Reading Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality

“With this remarkable work of scholarship, Van Haute and Westerink continue their pathbreaking project of making visible a largely unfamiliar Freud. Their meticulous readings demonstrate not only the historical and conceptual significance of the first edition of Three Essays, but also its astonishing relevance for contemporary debates about sex and gender.” —Tim Dean, James M. Benson Professor in English, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA “Philippe Van Haute and Herman Westerink reveal the multi-layered character of this text. Revealing a non-oedipal theory of sexuality in the 1905 edition and highlighting a theory of sexual pleasure and its potential for a radical critique of heteronormativity, they also remind us that it is us – our reading habits – that turn Freud into a monolithic thinker he has never been.” —Daniela Finzi, Scientific Director of the Freud Museum Vienna “Van Haute and Westerink present their own systematic reading of Freud’s text through the vicissitudes of its rewriting in no less than four successive re-editions from 1905–1924. What is at stake is the radicality of Freud’s 1905 thesis of the polymorphous perverse nature of an infantile sexuality.” —John Fletcher, Professor Emeritus, University of Warwick, Senior Research Associate, Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London “Intensifying rather than trying to iron out Freud’s contradictions, Van Haute and Westerink allow the critical potential of the Three Essays to come to the fore, with the excavation of those (non-oedipal, pleasure-based and auto-erotic) elements that work in opposition to the heteronormative, functional conceptions of sexuality that still circulate today.” —Stella Sandford, Professor of Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University, London READING FREUD’S THREE ESSAYS ON THE THEORY OF SEXUALITY Sigmund Freud’s 1905 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality is a founding text of psychoanalysis and yet it remains to a large extent an “unknown” text. In this book Freud’s 1905 theory of sexuality is reconstructed in its historical context, its systematic outline, and its actual relevance. This reconstruction reveals a non-oedipal theory of sexuality defined in terms of autoerotic, non-objectal, physical-pleasurable activities originating from the “drive” and excitability of erogenous zones. This book, consequently, not only calls for a reconsideration of the development of Freudian thinking and of the status of the Oedipus complex in psychoanalysis but also has a strong potential for supporting contemporary non-heteronormative theories of sexuality. It is as such that the 1905 edition of Three Essays becomes a highly relevant document in contemporary philosophical discussions of sexuality. This book also explores the inconsistencies and problems in the original theory of sexuality, notably the unresolved question of the transition from autoerotic infantile sexuality to objectal adult sexuality, as well as the theoretical and methodological shifts present in later editions of Three Essays. It will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and those with an academic interest in the history of psychoanalysis and sexuality. Philippe Van Haute is Professor for Philosophical Anthropology at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and Extraordinary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He has published extensively on the relation between psychoanalysis and philosophy. Herman Westerink is Associate Professor for Philosophy of Religion and Intercultural Philosophy at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and Extraordinary Professor at the KU Leuven, Belgium. He has published many books and articles on Freudian psychoanalysis, sexuality and religion. The History of Psychoanalysis Series Series Editors Professor Brett Kahr and Professor Peter L. Rudnytsky This series seeks to present outstanding new books that illuminate any aspect of the history of psychoanalysis from its earliest days to the present, and to reintroduce classic texts to contemporary readers. Other titles in the series: Corresponding Lives Mabel Dodge Luhan, A. A. Brill, and the Psychoanalytic Adventure in America Patricia R. Everett A Forgotten Freudian The Passion of Karl Stern Daniel Burston The Skin-Ego A New Translation by Naomi Segal Didier Anzieu Karl Abraham Life and Work, a Biography Anna Bentinck van Schoonheten The Freudian Orient Early Psychoanalysis, Anti-Semitic Challenge, and the Vicissitudes of Orientalist Discourse Frank F. Scherer For further information about this series please visit www.routledge.com/ The-History-of-Psychoanalysis-Series/book-series/KARNHIPSY READING FREUD’S THREE ESSAYS ON THE THEORY OF SEXUALITY From Pleasure to the Object Philippe Van Haute and Herman Westerink First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Philippe Van Haute and Herman Westerink The right of Philippe Van Haute and Herman Westerink to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-64530-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-36430-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-12498-6 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC CONTENTS Acknowledgments Series editor’s foreword viii ix Introduction 1 1 Hysteria and sexuality 7 2 The infant’s object choice and development 49 3 Beyond Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality 84 The actuality of Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality Bibliography Index 104 115 122 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book results from a larger project on Three Essays that has already produced several major publications. Parts of the first chapter of this book have already been published – in shorter versions and altered compositions – in the form of commentaries to translations and new editions of the 1905 Three Essays (Freud 1905a, 2015, 2017) and articles (Haute & Westerink 2016a, 2016b). Also, we should mention here the publication of two volumes – a first in which various authors explore aspects of the first edition of Three Essays (Haute & Westerink 2017) and a second that investigates the Dora case study and its relevance for Freudian theory (Finzi & Westerink 2018). We would like to thank the many colleagues with whom we were able to discuss our thoughts and ideas on Freud’s theory of sexuality at various meetings, symposia, and conferences over the past few years. Their comments contributed highly to our project. We would especially like to thank Ulrike Kistner for her reading and excellent translation of the 1905 Three Essays and the many productive conversations we had on the text. It was a privilege to work so closely with her. Also, we are very grateful for the meetings of the Freud Research Group and the many discussions with its members, Irene Berkel, Fons van Coillie, Monique David-Ménard, Jens De Vlemick, Daniela Finzi, Gilles Ribault, Ednei Soares, Beatriz Santos, Céline Surprenant, and Patrick Vandermeersch, on Freudian theory. In addition, we would like to explicitly thank our colleagues at the Center for Contemporary European Philosophy for their willingness to think through the project with us. We would like to thank Bob Vallier for the excellent correction work, Brett Kahr and Peter L. Rudnytsky for giving us the opportunity and honor to publish our book in the History of Psychoanalysis Series, and the Routledge editors Russell George and Alec Selwyn for guiding us through the publication process. SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD On December 12, 1904, Dr. Sigmund Freud, then forty-eight-and-a-half years of age, delivered a talk, “Über Psychotherapie” (“On Psychotherapy”), to colleagues in the Wiener Medizinisches Doktorenkollegium (Viennese Medical Doctor’s College). As Freud would soon turn forty-nine years of age on May 6, 1905, he no doubt found himself much preoccupied with his own impending half-century. In his presentation, Freud (1905f: 213) expressed concern that as patients approach or reach the age of fifty years, they begin to lose their mental “Plastizität” (“plasticity”) and become, alas, less educable and, therefore, less suitable for psychoanalytical treatment. Needless to say, modern-day psychotherapists and psychoanalysts would question Freud’s characterization of the older members of the population; and in more recent years, colleagues have undertaken excellent work on the treatment of the elderly through traditional psychoanalytical means (e.g., King 1980; Coltart 1991; Aldrich 1994; Junkers 2006; Amos & Balfour 2007; Davenhill 2007). One cannot help but wonder whether Freud made his observation about the dangers of aging, at least in part, because of his own encroaching birthday, just over a year away. Thus, with his fiftieth anniversary in the offing, Freud no doubt worked extremely diligently to produce as many substantial contributions as possible throughout the year 1905, prior to his major birthday on May 6, 1906. Throughout 1905, Freud (1905a) worked like a Trojan to complete several major monographs: first, a substantial text entitled Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten ( Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious), which, we suspect, appeared in print in the spring of that year, as Freud dated his own personal copy – currently preserved in the safe of the Freud Museum London – May 22, 1905. Some months later, during the autumn, he published a seminal case history in two parts about an hysterical patient known as Dora in a medical periodical, the x Series editor’s foreword Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie (Monthly for Psychiatry and Neurology) (Freud 1905d, 1905e). But, perhaps most profoundly of all, Freud (1905b) produced yet another book; namely, the Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie (Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality), which would become one of the most important tomes in the entire history of international psychology. Though only eighty-three pages in length, this short text broke considerable new ground and provided the foundation for an entirely fresh, bold, and daring theory of human sexuality. Although it would be unfair to describe Freud as the inventor of modern sexuality per se, he certainly created a new form of discourse in which erotic phantasy and behavior could be conceptualized more frankly and profoundly. From a sexological perspective, Freud followed in the footsteps of such authors as Professor Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1886), one of the most celebrated of German-speaking psychiatrists, best known for his remarkable work, Psychopathia Sexualis: Eine klinisch-forensische Studie (Sexual Psychopathy: A Clinical-Forensic Study), first published in 1886. Whereas von Krafft-Ebing’s book reads like a chronicle of disgust, Freud’s monograph strikes us as a much more libertarian, progressive, and honest work, explaining that non-procreative sexuality cannot be dismissed as merely the horrifying indulgences of the pathological and the perverse, but, rather, that every human being enjoys a complex sexual life, underpinned by infantile wishes and anxieties. During the latter part of the nineteenth century, Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s book attracted considerable attention and became, for many years, the gold standard work of