Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis · Sigmund Freud
TWENTIETH LECTURE THE SEXUAL LIFE OF MAN
From about the sixth or eighth year onwards a standstill or retrogression is observed in the sexual development, which in those cases reaching a high cultural standard deserves to be called a _latency period_. This latency period, however, may be absent; nor does it necessarily entail an interruption of sexual activities and sexual interests over the whole field. Most of the mental experiences and excitations occurring before the latency period then succumb to the infantile amnesia, already discussed, which veils our earliest childhood from us and estranges us from it. It is the task of every psycho-analysis to bring this forgotten period of life back into recollection; one cannot resist the supposition that the beginnings of sexual life belonging to this period are the motive for this forgetting, that is, that this oblivion is an effect of repression. From the third year onwards the sexual life of children shows much in common with that of adults; it is differentiated from the latter, as we already know, by the absence of a stable organization under the primacy of the genital organs, by inevitable traits of a perverse order, and of course also by far less intensity in the whole impulse. But those phases of the sexual development, or as we will call it, of the _Libido-development_, which are of greatest interest theoretically lie before this period. This development is gone through so rapidly that direct observation alone would perhaps never have succeeded in determining its fleeting forms. Only by the help of psycho-analytic investigation of the neuroses has it become possible to penetrate so far back and to discover these still earlier phases of Libido-development. These phases are certainly only theoretic constructions, but in the practice of psycho-analysis you will find them necessary and valuable constructions. You will soon understand how it happens that a pathological condition enables us to discover phenomena which we should certainly overlook in normal conditions.
Thus we can now define the forms taken by the sexual life of the child before the primacy of the genital zone is reached; this primacy is prepared for in the early infantile period, before the latent period, and is permanently organized from puberty onwards. In this early period a loose sort of organization exists which we shall call _pre-genital_; for during this phase it is not the genital component-instincts, but the _sadistic_ and _anal_, which are most prominent. The contrast between _masculine_ and _feminine_ plays no part as yet; instead of it there is the contrast between _active_ and _passive_, which may be described as the forerunner of the sexual polarity with which it also links up later. That which in this period seems masculine to us, regarded from the standpoint of the genital phase, proves to be the expression of an impulse to mastery, which easily passes over into cruelty. Impulses with a passive aim are connected with the erotogenic zone of the rectal orifice, at this period very important; the impulses of skoptophilia (gazing) and curiosity are powerfully active; the function of excreting urine is the only part actually taken by the genital organ in the sexual life.
Objects are not wanting to the component-instincts in this period, but these objects are not necessarily all comprised in one object. The sadistic-anal organization is the stage immediately preceding the phase of primacy of the genital zone. Closer study reveals how much of it is retained intact in the later final structure, and what are the paths by which these component-instincts are forced into the service of the new _genital organization_. Behind the sadistic-anal phase of the Libido-development we obtain a glimpse of an even more primitive stage of development, in which the erotogenic mouth zone plays the chief part. You can guess that the sexual activity of sucking (for its own sake) belongs to this stage; and you may admire the understanding of the ancient Egyptians in whose art a child, even the divine Horus, was represented with a finger in the mouth. Abraham has quite recently published work showing that traces of this primitive _oral_ phase of development survive in the sexual life of later years.
I can indeed imagine that you will have found this last information about the sexual organizations less of an enlightenment than an infliction. Perhaps I have again gone too much into detail; but have patience! what you have just heard will be of more use when we employ it later. Keep in view at the moment the idea that the sexual life—the _Libido-function_, as we call it—does not first spring up in its final form, does not even expand along the lines of its earliest forms, but goes through a series of successive phases unlike one another; in short, that many changes occur in it, like those in the development of the caterpillar into the butterfly. The turning-point of this development is the _subordination of all the sexual component-instincts under the primacy of the genital zone_ and, together with this, the enrolment of sexuality in the service of the reproductive function. Before this happens the sexual life is, so to say, disparate—independent activities of single component-impulses each seeking _organ-pleasure_ (pleasure in a bodily organ). This anarchy is modified by attempts at _pre_-genital ‘organizations,’ of which the chief is the sadistic-anal phase, behind which is the oral, perhaps the most primitive. In addition there are the various processes, about which little is known as yet, which effect the transition from one stage of organization to the next above it. Of what significance this long journey over so many stages in the development of the Libido is for comprehension of the neuroses we shall learn later on.
