Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis : $b a course of twenty-eight lectures delivered at the University of ViennaFreud, Sigmund
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Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis : $b a course of twenty-eight lectures delivered at the University of Vienna
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis
These perverts do at least seek to achieve very much the same ends with
the objects of their desires as normal people do with theirs. But after
them comes a long series of abnormal types, in whom the sexual
activities become increasingly further removed from anything which
appears attractive to a reasonable being. In their manifold variety and
their strangeness these types may be compared to the grotesque
monstrosities painted by P. Breughel to represent the temptations of St.
Anthony, or to the long procession of effete gods and worshippers which
G. Flaubert shows us passing before his pious penitent, and to nothing
else. The chaotic assembly calls out for classification if it is not to
bewilder us completely. We divide them into those in whom the _sexual
object_ has been altered, as with the homosexuals, and those in whom,
first and foremost, the _sexual aim_ has been altered. In the first
group belong those who have dispensed with the mutual union of the
genital organs and who have substituted for the genitals, in one of the
partners in the act, another organ or part of the body (mouth or anus,
in place of the vagina) making light of both the anatomical difficulties
and the suppression of disgust involved. There follow others who, it is
true, still retain the genital organs as object; not, however, by virtue
of their sexual function, but on account of other functions in which
they take part anatomically or by reason of their proximity. These
people demonstrate that the excretory functions, which in the course of
the child’s upbringing are relegated to a limbo as indecent, remain
capable of attracting the entire sexual interest. There are others who
have given up altogether the genital organs as object; and, instead,
have exalted some other part of the body to serve as the object of
desire, a woman’s breast, foot, or plait of hair. There are others yet
to whom even a part of the body is meaningless, while a particle of
clothing, a shoe or a piece of underclothing, will gratify all their
desires; these are the fetichists. Farther on in the scale come those
who indeed demand the object as a whole: but whose requirements in
regard to it take specific forms, of an extraordinary or horrible
nature—even to the point of seeking it as a defenceless corpse and,
urged on by their criminal obsessions, of making it one in order so to
enjoy it. But enough of these horrors!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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