reference about sexual crimes and oddities. Freud had reason to loathe von Krafft-Ebing and may have also harbored a wish to outdo him as Austria’s leading sexologist, not least because the older physician had once shamed Freud publicly back in 1896, dismissing his contributions as little more than a “wissenschaftliches Märchen,” or “scientific fairy tale” (Freud 1896a: 193). Consequently, although Freud would cite von Krafft-Ebing in his own book on sexuality published in 1905, he made only a few brief and not particularly significant references to the work of his senior colleague. Sigmund Freud’s classic study of sexuality has become a staple among psychoanalysts and psychotherapists worldwide, and it remains, to this day, a source of huge insight and inspiration that helps us to understand the nature of the erotic mind. I certainly could not have undertaken my own research on the sexual fantasies of British and American adults – more than 25,000 individuals in total – focusing on the traumatic childhood origins of sexual states of mind (Kahr 2007, 2008), without having spent years absorbing the insights first identified by Freud only months before his own fiftieth birthday. But those of us who read the works of Sigmund Freud nowadays find ourselves confronted with a potentially serious problem. Mercifully, in spite of the tragic fact that the Nazis burned many of Freud’s books in 1933, we still have innumerable editions of his many writings, not only in German and English but also in many other languages. Indeed, we have no shortage of Freud texts to which we may turn. Series editor’s foreword xi English-speaking readers who do not or cannot tackle Freud in German will, in all likelihood, have embraced the father of psychoanalysis through the wonderfully clear and accurate translations carefully supervised by James Strachey. However, in spite of the brilliance and authenticity of Strachey’s fluid and readable rendering of the Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie as the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (Freud 1905c), many students and practitioners alike may not fully realize that Strachey’s edition of Freud’s work consists not only of an incorporation of the original 1905 version of the book but also of an amalgamation of the many additional passages and notes contained in the second edition of 1910, the third edition of 1915, the fourth edition of 1920, the fifth edition of 1922, the revised fifth edition of 1924, and the sixth edition of 1925. Although Strachey – a formidable translator – crisply delineated each addendum with appropriate scholarly notations, contemporary Freud enthusiasts will not readily be able to differentiate the original text of 1905 from the expanded version of 1925 with much ease. And while most Freudian students could not care less whether they immerse themselves in a first edition or a sixth edition, those of us who do wish to understand the development of Freud’s theories over time and do yearn to study his contribution in a more serious and systematic way may find ourselves vexed or confused. Thankfully, Professors Philippe Van Haute and Herman Westerink, two extremely meticulous researchers from Nijmegen in the Netherlands, have studied each edition of Freud’s sexual masterpiece with microscopic skill and have provided a compelling and convincing narrative, explaining why one might benefit from reading the very first edition in its unedited form, underscoring how a careful investigation of Freud’s tract, in its original incarnation, will shed tremendous light on the truly radical, revolutionary nature of his contributions, emphasizing the ways in which Freud embraced sexuality in a non-pathologizing and nonmoralistic manner. I shall not reveal the specificities of the remarkable detective work that has emerged from the extensive historical investigations of Professors Van Haute and Westerink, but I shall underscore that, as a result of reading this book, one will walk away far more knowledgeable about the precise nature of Freud’s paradigmshifting contributions to the theory of sexuality as well as the complex and intricate journey of theory construction that unfolds across the many revisions of this seminal text. I certainly have learned a great deal, and I thank the authors warmly for having written such an engaging book and for having reminded us that the “tidy” version of an updated Freud may not always be the most accurate or, indeed, the most original. Professor Brett Kahr, Series Co-Editor, History of Psychoanalysis Series xii Series editor’s foreword References Aldrich, C.K. (1994). Senior Patients, Senior Psychiatrists, and Senior Politicians, in George H. Pollock (Ed.), How Psychiatrists Look at Aging, Vol. 2, Madison, CT: International Universities Press, 79–90. Amos, A. & Balfour, A. (2007). Couples Psychotherapy: Separateness or Separation? An Account of Work with a Couple Entering Later Life, in R. Davenhill (Ed.), Looking into Later Life: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Depression and Dementia in Old Age, London: Karnac Books, 75–89. Coltart, Nina E.C. (1991). The Analysis of an Elderly Patient, in International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 72, 209–219. Davenhill, R. (2007). Individual Psychotherapy, in Rachel Davenhill (Ed.), Looking into Later Life: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Depression and Dementia in Old Age, London: Karnac Books, 62–74. Freud, S. (1896). Letter to Wilhelm Fliess. 26th April, in J.M. Masson & M. Schröter (Eds.), Briefe an Wilhelm Fliess 1887–1904: Ungekürzte Ausgabe, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 193–194. Freud, S. (1905a). Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten, Vienna: Franz Deuticke. Freud, S. (1905b). Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, Vienna: Franz Deuticke. Freud, S. (1905c). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, J. Strachey (Transl.), in J. Strachey, A. Freud, A. Strachey & A. Tyson (Eds. and Transls.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume 7. (1901–1905). A Case of Hysteria. Three Essays on Sexuality and Other Works, London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of PsychoAnalysis, 130–243. Freud, S. (1905d). Bruchstück einer Hysterie-Analyse. [Part I], in Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie 18, 285–309. Freud, S. (1905e). Bruchstück einer Hysterie-Analyse. [Part II], in Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie 18, 408–467. Freud, S. (1905f). Über Psychotherapie, in S. Freud (Ed.) (1906), Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre aus den Jahren 1893–1906, Vienna: Franz Deuticke, 205–217. Junkers, G. (2006). Editor’s Preface, in G. Junkers (Ed.), Is it Too Late? Key Papers on Psychoanalysis and Ageing. Papers in International Journal of Psychoanalysis Key Papers Series, London: Karnac Books, xi–xxii. Kahr, B. (2007). Sex and the Psyche, London: Allen Lane/Penguin Books, Penguin Group. Kahr, B. (2008). Who’s Been Sleeping in Your Head? The Secret World of Sexual Fantasies, New York: Basic Books/Perseus Books Group. King, P. (1980). The Life Cycle as Indicated by the Nature of the Transference in the Psychoanalysis of the Middle-Aged and Elderly, in International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 61, 153–160. Krafft-Ebing, R. von (1886). Psychopathia Sexualis: Eine klinisch-forensische Studie, Stuttgart: Verlag von Ferdinand Enke. INTRODUCTION Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality is one of Sigmund Freud’s most important, original, and well-known writings. First published in 1905, it soon attracted attention and eventually became a landmark text in the history of Freudian psychoanalysis and beyond. It was a relatively short text compared to the various contemporary studies on sexuality published by scholars in neurology, sexology, and psychiatry, as it comprised no more than eighty-three pages. The reference to “1905” and “contemporary” indicates the context of Three Essays. The text is intrinsically bound to other publications in the same period, such as “Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria” (the Dora case) and Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, and to the culmination – and revision – of theoretical thoughts on and clinical insights into the role played by sexuality in the etiology of the psychoneuroses, notably hysteria. One might expect that any systematic reading of the text would start from this fact. And yet literature on the theoretical developments in Freudian psychoanalysis in general and his theory on sexuality in particular show that this is seldom the case. The difficulty here lies in the fact that Freud reissued Three Essays four times over a period of two decades (1910, 1915, 1920, 1924), each time deleting some – very crucial – sentences and concepts and adding long sections, paragraphs, and footnotes in which he presented in detail the theoretical “progress” that had been accomplished since the previous edition. One finds that Freud inserted large paragraphs on the drive and libido theory, the child’s sexual researches, the phases of development of the sexual organization, narcissism, the diphasic object choice, the influence of phylogenetic material, and – in a few scattered footnotes – the Oedipus complex. The result of this was that the final version of 1924 was almost forty pages longer than the original edition, and it was this 1924 text that became the “officially approved” one; that is, the version taken up in the wellknown collections of his writings (Gesammelte Werke and Standard Edition) as the publication coded “1905.” This 1905 text, however, is in a sense a missing object 2 Introduction to which every Freud scholar refers often without recognizing its “absence” from the standard collections of writings. This absence is not merely metaphorical – it is a fact. Until a few years ago (Freud 2015), the German 1905 edition was hardly accessible because very few original copies remained and only one almost unnoticed reprint was available (Freud 2005). The first English translation of the first edition has only very recently – in 2016 – been published, thus making the 1905 edition available for the first time in its own composition and reasoning (Freud 1905a).1 The absence of the 1905 edition of Three Essays has huge implications on various levels. These implications first of all concern any systematic reading of and reflection on the text itself. One might be tempted to take Freud’s own statement in the preface to the 1910 edition as a guideline: “what was imperfect may be replaced by something better.” From this perspective, the 1924 edition could be read as the “better” version in the sense that it articulates the “most complete” theory – and for this reason it would therefore also justifiably be the “officially approved” theory. By this reasoning, one likely assumes that the first version of the text is not complete when compared to every subsequent version – that is to say, either it has major deficiencies and leaves (too) many open questions unanswered and problems unsolved or it is in need of more profound theoretical substantiation and argumentation underpinning the first intuitions and explorations. The first version thus tends to become something like a draft, a first sketch of and outline for later versions. The various editions of the text would supposedly show continuity through the