2007-02-17 00:16:22昕桐
Perversion, neurosis and infantile sexuality
Children are conventionally thought as innocent and naïve, and thus asexual. Freud believed this to be a common misunderstanding: that is, all persons, including children have sexual impulses, or biological of sexual needs, but they are repressed to fit social expectation.
Perversion and neurosis are two correlated manifestations of the repressed and transformed sexual impulses of children. While the infant sexual impulses are very different from the mature or adult sexuality, Freud described certain impulses in infants as sexual. This allowed Freud to connect these impulses and their expression or frustration to impulses and needs of the sexual adult. Perversion is the direct reflection of incomplete infantile sexual stages, while neurosis is associated with early stage development in a more ambiguous way.
Both sexual ‘perversion’ and ‘neurosis’ are dealing with “sexual impulses”, or the scientific term “libido”. In discussing libido, the terms sexual object and sexual aim are always used respectively to describe from whom (or what) and how sexual impulses are raised. In Freud’s theories, the normal sexual aim is the union of the genitals between two opposite sex (Freud 14). All Sexual acts that displace the normal sexual aims are assumed to be deviant, unless subordinate to the primacy of genital union. Deviated sexual objects and sexual aims are manifested as various sexual aberrations, such as inversion or same sex object preference, perversion and neurosis. This paper examines perversion and neurosis, their correlations, as well as their association with infantile sexuality.
Freud divided sexual development into periods of time at which certain drives and conflicts would be paramount in the individual psyche. Each period is more or less successfully resolved, leading to perversion or to normal libido in latter stages. The stages of infant sexuality are followed by a ‘latency period’. After children reach the latency age, usually about five or six years old, education and society expectations plant a censor in their mind. Freud calls this censor the superego. The “superego” works as a monitor; therefore, the natural sexual impulses are discouraged and repressed into unconsciousness, which will not be evoked until puberty (Freud 42). According to Freud, perversion is a morbid symptom caused by overwhelmed sexual impulses, which are usually struggled with shame, loathing and psychical resistances. (Freud 25) On the other hand, neurosis is another way that the repressed psychic energy is transformed. Perversion and neurosis are like the two sides of one same leaf, in a sense, one side of the leave is exposed directly under the sun and the other side is shadowed, but still affected by the sun.
When sexual impulses overcome the moral resistances, perversions such as fetishism, sadism and masochism, or even necrophilia: “violation of cadavers” (Freud 25), manifest or rise from unconsciousness. Perversions, subject to deviated sexual aims, can be characterized into two categories: anatomical transgressions and obsessions with what is colloquially called foreplay. First the “anatomical transgressions of the bodily regions destined for sexual union” (Freud 15), that is, the sexual impulse that emanates from the sexual object is not only limited to the genitals. Sexual utilization of mouth (oral sex), anal opening (anal sex), other body parts and other phallic substitutes (fetishism) are the manifestations of this form of perversion. One asserted reason for these transgressions is love. Freud believed that the overestimating the sexual object, that is, when sexual object is idealized in the name of love, is the underlying cause of the craving for various body stimulations. Freud believed that love is seen as “an important if not the primordial source of authority” (Freud 15). Love thus authorizes the sex act causing a “logical blinding” (Freud 15), in which the person does not see the object of their libido realistically, but as something with greater import worthy of affection.
Besides “anatomical transgressions”, perversions also manifest as an obsession of precursory sexual acts. Instead of reaching the ‘normal’ sexual aim (the union of the genitals), perversions cause the person to remain “lingering at the intermediary relations to the sexual object which should normally be rapidly passed on the way to the definite sexual aim.” (Freud, 20) Freud believes perversions cannot count as a disease while they act to aid the normal sexual aim. Touching, kissing and looking will only be counted as perversions when these forms are the exclusive and predominant sexual aims.
Aggression, which might be used to achieve genital union, can be separated and exaggerated to displace the normal sexual aim, as we are seen in sadism and masochism. With respect to the dialectic between pleasure and pain, a person “who experiences pleasure by causing pain to others in sexual relations is also able to experience the pain emanating from sexual relations as pleasure”( Freud 23). In this way, sadism and masochism can live side by side in the same person.
It is interesting that other sexual aberrations, such as inversion, pedophilia, necrophilia, bestiality are not included in the Freud’s text of perversions. However, Freud does give a close relationship between them. Perversions deal with deviated sexual aims, while these other sexual aberrations deal with displaced sexual objects. Inversions, pedophilia, necrophilia, bestiality shift their normal sexual object from an object of the sexually matured opposite sex to same-sex, children, corpses and animals. It seems obvious that they also fall into the category of perversions, defined as deviated aims and objects.