To-day we will follow up another aspect of this development—namely, the relation of the sexual component-impulses to an _object_; or, rather, we will take a fleeting glimpse over this development so that we may spend more time upon a comparatively late result of it. Certain of the component-impulses of the sexual instinct have an object from the very beginning and hold fast to it: such are the impulse to mastery (sadism), to gazing (skoptophilia) and curiosity. Others, more plainly connected with particular erotogenic areas in the body, only have an object in the beginning, so long as they are still dependent upon the non-sexual functions, and give it up when they become detached from these latter. Thus the first object of the oral component of the sexual instinct is the mother’s breast which satisfies the infant’s need for nutrition. In the act of sucking for its own sake (_lutschen_) the erotic component, also gratified in sucking for nutrition (_saugen_), makes itself independent, gives up the object in an external person, and replaces it by a part of the child’s own person. The oral impulse becomes _auto-erotic_, as the anal and other erotogenic impulses are from the beginning. Further development has, to put it as concisely as possible, two aims: first, to renounce auto-erotism, to give up again the object found in the child’s own body in exchange again for an external one; and secondly, to combine the various objects of the separate impulses and replace them by one single one. This naturally can only be done if the single object is again itself complete, with a body like that of the subject; nor can it be accomplished without some part of the auto-erotic impulse-excitations being abandoned as useless.
The processes by which an object is found are rather involved, and have not so far received comprehensive exposition. For our purposes it may be emphasized that, when the process has reached a certain point in the years of childhood before the latency period, the object adopted proves almost identical with the first object of the oral pleasure impulse, adopted by reason of the child’s dependent relationship to it; it is, namely, the mother, although not the mother’s breast. We call the mother the first _love_-object. We speak of ‘love’ when we lay the accent upon the mental side of the sexual impulses and disregard, or wish to forget for a moment, the demands of the fundamental physical or ‘sensual’ side of the impulses. At about the time when the mother becomes the love-object, the mental operation of repression has already begun in the child and has withdrawn from him the knowledge of some part of his sexual aims. Now with this choice of the mother as love-object is connected all that which, under the name of ‘_the Oedipus complex_,’ has become of such great importance in the psycho-analytic explanation of the neuroses, and which has had a perhaps equally important share in causing the opposition against psycho-analysis.
Here is a little incident which occurred during the present war. One of the staunch adherents of psycho-analysis was stationed in his medical capacity on the German front in Poland; he attracted the attention of his colleagues by the fact that he occasionally effected an unexpected influence upon a patient. On being questioned, he admitted that he worked with psycho-analytic methods and with readiness agreed to impart his knowledge to his colleagues. So every evening the medical men of the corps, his colleagues and superiors, met to be initiated into the mysteries of psycho-analysis. For a time all went well; but when he had introduced his audience to the Oedipus complex a superior officer rose and announced that he did not believe this, it was the behaviour of a cad for the lecturer to relate such things to brave men, fathers of families, who were fighting for their country, and he forbade the continuation of the lectures. This was the end; the analyst got himself transferred to another part of the front. In my opinion, however, it is a bad outlook if a victory for German arms depends upon an ‘organization’ of science such as this, and German science will not prosper under any such organization.
Now you will be impatiently waiting to hear what this terrible Oedipus complex comprises. The name tells you: you all know the Greek myth of King Oedipus, whose destiny it was to slay his father and to wed his mother, who did all in his power to avoid the fate prophesied by the oracle, and who in self-punishment blinded himself when he discovered that in ignorance he had committed both these crimes. I trust that many of you have yourselves experienced the profound effect of the tragic drama fashioned by Sophocles from this story. The Attic poet’s work portrays the gradual discovery of the deed of Oedipus, long since accomplished, and brings it slowly to light by skilfully prolonged enquiry, constantly fed by new evidence; it has thus a certain resemblance to the course of a psycho-analysis. In the dialogue the deluded mother-wife, Jocasta, resists the continuation of the enquiry; she points out that many people in their dreams have mated with their mothers, but that dreams are of no account. To us dreams are of much account, especially typical dreams which occur in many people; we have no doubt that the dream Jocasta speaks of is intimately related to the shocking and terrible story of the myth.
It is surprising that Sophocles’ tragedy does not call forth indignant remonstrance in its audience; this reaction would be much better justified in them than it was in the blunt army doctor. For at bottom it is an immoral play; it sets aside the individual’s responsibility to social law, and displays divine forces ordaining the crime and rendering powerless the moral instincts of the human being which would guard him against the crime. It would be easy to believe that an accusation against destiny and the gods was intended in the story of the myth; in the hands of the critical Euripides, at variance with the gods, it would probably have become such an accusation. But with the reverent Sophocles there is no question of such an intention; the pious subtlety which declares it the highest morality to bow to the will of the gods, even when they ordain a crime, helps him out of the difficulty. I do not believe that this moral is one of the virtues of the drama, but neither does it detract from its effect; it leaves the hearer indifferent; he does not react to this, but to the secret meaning and content of the myth itself.