further clarification and systematization of ideas. The often not very hidden premise would then be this: Three Essays develops progressively into the “better” version, and this runs parallel to the steady advancements in psychoanalytic theory, methods, and practice. This book presents a systematic reading of the first and various later editions of Three Essays.2 This means making the “absent” theory of sexuality present again, not by considering the 1905 edition as a text that is less complete in comparison to the subsequent versions but by showing that the first and various later versions are different texts presenting different theories. The “absent” text is an “other” text – the 1905 theory of sexuality is fundamentally different from the later versions in which Freud indeed inserts new theoretical material and approaches that produce a different, redefined theory on sexuality. In other words, essential parts of the theory of infantile and adult sexuality as Freud presents these in inserted sections, paragraphs, and footnotes in the later editions of the text are virtually absent in the 1905 first version. Our reading of the first and later editions of Three Essays also has implications for the view of the history of Freudian psychoanalysis. What does it mean to say that the later inserted material – for example, the sections on the drive and libido theory, the phases of development of the sexual organization, and the diphasic object choice or the few references to the Oedipus complex – is absent from the 1905 edition? Should we conclude from this that Freud felt uncertain in 1905 about the status of intuitions he had been developing since he had – allegedly – abandoned Introduction 3 his seduction theory ten years before and had engaged himself in a productive selfanalysis? If that were the case, the “absent” theoretical material might be considered already potentially or latently present like a hidden “truth” behind the text and between the lines – a truth that would also be the key to the interpretation of the text, i.e., to an oedipal reading of the text. This book provides a historically and systematically contextualized reading of the first and later editions of Three Essays that explores the central concepts and compositions of ideas. Regarding the historical aspect, it is a fact that Freud’s text connects to a body of literature in psychiatry, neurology, and sexology from the late nineteenth century. In this context, the 1905 edition of Three Essays marks an important shift. Until 1905, Freud had mainly expressed his ideas within the conceptual framework of neurology. In Three Essays, he adopts for the first time – and systematically – the conceptual framework of psychiatry and sexology. This includes, for example, a shift from a theory of affects toward a theory of the drives. Until 1905, Freud’s conceptual framework, as he had developed it in his studies on hysteria, neurasthenia, and anxiety neurosis in the 1890s, mainly revolved around notions such as impulse (Reiz), endogenous excitation, affect, and psychic energy – concepts developed from his background in neurology. The concept of Trieb had not been part of that framework. It was in Three Essays that Freud first elaborated this concept in line with the contemporary psychiatric and sexological literature. Regarding the more systematic context, the 1905 Three Essays can be seen as Freud’s last major text on hysteria, and for that reason it is closely related to the Dora case (also published in 1905) and to all previous writings on hysteria. Notably, our reading of the first edition will reveal that many of the concepts and constructs generally considered fundamental to psychoanalytic theory had not yet been defined or even introduced at the time of its publication. With regard to this first edition, the central thesis in our book is that Freud develops a nonoedipal theory of infantile sexuality; that is, a theory that in principle cannot be articulated or translated in oedipal terms. In 1905, Freud had not yet articulated his theory of the Oedipus complex, nor had he focused his attention on the obsessional neurotic problematic of love, hate, ambivalence, identification, conscience, and guilt that would lead him to identify this complex. He had not yet formulated a theory of the drives, nor had he introduced his theory of narcissism, in which he would express his views on the association between the drive economy and object relations. Moreover, he had not committed himself to a developmental approach in thinking about the relation between early childhood, puberty, and adulthood. These and other later inserted elements contain new material that fundamentally disrupts the original ideas and perspectives on infantile sexuality as being composed of polymorphous perverse, autoerotic, and non-objectal pleasurable activities. Of course, the two decades between the first and last editions of Three Essays had seen fundamental changes in Freud’s thinking. He was well aware of this fact: “[r]eaders of my Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality will be aware that I have never undertaken any thorough remodelling of that work in its later editions, but have retained the original arrangement and have kept abreast of the advances made in 4 Introduction our knowledge by means of interpolations and alterations in the text. In doing this, it may often have happened that what was old and what was more recent did not admit of being merged into an entirely uncontradictory whole” (Freud 1923a: 141, emphasis ours). Indeed, we will illustrate that the final “officially approved” edition of 1924 is in many respects contradictory and inconsistent; or, in other words, any of Freud’s presumed attempts to solve problems, answer open questions, or resolve inconsistencies present in the 1905 edition resulted in creating new ones. And, as we will show, this was inevitable exactly because he maintained the original arrangement of the text; that is, three essays in which two distinct regimes of sexuality – the infantile and the adult – are presented. In Chapters 2 and 3, in which the various later editions of Three Essays are explored, the central hypothesis is the following: whereas the 1905 theory of (infantile) sexuality presents a radical critique of the contemporary functional and heteronormative perspective on sexuality by highlighting the polymorphous perverse and autoerotic character of sexuality, the later editions reveal a progressive undermining of the radical character and critical potential of the first version. This critical potential, of course, first of all concerns his discussion with his contemporaries in the field of late nineteenth-century scientia sexualis, notably Freud’s deconstruction of the sharp distinction between the normal and natural organization of sexuality in the service of preservation of the species on the one hand and the perversions as abnormal, pathological aberrations on the other. The fact that Freud in 1905 presents a non-oedipal theory of sexuality is of crucial importance for determining its further critical potential. If – as we will argue in this book – the steady oedipalization of Freudian theory, in combination with a turn to a developmental approach, can be seen as a “return” to the heteronormative views of his contemporaries, then the critical potential of the 1905 edition also concerns Freudian theory itself. One can read “with Freud against Freud” and consequently against the post-Freudian psychoanalysis that was preoccupied with objectrelations, the Oedipus complex, and the conceptualization of “good enough” family structures. Our “return” to the first edition of Three Essays thus raises questions as to the nature and purpose of any “return to Freud.” To which Freud does one return when one argues for such a return? And what are its implications? In this light, there is another critical potential of the 1905 theory of sexuality. Freud’s view of the polymorphous perverse pleasures and the need for variation that characterizes sexual activities does not merely contrast with the views held in late nineteenth-century scientia sexualis: the relationship is more complicated. As Foucault has argued, one cannot understand nineteenth-century scientia sexualis if one does not recognize its continuity with a Christian hostility toward a variety of pleasurable sexual activities (hence, the disavowal of “the use of pleasure”) and the promotion of marriage in its normalizing function for the organization of sexuality – the heterosexual partner choice with the aim of the production and raising of children. In other words, Three Essays is also a key text in any history of sexuality, and Freud unintentionally refers to this long history when using the concept of libido in the opening sentences of the text (Freud 1905a: 1). More explicit ideas Introduction 5 can be found in the following years, when Freud distinguishes cultural stages in the history of sexual morality, arguing that there is a development from relative sexual freedom toward intensified limitation and juridical regulation of sexuality in the service of reproduction (Freud 1908b: 189). This parallels another development Freud articulates in the 1910 edition of Three Essays: “the most striking distinction between the erotic life of antiquity and our own no doubt lies in the fact that the ancients laid stress upon the instinct [drive] itself, whereas we emphasize its object” (Freud 1905c: 149). Following Foucault’s ideas on the history of sexuality, one could argue that the term libido plays a vital role in this history, shifting meaning from lusts and appetites that ought to be tempered to obtain an optimum of pleasure and satisfaction in the leading of a good life (in Epicurean and Stoic thought) toward the – Augustinian – notion of a dominant, sinful sexual desire lurking in the dark corners of the soul and perverting all human activities (Foucault 2018). The libido is here something hostile and evil that needs to be either eradicated or domesticated in marriage; that is, bound to an object, not to obtain pleasure but with the aim of procreation. What Foucault seems to have overlooked in his evaluation of psychoanalysis and its place in the history of sexuality is exactly Freud’s 1905 theory of sexuality; that is, a theory of pleasure derived from autoerotic bodily sensations and ticklings. As Freud realized in the 1910 footnote we just mentioned, his conceptualization of infantile sexuality as non-objectal, autoerotic pleasure could be associated with the earlier version’s stress on the drive and its relative freedom. In other words, what we find here in the first place is a theory of sexual pleasure and excitation, not a theory of sexual desire for an object that promises to provide enjoyment and that is hence bound not to physiological facticity but to a regulatory cultural ideal of heterosexuality – not “sex-desire,” but rather “bodies and pleasures” ought to be the rallying point of a critical inquiry into the history of sexuality as a history of the conditions of the emergence of forms of subordination (Foucault 1978: 157; see also Butler 1999). In his project regarding “a historical and critical study dealing with desire and the desiring subject” (Foucault 1985: 5), Foucault’s interpretation of psychoanalytic thought largely depends on Lacan’s “return to Freud.” In this view, Freud presents a theory of desire and objects; that is to say, a theory that is always