The reader might ask the common question: How do deviations arise? Giving authority to the idea of love has been discussed as a way that the most common deviations from aim may develop. It is a common question whether perversions arise from congenital intuition, or are acquired in the later in sexual development. Freud believes that perversions exaggerations of the inherent sexual pulses. All people are subject to the same urges, but in some persons, these become exaggerated during development. Freud explains of the significance of infantile sexuality and its link to perversion and neurosis:
…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 (Freud,35).
In this concise argument, Freud makes clear that contrary to conventional believing, infantile sexuality not only exists, but also predominantly influence the later life sexual development; both perversion and neurosis signify a failure to successfully complete the infantile psychosexual development. For example, having oral sex is a manifestation of an adult still lingering at the oral stage: the first stage of sexual development as a baby. At the oral stage, breast-fed baby relates the pleasure-producing stimuli from sucking mother’s breast to mouth. Mouth becomes an erogenous zone to infants at oral stage. Adults who adopt oral sex as the exclusive sex form fail to resolve the oral stage; as a result, they never proceed and reach the normal sexual aim.
Perversion and neurosis are two correlated manifestations of the repressed and transformed sexual impulses of children. While the infant sexual impulses are very different from the mature or adult sexuality, Freud described certain impulses in infants as sexual. This allowed Freud to connect these impulses and their expression or frustration to impulses and needs of the sexual adult. Perversion is the direct reflection of incomplete infantile sexual stages, while neurosis is associated with early stage development in a more ambiguous way.
Both sexual ‘perversion’ and ‘neurosis’ are dealing with “sexual impulses”, or the scientific term “libido”. In discussing libido, the terms sexual object and sexual aim are always used respectively to describe from whom (or what) and how sexual impulses are raised. In Freud’s theories, the normal sexual aim is the union of the genitals between two opposite sex (Freud 14). All Sexual acts that displace the normal sexual aims are assumed to be deviant, unless subordinate to the primacy of genital union. Deviated sexual objects and sexual aims are manifested as various sexual aberrations, such as inversion or same sex object preference, perversion and neurosis. This paper examines perversion and neurosis, their correlations, as well as their association with infantile sexuality.
Freud divided sexual development into periods of time at which certain drives and conflicts would be paramount in the individual psyche. Each period is more or less successfully resolved, leading to perversion or to normal libido in latter stages. The stages of infant sexuality are followed by a ‘latency period’. After children reach the latency age, usually about five or six years old, education and society expectations plant a censor in their mind. Freud calls this censor the superego. The “superego” works as a monitor; therefore, the natural sexual impulses are discouraged and repressed into unconsciousness, which will not be evoked until puberty (Freud 42). According to Freud, perversion is a morbid symptom caused by overwhelmed sexual impulses, which are usually struggled with shame, loathing and psychical resistances. (Freud 25) On the other hand, neurosis is another way that the repressed psychic energy is transformed. Perversion and neurosis are like the two sides of one same leaf, in a sense, one side of the leave is exposed directly under the sun and the other side is shadowed, but still affected by the sun.
When sexual impulses overcome the moral resistances, perversions such as fetishism, sadism and masochism, or even necrophilia: “violation of cadavers” (Freud 25), manifest or rise from unconsciousness. Perversions, subject to deviated sexual aims, can be characterized into two categories: anatomical transgressions and obsessions with what is colloquially called foreplay. First the “anatomical transgressions of the bodily regions destined for sexual union” (Freud 15), that is, the sexual impulse that emanates from the sexual object is not only limited to the genitals. Sexual utilization of mouth (oral sex), anal opening (anal sex), other body parts and other phallic substitutes (fetishism) are the manifestations of this form of perversion. One asserted reason for these transgressions is love. Freud believed that the overestimating the sexual object, that is, when sexual object is idealized in the name of love, is the underlying cause of the craving for various body stimulations. Freud believed that love is seen as “an important if not the primordial source of authority” (Freud 15). Love thus authorizes the sex act causing a “logical blinding” (Freud 15), in which the person does not see the object of their libido realistically, but as something with greater import worthy of affection.
Besides “anatomical transgressions”, perversions also manifest as an obsession of precursory sexual acts. Instead of reaching the ‘normal’ sexual aim (the union of the genitals), perversions cause the person to remain “lingering at the intermediary relations to the sexual object which should normally be rapidly passed on the way to the definite sexual aim.” (Freud, 20) Freud believes perversions cannot count as a disease while they act to aid the normal sexual aim. Touching, kissing and looking will only be counted as perversions when these forms are the exclusive and predominant sexual aims.
