learn something from the determinations of the 
 case in question and to avoid encroaching on the problem as a 
 whole. Let us first glance at the manner in which the erogenous 
 zones adjust themselves to the new order of things. An impor- 
 tant role devolves upon them in the preparation of the sexual 
 excitation. The eye which is very remote from the sexual object, 
 is most often in position, during the relations of object wooing, 
 to become attracted by that particular quality of excitation, the 
 motive of which we designate as beauty in the sexual object. 
 The excellencies of the sexual object are therefore also called 
 "attractions." This excitation is on the one hand already con- 
 nected with pleasure, and on the other hand it either results in 
 an increase of the sexual excitation or in an evocation of the 
 same where it is still wanting. The effect is the same if the 
 excitation of another erogenous zone, e. g., the touching hand, 
 is added to it. There is on the one hand the feeling of pleasure 
 which soon becomes enhanced by the pleasure from the prepara- 
 tory changes, and on the other hand there is a further increase 
 of the sexual tension which soon changes into a most distinct 
 feeling of displeasure if it cannot proceed to more pleasure. 
 Another case will perhaps be clearer; let us, for example, take 
 
62 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 the case where an erogenous zone, like a woman's breast, is 
 excited by touching in a person who is not sexually excited at 
 the time. This touching in itself evokes a feeling of pleasure, 
 but nothing is better adapted to awaken sexual excitement which 
 demands a greater portion of pleasure. How it happens that the 
 perceived pleasure evokes the desire for greater pleasure, that 
 is the real problem. 
 
 Fore-pleasure Mechanism. — But the role which devolves upon 
 the erogenous zones is clear. What applies to one applies to all. 
 They are all utilized to furnish a certain amount of pleasure 
 through their own proper excitation, which increases the tension, 
 and which is in turn destined to produce the necessary motor 
 energy in order to bring to a conclusion the sexual act. "The last 
 part but one of this act is again a suitable excitation of an eroge- 
 nous zone; i. e., the genital zone proper of the glans penis is 
 excited by the object most fit for it, the mucous membrane of the 
 vagina, and through the pleasure furnished by this excitation it 
 now produces reflexly the motor energy which conveys to the 
 surface the sexual substance. This last pleasure is highest in 
 its intensity, and differs from the earliest ones in its mechanism. 
 It is altogether produced through discharge and it is altogether 
 a pleasure of gratification ; the tension of the libido temporarily 
 dies away with it. 
 
 It does not seem to me unauthorized to fix by name the dis- 
 tinction in the nature of these pleasures, the one through the 
 excitation of the erogenous zones, and the other through the 
 discharge of the sexual substance. In contradistinction to the 
 end-pleasure, or pleasure of gratification of sexual activity, we 
 can properly designate the first as fore-pleasure. The fore- 
 pleasure is then the same as that furnished by the infantile sexual 
 impulse, though on a reduced scale ; while the end-pleasure is new 
 and is probably connected with determinations which first appear 
 in puberty. The formula for the new function of the erogenous 
 zones reads as follows: they are utilized for the purpose of 
 
THE TRANSFORMATION OF PUBERTY 63 
 
 making possible the production of the greater pleasure of grati- 
 fication by means of the fore-pleasure which is gained from them 
 as in infantile life. 
 
 I have recently been able to elucidate another example from a 
 quite different realm of the psychic life, in which likewise a 
 greater feeling of pleasure is achieved by means of a lesser feel- 
 ing of pleasure which acts as an alluring premium. We had 
 there also the opportunity of entering more deeply into the nature 
 of pleasure. 1 
 
 Dangers of the Fore-pleasure. — However the connection of 
 fore-pleasure with the infantile life is strengthened by the patho- 
 genic role which may devolve upon it. The mechanism shelter- 
 ing the fore-pleasure may result in a danger for the attainment of 
 the normal sexual aim. This occurs if it happens that there is 
 too much fore-pleasure and too little tension on any part of the 
 preparatory sexual process. The motive power for the further 
 continuation of the sexual process then escapes, the whole road 
 becomes shortened, and the preparatory action in question takes 
 the place of the normal sexual aim. Experience shows that such 
 a hurtful case is determined by the fact that the erogenous zone 
 concerned or the corresponding partial impulse has already con- 
 tributed an unusual amount of pleasure in infantile life. If other 
 factors favoring fixation are added a compulsion readily results 
 for the later life which prevents the fore-pleasure from arrang- 
 ing itself into a new combination. Indeed, the mechanism of 
 many perversions is of such a nature; they merely represent a 
 lingering at a preparatory act of the sexual process. 
 
 The failure of the function of the sexual mechanism through 
 the fault of the fore-pleasure is generally avoided if the primacy 
 of the genital zones has also already been sketched out in infan- 
 tile life. The preparations of the second half of childhood (from 
 
 1 See my work " Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten " : 
 " The fore-pleasure gained by the technique of wit is utilized for the pur- 
 pose of setting free a greater pleasure by the removal of inner inhibitions." 
 
64 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 the eighth year to puberty) really seem to favor this. During 
 these years the genital zones behave almost as at the age of 
 maturity ; they are the seat of exciting sensations and of prepara- 
 tory changes if any kind of pleasure is experienced through the 
 gratification of other erogenous zones; although this effect re- 
 mains aimless, i. e., it contributes nothing towards the continua- 
 tion of the sexual process. Besides the pleasure of gratification 
 a certain amount of sexual tension appears even in infancy, 
 though it is less constant and less abundant. We can now under- 
 stand also why in the discussion of the sources of sexuality we 
 had a perfectly good reason for saying that the process in ques- 
 tion acts as sexual gratification as well as sexual excitement. We 
 note that on our way towards the truth we have at first enor- 
 mously exaggerated the distinctions between the infantile and 
 the mature sexual life, and we therefore supplement what has 
 been said with a correction. The infantile manifestations of 
 sexuality determine not only the deviations from the normal 
 sexual life but also the normal formations of the same. 
 
 The Problem of Sexual Excitement 
 It remained to us above entirely unexplained whence the sexual 
 tension comes which originates simultaneously with the gratifi- 
 cation of erogenous zones and what is its nature. The obvious 
 supposition that this tension originates in some way from the 
 pleasure itself is not only improbable in itself but untenable, inas- 
 much as during the greatest pleasure which is connected with the 
 voiding of sexual substance there is no production of tension but 
 rather a removal of all tension. Hence, pleasure and sexual ten- 
 sion can be only indirectly connected. 
 