already to some extent oedipalized and hence contaminated with the aim of establishing a cultural structure (the nuclear family) as the normal organizational form of sexuality and of identifying a number of sexual tendencies as abnormal, “evil” aberrations (the perversions) (Westerink 2019; Martins 2019). This reference to Foucault’s project regarding a history of sexuality provides us with a clearer view of what is at stake in our reading of the first and later editions of Three Essays. How does Freud redefine sexuality; resituate the perversions; define the relation between pathology and normality; conceptualize the body, its drives, pleasures, and excitations; and view the relation between human constitution (nature) and culture? And what would be the relevance and actuality of the 1905 edition of Three Essays for contemporary thought on sexuality, pleasure, perversion, pathology, and normality? Clearly, Freud’s 1905 theory of sexuality resonates with 6 Introduction the writings of Foucault and others such as Gilles Deleuze and Judith Butler – and with queer theory in its potential for developing a psychoanalytic metapsychology that escapes the heteronormativity that has characterized post-Freudian psychoanalysis up to now and that instead takes its starting point in the excitable body. But, moreover, does Freud present a full-fledged subversive theory of sexuality in Three Essays? We have already mentioned the inconsistencies and ambiguities, which will be more thoroughly discussed in this book, and we have also pointed at the “return” of the functional perspective in the third essay on puberty and adult sexuality. Freud struggled not only with the inner coherence of his depiction of infantile sexuality and the limitations of the model of hysteria but also with thinking through the transition from infantile to adult sexuality while remaining bound to a cultural morality in which several implications of his ideas were actually unthinkable. Our reading of the various editions shows how productive these problems and open ends in fact were and can be. Taking his starting point in the model of hysteria for the inquiries into the human sexual constitution, Freud soon felt obliged to fundamentally engage with metapsychological questions concerning the drives, the relation to objects and to reality, aggression, ego formation, etc. This soon led him beyond the model of hysteria and its limitations. The study of other psychopathologies that were supposed to shed light on existing problems in fact produced new questions that needed answering. In short, our reading of the various editions of Three Essays, in its significance for contemporary psychoanalysis and philosophical anthropology, can be interpreted to a certain extent as a reconstruction of developments within Freudian thought up to 1924. However, since we confine ourselves to a reading of the various editions of Three Essays, our analyses of evolutions in Freudian psychoanalysis will necessarily be limited to the themes and issues that pertain to the theory of sexuality as presented in Three Essays. Notes 1 The oldest version of Three Essays available in English is the 1910 edition translated by Abraham Brill. This version, however, is hardly ever referenced in literature. 2 Hence, this research is in line with, for instance, the work of Lydia Marinelli and Andreas Mayer on the different editions of Die Traumdeutung (Marinelli & Mayer 2003) and Ulrike May’s re-reading of the various versions of Jenseits des Lustprinzips (May-Tolzmann 2015b). In showing the multi-layered character of Freud’s texts, these readings allow us to understand these texts as a field of mutually related questions and problems that remain relevant for us today, rather than as a set of definitive answers that belong to history. References 1 With regard to sexuality, Freud uses both the term Geschlechtstrieb and Sexualtrieb. Geschlechtstrieb can be translated as genital drive because it refers to the genitally organized sexual attraction between two individuals. Sexualtrieb, on the contrary, refers to Freud’s new concept of sexuality that is no longer defined in terms of an intrinsic natural genital object. See also our later discussion. 2 Krafft-Ebing uses genital drive (Geschlechtstrieb), sexual drive (Sexualtrieb), and reproduction drive (Fortpflanzungstrieb) as equivalents; Freud does not. 3 On Krafft-Ebing and his influence on Freud, see Sulloway (1979), Oosterhuis (2000, 2012), and Davidson (2001). 4 Notably, in his 1871 The Descent of Man, Darwin had argued that nutrition and reproduction should be understood on the basis of the instinct for self-preservation. Darwin distinguishes this instinct from other fundamental instincts; namely, social instincts such as “sympathy” and “love,” especially as directed toward family members and beloved objects but also larger groups (communities, society) (Darwin 1981: 72ff;). Freud does not refer to a theory of sympathy in Three Essays. In later writings, he will explicitly reject the notion of a social instinct in favor of a theory of identification (Freud 1921: 117–121). On this issue, see also Westerink (2009: 124–126, 184–185). 5 Arnold Davidson has correctly argued that the distinction between normal (natural) and perverse (unnatural) sexuality was not a post-Darwinian invention of psychiatry and sexology. The distinction has much older roots in a long Western Christian tradition of a hermeneutics of sexual life continued into modern times. The shift that takes place in the nineteenth century consists of the reassignment of the study and regulation of the perversions from (a religiously motivated) morality and law to medicine – a shift that also includes a continuation of a strong moral evaluation of the perversions. It is only now that the perversions can be defined in terms of distinct pathologies and subjective identities (Davidson 2001: 23–24). On the same topic, see also Mazaleigue (2014). 6 This impulse mainly described what Freud calls “tender feelings” (Zärtlichkeit) and what we would today refer to as “attachment” (see later discussion). On the works of Moll, see Sauerteig (2012) and Sigusch (2012). 7 In his 1901 article, Krafft-Ebing further argues that in acquired homosexuality – the common form of homosexuality – seduction plays a decisive role. It is for this reason that suggestion can be a therapeutic tool in the cure of homosexuality. Given Freud’s views on seduction (see later discussion) and the well-known response of Krafft-Ebing to Freud’s lecture on the seduction theory in 1896, characterizing it as a scientific fairy tale, this reference to seduction is remarkable. However, we should also note that the German psychologist and sexologist Albert von Schrenck-Notzing had claimed that cultural factors such as education were decisive in the etiology of perversions, and that suggestion and hypnosis could be successfully employed in therapy (Oosterhuis 2000: 61, 2012). 8 We should note here that Freud mainly deals with homosexuality as a “perversion” and in doing so shows the fundamental shortcomings of the theoretical models of his predecessors. That does not mean that Freud’s view of homosexuality as such is clear and consistent. In the 1905 edition, the paradigmatic form of homosexuality is the adult man’s love of boys and young adolescents in ancient Greece. Some years later, in the Schreber case, Freud will argue that Schreber’s transgender wish to become a woman can in fact be called a homosexual wish. But the identification of Greek pederasty or Schreber’s transsexuality as homosexuality is far from self-evident (Freud 1905a: 9–10, 1911). 9 The implication is what Arnold Davidson has rightfully described as “a conceptually devastating blow to the entire structure of nineteenth-century theories of sexual psychopathology” (Davidson 2001: 79). 10 Freud tries to explain this development by drawing upon evolutionary developments: in starting to walk upright, man is estranged from the smells of the earth and former visual experiences. Shame and disgust are the first results of this evolutionary process, and as 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 such they mark the first difference between man and animal. On organic repression, see Haute and Geyskens (2004: 44–45). We are far removed here from the metapsychological theories on perversion that were developed after Freud and in the name of Freud. The reader may think here of the classical book by Stoller (1975) and of the work of Lacan. In both cases, “perversion” is thematized as a distinctive “identity” – calling it a structure (Lacan) does not change much in this context – that can be clearly distinguished from other identities (“structures”). In this respect, Freud is more on the side of recent queer theory than on the side of traditional psychoanalysis (Dean 2008; Haute 2016). It seems that Freud calls pain a reaction formation because he is looking for an explanation of sadomasochism that is formally analogous to his explanation of the other perversions. Just as shame is a limit that is overcome in voyeurism/exhibitionism, so, too, is pain considered the limit that is overcome or put into question in sadomasochism. But what forbidden pleasure could pain possibly hide? Freud’s basic model of perversion is hard to universalize, and it cannot make the different perversions intelligible in the same way. In his writings on hysteria, Freud occasionally thematizes a form of aggression that has no inherent object; namely, rage or anger. It is telling that in his studies of obsessional neurosis, Freud will highlight hatred (and the ambivalence of feelings) as being of fundamental importance for understanding all object-related forms of aggression, including sadism (Westerink 2016). Freud would later recall that Charcot commented, with reference to the origin of hysteria, “C’est toujours la chose génitale, toujours . . . toujours . . . toujours” (Westerink 2009: 8). In Three Essays, this development in Freud’s thought is most clearly expressed in endnote 7: “[i]n the understanding of inversion, pathological approaches have been replaced by anthropological ones” (Freud 1905a: 91). In German psychiatry, it was Otto Binswanger who in 1904 published a voluminous and influential handbook on hysteria (Binswanger 1904). In this book, he connects to the writings of predecessors such as Charcot and Moebius, while arguing that hysteria should be explained from a “psychopathic disposition,” and that psychic dynamics merely influence the concrete manifestation of hysteria and are not to be regarded a factor in the etiology. Rank and Sachs argued in their programmatic opening article in the first issue of Imago (1912) that because of Freud’s view of the psychopathologies as magnifications and exaggerations of general human psychic dynamics, the findings derived from the study of psychopathologies could not be limited to the field of pathology alone. The step toward the study of normal everyday phenomena (dreams, jokes, slips of the tongue, and the like) and cultural phenomena such as art, myth, and religion could and should also be made. The latter phenomena were of particular interest in the field of applied psychoanalysis since, according to Rank and Sachs, these cultural phenomena could be regarded as theater staging those repressed drives that were apparently unusable (not functional) in practical cultural life. Hence, psychoanalysis was particularly interested in those cultural