Aggression, which might be used to achieve genital union, can be separated and exaggerated to displace the normal sexual aim, as we are seen in sadism and masochism. With respect to the dialectic between pleasure and pain, a person “who experiences pleasure by causing pain to others in sexual relations is also able to experience the pain emanating from sexual relations as pleasure”( Freud 23). In this way, sadism and masochism can live side by side in the same person.
It is interesting that other sexual aberrations, such as inversion, pedophilia, necrophilia, bestiality are not included in the Freud’s text of perversions. However, Freud does give a close relationship between them. Perversions deal with deviated sexual aims, while these other sexual aberrations deal with displaced sexual objects. Inversions, pedophilia, necrophilia, bestiality shift their normal sexual object from an object of the sexually matured opposite sex to same-sex, children, corpses and animals. It seems obvious that they also fall into the category of perversions, defined as deviated aims and objects.
The reader might ask the common question: How do deviations arise? Giving authority to the idea of love has been discussed as a way that the most common deviations from aim may develop. It is a common question whether perversions arise from congenital intuition, or are acquired in the later in sexual development. Freud believes that perversions exaggerations of the inherent sexual pulses. All people are subject to the same urges, but in some persons, these become exaggerated during development. Freud explains of the significance of infantile sexuality and its link to perversion and neurosis:
…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 (Freud,35).
In this concise argument, Freud makes clear that contrary to conventional believing, infantile sexuality not only exists, but also predominantly influence the later life sexual development; both perversion and neurosis signify a failure to successfully complete the infantile psychosexual development. For example, having oral sex is a manifestation of an adult still lingering at the oral stage: the first stage of sexual development as a baby. At the oral stage, breast-fed baby relates the pleasure-producing stimuli from sucking mother’s breast to mouth. Mouth becomes an erogenous zone to infants at oral stage. Adults who adopt oral sex as the exclusive sex form fail to resolve the oral stage; as a result, they never proceed and reach the normal sexual aim.
Similar explanations can be derived to resolve other myths of perversions. Similar to oral sex, obsession with anal sex also suggests the unresolved attachment at the anal stage: the second stage of infantile sexual development. Fetishism is associated with the castration anxiety at the third psychosexual stage: the phallic stage. The realization of the different structure of male and female genitals causes boys think that girls are castrated. In fetishism, individuals are refusing to accept the idea that women are born with no penis; as a result, they relocate the genital onto other body parts or substitutes. Furthermore, inversions are related to the unresolved transitional stage where love is transferred between parents. In this way, the existence and validity of Freud’s stages of early libido conflicts and their resolution determines the validity of his theories of perversion. Irresolution at any stage can lead to perversion, and as will be addressed, neurosis.
Theoretical examples not used by Freud that does not depend on Freud’s developmental stages to validate the childhood origin of adult perversion can be given. For example, Sadism and masochism resulting from the impression of parents having sex can be interpreted as violence in the child’s eyes, which causes effect on their later development. As in Freud, the child is unaware of this effect or origin, but in this example, the existence of sexual impulses in the child is ambiguous. Similar, non-Freudian arguments based on childhood experience of adult sexuality are possible.
These ambiguous terms do not make it possible to ignore childhood or infant sexuality. Neurosis may seem to be completely irrelevant with sexual motives and Freud believes that the sexual impulse may not be the only source in the formation of neurosis (Freud 26). However, and importantly, sexual motive “supplies the only constant and the most important source of energy in the neurosis, so that the sexual life of such persons manifests itself either exclusively, preponderantly, or partially in these symptoms”(Freud 27)). Compared to perversions, the sexual impulses in neurosis are successfully repressed into one’s unconsciousness, where they seek a way to discharge. These finally convert into a camouflaged form of perversion, or in Freud’s words, “The neurosis is, so to say, the negative of the perversion” (Freud 29). Before Freud, because of the less obvious relationship between neurosis and the unsolved sexual desire, the cause of some pathological symptom remains unknown. However, with the formation of psychoanalysis, it became possible to link many seemingly unrelated mental behaviors with sex. Neurosis has roots in sexual conflict, especially infantile unsolved sexual conflict. For example, obsession relates to the utilization of mouth, such as drinking wine, chewing gum and smoking cigarette, are fixations of failing to pass the oral stage, which can be compared with its direct manifestation of oral sex discussed previously. Again, the fixation of lingering at the anal stage if neurotically expressed is the anal personality, which we use to describe an uptight person – meticulous, detail oriented, and anxious. Each perversion has its reversal, a neurosis resulting form the successful repression of individual resistance and social norms.