 The Role of the Sexual Substance. — Aside from the fact that 
 only the discharge of the sexual substance can normally put an 
 end to the sexual excitement, there are other essential facts which 
 bring the sexual tension into relation with the sexual products. 
 In a life of continence the sexual activity is wont to discharge 
 
THE TRANSFORMATION OF PUBERTY 6$ 
 
 the sexual substance at night during pleasurable dream halluci- 
 nations of a sexual act, this discharge coming at changing but 
 not at entirely capricious intervals ; and the following interpreta- 
 tion of this process — the nocturnal pollution — can hardly be re- 
 jected, viz., that the sexual tension which brings about a substi- 
 tute for the sexual act by the short hallucinatory road is a function 
 of the accumulated semen in the reservoirs for the sexual prod- 
 ucts. Experiences with the exhaustibility of the sexual mech- 
 anism speak for the same thing. Where there is no stock of 
 semen it is not only impossible to accomplish the sexual act, but 
 there is also a lack of excitability in the erogenous zones, the 
 suitable excitation of which can evoke no pleasure. We thus 
 discover incidentally that a certain amount of sexual tension is 
 itself necessary for the excitability of the erogenous zones. 
 
 One is thus forced to the assumption, which if I am not mis- 
 taken is quite generally adopted, that the accumulation of sexual 
 substance produces and maintains the sexual tension. The pres- 
 sure of these products on the walls of their receptacles acts as 
 an excitant on the spinal center, the state of which is then per- 
 ceived by the higher centers which then produce in consciousness 
 the familiar feeling of tension. If the excitation of erogenous 
 zones increases the sexual tension, it can only be due to the fact 
 that the erogenous zones are connected with these centers by pre- 
 viously formed anatomical connections. They increase there the 
 tone of the excitation, and with sufficient sexual tension they set 
 in motion the sexual act, and with insufficient tension they merely 
 stimulate a production of the sexual substance. 
 
 The weakness of the theory which one finds adopted, e. g., in 
 v. Krafft-Ebing's description of the sexual process, lies in the 
 fact that it has been formed for the sexual activity of the mature 
 man and pays too little heed to three kinds of relations which 
 should also have been elucidated. We refer to the relations as 
 found in the child, in the woman, and in the castrated male. In 
 
66 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 none of the three cases can we speak of an accumulation of sexual 
 products in the same sense as in the man, which naturally renders 
 difficult the general application of this scheme; still it may be 
 admitted without any further ado that ways can be found to 
 justify the subordination of even these cases. At all events one 
 should be cautious about burdening the factor of accumulation 
 of sexual products with actions which it seems incapable of 
 supporting. 
 
 Overestimation of the Internal Genitals. — That sexual excite- 
 ment can be to a considerable extent independent of the produc- 
 tion of sexual substance seems to be shown by observations on 
 castrated males, in whom the libido sometimes escapes the injury 
 caused by the operation, although the opposite behavior, which 
 is really the motive for the operation, is usually the rule. It is 
 therefore not at all surprising, as C. Rieger puts it, that the loss 
 of the male germ glands in maturer age should exert no new 
 influence on the psychic life of the individual. The germ glands 
 are really not the sexuality, and the experience with castrated 
 males only verifies what we had long before learned from the 
 removal of the ovaries, namely, that it is impossible to do away 
 with the sexual character by removing the germ glands. To be 
 sure, castration performed at a delicate age, be fore puberty, comes 
 nearer to this aim, but it would seem in this case that besides the 
 loss of the sexual glands we must also consider the inhibition of 
 development and other factors which are connected with that loss. 
 
 Chemical Theories. — The truth remains, however, that we are 
 unable to give any information about the nature of the sexual 
 excitement for the reason that we do not know with what organ 
 or organs sexuality is connected, since we have seen that the 
 sexual glands have been overestimated in this significance. Since 
 surprising discoveries have taught us the important role of the 
 thyroid gland in sexuality, we may assume that the knowledge 
 of the essential factors of sexuality are still withheld from us. 
 One who feels the need of filling up the large gap in our knowl- 
 
THE TRANSFORMATION OF PUBERTY 67 
 
 edge with a preliminary assumption may formulate for himself 
 the following theory based on the active substances found in the 
 thyroid. Through the adapted excitement of erogenous zones, 
 as well as through other conditions under which sexual excite- 
 ment originates, a material which is universally distributed in the 
 organism becomes disintegrated, the decomposing products of 
 which supply a specific stimulus to the organs of reproduction 
 or to the spinal center connected with them. Such a transforma- 
 tion of a toxic stimulus in a particular organic stimulus we are 
 already familiar with from other toxic products introduced into 
 the body from without. To treat, if only hypothetically, the 
 complexities of the pure toxic and the physiologic stimulations 
 which result in the sexual processes is not now our appropriate 
 task. To be sure, I attach no value to this special assumption 
 and I shall be quite ready to give it up in favor of another, pro- 
 vided its original character, the emphasis on the sexual chemism, 
 were preserved. For this apparently arbitrary statement is sup- 
 ported by a fact which, though little heeded, is most noteworthy. 
 The neuroses which can be traced only to disturbances of the 
 sexual life show the greatest clinical resemblance to the phe- 
 nomena of intoxication and abstinence which result through 
 the habitual introduction of pleasure-producing poisonous sub- 
 stances (alkaloids). 
 
 Differentiation Between Man and Woman 
 \ It is known that the sharp differentiation of the male and 
 female character originates at puberty, and it is the resulting 
 difference which, more than any other factor, decisively influ- 
 ences the later development of personality. To be sure, the male 
 and female dispositions are easily recognizable even in infantile 
 life; thus the development of sexual inhibitions (shame, loathing, 
 sympathy, etc.) ensues earlier and with less resistance in the 
 little girl than in the little boy. The tendency to sexual repres- 
 sion certainly seems much greater, and where partial impulses 
 
68 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 of sexuality are noticed they show a preference for thejpassive 
 form. But the autoerotic activity of the erogenous zones is the 
 ~same in both sexes, and it is this agreement that removes the pos- 
 sibility of a sex differentiation in childhood as it appears after 
 puberty. In respect to the autoerotic and masturbatic sexual 
 manifestations, it may be asserted that the sexuality of the~little 
 girl has entirely a male character. Indeed, if one could give a 
 more definite content to the terms " masculine and feminine," one 
 might advance the opinion that the libido is regularly and lawfully 
 of a masculine nature, be it in the man or in the woman; and if 
 we consider its object, this may be either the man or the woman. 
 
