Freud - Complete Works (257 page)

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1923:] A
continuation of these remarks upon transference is contained in my
technical paper on ‘transference-love’ (Freud,
1915
a
).

Fragment Of An Analysis Of A Case Of Hysteria

1452

   I have been obliged to speak of
transference, for it is only by means of this factor that I can
elucidate the peculiarities of Dora’s analysis. Its great
merit, namely, the unusual clarity which makes it seem so suitable
as a first introductory publication, is closely bound up with its
great defect, which led to its being broken off prematurely. I did
not succeed in mastering the transference in good time. Owing to
the readiness with which Dora put one part of the pathogenic
material at my disposal during the treatment, I neglected the
precaution of looking out for the first signs of transference,
which was being prepared in connection with another part of the
same material a part of which I was in ignorance. At the beginning
it was clear that I was replacing her father in her imagination,
which was not unlikely, in view of the difference between our ages.
She was even constantly comparing me with him consciously, and kept
anxiously trying to make sure whether I was being quite
straightforward with her, for her father ‘always preferred
secrecy and roundabout ways’. But when the first dream came,
in which she gave herself the warning that she had better leave my
treatment just as she had formerly left Herr K.’s house, I
ought to have listened to the warning myself. ‘Now,’ I
ought to have said to her, ‘it is from Herr K. that you have
made a transference on to me. Have you noticed anything that leads
you to suspect me of evil intentions similar (whether openly or in
some sublimated form) to Herr K.’s? Or have you been struck
by anything about me or got to know anything about me which has
caught your fancy, as happened previously with Herr K.’ Her
attention would then have been turned to some detail in our
relations, or in my person or circumstances, behind which there lay
concealed something analogous but immeasurably more important
concerning Herr K. And when this transference had been cleared up,
the analysis would have obtained access to new memories, dealing,
probably, with actual events. But I was deaf to this first note of
warning, thinking I had ample time before me, since no further
stages of transference developed and the material for the analysis
had not yet run dry. In this way the transference took me unawares,
and, because of the unknown quantity in me which reminded Dora of
Herr K., she took her revenge on me as she wanted to take her
revenge on him, and deserted me as she believed herself to have
been deceived and deserted by him. Thus she
acted out
an
essential part of her recollections and phantasies instead of
reproducing it in the treatment. What this unknown quantity was I
naturally cannot tell. I suspect that it had to do with money, or
with jealousy of another patient who had kept up relations with my
family after her recovery. When it is possible to work
transferences into the analysis at an early stage, the course of
the analysis is retarded and obscured, but its existence is better
guaranteed against sudden and overwhelming resistances.

Fragment Of An Analysis Of A Case Of Hysteria

1453

   In Dora’s second dream
there are several clear allusions to transference. At the time she
was telling me the dream I was still unaware (and did not learn
until two days later) that we had only
two hours
more work
before us. This was the same length of time which she had spent in
front of the Sistine Madonna, and which (by making a correction and
putting ‘two hours’ instead of ‘two and a half
hours’) she had taken as the length of the walk which she had
not made round the lake. The striving and waiting in the dream,
which related to the young man in Germany, and had their origin in
her waiting till Herr K. could marry her, had been expressed in the
transference a few days before. The treatment, she had thought, was
too long for her; she would never have the patience to wait so
long. And yet in the first few weeks she had had discernment enough
to listen without making any such objections when I informed her
that her complete recovery would require perhaps a year. Her
refusing in the dream to be accompanied, and preferring to go
alone, also originated from her visit to the gallery at Dresden,
and I was myself to experience them on the appointed day. What they
meant was, no doubt: ‘Men are all so detestable that I would
rather not marry. This is my revenge.’¹

  
¹
The longer the interval of time that
separates me from the end of this analysis, the more probable it
seems to me that the fault in my technique lay in this omission: I
failed to discover in time and to inform the patient that her
homosexual (gynaecophilic) love for Frau K. was the strongest
unconscious current in her mental life. I ought to have guessed
that the main source of her knowledge of sexual matters could have
been no one but Frau K. - the very person who later on charged her
with being interested in those same subjects. Her knowing all about
such things and, at the same time, her always pretending not to
know where her knowledge came from was really too remarkable. I
ought to have attacked this riddle and looked for the motive of
such an extraordinary piece of repression. If I had done this, the
second dream would have given me my answer. The remorseless craving
for revenge expressed in that dream was suited as nothing else was
to conceal the current of feeling that ran contrary to it - the
magnanimity with which she forgave the treachery of the friend she
loved and concealed from every one the fact that it was this friend
who had herself revealed to her the knowledge which had later been
the ground of the accusations against her. Before I had learnt the
importance of the homosexual current of feeling in psychoneurotics,
I was often brought to a standstill in the treatment of my cases or
found myself in complete perplexity.