phenomena that did not contribute to the preservation of the individual and the group through procreation and labor (communal and family life). Two remarks should be made about this. First, this view of applied psychoanalysis as the study of “theatrical stages” is still closely associated with the model of hysteria and Freud’s critique of the functional interpretation of the sexual drives. Second, the anthropological approach in Three Essays indeed enables this text to be situated in a series of attempts (starting with Interpretation of Dreams) to analyze general human aspects of everyday life (Rank & Sachs 1912). In this context, Freud also remarks that “among the unconscious trains of thought found in neuroses, there is nothing corresponding to a tendency to fetishism.” This shows us that the relation between the neuroses and the perversions is more complex than the 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 formula “neurosis is the negative of perversion” at first sight seems to suggest (Freud 1905a: 26, 28). This seems to parallel the kind of ambiguity and “need of variation” one also finds in bisexuality. Freud adds in a footnote: “[i]t is scarcely possible to exaggerate the pathogenic significance of the comprehensive tie uniting the sexual and the excremental, a tie which is at the basis of a very large number of hysterical phobias” (Freud 1905d: 32). Freud places “drive” in quotation marks, and with good reason: in 1905 he had not yet formulated a drive theory. To support an interpretation of the drive as (the/a?) motor impulse, one might refer to Project of a Scientific Psychology (1895), where Freud had developed a neurobiological theory of stimuli (Reize) and pressure (Drang) in terms of the quantities and discharges of neurons (Freud 1950). However, the Project was never published during Freud’s lifetime, and we find no references to this theory in Three Essays. Why did Freud delete this passage in 1915? An important reason can be found in Jung’s exposition of his genetic theory of the libido (1912a), which offers yet another peculiar reading of the passage. Jung argues that Freud suggests a single primordial drive splitting up in various directions and causing certain bodily functions, zones, and objects to be cathected with sexuality. In this way, zones (for example, the lips) that were initially without sexual function could receive such a function (kissing) in the context of a natural process of efficient differentiation and growth. In this reading, the drive does not become sexual through the link with bodily zones; on the contrary, certain bodily zones receive a sexual function when the primordial libido differentiates into various domains and specialized functions. It is against Jung’s genetic theory of the drives that Freud will then stress the existence of two primal drives, one of which is sexual by nature and aimed at preservation of the species. To prevent any misunderstanding and future heresies, he deletes the passage. See Jung (1912a: 133–139) and Vandermeersch (1991: 231ff, 2017). Because of his critique of the functional approach in contemporary Darwinian thought, Freud basically dismisses all arguments for the Darwinian drive dichotomy. Interestingly, Freud does not provide any new arguments for the idea that psychic life is characterized by two fundamental tendencies or drives. There could be another argument that Freud does not develop in the text we are commenting on: the infantile pleasures are clearly sexual when they are integrated into adult sexuality (e.g., kissing). Since they are “sexual” at the end of the development, they must already have been sexual from the beginning. This probably also explains why Freud, in discussing the “sources of infantile sexuality” at the end of the second part of his text, identifies without much ado the pleasurable experiences caused by “mechanical vibrations” (one could think here of sitting in a train) as sexual in nature. Along the same lines, Freud writes that intellectual activities can go along with “a concomitant sexual excitation,” which “is no doubt the only justifiable basis for what is in other respects a highly questionable derivation of nervous disturbances from intellectual ‘overwork’” (Freud 1905a: 54, 57). We do not agree with Jonathan Lear’s reading of Freud’s theory on infantile sexuality (Lear 2005: 70–82). Lear argues that in Freud’s view, human sexuality is essentially imaginative and that sensual sucking is a pleasurable imaginative activity. We find a similar idea in the work of Jean Laplanche (1987: 71). According to Laplanche, the infantile autoerotic activity is essentially phantasmatic. According to Freud, however, neither imagination nor phantasy is among pleasurable infantile activities. Ulrike May-Tolzmann has shown that it is only in the 1915 edition of Three Essays that Freud will first associate sensual sucking with the aim of “incorporation of the object” (cannibalistic tendencies, introjection, identification). Hence, it is in 1915 that Freud reinterprets sensual sucking in object-relational terms (May-Tolzmann 2015a: 134–142). 28 “In childhood, therefore, the sexual drive is without an object, that is, autoerotic” (Freud 1905a: 82). 29 One could think here, for instance, of Lacan’s famous dictum that “desire is lack of being” (Lacan 1966: 793–827). 30 “A young man who was a great admirer of feminine beauty was talking once – so the story went – of the good-looking wet-nurse who had suckled him when he was a baby: ‘I’m sorry,’ he remarked, ‘that I did not make a better use of my opportunity.’ I was in the habit of quoting this anecdote to explain the factor of deferred action in the mechanism of the psychoneurosis” (Freud 1900: 204–205). 31 In later texts – and especially in the study on the Wolf Man – Freud no longer links deferred action (Nachträglichkeit) to puberty. On this issue, see Laplanche 2006. 32 On the notion of Nachträglichkeit in the work of Freud, see Laplanche 2006 and Fletcher 2013. 33 Albert Moll argues that the concept of Trieb should not be used to describe all contingent psychic movements, intentions, strivings, and acts of the will – as, for example, Wilhelm Wundt had argued – but instead should be used to denote the psychic disposition that pushes a person to perform a certain act. This raises the question of the distinction between Trieb and Instinkt. Moll argues that the Geschlechtstrieb – the instinct aimed at coitus and intimacy with an adult partner of the opposite sex – is merely the conscious and subjective side of an unconscious Fortpflanzunsinstinkt that has reproduction as its goal. Although Trieb and Instinkt are thus two dimensions of the same process, Moll prefers to use the concept of Trieb precisely because of its subjective side, i.e., its relevance for an understanding of the psychological aspects of sexuality, such as sexual satisfaction, attachment, and object choice (Moll 1898: 1–8). 34 For this reason, Strachey’s decision to translate Trieb as “instinct” can be defended against the critique based on a distinction between nature (animal, biological processes) and culture (human, psychological dynamics) we find, for example, in Lacanian theory. 35 In Strachey’s translation of Three Essays, this distinction is completely blurred by the fact that Strachey translates both concepts as “sexual instinct.” 36 One can think here, for instance, of Ernst Kris, who writes the following: “[i]n his letters [to Wilhelm Fliess], we learn that Freud’s insight into the structure of the Oedipus complex, that is, the core problem of psychoanalysis, was made possible by his selfanalysis, which he began in the summer of 1897 during his stay in Aussee” (Kris 1952: 545, our translation). This argumentation has become “classic” and has continued in key publications until the present day. See, for example, Gay (1988) and Phillips (2014). The latter writes the following: “[b]ecause sexuality begins as incestuous desire for the parents – as Freud was discovering what he took to be his own and everyone else’s Oedipus complex in his self-analysis – it terrorizes us” (Ibid.: 107). 37 We will return to this problem in more detail in our third chapter. 38 We have to read this statement together with another one from “My Views” that seems to contradict it: “[a]t that time my material was still scanty, and it happened by chance to include a proportionately large number of cases in which sexual seduction by an adult or by older children played the chief part in the history of the patient’s childhood. I thus overestimated the frequency of such events (though in other respects they were not open to doubt)” (Freud 1906: 152). The contradiction is only apparent. What Freud says is that he did not overestimate the importance of seduction in the eighteen cases he reported in “The Aetiology of Hysteria.” But since he did not realize at that time that sexual constitution can also arouse a child’s sex life, he overestimated its importance in general. For this interpretation and for a more detailed reading of these passages, see Davidson (1984). 39 For a more detailed account, see Haute 2018. 40 The few references to this complex were introduced in later editions and more particularly in the footnotes to the edition of 1920. See chapter 3. 41 It is only in the edition of 1915 that Freud describes infantile sexuality as objectal in itself. From that time forward, he speaks of a “diphasic object choice.” The first phase would take place in the period between two and five years old. The object choices of that period would appear “unutilizable” because of repression and then be inhibited until their return at the beginning of puberty (Freud 1905c: 200). 42 It seems clear from the context that the “interests” we need to build a community are, according to Freud, of a libidinal nature, but Freud does not explain – or is not yet capable of explaining – in the first edition of Three Essays how the transformation of the libidinal investment of the parental figures gives rise to social feelings. The establishment of social bonds is not thematized in this text. It is not until Totem and Taboo (1912–1913) that Freud will provide a full account of this thematic. 43 “His fate moves us only because it might have been our own, because the oracle laid upon us before our birth the very curse which rested upon him” (Freud 1900: 246–247). 44 Freud further systematized the insights he gained from these studies in some new paragraphs on “the sexual researches of children” that he will add to the 1915 edition of his text. He concludes from the case of Little Hans that the process of the choice of object is “diphasic” and occurs in two waves, the first taking part in the period between two and five years, the second setting in with puberty (1905c: 200). Pubertal and adult sexuality can only now be considered the “persistence” and “revival” of the infantile object choices. The 1915 paragraph on the diphasic object choice thus marks a fundamental shift in Freud’s thinking on sexuality. No longer does he defend a strict dichotomy between an autoerotic infantile period and an object-related adult sexuality (Freud 1905c: 194–200). 45 The idea that the Oedipus complex contains the key to all psychopathology – meaning that all psychopathological syndromes are to be considered vicissitudes of the (psychosexual) relations between the child and its parents, and that this is the obligatory road for entry into the world of culture – is first formulated in the fourth essay of Totem and Taboo (Freud 1912–1913: 160–161). The Oedipus complex gets its canonical formulation in The Ego and the Id of 1923, in which Freud calls it the shibboleth of psychoanalysis (Freud 1923b: 13). 