 Since becoming acquainted with the aspect of bisexuality I 
 hold this factor as here decisive, and I believe that without taking 
 into account the factor of bisexuality it will hardly be possible 
 to understand the actually observed sexual manifestations in man 
 and woman. 
 
 The Leading Zones in Man and Woman. — Further than this 
 I can only add the following. The chief erogenous zone in the 
 female child is the clitoris, which is homologous to the male penis. 
 All I have been able to discover concerning masturbation in little 
 girls concerned the clitoris and not those other external genitals 
 which are so important for the later sexual functions. With few 
 exceptions I myself doubt whether the female child can be seduced 
 to anything but clitoris masturbation. The frequent spontaneous 
 discharges of sexual excitement in little girls manifest themselves 
 in a twitching of the clitoris, and the frequent erections of the 
 same enable the girl to understand correctly even without any 
 instruction the sexual manifestations of the other sex ; they simply 
 transfer to the boys the sensations of their own sexual processes. 
 
 If one wishes to understand how the little girl becomes a 
 woman, he must follow up the further destinies of this clitoris 
 excitation. Puberty, which brings to the boy a great advance of 
 libido, distinguishes itself in the girl by a new wave of repression 
 which especially concerns the clitoris sexuality. It is a part of 
 
THE TRANSFORMATION OF PUBERTY 69 
 
 the male sexual life that merges into repression. The reinforce- 
 ment of the sexual inhibitions produced in the woman by the 
 repression of puberty causes a stimulus in the libido of the man 
 and forces it to increase its capacity; with the height of the 
 libido there is a rise in the overestimation of the sexual, which 
 can be present in its full force only when the woman refuses and 
 denies her sexuality. If the sexual act is finally submitted to 
 and the clitoris becomes excited its role is then to conduct the 
 excitement to the adjacent female parts, and in this it acts like 
 a chip of pine wood which is utilized to set fire to the harder 
 wood. It often takes some time for this transference to be 
 accomplished, during which the young wife remains anesthetic. 
 This anesthesia may become permanent if the clitoris zone refuses 
 to give up its excitability; a condition brought on by abundant 1 
 activities in infantile life. It is known that anesthesia in women 
 is often only apparent, and local. They are anesthetic at the 
 vaginal entrance but not at all unexcitable through the clitoris or 
 even through other zones. Besides these erogenous causes of 
 anesthesia there are also psychic causes likewise determined by 
 the repression. 
 
 If the transference of the erogenous excitability from the 
 clitoris to the vagina has succeeded, the woman has thus changed 
 her leading zone for the future sexual activity; the man on the 
 other hand retains his from childhood. The main determinants 
 for the woman's preference for the neuroses, especially for hys- 
 teria, lie in this change of the leading zone as well as in the repres- 
 sion of puberty. These determinants are therefore most inti- 
 mately connected with the nature of femininity. 
 
 The Object-finding 
 
 While the primacy of the genital zones is being established 
 
 through the processes of puberty, and the erected penis in the 
 
 man imperiously points towards the new sexual aim, *. e., towards 
 
 the penetration of a cavity which excites the genital zone, the 
 
70 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 object-finding, for which also preparations have been made since 
 early childhood, becomes consummated on the psychic side. 
 While the very incipient sexual gratifications are still connected 
 with the taking of nourishment, the sexual impulse has a sexual 
 object outside its own body in his mother's breast. This object 
 it loses later, perhaps at the very time when it becomes possible 
 for the child to form a general picture of the person to whom the 
 organ granting him the gratification belongs. The sexual im- 
 pulse later regularly becomes autoerotic, and only after over- 
 coming the latency period is there a resumption of the original 
 relation. It is not without good reason that the suckling of the 
 child from its mother's breast has become a model for every 
 amour. The object-finding is really a re-finding. 
 
 The Sexual Object of the Nursing Period. — However, even 
 after the separation of the sexual activity from the taking of 
 nourishment, there still remains from this first and most impor- 
 tant of all sexual relations an important share, which prepares the 
 object selection and assists in reestablishing the lost happiness. 
 Throughout the latency period the child learns to love other per- 
 sons who assist it in its helplessness and gratify its wants; all 
 this follows the model and is a continuation of the child's infan- 
 tile relations to his wet nurse. One may perhaps hesitate to 
 identify the tender feelings and esteem of the child for his foster- 
 parents with sexual love; I believe, however, that a more thor- 
 ough psychological investigation will establish this identity beyond 
 any doubt. The intercourse between the child and its foster- 
 parents is for the former an inexhaustible source of sexual exci- 
 tation and gratification of erogenous zones, especially since the 
 parents — or as a rule the mother — supplies the child with feelings 
 which originate from her own sexual life; she pats it, kisses it, 
 and rocks it, plainly taking it as a substitute for a full-valued 
 sexual object. 2 The mother would probably be terrified if it 
 ' Those to whom this conception appears "wicked" may read Havelock 
 Ellis's treatise on the relations between mother and child which expresses 
 almost the same ideas (The Sexual Impulse, p. 16) . 
 
THE TRANSFORMATION OF PUBERTY 7 1 
 
 were explained to her that all her tenderness awakens the sexual 
 impulse of her child and prepares its future intensity. She con- 
 siders her actions as asexually "pure" love, for she carefully 
 avoids causing more irritation to the genitals of the child than is 
 indispensable in caring for the body. But as we know the sexual 
 impulse is not awakened by the excitation of genital zones alone. 
 What we call tenderness will some day surely manifest its influ- 
 ence on the genital zones also. If the mother better understood 
 the high significance of the sexual impulse for the whole psychic 
 life and for all ethical and psychic activities, the enlightenment 
 would spare her all reproaches. By teaching the child to love she 
 only fulfills her function; for the child should become a fit man 
 with energetic sexual needs, and accomplish in life all that the 
 impulse urges the man to do. Of course, too much parental ten- 
 derness becomes harmful because it accelerates the sexual matur- 
 ity, and also because it "spoils" the child and makes it unfit to 
 temporarily renounce love or be satisfied with a smaller amount 
 of love in later life. One of the surest premonitions of later ner- 
 vousness is the fact that the child shows itself insatiable in its 
 demands for parental tenderness ; on the other hand, neuropathic 
 parents, who usually display a boundless tenderness, often with 
 their caressing awaken in the child a disposition for neurotic dis- 
 eases. This example at least shows that neuropathic parents have 
 nearer ways than inheritance by which they can transfer their 
 disturbances to their children. 
 