Fragment Of An Analysis Of A Case Of Hysteria

1454

   If cruel impulses and revengeful
motives, which have already been used in the patient’s
ordinary life for maintaining her symptoms, become transferred on
to the physician during treatment, before he has had time to detach
them from himself by tracing them back to their sources, then it is
not to be wondered at if the patient’s condition is
unaffected by his therapeutic efforts. For how could the patient
take a more effective revenge than by demonstrating upon her own
person the helplessness and incapacity of the physician?
Nevertheless, I am not inclined to put too low a value on the
therapeutic results even of such a fragmentary treatment as
Dora’s.

   It was not until fifteen months
after the case was over and this paper composed that I had news of
my patient’s condition and the effects of my treatment. On a
date which is not a matter of complete indifference, on the first
of April (times and dates, as we know, were never without
significance for her), Dora came to see me again: to finish her
story and to ask for help once more. One glance at her face,
however, was enough to tell me that she was not in earnest over her
request. For four or five weeks after stopping the treatment she
had been ‘all in a muddle’, as she said. A great
improvement had then set in; her attacks had become less frequent
and her spirits had risen. In the May of that year one of the
K.’s two children (it had always been delicate) had died. She
took the opportunity of their loss to pay them a visit of
condolence, and they received her as though nothing had happened in
the last three years. She made it up with them, she took her
revenge on them and she brought her own business to a satisfactory
conclusion. To the wife she said: ‘I know you have an affair
with my father’; and the other did not deny it. From the
husband she drew an admission of the scene by the lake which he had
disputed, and brought the news of her vindication home to her
father. Since then she had not resumed her relations with the
family.

Fragment Of An Analysis Of A Case Of Hysteria

1455

   After this she had gone on quite
well till the middle of October, when she had had another attack of
aphonia which had lasted for six weeks. I was surprised at this
news, and, on my asking her whether there had been any exciting
cause, she told me that the attack had followed upon a violent
fright. She had seen some one run over by a carriage. Finally she
came out with the fact that the accident had occurred to no less a
person than Herr K. himself. She had come across him in the street
one day; they had met in a place where there was a great deal of
traffic; he had stopped in front of her as though in bewilderment,
and in his abstraction he had allowed himself to be knocked down by
a carriage.¹ She had been able to convince herself, however,
that he escaped without serious injury. She still felt some slight
emotion if she heard any one speak of her father’s affair
with Frau K., but otherwise she had no further concern with the
matter. She was absorbed in her work, and had no thoughts of
marrying.

   She went on to tell me that she
had come for help on account of a right-sided facial neuralgia,
from which she was now suffering day and night. ‘How long has
it been going on?’ ‘Exactly a fortnight.’² I
could not help smiling; for I was able to show her that exactly a
fortnight earlier she had read a piece of news that concerned me in
the newspaper. (This was in 1902.) And this she confirmed.

  
¹
We have here an interesting contribution to
the problem of indirect attempts at suicide, which I have discussed
in my
Psychopathology of Everyday Life
.

  
²
For the significance of this period of time
and its relation to the theme of revenge, see the analysis of the
second dream.

Fragment Of An Analysis Of A Case Of Hysteria

1456

   Her alleged facial neuralgia was
thus a self-punishment -  remorse at having once given Herr K.
a box on the ear, and at having transferred her feelings of revenge
on to me. I do not know what kind of help she wanted from me, but I
promised to forgive her for having deprived me of the satisfaction
of affording her a far more radical cure for her troubles.

   Years have again gone by since
her visit. In the meantime the girl has married, and indeed -
unless all the signs mislead me - she has married the young man who
came into her associations at the beginning of the analysis of the
second dream. Just as the first dream represented her turning away
from the man she loved to her father - that is to say, her flight
from life into disease - so the second dream announced that she was
about to tear herself free from her father and had been reclaimed
once more by the realities of life.

1457

THREE ESSAYS ON THE THEORY OF SEXUALITY

(1905)

1458

Intentionally left blank

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1459

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The author is under no illusion as to the
deficiencies and obscurities of this little work. Nevertheless he
has resisted the temptation of introducing into it the results of
the researches of the last five years, since this would have
destroyed its unity and documentary character. He is, therefore,
reprinting the original text with only slight alterations, and has
contented himself with adding a few footnotes which are
distinguished from the older ones by an asterisk.¹ It is,
moreover, his earnest wish that the book may age rapidly - that
what was once new in it may become generally accepted, and that
what is imperfect in it may be replaced by something better.

  
VIENNA
,
December
1909

  
¹
[The distinction was dropped in all
subsequent editions.]