He reacts as though by self-analysis he had detected the Oedipus complex in himself, and had recognized the will of the gods and the oracle as glorified disguises of his own Unconscious; as though he remembered in himself the wish to do away with his father and in his place to wed his mother, and must abhor the thought. The poet’s words seem to him to mean: “In vain do you deny that you are accountable, in vain do you proclaim how you have striven against these evil designs. You are guilty, nevertheless; for you could not stifle them; they still survive unconsciously in you.” And psychological truth is contained in this; even though man has repressed his evil desires into his Unconscious and would then gladly say to himself that he is no longer answerable for them, he is yet compelled to feel his responsibility in the form of a sense of guilt for which he can discern no foundation. There is no possible doubt that one of the most important sources of the sense of guilt which so often torments neurotic people is to be found in the Oedipus complex. More than this: in 1913, under the title of _Totem und Tabu_, I published a study of the earliest forms of religion and morality in which I expressed a suspicion that perhaps the sense of guilt of mankind as a whole, which is the ultimate source of religion and morality, was acquired in the beginnings of history through the Oedipus complex. I should much like to tell you more of this, but I had better not; it is difficult to leave this subject when once one begins upon it, and we must return to individual psychology.
Now what does direct observation of children, at the period of object-choice before the latency period, show us in regard to the Oedipus complex? Well, it is easy to see that the little man wants his mother all to himself, finds his father in the way, becomes restive when the latter takes upon himself to caress her, and shows his satisfaction when the father goes away or is absent. He often expresses his feelings directly in words and promises his mother to marry her; this may not seem much in comparison with the deeds of Oedipus, but it is enough in fact; the kernel of each is the same. Observation is often rendered puzzling by the circumstance that the same child on other occasions at this period will display great affection for the father; but such contrasting—or, better, _ambivalent_—states of feeling, which in adults would lead to conflicts, can be tolerated alongside one another in the child for a long time, just as later on they dwell together permanently in the Unconscious.
One might try to object that the little boy’s behaviour is due to egoistic motives and does not justify the conception of an erotic complex; the mother looks after all the child’s needs and consequently it is to the child’s interest that she should trouble herself about no one else. This too is quite correct; but it is soon clear that in this, as in similar dependent situations, egoistic interests only provide the occasion on which the erotic impulses seize. When the little boy shows the most open sexual curiosity about his mother, wants to sleep with her at night, insists on being in the room while she is dressing, or even attempts physical acts of seduction, as the mother so often observes and laughingly relates, the erotic nature of this attachment to her is established without a doubt. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that a mother looks after a little daughter’s needs in the same way without producing this effect; and that often enough a father eagerly vies with her in trouble for the boy without succeeding in winning the same importance in his eyes as the mother. In short, the factor of sex preference is not to be eliminated from the situation by any criticisms. From the point of view of the boy’s egoistic interests it would merely be foolish if he did not tolerate two people in his service rather than only one of them.
As you see, I have only described the relationship of a boy to his father and mother; things proceed in just the same way, with the necessary reversal, in little girls. The loving devotion to the father, the need to do away with the superfluous mother and to take her place, the early display of coquetry and the arts of later womanhood, make up a particularly charming picture in a little girl, and may cause us to forget its seriousness and the grave consequences which may later result from this situation. Let us not fail to add that frequently the parents themselves exert a decisive influence upon the awakening of the Oedipus complex in a child, by themselves following the sex attraction where there is more than one child; the father in an unmistakable manner prefers his little daughter with marks of tenderness, and the mother, the son: but even this factor does not seriously impugn the spontaneous nature of the infantile Oedipus complex. When other children appear, the Oedipus complex expands and becomes a family complex. Reinforced anew by the injury resulting to the egoistic interests, it actuates a feeling of aversion towards these new arrivals and an unhesitating wish to get rid of them again.
These feelings of hatred are as a rule much more often openly expressed than those connected with the parental complex. If such a wish is fulfilled and after a short time death removes the unwanted addition to the family, later analysis can show what a significant event this death is for the child, although it does not necessarily remain in memory. Forced into the second place by the birth of another child and for the first time almost entirely parted from the mother, the child finds it very hard to forgive her for this exclusion of him; feelings which in adults we should describe as profound embitterment are roused in him, and often become the groundwork of a lasting estrangement. That sexual curiosity and all its consequences is usually connected with these experiences has already been mentioned. As these new brothers and sisters grow up the child’s attitude to them undergoes the most important transformations. A boy may take his sister as love-object in place of his faithless mother; where there are several brothers to win the favour of a little sister hostile rivalry, of great importance in after life, shows itself already in the nursery. A little girl takes an older brother as a substitute for the father who no longer treats her with the same tenderness as in her earliest years; or she takes a little sister as a substitute for the child that she vainly wished for from her father.