 Infantile Fear. — The children themselves behave from their 
 early childhood as if their attachment to their foster-parents 
 were of the nature of sexual love. The fear of children is origi- 
 nally nothing but an expression for the fact that they miss the 
 beloved person. They therefore meet every stranger with fear, 
 they are afraid of the dark because they cannot see the beloved 
 person, and are calmed if they can grasp that person's hand. The 
 effect of childish fears and of the terrifying stories told by nurses 
 is overestimated if one blames the latter for producing the fear 
 
72 -THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 in children. Children who are predisposed to fear absorb these 
 stories, which make no impression whatever upon others; and 
 only such children are predisposed to fear whose sexual impulse 
 is excessive or prematurely developed, or has become pretentious 
 through pampering. The child behaves here like the adult, that 
 is, it changes its libido into fear when it cannot bring it to grati- 
 fication, and the grown-up who becomes neurotic on account of 
 ungratified libido behaves in his anxiety like a child; he fears 
 when he is alone, i, e., without a person of whose love he believes 
 himself sure, and who can calm his fears by means of the most 
 childish measures. 8 
 
 Incest Barriers. — If the tenderness of the parents for the 
 child has luckily failed to awaken the sexual impulse of the child 
 prematurely, i. e., before the physical determinations for puberty 
 appear, and if that awakening has not gone so far as to cause 
 an unmistakable breaking through of the psychic excitement into 
 the genital system, it can then fulfill its task and direct the child 
 at the age of maturity in the selection of the sexual object. It 
 would, of course, be most natural for the child to select as the 
 sexual object that person whom it has loved since childhood with, 
 so to speak, a suppressed libido. But owing to the delay of sexual 
 maturity time has been gained for the erection beside the sexual 
 inhibitions of the incest barrier, that moral prescription which 
 explicitly excludes from the object selection the beloved person 
 of infancy or blood relation. The observance of this barrier is 
 above all a demand of cultural society which must guard against 
 the absorption by the family of those interests which it needs for 
 
 8 For the explanation of the origin of the infantile fear I am indebted 
 to a three-year-old boy whom I once heard calling from a dark room : 
 " Aunt, talk to me, I am afraid because it is dark." " How will that 
 help you," answered the aunt ; " you cannot see anyhow." " That's 
 nothing," answered the child ; " If some one talks then it becomes light." 
 ■ — He was, as we see, not afraid of the darkness but he was afraid because 
 he missed the person he loved, and he could promise to calm down as 
 soon as he was assured of her presence. 
 
THE TRANSFORMATION OF PUBERTY 73 
 
 the production of higher social units. Society, therefore, uses 
 every means to loosen those family ties in every individual, espe- 
 cially in the boy, which are authoritative in childhood only. 
 
 The object selection, however, is first accomplished in the 
 imagination, and the sexual life of the maturing youth has hardly 
 any escape except indulgence in phantasies or ideas which are not 
 destined to Jbe_ brought—to- execution. In the phantasies of all 
 persons the. ^infantile inclinations, 'now reenforced by" somatic 
 emphasis, reappear, and among them one finds in lawful fre- 
 quency andjnjirst place the sexual feeling of the child for the 
 parents. \ Tljiis has usually already been differentiated by the 
 sexual_a#ract_ion, the attraction of the son for the mother and 
 of the daughter for the father.* Simultaneously with the over- 
 coming and rejection of these distinctly incestuous phantasies 
 there occurs one of the most important as well as one of the 
 most painful psychic accomplishments of puberty ; it is the break- 
 ing away from the parental authority, through which alone is 
 formed that opposition between the new and old generations 
 which is so important for cultural progress. Many persons are 
 detained at every station in the course of development through 
 which the individual must pass ; and accordingly there are persons 
 who never overcome the parental authority and never, or very 
 imperfectly, withdraw their affection from their parents. They 
 are mostly girls, who, to the delight of their parents, retain their 
 full infantile love far beyond puberty, and it is instructive to find 
 that in their married life these girls are incapable of fulfilling 
 their duties tojtheir husbands. . They make cold wives and remain 
 sexually anesthetic. This shows that the apparently non-sexual 
 love for the parents and the sexual love are nourished from the 
 same source, i. e., that the first merely corresponds to an infantile 
 fixation of the libido. 
 
 The nearer we come to the deeper disturbances of the psycho- 
 * Compare the description concerning the inevitable relation in the 
 CEdipus fable (Traumdeutung, 2d edition, p. 185). 
 
74 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 sexual development the more easily we can recognize the evident 
 significance of the incestuous object-selection. As a result of 
 sexual rejection there remains in the unconscious of the psycho- 
 neurotic a great part or the whole of the psychosexual activity for 
 object finding. Girls with an excessive need for affection and 
 an equal horror for the real demands of the sexual life, experience 
 an uncontrollable temptation on the one hand to realize in life 
 the ideal of the asexual love and on the other hand to conceal their 
 libido under an affection which they may manifest without self 
 reproach ; this they do by clinging for life to the infantile attrac- 
 tion for their parents or brothers or sisters which has been 
 repressed in puberty. With the help of the symptoms and other 
 morbid manifestations, psychoanalysis can trace their unconscious 
 thoughts and translate them into the conscious, and thus easily 
 show to such persons that they are in love with their consan- 
 guinous relations in the popular meaning of the term. Likewise 
 when a once healthy person merges into disease after an unhappy 
 love affair, the mechanism of the disease can distinctly be ex- 
 plained as a return of his libido to the persons preferred in his 
 infancy. 
 