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1460

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

I have now been watching for more than ten
years the effects produced by this work and the reception accorded
to it; and I take the opportunity offered by the publication of its
third edition to preface it with a few remarks intended to prevent
misunderstandings and expectations that cannot be fulfilled. It
must above all be emphasized that the exposition to be found in the
following pages is based entirely upon everyday medical
observation, to which the findings of psycho-analytic research
should lend additional depth and scientific significance. It is
impossible that these
Three Essays on the Theory of
Sexuality
should contain anything but what psycho-analysis
makes it necessary to assume or possible to establish. It is,
therefore, out of the question that they could ever be extended
into a complete ‘theory of sexuality’, and it is
natural that there should be a number of important problems of
sexual life with which they do not deal at all. But the reader
should not conclude from this that the branches of this large
subject which have been thus passed over are unknown to the author
or have been neglected by him as of small importance.

   The fact that this book is based
upon the psycho-analytic observations which led to its composition
is shown, however, not only in the choice of the topics dealt with,
but also in their arrangement. Throughout the entire work the
various factors are placed in a particular order of precedence:
preference is given to the accidental factors while disposition is
left in the background, and more weight is attached to ontogenesis
than to phylogenesis. For it is the accidental factors that play
the principal part in analysis: they are almost entirely subject to
its influence. The dispositional ones only come to light after
them, as something stirred into activity by experience: adequate
consideration of them would lead far beyond the sphere of
psycho-analysis.

   The relation between ontogenesis
and phylogenesis is a similar one. Ontogenesis may be regarded as a
recapitulation of phylogenesis, in so far as the latter has not
been modified by more recent experience. The phylogenetic
disposition can be seen at work behind the ontogenetic process. But
disposition is ultimately the precipitate of earlier experience of
the species to which the more recent experience of the individual,
as the sum of the accidental factors, is super-added.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1461

   I must, however, emphasize that
the present work is characterized not only by being completely
based upon psycho-analytic research, but also by being deliberately
independent of the findings of biology. I have carefully avoided
introducing my preconceptions, whether derived from general sexual
biology or from that of particular animal species, into this study
- a study which is concerned with the sexual functions of human
beings and which is made possible through the technique of
psycho-analysis. Indeed, my aim has rather been to discover how far
psychological investigation can throw light upon the biology of the
sexual life of man. It was legitimate for me to indicate points of
contact and agreement which came to light during my investigation,
but there was no need for me to be diverted from my course if the
psycho-analytic method led in a number of important respects to
opinions and findings which differed largely from those based on
biological considerations.

   In this third edition I have
introduced a considerable amount of fresh matter, but have not
indicated it in any special way, as I did in the previous edition.
Progress in our field of scientific work is at present less rapid;
nevertheless it was essential to make a certain number of additions
to this volume if it was to be kept in touch with recent
psycho-analytic literature.

  
VIENNA
,
October
1914

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1462

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION

Now that the flood-waters of war have
subsided, it is satisfactory to be able to record the fact that
interest in psycho-analytic research remains unimpaired in the
world at large. But the different parts of the theory have not all
had the same history. The purely psychological theses and findings
of psycho-analysis on the unconscious, repression, conflict as a
cause of illness, the advantage accruing from illness, the
mechanisms of the formation of symptoms, etc., have come to enjoy
increasing recognition and have won notice even from those who are
in general opposed to our views. That part of the theory, however,
which lies on the frontiers of biology and the foundations of which
are contained in this little work is still faced with undiminished
contradiction. It has even led some who for a time took a very
active interest in psycho-analysis to abandon it and to adopt fresh
views which were intended to restrict once more the part played by
the factor of sexuality in normal and pathological mental life.

   Nevertheless I cannot bring
myself to accept the idea that this part of psycho-analytic theory
can be very much more distant than the rest from the reality which
it is its business to discover. My recollections, as well as a
constant re-examination of the material, assure me that this part
of the theory is based upon equally careful and impartial
observation. There is, moreover, no difficulty in finding an
explanation of this discrepancy in the general acceptance of my
views. In the first place, the beginnings of human sexual life
which are here described can only be confirmed by investigators who
have enough patience and technical skill to trace back an analysis
to the first years of a patient’s childhood. And there is
often no possibility of doing this, since medical treatment demands
that an illness should, at least in appearance, be dealt with more
rapidly. None, however, but physicians who practise psycho-analysis
can have any access whatever to this sphere of knowledge or any
possibility of forming a judgement that is uninfluenced by their
own dislikes and prejudices. If mankind had been able to learn from
a direct observation of children, these three essays could have
remained unwritten.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1463

