Three Contributions to the Theory of SexFreud, Sigmund
Science
Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex
Freud, Sigmund
Sex
[2] See my work, Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious, translated by
A.A. Brill, Moffat Yard Pub. Co., New York: "The fore-pleasure gained by
the technique of wit is utilized for the purpose of setting free a
greater pleasure by the removal of inner inhibitions."
[3] Cf. Zur Einführung des Narzismus, Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, VI,
1913.
[4] It is necessary to make clear that the conceptions "masculine" and
"feminine," whose content seems so unequivocal to the ordinary meaning,
belong to the most confused terms in science and can be cut up into at
least three paths. One uses masculine and feminine at times in the sense
of activity and passivity, again, in the biological sense, and then also
in the sociological sense. The first of these three meanings is the
essential one and the only one utilizable in psychoanalysis. It agrees
with the masculine designation of the libido in the text above, for the
libido is always active even when it is directed to a passive aim. The
second, the biological significance of masculine and feminine, is the
one which permits the clearest determination. Masculine and feminine are
here characterized by the presence of semen or ovum and through the
functions emanating from them. The activity and its secondary
manifestations, like stronger developed muscles, aggression, a greater
intensity of libido, are as a rule soldered to the biological
masculinity but not necessarily connected with it, for there are species
of animals in whom these qualities are attributed to the female. The
third, the sociological meaning, receives its content through the
observation of the actual existing male and female individuals. The
result of this in man is that there is no pure masculinity or feminity
either in the biological or psychological sense. On the contrary every
individual person shows a mixture of his own biological sex
characteristics with the biological traits of the other sex and a union
of activity and passivity; this is the case whether these psychological
characteristic features depend on the biological or whether they are
independent of it.
[5] Psychoanalysis teaches that there are two paths of object-finding;
the first is the one discussed in the text which is guided by the early
infantile prototypes. The second is the narcissistic which seeks its own
ego and finds it in the other. The latter is of particularly great
significance for the pathological outcomes, but does not fit into the
connection treated here.
[6] Those to whom this conception appears "wicked" may read Havelock
Ellis's treatise on the relations between mother and child which
expresses almost the same ideas (The Sexual Impulse, p. 16).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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