 The After Effects of the Infantile Object Selection. — Even 
 those who have happily eluded the incestuous fixation of their 
 libido have not completely escaped its influence. It is a distinct 
 echo of this phase of development that the first serious love of 
 the young man is often for a mature woman and that of the girl 
 for an older man equipped with authority — i. e., for persons who 
 can revive in them the picture of the mother and father. Gener- 
 ally speaking object selection unquestionably takes place by fol- 
 lowing more freely these prototypes. The man seeks above all 
 the memory picture of his mother as it has dominated him since 
 the beginning of childhood ; this is quite consistent with the fact 
 that the mother, if still living, strives against this, her renewal, 
 and meets it with hostility. In view of this significance of the 
 infantile relation to the parents for the later selection of the 
 
THE TRANSFORMATION OF PUBERTY . 75 
 
 sexual object, it is easy to understand that every disturbance of 
 this infantile relation brings to a head the most serious results 
 for the sexual life after puberty. Jealousy of the.' lover, too, 
 never lacks the infantile sources or at least the infantil'e reinforce- 
 ment. Quarrels between parents and unhappy marital relations 
 between the same determine the severest predispositions for dis- 
 turbed sexual development or neurotic diseases in the children. 
 
 The infantile desire for the parents is, to be sure, the most 
 important, but not the only trace revived in puberty which points 
 the way to the object selection. Other dispositions of the same 
 origin permit the man, still supported by his infancy, to develop 
 more than one single sexual series and to form different determi- 
 nations for the object selection. 
 
 Prevention of Inversion. — One of the resulting tasks in the 
 object selection consists in not missing the opposite sex. This, 
 as we know, is not solved without some difficulty. The first feel- 
 ings after puberty often enough go astray, though not with any 
 permanent injury. Dessoir has justly called attention to the 
 lawfulness betrayed in the enthusiastic friendships formed by 
 boys and girls with their own sex. The greatest force which 
 guards against a permanent inversion of the sexual object is 
 surely the attraction exerted by the opposite sex characters on 
 each other. For this we can give no explanation in connection 
 with this discussion. This factor, however, does not in itself 
 suffice to exclude the inversion; besides this there are surely 
 many other supporting factors. Above all, there is the authorita- 
 tive inhibition of society ; experience shows that where the inver- 
 sion is not considered a crime it fully corresponds to the sexual 
 inclinations of many persons. Moreover, it may be assumed 
 that in the man the infantile memories of the mother's tenderness 
 as well as that of other females who cared for him as a child, 
 energetically assists in directing his selection to the woman ; while 
 the girl, besides merging into a period of repression atlhe onset 
 of puberty, is detained from the love for the same sex through 
 
76 *HREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 the incitements of the competitor. The bringing up of boys by 
 male persons (slaves in the ancient times) seems to favor homo- 
 sexuality; ,he frequency of inversion in the present day nobility 
 is probably explained by their employment of male servants, and 
 by the scant care that mothers of that class give to their children. 
 It happens in some hysterics that one of the parents has disap- 
 peared (through death, divorce, or estrangement), thus permitting 
 the remaining parent to absorb all the love of the child, and in 
 this way establishing the determinations for the sex of the person 
 to be selected later as the sexual object ; thus a permanent inver- 
 sion is made possible. 
 
 Summary 
 It is now time to attempt a summarization. We have started 
 from the aberrations of the sexual impulse in reference to its 
 object and aim and have encountered the question whether these 
 originate from a congenital predisposition, or whether they are 
 acquired in consequence of influences from life. The answer to 
 this question was reached through an examination of the relations 
 of the sexual life of psychoneurotics, a numerous group not very 
 remote from the normal. This examination has been made 
 through psychoanalytic investigations. We have thus found that 
 a tendency to all perversions might be demonstrated in these 
 persons in the form of unconscious forces revealing themselves 
 as symptom creators, and we could say that the neurosis is, as it 
 were, the negative of the perversion. In view of the now recog- 
 nized great diffusion of tendencies to perversion the idea forced 
 itself upon us that the disposition to perversions is the primitive 
 and universal disposition of the human sexual impulse, from 
 which the normal sexual behavior develops in consequence of 
 organic changes and psychic inhibitions in the course of maturity. 
 We hope to be able to demonstrate the original disposition in the 
 infantile life; among the forces restraining the direction of the 
 sexual impulse we have mentioned shame, loathing and sympathy, 
 
THE TRANSFORMATION OF PUBERTY 77 
 
 and the social constructions of morality and authority. We have 
 thus been forced to perceive in every fixed aberration from the 
 normal sexual life a fragment of inhibited development and in- 
 fantilism. The significance of the variations of the primitive 
 dispositions had to be put into the foreground, but between them 
 and the influences of life we had to assume a relation of coopera- 
 tion and not of opposition. On the other hand, as the primitive 
 disposition must be a complex one, the sexual impulse itself 
 appeared to us as something composed of many factors, which in 
 the perversions becomes separated, as it were, into its compo- 
 nents. The perversions thus prove themselves to be on the one 
 hand inhibitions, and on the other dissociations from the normal 
 development. Both conceptions became united in the assump- 
 tion that the sexual impulse of the adult originates through the 
 comprehension of the diverse feelings of the infantile life into 
 one unit and one aspiration with one single aim. 
 
 We also added an explanation for the preponderance of perver- 
 sive tendencies in the psychoneurotics by recognizing in these 
 tendencies collateral fillings of side branches caused by the shift- 
 ing of the main river bed through repression, and we then turned 
 our examination to the sexual life of the infantile period. We 
 found it deplorable that the existence of a sexual life in infancy 
 has been disputed, and that the sexual manifestations which have 
 been often observed in children have been described as abnormal 
 occurrences. It rather seemed to us that the child brings along into 
 the world germs of sexual activity and that even while taking 
 nourishment it at the same time also enjoys a sexual gratification 
 which it then seeks to again procure for itself through the familiar 
 activity of " thumbsucking." The sexual activity of the child, 
 however, does not develop in the same measure as its other func- 
 tions, but merges first into the so-called latency period. The 
 production of sexual excitation by no means ceases at this period 
 but continues and furnishes a stock of energy, the greater part of 
 which is utilized for aims other than sexual ; namely, on the one 
 
78 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 hand for the delivery of sexual components for social feelings, 
 and on the other hand (by means of repression and reaction 
 formation) for the erection of the future sexual barriers. Ac- 
 cordingly, the forces which are destined to hold the sexual impulse 
 in certain tracks are built up in infancy at the expense of the 
 greater part of the perverse sexual feelings and with the assist- 
 ance of the bringing up. Another part of the infantile sexual 
 manifestations escapes this utilization and may manifest itself as 
 sexual activity. It can then be discovered that the sexual excita- 
 tion of the child flows from diverse sources. Above all gratifi- 
 cations originate through the adapted sensible excitation of 
 so-called erogenous zones. For these probably any skin region 
 or sensory organ may serve; but there are certain distinguished 
 erogenous zones the excitation of which by certain organic mech- 
 anisms is assured from the beginning. Moreover, sexual excita- 
 tion originates in the organism, as it were, as a by-product in a 
 great number of processes, as soon as they attain a certain inten- 
 sity ; this especially takes place in all strong emotional excitements 
 even if they be of a painful nature. The excitations from all 
 these sources do not yet unite, but they pursue their aim indi- 
 vidually — this aim consisting merely in the gaining of a certain 
 pleasure. The sexual impulse of childhood is therefore object- 
 less or autoerotic. 
 