So much and a great deal more of a similar kind is shown by direct observation of children, and by consideration of clear memories of childhood, uninfluenced by any analysis. Among other things you will infer from this that a child’s position in the sequence of brothers and sisters is of very great significance for the course of his later life, a factor to be considered in every biography. What is even more important, however, is that in the face of these enlightening considerations, so easily to be obtained, you will hardly recall without smiling the scientific theories accounting for the prohibition of incest. What has not been invented for this purpose! We are told that sexual attraction is diverted from the members of the opposite sex in one family owing to their living together from early childhood; or that a biological tendency against in-breeding has a mental equivalent in the horror of incest! Whereby it is entirely overlooked that no such rigorous prohibitions in law and custom would be required if any trustworthy natural barriers against the temptation to incest existed. The opposite is the truth. The first choice of object in mankind is regularly an incestuous one, directed to the mother and sister of men, and the most stringent prohibitions are required to prevent this sustained infantile tendency from being carried into effect. In the savage and primitive peoples surviving to-day the incest prohibitions are a great deal stricter than with us; Theodor Reik has recently shown in a brilliant work that the meaning of the savage rites of puberty which represent rebirth is the loosening of the boy’s incestuous attachment to the mother and his reconciliation with the father.
Mythology will show you that incest, ostensibly so much abhorred by men, is permitted to their gods without a thought; and from ancient history you may learn that incestuous marriage with a sister was prescribed as a sacred duty for kings (the Pharaohs of Egypt and the Incas of Peru); it was therefore in the nature of a privilege denied to the common herd. Incest with the mother is one of the crimes of Oedipus and parricide the other. Incidentally, these are the two great offences condemned by totemism, the first social-religious institution of mankind. Now let us turn from the direct observation of children to the analytic investigation of adults who have become neurotic; what does analysis yield in further knowledge of the Oedipus complex? Well, this is soon told. The complex is revealed just as the myth relates it; it will be seen that every one of these neurotics was himself an Oedipus or, what amounts to the same thing, has become a Hamlet in his reaction to the complex. To be sure, the analytic picture of the Oedipus complex is an enlarged and accentuated edition of the infantile sketch; the hatred of the father and the death-wishes against him are no longer vague hints, the affection for the mother declares itself with the aim of possessing her as a woman. Are we really to accredit such grossness and intensity of the feelings to the tender age of childhood; or does the analysis deceive us by introducing another factor? It is not difficult to find one.
Every time anyone describes anything past, even if he be a historian, we have to take into account all that he unintentionally imports into that past period from present and intermediate times, thereby falsifying it. With the neurotic it is even doubtful whether this retroversion is altogether unintentional; we shall hear later on that there are motives for it and we must explore the whole subject of the ‘retrogressive phantasy-making’ which goes back to the remote past. We soon discover, too, that the hatred against the father has been strengthened by a number of motives arising in later periods and other relationships in life, and that the sexual desires towards the mother have been moulded into forms which would have been as yet foreign to the child. But it would be a vain attempt if we endeavoured to explain the whole of the Oedipus complex by ‘retrogressive phantasy-making,’ and by motives originating in later periods of life. The infantile nucleus, with more or less of the accretions to it, remains intact, as is confirmed by direct observation of children.
The clinical fact which confronts us behind the form of the Oedipus complex as established by analysis now becomes of the greatest practical importance. We learn that at the time of puberty, when the sexual instinct first asserts its demands in full strength, the old familiar incestuous objects are taken up again and again invested by the Libido. The infantile object-choice was but a feeble venture in play, as it were, but it laid down the direction for the object-choice of puberty. At this time a very intense flow of feeling towards the Oedipus complex or in reaction to it comes into force; since their mental antecedents have become intolerable, however, these feelings must remain for the most part outside consciousness. From the time of puberty onward the human individual must devote himself to the great task of _freeing himself from the parents_; and only after this detachment is accomplished can he cease to be a child and so become a member of the social community. For a son, the task consists in releasing his libidinal desires from his mother, in order to employ them in the quest of an external love-object in reality; and in reconciling himself with his father if he has remained antagonistic to him, or in freeing himself from his domination if, in the reaction to the infantile revolt, he has lapsed into subservience to him. These tasks are laid down for every man; it is noteworthy how seldom they are carried through ideally, that is, how seldom they are solved in a manner psychologically as well as socially satisfactory. In neurotics, however, this detachment from the parents is not accomplished at all; the son remains all his life in subjection to his father, and incapable of transferring his Libido to a new sexual object. In the reversed relationship the daughter’s fate may be the same. In this sense the Oedipus complex is justifiably regarded as the kernel of the neuroses.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.