Concepts in Psychoanalysis

Freud views the concept of sexuality from a wider context, much more than the genital intercourse between a female and male. Nevertheless, regardless of the form or shape of sexuality an individual is likely to take, Freud maintains, it invariably traces its origin to infantile sexuality (Freud, 1995). This is a term used in reference to sexual development that an infant experiences in his first few years of life (Hollitscher, 2003). Freud has extended the concept of sexuality in a number of ways. To begin with, he seems to dwell more on the goal of attaining pleasure, effectively divorcing it from its close link to genitals. In this way, the reproductive function of sexuality is relegated to a secondary role. In addition, Freud (1991) opines that all relations and meanings share a common origin with similar sexual impulses that are depicted in different degrees and forms. Freud (1986) tries to comprehend this common foundation as a means of ascertaining the intelligibility of human behaviours. He succeeds in deriving this extension from his various laborious psycho-analyses and clinical researches, on which all his observations and theories on sexuality derive from. Moreover, Freud (1991) indicates that human sexuality begins at birth, as opposed to the widely held view that it begins at puberty. He further adds that all types of sexuality, be they pervert, normal or neurotic, can be traced back to the infantile sexuality phase, which Freud describes as the period of sexual development starting at the point of birth up to about 6 years, via the oral, anal, as well as the phallic (genital) phases. It is from this context that the current essay endeavours to explore Freud's notable extension of the sexual phenomenon and his justification for this approach, based on references to the relevant texts.

• Freud's view of infantile sexuality and its manifestation
• Freud's association of infantile sexuality with neurotic illnesses
• Freud's Justification for his extension on the phenomenon of sexuality
• Conclusion
• References

Freud's view of infantile sexuality and its manifestation

The term “infantile sexuality” is an often-misunderstood concept. While referring to it, psychoanalysts' do not limit their meanings to the different forms of erotic activity that are likely to manifest in young children, including the desires and thoughts that children express from infancy and beyond (Muller, 2014). Infantile sexuality also entails the complete sequence of transformations in the child's body and mind, up to puberty and adolescence. The process starts when the child's senses first awaken as he sucks his mother's breasts for the first time, moving on stage-wise, and getting increasingly organised until it reaches “ the genital maturity characteristic of adulthood and the gender determination as man or woman” (Quinodoz, 2013, p. 23). Psychoanalysts' refer to this entire process as “infantile sexuality”.

Freud observed that thumb sucking which is a common practice in the nursing baby, involves repeated contact with the lips in a rhythmic manner, with the lip and tongue being regarded as objects of sucking (Thwaites, 2007). The behaviour of a child to grasp at a certain part of another individual (mostly the ear of the mother) is what Freud refers to as pleasure-sucking and is linked to exhaustion of attention and usually results in sleep or better still, a motor reaction-like orgasm. Pleasure-sucking, Freud notes, is usually combined with a rubbing contact with such other sensitive body parts as external genitals and breasts, and this practice sees many children abandoning thumb-sucking in favour of masturbation.

The thumb-sucking action that the child engages in is due largely to a desire to experience a pleasure already experienced, and which is now recalled. This leads to gratification (Freud, 2012). A child gets acquainted with this pleasure for the first time upon sucking the mother's breasts. In this case, Freud infers that the child's lips function as an erogenous zone, with the child deriving pleasure sensation from the excitement of the warm stream of milk from the mother's breasts. The ensuing gratification of the child's erogenous zone through nourishment from breast milk, resulting in its falling asleep with a blissful smile and reddened cheeks can be likened with the manifestation of sexual gratification evident in the child's later life.

By listening to his patients' accounts of dreams and memories, and by analysing his own dreams, Freud observed that just like adults, children also experience sexual sensation, thoughts, and feelings (Jung, Shamdasani & Hull, 2011). However, they find it rather difficult to tell apart fantasy from reality. Therefore, Freud arrived at a bold conclusion that fantasy, and not reality, play a decisive role in determining infantile sexuality: > “And now, from behind the fantasies, the whole range of a child's sexual life come to light” (cited by Quinodoz, 2013, p. 23).

In a complete departure from what was believed at the time to be the case, not only adults and adolescents, but children too, experienced sexual sensations, thoughts, and experiences.