46 We find similar attachment behavior in other primates even if they do not have as long a period of dependency on the mother as humans do (Bowlby 1969). 47 “We can anticipate that these characteristics will be found to apply to most of the other activities of the infantile sexual drive” (Freud 1905a: 43). 48 This explains why, in the beginning of the third part, Freud qualifies infantile sexuality as “predominantly autoerotic” (Ibid.: 61, emphasis ours). 49 A reason for this imbalance could be the fact that in Three Essays Freud takes hysteria as the model for the study of sexuality. In earlier writings, he had associated cruelty almost exclusively with the obsessional neurotic’s aggressive urge for sexual pleasure. Another reason lies in the fact that Freud clearly wants to relate his text to Krafft-Ebing’s catalog of the various sexual perversions. 50 In this quotation, Freud seems to identify “love” and “sexual need” (Sexualbedürfnis), an identification that is far from self-evident. But the status of “love” is difficult to thematize within the exclusive distinction between sexuality and self-preservation. 51 This does not mean, however, that Freud gives a determinative role to the sexuality of the adult in the constitution of infantile sexuality, as Laplanche does. The child responds to the adult’s initiative, but this response originates exclusively in the child. Freud remains an “ipsocentrist.” 52 In this context, we can also begin to understand Freud’s reference to Little Hans as “a little Oedipus”: Hans responds to the loving care of his mother with a wish for intimate contact by sleeping beside her and thus gaining pleasure from skin contact. For this reason, he develops a wish to have his father “out of the way.” In this train of thought, the hostility toward the father develops from a sexual aim that is still essentially autoerotic (pleasure derived from cutaneous contact) (Freud 1909a: 111). 53 “The normality of sex life is warranted solely by an exact convergence of the two currents directed toward the sexual object and the sexual aim. . . . The sexual drive now puts itself at the service of the reproductive function” (Freud 1905a: 61). 54 In the summary of the text, Freud writes that puberty brings about the primacy of the genital zone and the finding of the object. The latter is immediately identified with a heterosexual object (Freud 1905a: 83). Interestingly enough, Freud adds that the object choice is prepared in the infantile period by the “sexual inclination” of children toward their parents and caregivers, which is refreshed at the beginning of puberty, and by the introduction of the incest barriers that turn children away from these objects. Does this not also undermine the general line of Freud’s argumentation by introducing a more “functional approach” to sexuality? And does this not anticipate, albeit in an extremely sketchy way, later developments, such as the Oedipus complex? 55 Freud conceives of sexuality in this first edition to a large extent without any reference to sexual difference. The problematic of sexual difference only comes to the fore at the beginning of puberty, when sexuality finds its object. The introduction of this difference is, moreover, immediately linked to the different roles the sexes play in reproduction: “[s]ince the new sexual aim assigns very different functions to the two sexes, their sexual development now diverges widely” (Freud 1905a: 61). Clearly, Freud here surrenders to the paradigm of classical sexology. 56 “I have recently been able to throw light upon another example, from a vastly different area of psychical dynamics, in which similarly, a greater effect of pleasure is being afforded by means of a less intense sensation of pleasure acting, as it were, as an incentive bonus. This also provided an opportunity to take a closer look at the nature of pleasure” (Freud 1905a: 65). 57 “That being so, it cannot be disputed that we supplement our pleasure by attaining the laughter that is impossible for us by the roundabout path of the impression we have of the person who has been made to laugh. As Dugas has put it, we laugh as it were ‘par ricochet.’ . . . When I make the other person laugh by telling him my joke, I am actually making use of him to arouse my own laughter” (Freud 1905b: 155–156). 58 For an extensive and brilliant interpretation of the passages we are commenting on here, see Moyaert (2012). 59 At this point, our reading of the 1905 Three Essays as a text in which Freud identifies two regimes of sexuality – infantile autoerotic sexuality and pubertal/adult genital objectrelated sexuality – comes close to Laplanche’s reading of Three Essays (Laplanche 2007). We would like to note, however, that although Laplanche acknowledges the significance of the distinction made by Freud between Sexualtrieb (sexual drive) and Geschlechtstrieb (genital drive), he doesn’t interpret the Sexualtrieb in the same way as we do here. Laplanche opposes the pulsion sexuelle (Sexualtrieb) to the pulsion sexué (Geslechtstrieb). What he calls “sexual” refers to the sexual unconscious that consists of that part of the enigmatic (sexual) messages of the other that couldn’t be translated (integrated) by the little child. Hence, the Laplanchean “sexual” does not correspond to the autoerotic in the Freudian sense (Laplanche 2007: 153–175). 60 This reference to the theater and, hence, culture inevitably introduces the psychoanalytic problem of sublimation that Freud also mentions in his text without paying much attention to it. In this text, Freud considers sublimation within the context, or even as a subcategory, of the reaction formation (Freud 1905a: 38–39). 61 “But the limits of such disgust are purely conventional; a man who passionately kisses the lips of a pretty girl may be disgusted at the idea of using her toothbrush, even though there are no grounds for supposing that his own oral cavity, for which he feels no disgust, is any cleaner than that of the girl” (Freud 1905a: 14). 62 In Freud’s view, culture cannot but take nature into account and respect its fundamental tendencies: “[e]ducation will remain perfectly within its mandated domain if it limits itself to following the lines which have already been laid down organically, and to imprinting them somewhat more clearly and deeply” (Freud 1905a: 39). 63 As early as 1890, Freud writes the following: “[i]t is not until we have studied pathological phenomena that we can get an insight into normal ones” (Freud 1890: 286). 64 On Freud’s conflicting views on sexuality in the 1905 Three Essays, see also Blass (2017). 65 This is notably the case with neurasthenia – a concept that in the 1890s Krafft-Ebing had described as a pathological change in the central nervous system due to increased stress and pressure on a person in modern society (Westerink 2009: 64–67). 66 The concept of traumatic neurosis was introduced in German literature in 1889 by the neurologist Hermann Oppenheim, who had used the diagnosis for injured (brain damage) industrial workers. This conception of traumatic neurosis was rejected in favor of a psychogenic approach to the shell shock phenomenon at a conference held in 1916 by German neurologists and psychiatrists in Munich. Instead, the concept of war neurosis became more generally used to refer to a disorder in which older concepts merged, notably traumatic neurosis, psychoneurosis (as defined in psychoanalysis), hysteria, and concepts of constitutional inferiority. These concepts continued to be used until after World War II (Kloocke, Schmiedebach & Priebe 2005). 67 Kraepelin had prepared the ground for this interpreation when he categorized hysteria, together with neurasthenia and traumatic neurosis, as a psychogenic pathology (Kraepelin 1915; Weber 2015). 68 In 1906 Freud writes the following to Bleuler: “I am confident that we will soon conquer psychiatry” (Schröter 2012: 100). 69 Freud discusses and describes this evolution himself in “On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement” (Freud 1914b). 70 The opening passage of Freud’s 1917 text on melancholia shows that his aim is to make a contribution to psychiatry. Contrary to Kraepelin (1915), who had listed melancholia under the category of endogenic pathologies, Freud proposes to view melancholia – like hysteria and obsessional neurosis – as a psychogenic pathology (Freud 1917). 71 In late nineteenth-century psychiatric literature, the concept of psychosis was mostly used as a general term indicating mental illness (Geisteskrankheiten) and sometimes also as a synonym for the psychoneuroses (or neuropsychoses) (Beer 1995). It was only in the later editions of Kraepelin’s and Jasper’s textbooks – and, hence, after Freud’s Schreber case – that a systematic distinction between the neuroses and psychoses was made. 72 In Über die Psychologie der Dementia Praecox, Jung strongly focuses on the similarities between hysteria and dementia praecox, thus assuming a connection between the two, which was also promising for further psychoanalytic inquiry. In the same period, Karl Abraham published several articles on the same topic, notably “Die psychosexuellen Differenzen der Hysterie und der Dementia Praecox” (1908). On this issue, see also May-Tolzmann (2015a: 101–125). 73 One should also mention fetishism in this context (Freud 1905a: 16–17). We return to this issue in the next chapter. 1 In the 1910 Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Freud not only introduces the concept of the Oedipus complex and provides a first description of it but also tries to conceptualize the relation between this complex and children’s sexual theories given that both, according to Freud, take place in the same period of infantile life (Freud 1910a: 47–48). His comments on this relation between the complex and infantile theories, however, reveal some problems, most importantly the fact that the Oedipus complex presupposes at least certain insight into sexual difference (more specifically, the difference between father and mother), whereas the infantile theories are built on the idea that there is no knowledge of sexual difference (more specifically, the idea that both fathers and mothers have male genitals). Freud does not further explore this issue. It seems significant, though, that the introduction of the Oedipus complex coincides with a decline of interest in the topic of the Wißtrieb and children’s sexual theories after the initial texts of 1908/1909. In fact, the 1915 edition of Three Essays is the last text in which Freud elaborates this train of thought on infantile sexual theories and the child’s lack of knowledge of sexual difference. By that time, Freud had already found in his analyses of the Wolf Man that 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 the child at a very early stage may have knowledge of sexual difference. For further discussion of this issue, see the upcoming section on the phylogenetic factor in infantile sexuality. Compare: “[o]riginally, as we know, the accent was on a portrayal of the fundamental difference between the sexual life of children and of adults; later, the pre-genital organizations of the libido made their way into the foreground, and also the remarkable and momentous