In Freud’s text, some points about perversion and neurosis are emphasized. Most perversions, such as oral sex and fetishism, are part of the normal sexual attraction and desire as long as they do not inhibited the normal aims. Similarly, kissing and touching are perfectly valid and legitimate unless they become the only sexual aim. Therefore, certain sexual act is only perversion when it predominantly takes place of the normal sexual aim: the union of genitals. In fact Freud shows that individuals with perverse traits can be perfectly normal in other non-sexual acts (Freud 14). This suggests that there is no direct link between sexual aberrations to other psychical abnormality. However, Freud does believe that “the impulses 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”(Freud 14) This explains the reason why sexual life is given utmost attention in psychoanalysis, that is, sexual abnormality is a necessary yet insufficient condition for psychical abnormality.
Both perversion and neurosis relate to infantile sexuality as described in Freud’s text. In sum, Freud believes that everyone is somewhat perverse. There is no sharp line drawn between perverse and normal. Rather, perverts are just like everyone else; only their already normal sexual impulses are exaggerated. Unresolved sexual impulses and psychic energies are repressed in child’s latency period, and transformed into a perversion, a neurosis or a positive sublimating way: the energy of the pent up drives may be used in positive, non-sexual ways to benefit the larger society of which the individual is part. Freud considers this the healthiest outcome (Freud 21).
Freud, Sigmund. Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex. Trans A.A. Brill. New York: Dover Editions, 2001.
Theoretical examples not used by Freud that does not depend on Freud’s developmental stages to validate the childhood origin of adult perversion can be given. For example, Sadism and masochism resulting from the impression of parents having sex can be interpreted as violence in the child’s eyes, which causes effect on their later development. As in Freud, the child is unaware of this effect or origin, but in this example, the existence of sexual impulses in the child is ambiguous. Similar, non-Freudian arguments based on childhood experience of adult sexuality are possible.
These ambiguous terms do not make it possible to ignore childhood or infant sexuality. Neurosis may seem to be completely irrelevant with sexual motives and Freud believes that the sexual impulse may not be the only source in the formation of neurosis (Freud 26). However, and importantly, sexual motive “supplies the only constant and the most important source of energy in the neurosis, so that the sexual life of such persons manifests itself either exclusively, preponderantly, or partially in these symptoms”(Freud 27)). Compared to perversions, the sexual impulses in neurosis are successfully repressed into one’s unconsciousness, where they seek a way to discharge. These finally convert into a camouflaged form of perversion, or in Freud’s words, “The neurosis is, so to say, the negative of the perversion” (Freud 29). Before Freud, because of the less obvious relationship between neurosis and the unsolved sexual desire, the cause of some pathological symptom remains unknown. However, with the formation of psychoanalysis, it became possible to link many seemingly unrelated mental behaviors with sex. Neurosis has roots in sexual conflict, especially infantile unsolved sexual conflict. For example, obsession relates to the utilization of mouth, such as drinking wine, chewing gum and smoking cigarette, are fixations of failing to pass the oral stage, which can be compared with its direct manifestation of oral sex discussed previously. Again, the fixation of lingering at the anal stage if neurotically expressed is the anal personality, which we use to describe an uptight person – meticulous, detail oriented, and anxious. Each perversion has its reversal, a neurosis resulting form the successful repression of individual resistance and social norms.
In Freud’s text, some points about perversion and neurosis are emphasized. Most perversions, such as oral sex and fetishism, are part of the normal sexual attraction and desire as long as they do not inhibited the normal aims. Similarly, kissing and touching are perfectly valid and legitimate unless they become the only sexual aim. Therefore, certain sexual act is only perversion when it predominantly takes place of the normal sexual aim: the union of genitals. In fact Freud shows that individuals with perverse traits can be perfectly normal in other non-sexual acts (Freud 14). This suggests that there is no direct link between sexual aberrations to other psychical abnormality. However, Freud does believe that “the impulses 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”(Freud 14) This explains the reason why sexual life is given utmost attention in psychoanalysis, that is, sexual abnormality is a necessary yet insufficient condition for psychical abnormality.
Both perversion and neurosis relate to infantile sexuality as described in Freud’s text. In sum, Freud believes that everyone is somewhat perverse. There is no sharp line drawn between perverse and normal. Rather, perverts are just like everyone else; only their already normal sexual impulses are exaggerated. Unresolved sexual impulses and psychic energies are repressed in child’s latency period, and transformed into a perversion, a neurosis or a positive sublimating way: the energy of the pent up drives may be used in positive, non-sexual ways to benefit the larger society of which the individual is part. Freud considers this the healthiest outcome (Freud 21).
Freud, Sigmund. Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex. Trans A.A. Brill. New York: Dover Editions, 2001.