Freud's association of infantile sexuality with neurotic illnesses

In his psychoanalytic research, Freud boldly claimed that patients' illnesses are closely linked to their erotic lives. In other words, erotic disturbances are responsible for pathogenic wishful impulses in that they influence illnesses (Neu, 1991). Freud maintains that the behaviour of patients might have influenced his conviction regarding the correctness of this theory. This is because patients tend to conceal information regarding their sexual life, as opposed to being candid about it (Freud 1995). Freud, through a series of psycho-analytic analysis managed to trace the symptoms of pathogenic wishful impulses to traumatic experiences, and not sexual ones. Freud further notes that an in-depth analysis of a case and total recovery from it does not end at events that took place when the illness was triggered but can rather be traced back to the early childhood or puberty of the patient. That is when one chances upon the events and impressions responsible for the later genesis of the illness.

Vulnerability to later traumas can only be explained by experiences in childhood. In the same way, we can only rid of these symptoms by unmasking these almost always beyond recall memory traces, thereby elevating them into consciousness. This conclusion reached by Freud concurs with the findings of investigation dreams by him and other scholars, that the repressed wishful imperishable impulses of childhood solely offers the power to develop symptoms and in their absence, we should almost invariably react to traumas normally (Quinodoz, 2013). Such powerful wishful childhood impulses, Freud maintains, could absolutely be described as sexual. He located the 'traumatic event' in infancy and proceeded to locate a sexual character to it. However, at this point, the question of 'sexual character' was restricted to sexual interference responses that the child was believed to passively endure, as opposed to the child's individual sexuality. Wollheim is of the opinion that such an 'implausible' outlook could be associated with the ability of Freud to credit the infant with impulses and wishes, albeit reluctantly, from which orthodoxy and tradition has endeavoured to protect the child against.

We could also infer that Freud, who had earlier suggested that his own father may have been guilty of sexual assault on his brothers and sisters, and who had convinced himself that he had held a sexual craving for his then nine-year old daughter, might have felt compelled to hold back his desire to identify with the infantile sexual feelings that his patients manifested. In any event, Freud was by now fully convinced that infants possessed in them the capacity to experience sexual pleasure, seeing as they had already experienced seduction with pleasure and the experience would be repeated severally as young children.

Freud may have also realised that his patients appeared to only remember fantasies, as opposed to events. This means that universalising the experiences of infants would have served no purpose in aiding Freud to find a solution to his etiological problem. It is important to recall that Freud endeavoured to go back to a patient's infancy on the understanding that the etiological agent at play here possessed both traumatic and determining power. Should Freud have settled for a universal contingency, it means that he would have in effect lost the justification for infantile sexuality. This is something that Freud seemed to be well aware of as he writes, “Of course, if infantile sexuality were an almost universal occurrence it would prove nothing to find it in every case" (cited by Ciofi, 1998, p. 146).

What this appears to suggest is that the acknowledgement of infantile sexuality may have cast doubt on infantile fantasises and the associated etiological status.

Freud's Justification for his extension on the phenomenon of sexuality

While Freud theory of infantile sexuality has been heavily criticised by critics who opine that it erodes the perception of infants, he nevertheless maintains that this theory is based on the laborious collection of information, data and clinical researchers. In his book, “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality”, Freud (1995) notes that every child is born with instincts that furnish cravings or desires which ought to be attended to in a certain way. He further maintains that it may be necessary to “sublimate” or refine such cravings or desires as may be deemed desirable or appropriate, into other forms of energies. Alternatively, such cravings or desires could remain as they are and might actually in future feed other cravings, inversions and perversions of novel forms borne of pressures of a typical civilisation (Jung et al., 2011). Freud further opines that the symptoms manifested by the functional psychoneuroses are symbolic of several distorted endeavours to locate an alternative for the essential cravings attributed to the sexual instincts (Manning, 2013). In addition, the nature of such cravings is partly determined by the features of one's sexual life during infancy and/or early childhood (Morss, 1990). Freud further maintains that the 'inversions' and 'perversions', which manifest themselves in later stages of growth and development, are a part of the normal development in the young child's sexual life (Freud 1991). The reappearance of these 'inversions' and 'perversion' in various striking shapes, Freud maintains, are evident in nearly all cases of a nervous illness.

Freud asserted that his key discovery revolved around the role of sexuality, a development that "cost him the good opinion of others” (Muller 2014, p. 163). In reference to his colleagues, while giving one of his many lectures at Clark University, Freud observed > “they all began by completely disbelieving my assertion that sexual aetiology was of decisive importance, until their own analytic experiences compelled them to accept it” (Freud 1909, p. 40; cited by Saint Anselm College, n.d.).