fact of the diphasic onset of sexual development. Finally, our interest was engaged by the sexual researches of children; and from this we were able to recognize the far-reaching approximation of the final outcome of sexuality in childhood (in about the fifth year) to the definitive form taken by it in the adult” (Freud 1923a: 141). However, there is some ambiguity on this topic since Freud also mentions that pain could be pleasurable, and he writes that ever since Rousseau we know that the buttocks is one “of the erogenous roots of the passive drive to cruelty” (Freud 1905a: 53). From this perspective, it might make sense to make an equivalence between the reaction formations and pain. This implies that masochism cannot be “primary,” as Freud thought in his later years, but is a phenomenon that can only occur at the onset of puberty once sexuality has found its object. Further in the text Freud says once again that the “active” perversion is regularly linked to the passive one (Ibid.: 28). We will return to this issue of identification in the next chapter. We will discuss the anal-sadistic organization and the pre-genital organizations later in this chapter. Krafft-Ebing’s analyses of fetishism in his Psychopathia Sexualis heavily draw upon Binet’s view of fetishism as originating from an optical impression accompanied by sexual excitement and taking place in the period of the awakening of the Vita sexualis (KrafftEbing 1886: 143–146). The “existence of two sexes does not to begin with arouse any difficulties or doubts in children” (Freud 1905c: 195). In a footnote added in 1920, Freud returns to the issue of infantile sexual research and investigations, arguing that the later sexual phantasies, as they appear in puberty, build on the material of these earlier researches and theories; that is to say, on the perverse – oral and anal – components that meanwhile have been repressed (Freud 1905c: 226). One could also think here of Rudolf Reitler’s critique on the following passage that we find in the 1905 and 1910 editions of Three Essays: “[i]f we survey the sum of these procedures, and consider that soiling something is bound to be similar in its effects to measures for keeping it clean, it is difficult to overlook nature’s purpose: to establish, through early infantile masturbation (which scarcely a single individual escapes), the future primacy of these erogenous zones for genital activity” (Freud 1905a: 48, emphasis ours). Reitler criticized the teleological nature of this argument in favor of the universality of masturbation. Freud admitted the problematic and changed the phrasing accordingly in the following editions. In the 1920 edition, Freud adds a footnote arguing that the little girl develops not only penis envy when viewing a boy’s genitals but also – like boys – an infantile theory in which girls originally had a penis that was lost through castration (Freud 1905c: 195). On the issue of alienation (Entfremdung) as redefining one’s position in the family romance, see Westerink (2014). “Family Romances” was written shortly before Christmas 1908. The lectures in which Freud introduces the Oedipus complex were held in September 1909 at Clark University. Freud’s use of the term complex (e.g., castration complex, Oedipus complex) is derived from Jung’s terminology as displayed in his 1907 Über die Psychologie der Dementia Praecox. Jung introduced this concept in psychiatric literature after the neurologist Theodor 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Ziehen had first used this concept (in 1898) to define “emotionally charged groups of associations.” From this we can understand why we do not find Freud using the term before 1907 (Vandermeersch 1991: 45–48). In “On the History of the Psycho-analytic Movement,” Freud himself explicitly mentions the fact that the term complex was introduced in psychoanalytic theory by Jung (Freud 1914b: 29–30). Vandermeersch has convincingly argued that the debate (including severe misunderstandings) between Freud and Jung cannot be fully understood if one does not take into account the different models for the reorganization of nosological categories in the contemporary literature. Whereas Kraepelin introduced a distinction between dementia praecox and paranoia – which Jung follows – and Bleuler introduced the term schizophrenia in 1911, Freud maintains the use of the older and broader concepts of paraphrenia and paranoia in his Schreber case study and in his 1914 text on narcissism (Vandermeersch 1991: 115–128); see also Freud (1911: 75–76). Freud does not want to follow Kraepelin or Bleuler in their use of the terms dementia praecox and schizophrenia since both categories had been introduced to create a distinction with what had previously been termed paranoia. To avoid this separation, Freud proposes to use the term paraphrenia, which has “no special connotation, and it would serve to indicate a relationship with paranoia.” The aim of this proposition is that Freud wants to maintain a continuum between the neuroses, paranoia, and the psychoses to claim the extension of psychoanalysis to the realm of the psychoses (Freud 1911: 75–78; Woods 2011: 80–81). According to Jung, “[W]e see the libido at the stage of childhood almost wholly [zunächst ganz] occupied in the instinct of nutrition, which takes care of the upbuilding of the body” ( Jung 1912a: 148). This reference to an “original state of things” does not imply that Freud identifies autoerotism and narcissism here. This original state is in fact “realized in earliest childhood,” meaning that it emerged through a “new psychic action.” From 1913 onward, Freud makes a distinction between transference neuroses (hysteria, obsessional neurosis), narcissistic neuroses (dementia praecox, paranoia, melancholia), and actual neuroses (anxiety neurosis, hypochondria). The term transference neuroses refers to the psychoanalytic practice and the patient’s production of phantasies and impulses in the “transference” relation with the analyst (Freud 1914c: 154). In a 1924 footnote, Freud adds that the analyses of “neuroses other than the transference neuroses” – that is, other than hysteria and obsessional neuroses – have become accessible to psychoanalysis and produced more insight into the relation between narcissism and object-libido. Freud is referring here in particular to the study of melancholia. This will be further discussed in the next chapter. In a series of footnotes in the section on the phases of development of the sexual organization, Freud credits Karl Abraham’s contributions to this part of the theory. Indeed, in the period from 1915 to 1924, Abraham will publish several texts on the developmental phases, introducing some new elements, such as an oral-sadistic phase. On this issue, see May Tolzmann (2015a: 127–154). In a footnote to the paragraph on “the finding of an object” that was also added in 1915, Freud refers to the distinction between an anaclitic and a narcissistic type of object choice that he had thematized at great length in “On Narcissism” (Freud 1905c: 222, 1914a: 87–91). The latter refers to those cases in which the individual’s object choice is narcissistically motivated. In such cases a person takes a love object that resembles her or him. In the background of this development stands Freud’s debate with Adler, who had further developed Freud’s notion of the drive for mastery by arguing that through a process he called Triebverschränkung the drive for mastery could become an aspect of all drives. Freud interpreted Adler as introducing a “third drive” alongside the sexual drive and the drive of self-preservation. It is in response to this that Freud, in his case study of Little Hans, chooses not to defend a need for mastery independent of sexual drives, but instead reasons that each drive has “its own power of becoming aggressive” and hence 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 that Hans’s hostility toward his father and sadistic impulses toward his mother should be seen as “components of the sexual libido” (Freud 1909a: 141). See also Adler (1908). Freud further associates these aspects of the sadistic-anal organization with the concept of ambivalence – a concept introduced by Bleuler in 1910 in the context of his studies on schizophrenia. In Three Essays, Freud seems to give it a different, broader meaning: the appearance of “opposing pairs of drives” (Freud 1905c: 199). In the years preceding the 1915 edition, the concept of ambivalence had already found its way into Freud’s writing, mostly describing the contrasting feelings of love and hatred toward significant other persons (parents, loved ones, authorities). See, for example, the second essay of Totem and Taboo (Freud 1912–1913: 29, 68). In 1915 Freud underscores this reference to bisexuality by adding that “the sexual object is a kind of reflection of the subject’s own bisexual nature” (Freud 1905c: 144). In the case of Leonardo, Freud does not link the phantasy about the female penis (and subsequent castration) to a lack of knowledge of sexual difference but sees it as originating from inherited cultural material. In 1915 Freud deletes a few sentences from the 1910 footnote in which he nuances his statements on homosexuality, arguing that the problem of inversion is highly complex and that there are different types of inversion (Freud 1905c: 145). In the 1920 edition, Freud writes that the diphasic sexual development as well as the interruption by the period of latency “appears to be one of the necessary conditions of the aptitude of men for developing a higher civilization, but also of their tendency to neurosis.” This diphasic development, Freud adds, has no analogy in animal life (Freud 1905c: 234). See previous chapter, p. 29. We have already discussed the absence of the Oedipus complex in the previous chapter. We will discuss the absence of this complex in its “canonical form” at length in the next chapter. According to Freud, the puberty gland is likely to have a “hermaphrodite disposition,” meaning that it would give anatomical foundation to the theory of bisexuality. In a footnote added in 1920 in the context of the discussion of the homosexual’s aim, Freud writes that for this reason recent experiments with the transformation of sex do not justify the idea that homosexuality, for example, is a physiological defect (lack of produced male substance by the glands) that can and should be “cured” through a transplant of testicles (Freud 1905c: 147). Compare: “[i]f we were able to say what this qualitative characteristic is, we should be much further advanced in psychology. Perhaps it is the rhythm, the temporal sequence of changes, rises and falls in the quantity of stimulus. We do not know” (Freud 1924a: 160). Freud develops these intuitions in the context of a comparison between Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare’s Hamlet in The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud 1900: 264). In “Civilized’ Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness,” Freud argues that throughout human history one can distinguish three developmental phases of the sexual drive: a “polymorphous perverse” phase in which the sexual drive is free and not bound to the aim of reproduction; a second phase in which the sexual drive is repressed, with the exception of sexual activities that can serve reproduction; and a third phase in which only “legitimate” reproductive sexual activities are allowed (Freud 1908b: 189). The final essay of Totem and Taboo and Freud’s ideas on the acquisition of historical material can be situated in the context of the debate with Jung and his views on the relation between natural and cultural evolution relative to the development and differentiation of the libido (Vandermeersch 1991; Westerink 2009). In another footnote from 1915 dealing with the incest barrier, we find a similar reasoning: “[t]he barrier against incest is probably among the historical acquisitions of humankind, and, like other moral taboos, has no doubt already become established in many persons by organic inheritance” (Freud 1905c: 225). 