Civilization and its discontents · Sigmund Freud
FOOTNOTES:
There is an unmistakable social factor at work in the impulse of civilization towards cleanliness, which has been subsequently justified by considerations of hygiene but had nevertheless found expression before they were appreciated. The impulse towards cleanliness originates in the striving to get rid of excretions which have become unpleasant to the sense-perceptions. We know that things are different in the nursery. Excreta arouse no aversion in children; they seem precious to them, as being parts of their own bodies which have been detached from them. The training of children is very energetic in this particular; its object is to expedite the development that lies ahead of them, according to which the excreta are to become worthless, disgusting, horrible and despicable to them. Such a reversal of values would be almost impossible to bring about, were it not that these substances expelled from the body are destined by their strong odours to share the fate that overtook the olfactory stimuli after man had erected himself from the ground. Anal erotism, therefore, is from the first subjected to the ‘organic repression’ which opened up the way to culture. The social factor which has been active in the further modifications of anal erotism comes into play with the fact that in spite of all man’s evolutionary progress the smell of his own excretions is scarcely disagreeable to him yet, but so far only that of the evacuations of others. The man who is not clean, _i.e._ who does not eliminate his excretions, therefore offends others, shows no consideration for them—a fact which is exemplified in the commonest and most forcible terms of abuse. It would be incomprehensible, too, that man should use as an abusive epithet the name of his most faithful friend in the animal world, if dogs did not incur the contempt of men through two of their characteristics, _i.e._ that they are creatures of smell and have no horror of excrement, and, secondly, that they are not ashamed of their sexual functions.
The conjecture which leads furthest, however, is that—and here we come back to the remarks in the footnote on p. 66—the whole of sexuality and not merely anal erotism is threatened with falling a victim to the organic repression consequent upon man’s adoption of the erect posture and the lowering in value of the sense of smell; so that since that time the sexual function has been associated with a resistance not susceptible of further explanation, which puts obstacles in the way of full satisfaction and forces it away from its sexual aim towards sublimations and displacements of libido. I am aware that Bleuler (in ‘Der Sexualwiderstand’, _Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen_, Bd. v., 1913) once pointed out the existence of a fundamental tendency of this kind towards rejecting sexual life. All neurotics, and many others too, take exception to the fact that ‘inter urinas et faeces nascimur’. The genitals, too, excite the olfactory sense strongly in a way that many people cannot tolerate and which spoils sexual intercourse for them. Thus we should find, as the deepest root of the sexual repression that marches with culture, the organic defence of the new form of life that began with the erect posture against the earliest type of animal existence—a result of scientific researches that coincides in a curious way with often expressed vulgar prejudices. At the present time, nevertheless, these results are but unconfirmed possibilities, not yet scientifically substantiated. Nor should we forget that, in spite of the undeniable diminution in the importance of olfactory stimuli, there exist even in Europe races who prize highly as aphrodisiacs the strong genital odours so objectionable to us and who will not renounce them. (Cf. the reports of folkloristic information obtained by Iwan Bloch’s ‘Questionnaire’, appearing under the title of ‘Über den Geruchssinn in der vita sexualis’ in various volumes of Friedrich S. Krauss’ _Anthropophyteia_.)
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.