Clearly, Freud's discoveries, and assertions thereof regarding the strong association of sexual factors with the causation of neurotic illnesses, are borne of prolonged and detailed observations of his patients and an in-depth assessment of the works of Breuer and others (Muller, 2014). This should therefore be viewed as sufficient grounds to accord credibility to his assertions. However, critics have demonstrated their concern with the extent to which Freud goes to explore the issue of 'sexuality' in treating his patients and link it with their diagnosed neurotic illnesses (King & Steiner, 2015). While some critics thus presuppose that Freud puts it there, it is important to note that such criticisms are an indication of ignorance and misunderstanding on the part of the critics.

Freud, through his many experiments and study of his practice, came to acknowledge that amnesias of hysteria and hypnosis were relative, as opposed to absolute. He further unearthed the fact that by unmasking what was perceived to be the patient's lost memories he ended up unmasking more than he had anticipated (Sulloway, 1992). While others had also reached this point in their hypnotic treatment of hysterical and neurotical patients, they did not go beyond this point. However, Freud endeavoured to venture further than this with the aim of inexorably scrutinising the unconscious thoughts and memories of his patients to an advanced level than had not been accomplished before. In this way, Freud tried to extract hidden stories of dreams and knowledge, however absurd they may be, of an otherwise unforgettable childhood. These in turn proved useful in helping Freud unmask hidden sets of underlying motives and consciousness's.

Freud did not reveal materials about what he deemed to be the most controversial aspect of his famous five lecturers namely, dream analysis and child sexuality, until his third and fourth lecturers. Here, Freud made a lot of effort to introduce these controversial materials while being very careful not to antagonised his audience.

In his fourth lecture, Freud has also detailed the fundamental idea behind the Oedipus complex, in which he mentions the desire by King Oedipus to kill his own father so that he could fulfil his wish of marrying his mother. This, Freud notes, is indicative of a universal infantile sexual wish. In addition, Freud suggests that the “incest-complex" that enshrouds Hamlet is yet another ideal example of the “nuclear complex" (SE, XI: 47; cited in Saint Anselm College, n.d.). Freud was even very cautious in the fourth lecture when he introduced the topic on child sexuality. He started by citing the quantitative findings of Sanford Bell. Freud claimed that Bell had in fact foreseen most of his ideas regarding child sexuality. This is only one of very few times when Freud acknowledged the significance of quantification. Freud further conceded that it was highly likely to trace the origins of neurotic illnesses to impressions formed from one's neurotic life. Here, one can only assume that Freud intended his audience to associate this assertion with his earlier discussion of Anna O in order that they could get a more refined picture of her, even though it lacked explicit details. In one of the passages borrowed from his fourth lecture, Freud makes a clear introduction of the significance of sexuality:

"People are in general not candid over sexual matters. They do not show their sexuality freely, but to conceal it they wear a heavy overcoat woven of a tissue of lies, as though the weather were bad in the world of sexuality. Nor are they mistaken. It is a fact that the sun and wind are not favourable to sexual activity in this civilised world of ours; none of us can reveal his eroticism freely to others” (SE, XI: 41; cited in Saint Anselm College, n.d.).

Thereafter, Freud tries to extend his argument from an economic context by observing that sexual ethology was significant to resistance often experienced in the development of neurotic symptoms linked to the nearly neglected memory-traces during one's childhood (Freud & Strachey, 2011), and that cathartic recall could be the only hope of ever reliving such memories. While Freud's first lecture has a certain level of safe decency about it, he appears to have identified the fourth one as the most ideal place to bring forth the most controversial material (Hollitscher, 2003), and he succeeds in doing so with remarkable verve and speed.

In his fifth lecture, Freud examined in general terms, neurosis, its treatment, transference, as well as sublimation and its role in civilised life. Freud restated that when an individual's erotic needs are not met, and they thus end up frustrated, they are likely to develop neurotic symptoms. As a matter of fact, Freud maintains that the patient's neurosis acts as another source of their satisfaction (Saint Anselm College, n.d.). In this way, the neurosis acts as a solution to the problems facing the patient, as opposed to an actual problem. Resistance is thus inevitable, seeing as the patient has no intention of forfeiting the neurosis that he/she now relies on as an essential source of satisfaction.

Even as Freud heavily stressed on the issue of sexuality in human nature, it is important to note that he was absolutely opposed to pansexualism, which he viewed as a misrepresentation of his hypothesis; not once did he energetically and explicitly deny the connection of all forms of instinctual life with sexuality (University of Oregon, n.d.). As a matter of fact, a key reason why Freud stressed so much on sexuality was the quest to advance another group of instincts that would override sexuality. The explanatory significance of the notion of sexuality in mental illness relied heavily "on its not enjoying a monopoly in the domain of the instincts” (Wollheim 1981, p. 115). This dealt a heavy blow to Freud's theory, and it seemed as if sexuality or libido would encompass all instinctual energy. This would have implied failure to un-verify the pathogenic function of sexuality.