37 Freud refers to these insights in a footnote introduced in the 1920 edition (Ibid.: 226). On this issue, see also Fletcher (2013: 266–269). 38 Interestingly, in this case study he not only argues that the phylogenetically acquired material must await experiences before it can make itself felt but also adds that this acquired material can actually change the accidental experiences by filling the gaps and blind spots in these experiences; however, when this acquired material is not activated by actual experiences, it will spontaneously become productive through phantasies. 39 Although a closer analysis of the issue is beyond the scope of this book, we do want to mention the fact that in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud almost exclusively refers to “death drives” (plural), whereas in The Ego and the Id and later texts he writes “death drive” (singular). In this chapter, we maintain this distinction. 1 Although a closer analysis of the issue is beyond the scope of this book, we do want to mention the fact that in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud almost exclusively refers to “death drives” (plural) whereas in The Ego and the Id and later texts he writes “death drive” (singular). In this chapter, we maintain this distinction. 2 In the case study of Little Hans, Freud refers to the boy as “a little Oedipus” (Freud 1909a: 111); that is, as a boy who wants his father “out of the way” so that he can be alone with his mother and enjoy her cutaneous contact. Freud refers here to the Oedipus myth merely for its emblematic value. There is no mention here of the term “identification” (with the father). 3 In the Rat Man case study, Freud does not use the term ambivalence to describe the conflicting feelings of love and hatred. The concept of ambivalence was only first introduced in 1911 by Eugen Bleuler in the context of his studies on schizophrenia. Freud adopts this concept in 1912 (Freud 1912: 106, 1912–1913: 29ff). In the 1915 edition of Three Essays, Freud uses the term to describe the currents of activity and passivity (Freud 1905c: 199). Notably, in the study on melancholia, Freud points out the significance of constitutional and accidental ambivalent feelings of love and hatred in human psychic life (Freud 1917: 256–258). 4 In the 1905 Three Essays, Freud had already suggested this without further explanation: “[i]t is also through this connection between libido and cruelty that the transformation of love into hate takes place, as does the transformation of affectionate into hostile stirrings, which is characteristic of a great number of cases of neurosis” (Freud 1905a: 27). 5 The case of the Wolf Man is often referred to as the case par excellence in which Freud provides clinical evidence of the Oedipus complex. It is a remarkable fact, however, that in this case study the Oedipus complex as such is only mentioned a few times, notably in the final section of the text, where Freud discusses the issue of inherited phylogenetic material (Freud 1918: 119). See also the previous chapter. 6 We note here that in Totem and Taboo Freud only mentions the term identification in the context of the son’s act of devouring the father. 7 In the period in which Freud wrote his study on melancholia, the status of the concept of melancholia in the contemporary psychiatric literature was contested. Most importantly, Kraepelin, in the various editions of his textbook, had progressively started replacing the concept of melancholia with depression. And whereas he had initially seen melancholia as an important nosological category, he nuances this view in later editions. Moreover, Kraepelin had listed melancholia under the heading of endogenetic pathologies, thus sharply distinguishing melancholia from psychogenetic pathologies. Freud is clearly aware of this contestation when writing that the “definition fluctuates even in descriptive psychiatry” (Freud 1917: 243). Nevertheless, he chooses to maintain the concept and aims to extend psychoanalysis to the study of melancholia as well (as he had done a few years earlier in the case of paraphrenia [Schreber]) by exploring the psychogenetic aspects of a group of cases. 8 Freud sometimes distinguishes the superego from the ego ideal that represents the ideals to which the ego must correspond. In the texts we are analyzing here, the ego ideal 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 is just an aspect of the superego that is further identified with the critical instance that scrutinizes the ego: conscience. Again, we notice here that Freud does not explain sympathy from a social drive, as Darwin did. See, on this topic, M. Borch-Jacobsen, The Freudian Subject, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1988. In the 1905 Three Essays, we do not yet find the idea that the drive is a “constant force.” It is only first in “Instincts and Their Vicissitudes” that Freud makes a fundamental distinction between stimulus (Reiz) and drive: “all that is essential in a stimulus is covered if we assume that it operates with a single impact, so that it can be is posed of by a single expedient action. [. . .] An instinct, on the other hand, never operates as a force giving a momentary impact but always as a constant one” (Freud 1915: 118). The fact that the “need for variation” was deleted in the 1920 edition can probably be seen as a result of the problem mourning and melancholia confronted Freud with: the continuation of the relation with a lost object through identification. In an article that analyzes the complex realization of Beyond the Pleasure Principle in 1919–1920, Ulrike May-Tolzmann shows that the theory of the life and death drives (chapter 6 of that text) was first introduced only in the final version of the text. In the original draft from 1919, these concepts were absent (May-Tolzmann 2015b). From the perspective of later texts like Civilization and Its Discontents, one might be tempted to argue that the theory of the death drives was introduced to provide a general theory of aggression. Indeed, in this major text Freud refers to the “blindest fury of destructiveness” as a manifestation of a drive of destruction that is “the derivative and main representative of the death instinct” (Freud 1930: 121–122). This interpretation of the death drives as drive for destruction, however, cannot be found in Beyond the Pleasure Principle as such – elaborations on rage and hatred are practically absent in that text. (Freud elaborated only on the sadistic component of the drive.) One could argue that the idea of a “blindest fury of destructiveness” results from a reconsideration of the primal hatred as depicted in “Instincts and Their Vicissitudes”: the most “primitive” aggression is maybe not the hatred that reacts against an object that causes unpleasure but a rage (Wut) that seeks an object to release tension (Moyaert 2014; Westerink 2016). We should notice here that Eros as the drive toward coalescence with objects is at odds with the 1905 depiction of infantile sexuality as autoerotic and without object. In other words, the concept of Eros fundamentally undermines the 1905 theory of infantile sexuality. However, it does support the conceptualization of adult sexuality. As early as the 1905 edition of Three Essays, Freud is already puzzled by the question of the “unknown origin” of a compulsion to repeat, which he further articulates in terms of a “pertinacity or susceptibility to fixation” in both neuroses and perversions that fails to “prescribe the paths to be taken by the sexual drive,” i.e., fixations and repetitions that do not produce pleasure (Freud 1905a: 89). For a more detailed account, see Moyaert 2014 and Bernet 2013. In melancholia, this “organic” aspect can be witnessed in sleeplessness and the refusal to take nourishment (Freud 1917: 246). For the complex relation between sublimation and desexualization in the work of Freud, see Moyaert 1994 and De Block 2004. On this, Freud writes: “[t]he super-ego arises, as we know, from an identification with the father taken as a model. Every such identification is in the nature of a desexualization or even of a sublimation. It now seems as though when a transformation of this kind takes place, an instinctual defusion occurs at the same time. After sublimation, the erotic component no longer has the power to bind the whole of the destructiveness that was combined with it, and this is released in the form of an inclination to aggression and destruction. This defusion would be the source of the general character of harshness and cruelty by the ideal – its dictatorial ‘Thou shalt’” (Freud 1923b: 44–45). 21 We agree on this point with Laplanche that “the essential dimension of the affirmation of a death drive lies not in the discovery of aggressiveness” but “in the idea that the aggressiveness is first of all directed against the subject and, as it were, stagnant within him” (Laplanche 1976: 86, emphasis ours). This is contrary to Lear (and others), who interprets the death drive as a drive toward self-destruction that needs deflection toward external objects to avoid this self-destruction. Aggression is here a defense against selfdestructive tendencies (Lear 2005: 160–162). What Lear has clearly overlooked is the significance of Freud’s theory of melancholia for the conceptualization of the death drive (De Vleminck 2013). 22 So much so that some just explain its logic while constantly referring to the “absent” complex (Quinodoz 2005: 52–65). 1 Compare also the preparatory remarks to the Dora case where Freud draws an analogy between psychoanalytic analyses and reconstructions and the work of archaeologists (Freud 1905d: 12). 2 However, such narrative in principle seems at odds with a psychoanalytic theory and practice that fundamentally question unity, coherence, and consistency in both the speaker and his or her narrative. 3 “The author is therefore the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning” (Foucault 1984: 119). 4 In this context, one could also think of Melanie Klein, for whom perversion is a schizoid identity problem that is further linked to the vicissitudes of the death drive (Roudinesco 2014; Hinshelwood 1994). 5 For a more detailed account of the Lacanian approach in relation to the positions on the perversions we just mentioned, see Haute 2016. 6 In this respect, Stephanie Swales writes: “[t]he perverse subject is he who has undergone alienation but disavowed castration, suffering from excessive jouissance and a core belief that the law and social norms are fraudulent at worse and weak at best” (Swales 2012: xii). 7 For illustrations, see Haute 2016. 8 What should also be considered in this context is the influence of French psychiatrist Ernest Dupré on Lacan’s theory of the perversions. 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