 Still during infancy the erogenous zone of the genitals begins 
 to make itself noticeable, either by the fact that like any other 
 erogenous zone it furnishes gratification through a suitable sen- 
 sible stimulus or because in some incomprehensible way the 
 gratification from other sources causes at the same time the sexual 
 excitement which has a special connection with the genital zone. 
 We found cause to regret that a sufficient explanation of the 
 relations between sexual gratification and sexual excitement, as 
 well as between the activity of the genital zone and the remaining 
 sources of sexuality, was not to be attained. 
 
 We were unable to state what amount of sexual activity in 
 
THE TRANSFORMATION OF PUBERTY 79 
 
 childhood might be designated as normal — as activity which is 
 not carried on at the expense of further development. The char- 
 acter of the sexual manifestation showed itself to be preponder- 
 ately masturbatic. We, moreover, verified from experience the 
 belief that the external influences of seduction might produce 
 premature breaches in the latency period leading as far as the 
 suppression of the same, and that the sexual impulse of the child 
 really shows itself to be polymorphous perverse; furthermore, 
 that every such premature sexual activity impairs the educability 
 of the child. 
 
 Despite the incompleteness of our examinations of the infantile 
 sexual life we were subsequently forced to attempt to study the 
 serious changes produced by the appearance of puberty. We 
 selected two of the same as criteria, namely, the subordination of 
 all other sources of the sexual feeling to the primacy of the 
 genital zones, and the process of object finding. The first is 
 accomplished through the mechanism of utilizing the fore- 
 pleasure, whereby all other independent sexual acts which are 
 connected with pleasure and excitement become preparatory acts 
 for the new sexual aim, the voiding of the sexual products, the 
 attainment of which under enormous pleasure puts an end to the 
 sexual feeling. jAt the same time we had to consider the differ- 
 entiation of the sexual nature of man and woman, and we found 
 that in order to become a woman a new repression is required 
 which abolishes a piece of infantile masculinity, and prepares the 
 woman for the change of the leading genital zones. Lastly, we 
 found the object selection, tracing it through infancy to its revival 
 in puberty; we also found indications of sexual inclinations on 
 the part of the child for the parents and foster-parents, which, 
 however, were turned away from these persons to others resem- 
 bling them by the incest barriers which had been erected in the 
 meantime. Let us finally add that during the transition period 
 of puberty the somatic and psychic processes of development pro- 
 ceed side by side, but separately, until the normally acquired 
 
80 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 unification in the function of love has been established by the 
 breaking through of an intensive psychic feeling of love for the 
 innervation of the genitals. 
 
 The Factors Disturbing the Development. — As we have 
 already shown by different examples, every step on this long road 
 of development may become a point of fixation and every joint 
 in this complicated structure may afford opportunity for a disso- 
 ciation of the sexual impulse. It still remains for us to review 
 the various inner and outer factors which disturb the develop- 
 ment, and to mention the part of the mechanism affected by the 
 disturbance emanating from them. The factors which we men- 
 tion here in a series cannot, of course, all be in themselves of 
 equal validity and we must expect to meet with difficulties in the 
 assigning to the individual factors their due importance. 
 
 Constitution and Heredity. — In the first place, we must men- 
 tion here the congenital variation in the sexual constitution, upon 
 which the greatest weight probably falls, but the existence of 
 which, as may be easily understood, can be established only 
 through its later manifestations and even then not always with 
 great certainty. We understand by it a preponderance of one 
 or another of the manifold sources of the sexual feeling, and we 
 believe that such a difference of disposition must always come to 
 expression in the final result, even if it should remain within 
 normal limits. Of course, we can also imagine certain variations 
 of the original disposition that even without further aid must 
 necessarily lead to the formation of an abnormal sexual life. 
 We can call these " degenerative " and consider them as an ex- 
 pression of hereditary deterioration. In this connection I have 
 to report a remarkable fact. In more than half of the severe 
 cases of hysteria, compulsion neuroses, etc., which I have treated 
 by psychotherapy, I have succeeded in positively demonstrating 
 that their fathers have gone through an attack of syphilis before 
 marriage ; they have either suffered from tabes or general paresis, 
 or there was a definite history of lues. I expressly add that the 
 
THE TRANSFORMATION OF PUBERTY 8 1 
 
 children who were later neurotic showed absolutely no signs of 
 hereditary lues, so that the abnormal sexual constitution was to 
 be considered as the last off-shoot of the luetic heredity. As far 
 as it is now from my thoughts to put down a descent from syphi- 
 litic parents as a regular and indispensable etiological determina- 
 tion of the neuropathic constitution, I nevertheless maintain that 
 the coincidence observed by me is not accidental and not without 
 significance. 
 
 The hereditary relations of the positive perverts are not so well 
 known because they know how to avoid inquiry. Still there is 
 reason to believe that the same holds true in the perversions as 
 in the neuroses. We often find perversions and psychoneuroses 
 in the different sexes of the same family, so distributed that the 
 male members, or one of them, is a positive pervert, while the 
 females, following the repressive tendencies of their sex, are 
 negative perverts or hysterics. This is a good example of the 
 substantial relations between the two disturbances which I have 
 discovered. 
 
 It cannot, however, be maintained that our notion of the struc- 
 ture of the sexual life is rendered finally complete by the addition 
 of the diverse components of the sexual constitution. On the 
 contrary, qualifications continue to appear and new possibilities 
 result, depending upon the fate experienced by the sexual streams 
 originating from the individual sources. This further elabora- 
 tion is evidently the final and decisive one and the constitution 
 described as uniform may lead to three final issues. If all the 
 dispositions assumed to be abnormal retain their relative propor- 
 tion, and are strengthened with maturity, the ultimate result can 
 only be a perverse sexual life. The analysis of such abnormally 
 constituted dispositions has not yet been thoroughly undertaken, 
 but we already know cases that can be readily explained in the 
 light of these theories. Authors believe, for example, that a 
 whole series of fixation perversions must necessarily have had 
 
82 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 as their basis a congenital weakness of the sexual impulse. The 
 statement seems to me untenable in this form, but it becomes 
 ingenious if it refers to a constitutional weakness of one factor 
 in the sexual impulse, namely, the genital zone, which later in the 
 interests of propagation accepts as a function the sum of the indi- 
 vidual sexual activities. In this case the summation which is 
 demanded in puberty must fail and the strongest of the other 
 sexual components continues its activity as a perversion. 
 