   It must also be remembered,
however, that some of what this book contains - its insistence on
the importance of sexuality in all human achievements and the
attempt that it makes at enlarging the concept of sexuality - has
from the first provided the strongest motives for the resistance
against psycho-analysis. People have gone so far in their search
for high-sounding catch words as to talk of the
‘pan-sexualism’ of psycho-analysis and to raise the
senseless charge against it of explaining ‘everything’
by sex. We might be astonished at this, if we ourselves could
forget the way in which emotional factors make people confused and
forgetful. For it is some time since Arthur Schopenhauer, the
philosopher, showed mankind the extent to which their activities
are determined by sexual impulses - in the ordinary sense of the
word. It should surely have been impossible for a whole world of
readers to banish such a startling piece of information so
completely from their minds. And as for the
‘stretching’ of the concept of sexuality which has been
necessitated by the analysis of children and what are called
perverts, anyone who looks down with contempt upon psycho-analysis
from a superior vantage-point should remember how closely the
enlarged sexuality of psycho-analysis coincides with the Eros of
the divine Plato. (Cf. Nachmansohn, 1915.)

  
VIENNA
,
May
1920

1464

THREE ESSAYS ON THE THEORY OF SEXUALITY

I

THE
SEXUAL ABERRATIONS¹

The fact of the existence of sexual needs in
human beings and animals is expressed in biology by the assumption
of a ‘sexual instinct’, on the analogy of the instinct
of nutrition, that is of hunger. Everyday language possesses no
counterpart to the word ‘hunger’, but science makes use
of the word ‘libido’ for that purpose.²

   Popular opinion has quite
definite ideas about the nature and characteristics of this sexual
instinct. It is generally understood to be absent in childhood, to
set in at the time of puberty in connection with the process of
coming to maturity and to be revealed in the manifestations of an
irresistible attraction exercised by one sex upon the other; while
its aim is presumed to be sexual union, or at all events actions
leading in that direction. We have every reason to believe,
however, that these views give a very false picture of the true
situation. If we look into them more closely we shall find that
they contain a number of errors, inaccuracies and hasty conclusions
flaws.

   I shall at this point introduce
two technical terms. Let up call the person from whom sexual
attraction proceeds the
sexual object
and the act towards
which the instinct tends the
sexual aim
. Scientifically
sifted observation, then, shows that numerous deviations occur in
respect of both of these - the sexual object and the sexual aim.
The relation between these deviations and what is assumed to be
normal requires thorough investigation.

  
¹
The information contained in this first
essay is derived from the well-known writings of Krafft-Ebing,
Moll, Moebius, Havelock Ellis, Schrenck-Notzing, Löwenfeld,
Eulenburg, Bloch and Hirschfeld, and from the
Jahrbuch für
sexuelle Zwischenstufen
, published under the direction of the
last-named author. Since full bibliographies of the remaining
literature of the subject will be found in the works of these
writers, I have been able to spare myself the necessity for giving
detailed references. [
Added
1910:] The data obtained from
the psycho-analytic investigation of inverts are based upon
material supplied to me by I Sadger and upon my own
findings.

  
²
[
Footnote added
1910:] The only
appropriate word in the German language, ‘
Lust
’,
is unfortunately ambiguous, and is used to denote the experience
both of a need and of a gratification.

Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality

1465

(1)  DEVIATIONS IN RESPECT OF THE SEXUAL OBJECT

(A)  INVERSION

   The popular view of the sexual
instinct is beautifully reflected in the poetic fable which tells
how the original human beings were cut up into two halves - man and
woman - and how these are always striving to unite again in love.
It comes as a great surprise therefore to learn that there are men
whose sexual object is a man and not a woman, and women whose
sexual object is a woman and not a man. People of this kind are
described as having ‘contrary sexual feelings’, or
better, as being ‘inverts’, and the fact is described
as ‘inversion’. The number of such people is very
considerable, though there are difficulties in establishing it
precisely.¹

BEHAVIOUR OF
INVERTS
   Such people vary greatly in their
behaviour in several respects.

  
                                       (
a
) They may be
absolute
inverts. In that case their
sexual objects are exclusively of their own sex. Persons of the
opposite sex are never the object of their sexual desire, but leave
them cold, or even arouse sexual aversion in them. As a consequence
of this aversion, they are incapable, if they are men, of carrying
out the sexual act, or else they derive no enjoyment from it.

   (
b
) They may be
amphigenic
inverts, that is psychosexual hermaphrodites. In
that case their sexual objects may equally well be of their own or
of the opposite sex. This kind of inversion thus lacks the
characteristic of exclusiveness.

   (
c
) They may be
contingent
inverts. In that case, under certain external
conditions - of which inaccessibility of any normal sexual object
and imitation are the chief - they are capable of taking as their
sexual object someone of their own sex and of deriving satisfaction
from sexual intercourse with him.