Freud admitted that workers willing to subscribe by his psychological studies had a mind to imagine that he (Freud) exaggerates the role of sexual factors in influencing pathogenic impulses. On this, one wonders why Freud failed to associate the repressed wishful impulses that characterise neurotics with other mental excitations. While Freud (2012) intimates that there is no reason why these other mental excitations should not result in the phenomenon described, experience indicates that they cannot carry the weight of the sexual factors under these circumstances, and hence cannot replace them. While sexuality would still be regarded as a key aspect of normal psychology, its interest in regards to abnormal psychology would, nevertheless, be only marginal.

Conclusion

Freud has demonstrated a tendency to greatly extend the range of phenomenon that would ordinarily be regarded as sexual. This is best exemplified in many of his earlier works and notably in view of his five lectures of psychoanalysis. Freud endeavoured to trace back on the infancy period of his patients as he was of the opinion that the etiological agent involved possessed traumatic as well as determining power. His discoveries, assertions and strong association of sexual factors with the development of neurotic disorders was borne of prolonged and detailed observation of his patients, along with an in-depth assessment of other scholars on the same issue. In spite of the doubts and criticism cast on Freud controversial assertions and theories on sexuality, his works nevertheless acts as a key foundation of psychotherapy and clinical observation. Despite all his effort at popularising his theory of infantile sexuality, along with its association with pervasions and neuroses in adults appears to have limited impact in providing cure to individuals who suffered.

References

Cioffi, F. (1998). Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience. Chicago, Illinois: Open Court Publishing.

Freud, A. (1986). Sigmund Freud, The Essentials of Psycho-Analysis. London: Penguin Books.

Freud, S (1991). 'The Sexual Life of Human Beings,' Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, trans. James Strachey. London: Penguin.

Freud, S. (1991). The Development of the Libido', Introductory Lecturers on Psychoanalysis, trans. James Strachey. London: Penguin Books.

Freud, S., Strachey, J., & Richards, A. (1991). Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. London: Penguin Books.

Freud, S. (1995). 'Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality'. The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gray. London: Vintage.

Freud, S., & Strachey, J. (2011). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Eastford, CT.: Martino Fine Books.

Freud, S. (2012). Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex. New York: Lits

Gay, P. (1988). Freud: A Life For Our Time. New York: W. Norton & Co.

Hollitscher, W. (2003). Sigmund Freud: An Introduction. New York: Psychology Press.

Jones, E. (1953). The life and work of Sigmund Freud-Volume 1. New York: Basic Books.

Jung, C.G., Shamdasani, S., & Hull, F.C. (2011). Jung Contra Freud: The 1912 New York Lectures on the Theory of Psychoanalysis. Princeton University Press.

Jung, C.G. (2015). Freud and Psychoanalysis, Volume 4. London: Routledge.

King, P., & Steiner, R. (2005). The Freud-Klein Controversies 1941-45. London: Routledge.

Manning, P (2013). Freud and American Sociology. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Morss, J.R. (1990). The Biologising of Childhood: Developmental Psychology and the Darwinian Myth. New York: Taylor & Francis.

Muller, J.P. (2014). Beyond the Psychoanalytic Dyad: Developmental Semiotics in Freud, Peirce and Lacan. London: Routledge.

Neu, J (1991). The Cambridge Companion to Freud. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press.

Quinodoz, J.M. (2013). Reading Freud: A Chronological Exploration of Freud's Writings. New York: Routledge.

Saint Anselm College (n.d.). Sigmund Freud, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis 1909. Retrieved from http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/h-freud-lectures.htm [Last Accessed: 23rd February 2016]

Sulloway, F.J. (1992). Freud, Biologist of the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend. Harvard, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Thwaites, T (2007). Reading Freud: Psychoanalysis as Cultural Theory. London: SAGE.

University of Oregon (n.d.). XX. Sigmund Freud, "The Sexual Life of Human Beings," 1920. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. Retrieved from http://pages.uoregon.edu/eherman/teaching/texts/Freud%20The%20Sexual%20Life%20of [Last Accessed: 23rd February 2016]

Wollheim, R (1981). Sigmund Freud. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Michael is a qualified Psychotherapist (Registered), based in Gurteen, Ballymahon, Ireland.

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