 Repression. — Another issue results if in the course of develop- 
 ment certain powerful components experience a repression — which 
 we must carefully note is not a suspension. The excitations in 
 question are produced as usual but are prevented from attaining 
 their aim by psychic hindrances, and are driven off into many 
 other paths until they express themselves in a symptom. The 
 result can be an almost normal sexual life — usually a limited 
 one — but with the addition of a psychoneurotic disease. It is 
 these cases that become so familiar to us through the psycho- 
 analytic investigation of neurotics. The sexual life of such per- 
 sons begins like that of perverts, a considerable part of their 
 childhood is filled up with perverse sexual activity which occa- 
 sionally extends far beyond the period of maturity, but owing to 
 inner reasons a repressive change then results — usually before 
 puberty, but now and then even much later — and from this point 
 on without any extinction of the old feelings there appears a 
 neurosis instead of a perversion. One may recall here the say- 
 ing, "Junge Hure, alte Betschwester," — only here youth has 
 turned out to be much too short. The relieving of the perver- 
 sion by the neurosis in the life of the same person, as well as the 
 above mentioned distribution of perversion and hysteria in dif- 
 erent persons of the same family must be placed side by side with 
 the fact that the neurosis is the negative of the perversion. 
 
 Sublimation. — The third issue in abnormal constitutional dis- 
 positions is made possible by the process of "sublimation," 
 
THE TRANSFORMATION OF PUBERTY 83 
 
 through which the powerful excitations from individual sources 
 of sexuality are discharged and utilized in other spheres, so that 
 a considerable increase of psychic capacity results from an, in 
 itself dangerous, predisposition. This forms one of the sources 
 of artistic activity, and, according as such sublimation is complete 
 or incomplete, the analysis of the character of highly gifted, espe- 
 cially of artistically disposed persons, will show any proportionate 
 blending between productive ability, perversion, and neurosis. A 
 sub-species of sublimation is the suppression through reaction- 
 formation, which, as we have found, begins even in the latency 
 period of infancy, only to continue throughout life in favorable 
 cases. What we call the character of a person is built up to a 
 great extent from the material of sexual excitations; it is com- 
 posed of impulses fixed since infancy and won through sublima- 
 tion, and of such constructions as are destined to suppress effect- 
 ually those perverse feelings which are recognized as useless. 
 The general perverse sexual disposition of childhood can there- 
 fore be esteemed as a source of a number of our virtues, insofar 
 as it incites their creation through the formation of reactions. 5 
 Accidental Experiences. — All other influences lose in signifi- 
 cance when compared with the sexual discharges, repressions, 
 and sublimation ; the inner determinations ,for the last two proc- 
 esses are totally unknown to us. He who includes repressions 
 and sublimations among constitutional predispositions, and con- 
 siders them as the living manifestations of the same, has surely 
 the right to maintain that the final structure of the sexual life is 
 above all the result of the congenital constitution. No intelligent 
 
 5 That keen observer of human nature E. Zola, describes in his book La 
 Joie de vivre, a girl who in cheerful self renunciation offers all she has 
 in possession or expectation, her fortune and her life's hopes to those 
 she loves without thought of return. The childhood of this girl was 
 dominated by an insatiable desire for love which whenever she was de- 
 preciated caused her to merge into a fit of cruelty. 
 
84 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 person, however, will dispute that in such a cooperation of factors 
 there is also room for the modifying influences of accidental 
 factors derived from experience in childhood and later on. We 
 may now continue with our task of enumerating the factors which 
 have become known to us as influential for the sexual develop- 
 ment, whether they be active forces or merely manifestations of 
 the same. 
 
 Prematurity. — Such a factor is the spontaneous sexual pre- 
 maturity which can be definitely demonstrated at least in the 
 etiology of the neuroses, though in itself it is as little adequate 
 for causation as the other factors. It manifests itself in a break- 
 ing through, shortening, or suspending of the infantile latency 
 period and becomes a cause of disturbances inasmuch as it pro- 
 vokes sexual manifestations which, either on account of the 
 unready state of the sexual inhibitions or because of the undevel- 
 oped state of the genital system, can only carry along the char- 
 acter of perversions. These tendencies to perversion may either 
 remain as such, or after the repression sets in they may become 
 motive powers for neurotic symptoms; at all events, the sexual 
 prematurity renders difficult the desirable later control of the 
 sexual impulse by the higher psychic influences, and enhances 
 the compulsive-like character which even without this prema- 
 turity would be claimed by the psychic representatives of the 
 impulse. Sexual prematurity often runs parallel with premature 
 intellectual development; it is found as such in the infantile his- 
 tory of the most distinguished and most productive individuals, 
 and in such connection it does not seem to act as pathogenically 
 as when appearing isolated. 
 
 Adhesion. — The significance of all premature sexual mani- 
 festations is enhanced by a psychic factor of unknown origin 
 which at present can be put down only as a psychological pre- 
 liminary. I believe that it is the heightened adhesion of fixedness 
 of these impressions of the sexual life which in later neurotics, 
 
THE TRANSFORMATION OF PUBERTY 85 
 
 as well as in perverts, must be added for the completion of the 
 other facts; for the same premature sexual manifestations in 
 other persons cannot impress themselves deeply enough to repeat 
 themselves compulsively and to succeed in prescribing the way 
 for the sexual impulse throughout later life. Perhaps a part of 
 the explanation for this adhesion lies in another psychic factor 
 which we cannot miss in the causation of the neuroses, namely, 
 in the preponderance which in the psychic life falls to the share 
 of memory traces as compared with recent impressions. This 
 factor is apparently independent of intellectual development and 
 grows with the growth of personal culture. In contrast to this 
 the savage has been characterized as "the unfortunate child of 
 the moment." 6 Owing to the oppositional relation existing be- 
 tween culture and the free development of sexuality, the results 
 of which may be traced far into the formation of our life, the 
 problem how the sexual life of the child evolves is of very little 
 importance for the later life in the lower stages of culture and 
 civilization, and of very great importance in the higher. 
 
