"...children are born with sexual urges, which undergo a complicated development before they attain the familiar adult form."
SIGMUND FREUD
SIGMUND FREUD
According to Freud children develop through three stages; oral, anal, phallic. And that any disturbance in the rolling out of these three phases imprints onto our psychology and if unresolved emerges as some form of psychic disturbance (fixation, phobia or neurosis) later in life.
As adults we revisit these three stages, not (necessarily) to resolve any guilty feelings but for sheer enjoyment. We call it sex.
Freud's first essay, on "The Sexual Aberrations", designated 'the person from whom sexual attraction proceeds the sexual object and the act towards which the instinct tends the sexual aim ', and stressed that 'numerous deviations appear in respect of both of these - the sexual object and the sexual aim'. Turning to neurotics, Freud emphasised that 'in them tendencies to every kind of perversion can be shown to exist as unconscious forces...neurosis is, as it were, the negative of perversion'.Freud concluded that 'a disposition to perversions is an original and universal disposition of the human sexual instinct and that...this postulated constitution, containing the germs of all the perversions, will only be demonstrable in children'.
His second essay, on "Infantile Sexuality", demonstrated that 'children are born with sexual urges, which undergo a complicated development before they attain the familiar adult form'. Freud argued thereby that "perversion" was present even among the healthy, and that the path towards a mature and normal sexual attitude began not at puberty but at early childhood (see psychosexual development). Looking at children, Freud claimed that 'infantile sexual emotions and desires take many and varied forms, not all of them palpably erotic: thumb sucking and other displays of autoeroticism, retention of feces, sibling rivalry, masturbation'.
'The years of puberty and adolescence, to which Freud devoted the last of his three essays...consolidate sexual identity, revive long-buried oedipal attachments, establish the dominance of the genitals for the attainment of sexual gratification'.[6] In "The Transformations of Puberty" Freud also formalised the distinction between the pleasures of infantile sexuality which 'may be suitably described as "fore-pleasure" in contrast to the "end-pleasure" or pleasure of satisfaction derived from the sexual act'.
Freud sought to link to his theory of the unconscious put forward in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) and his work on hysteria by means of positing sexuality as the driving force of both neuroses (through repression) and perversion. In its final version, the "Three Essays" also included the concepts of penis envy, castration anxiety, and the Oedipus complex.
As adults we revisit these three stages, not (necessarily) to resolve any guilty feelings but for sheer enjoyment. We call it sex.
Freud's first essay, on "The Sexual Aberrations", designated 'the person from whom sexual attraction proceeds the sexual object and the act towards which the instinct tends the sexual aim ', and stressed that 'numerous deviations appear in respect of both of these - the sexual object and the sexual aim'. Turning to neurotics, Freud emphasised that 'in them tendencies to every kind of perversion can be shown to exist as unconscious forces...neurosis is, as it were, the negative of perversion'.Freud concluded that 'a disposition to perversions is an original and universal disposition of the human sexual instinct and that...this postulated constitution, containing the germs of all the perversions, will only be demonstrable in children'.
His second essay, on "Infantile Sexuality", demonstrated that 'children are born with sexual urges, which undergo a complicated development before they attain the familiar adult form'. Freud argued thereby that "perversion" was present even among the healthy, and that the path towards a mature and normal sexual attitude began not at puberty but at early childhood (see psychosexual development). Looking at children, Freud claimed that 'infantile sexual emotions and desires take many and varied forms, not all of them palpably erotic: thumb sucking and other displays of autoeroticism, retention of feces, sibling rivalry, masturbation'.
'The years of puberty and adolescence, to which Freud devoted the last of his three essays...consolidate sexual identity, revive long-buried oedipal attachments, establish the dominance of the genitals for the attainment of sexual gratification'.[6] In "The Transformations of Puberty" Freud also formalised the distinction between the pleasures of infantile sexuality which 'may be suitably described as "fore-pleasure" in contrast to the "end-pleasure" or pleasure of satisfaction derived from the sexual act'.
Freud sought to link to his theory of the unconscious put forward in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) and his work on hysteria by means of positing sexuality as the driving force of both neuroses (through repression) and perversion. In its final version, the "Three Essays" also included the concepts of penis envy, castration anxiety, and the Oedipus complex.