 Fixation. — The influence of the psychic factors just mentioned 
 favored the development of the accidentally experienced impulses 
 of the infantile sexuality. The latter (especially in the form of 
 seductions through other children or through adults) produce the 
 material which, with the help of the former, may become fixed 
 as a permanent disturbance. A considerable number of the 
 deviations from the normal sexual life observed later have been 
 thus established in neurotics and perverts from the beginning 
 through the impressions received during the alleged sexually free 
 period of childhood. The causation may thus be divided into the 
 responsiveness of the constitution, the prematurity, the quality 
 of heightened adhesion, and the accidental excitement of the 
 sexual impulse through outside influence. 
 
 * It is possible that the heightened adhesion is only the result of a special 
 intensive somatic sexual manifestation of former years. 
 
86 THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SEXUAL THEORY 
 
 The unsatisfactory conclusion which must result from an inves- 
 tigation of the disturbances of the sexual life is due to the fact 
 that we as yet know too little concerning the biological processes 
 in which the nature of sexuality consists to form from our isolated 
 examinations a satisfactory theory for the explanation of either 
 the normal or the pathological. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Aberrations, sexual i 
 
 Accidental experiences 83 
 
 Activity, muscular 54 
 
 Adhesion 84 
 
 Affective processes 55 
 
 Affects, painful ee 
 
 After effects infantile selection 74 
 
 Aim, deviation in 14 
 
 Algolagnia 2I 
 
 Amphigenously inverted 2 
 
 Amnesia 35 
 
 Anal activity 45 
 
 object 16 
 
 Anatomical transgression 15 
 
 Androgyny 8 
 
 Animals as objects 12 
 
 Autoerotism 41 
 
 Barriers to incest 72 
 
 Behavior of Inverts 2 
 
 Bisexuality 7 
 
 Body, other parts 17 
 
 Cathartic method 25 
 
 Chemical theories 66 
 
 Childhood latency 37 
 
 Children as objects 12 
 
 Conception of inversion 3 
 
 Conclusions regarding inversion 12 
 
 Constitution and heredity 80 
 
 Constitutions, sexual 57 
 
 Cruelty 51 
 
 Degeneration , 4 
 
 7 87 
 
88 CONTENTS. 
 
 Development factors 80 
 
 Duration in object 2 
 
 Deviation in sexual aim 14 
 
 Disturbances of development 80 
 
 Differentiation of man and woman 67 
 
 Emergency of latency 39 
 
 Erogenous zones 29, 43 
 
 Character of 43 
 
 Excitation, mechanical 53 
 
 Excitement, hunger 15 
 
 Sexual 64 
 
 Experiences, accidental 83 
 
 Fear, infantile 70 
 
 Fetichism 17 
 
 Fixation 85 
 
 Fixation of anus 19 
 
 Forepleasure 60 
 
 dangers 63 
 
 mechanism 62 
 
 Genitals, internal 66 
 
 Genital zone 46 
 
 Genital zone primacy 60 
 
 Heredity and constitution 80 
 
 Hermaphroditism, psychic 8 
 
 Hunger, excitement 15 
 
 Impulse in neurotic 24 
 
 Impulses, partial 29, 50 
 
 Incest barriers 72 
 
 Infantile amnesia 35 
 
 after effects 74 
 
 fear 71 
 
 masturbation 48 
 
 neglect ; . 34 
 
 sexuality 34 
 
CONTENTS. 89 
 
 Infantile sexual aim 44 
 
 sexuality, sources 52 
 
 Infantilism, sexual 32 
 
 Influences, opposite 57 
 
 Inhibition 38 
 
 Innateness 5 
 
 Intellectual work 56 
 
 Intentions, newer 19 
 
 Internal genitals 66 
 
 Inversion 2 
 
 conception of 4 
 
 explanation of 6 
 
 prevention of 75 
 
 Invert behavior 2 
 
 Latency 37 
 
 period 39 
 
 Libido 1 
 
 Looking 20 
 
 Man and woman 67 
 
 leading zones 68 
 
 Masochism 21 
 
 Masturbation 45 
 
 infantile 48 
 
 Mechanical excitation 53 
 
 Muscular activity 54 
 
 Narcissism 11 
 
 Neurosis and perversions 27 
 
 Neurotics, impulse in 24 
 
 Nursing period 7° 
 
 Object deviation 2 
 
 finding 69 
 
 Onanism 47 
 
 Opposite influence 57 
 
 Overestimation of object 15 
 
90 CONTENTS. 
 
 Partial impulses 29, 50 
 
 Perverse, polymorphous 49 
 
 Perversion 16 
 
 Perversions and neurosis 27 
 
 general statement 22 
 
 morbid 23 
 
 psychic participation 24 
 
 why in psychoneuroses 30 
 
 Polymorphous perverse disposition 49 
 
 Prematurity 84 
 
 Psychic hermaphroditism 8 
 
 participation in perversions 24 
 
 Psychoanalysis 24 
 
 Psychoanalysis, results of 26 
 
 Psychoneuroses, perversions in 30 
 
 Puberty transformations 59 
 
 Reaction formation 38 
 
 Repression 82 
 
 Sadism 21 
 
 Sexual aberrations 1 
 
 aim in inverts 11 
 
 constitution 57 
 
 excitement 64 
 
 impulse in neurotics 24 
 
 infantilism 32 
 
 inhibition 38 
 
 latency 37 
 
 object in inverts 10 
 
 object nursing 70 
 
 substance 64 
 
 tension 60 
 
 utilization of mucous membranes 15 
 
 Sexually immature objects 12 
 
 Sexuality, infantile 34 
 
 Sublimation 38, 82 
 
 Substance, sexual 66 
 
CONTENTS. 9 1 
 
 Substitutions, unfit 17 
 
 Summary 76 
 
 Tension, sexual 60 
 
 Theories, chemical 66 
 
 Thumbsucking 40 
 
 Touching 20 
 
 Transformation, puberty , 50 
 
 Transgression, anatomical 15 
 
 Unfit substitutions 17 
 
 Variation and disease 22 
 
 Woman and man 67 
 
 leading zones 68 
 
 Work, intellectual 56 
 
 Zones, erogenous, in man 68 
 
 in woman 68 
 
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