Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex

By Sigmund Freud

Landmark study examines sexual aberrations, infantile sexuality and the transformations of puberty. A unique work, according to translator A. A. Brill, it is "unlike other works on sex...of interest not only to the student of abnormal manifestations [but also] indispensable to the psychologist, the anthropologist, sociologist, the jurist, and above all the teacher."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Apr 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9780486151243

Book preview

DOVER BOOKS ON BIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY AND MEDICINE

LETTERS OF SIGMUND FREUD, Sigmund Freud. (Available in United States only) (27105-6) $9.95

HUMAN SEX AND SEXUALITY: SECOND REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION, Edwin B. Steen and James H. Price. (25544-1) $9.95

ON GROWTH AND FORM, D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson. (Available in United States only) (67135-6) $24.95

THE GREAT DINOSAUR HUNTERS AND THEIR DISCOVERIES, E. H. Colbert. (24701-5) $8.95

THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY, William James. (20381-6, 20382-4) Two-volume set $25.90

VISUAL ILLUSIONS, Matthew Luckiesh. (21530-X) $6.95

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INVENTION IN THE MATHEMATICAL FIELD, Jacques Hadamard. (20107-4) $5.95

PSYCHOLOGY OF TRANSCENDENCE, Andrew Neher. (26167-0) $8.95

BEYOND PSYCHOLOGY, Otto Rank. (20485-5) $8.95

PSYCHOLOGY OF MUSIC, Carl E. Seashore. (21851-1) $9.95

ANIMAL PARASITES, O. Wilford Olsen. (65126-6) $19.95

SPECIFICITY OF SEROLOGICAL REACTIONS, Karl Landsteiner. (66203-9) $8.95

MATHEMATICAL TECHNIQUES FOR BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE, William Simon. (65247-5) $10.95

INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF EXPERIMENTAL MEDICINE, Claude Bernard. (20400-6) $7.95

SOURCE BOOK OF MEDICAL HISTORY, Logan Clendening. (20621-1) $15.95

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND SELECTED LETTERS, Charles Darwin. (20479-0) $9.95

NOTES ON NURSING, Florence Nightingale. (22340-X) $4.95

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS, Sigmund Freud. (28253-8) $1.00

WIT AND ITS RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS, Sigmund Freud. (27742-9) $8.95

THE TRAUMA OF BIRTH, Otto Rank. (27974-X) $7.95

THE ANATOMICAL EXERCISES, William Harvey. (68827-5) $8.95

FUNGUS DISEASES OF TROPICAL CROPS, Paul Holliday. (68647-7) $22.95

THE PATH TO THE DOUBLE HELIX, Robert Olby. (68117-3) $13.95

Published in Canada by General Publishing Company, Ltd., 30 Lesmill Road, Don Mills, Toronto, Ontario.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2001, is an unabridged reprint of Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, fourth edition, first published in 1930 by the Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Company, Washington, D.C.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Freud, Sigmund, 1856–1939.

[Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie. English]

Three contributions to the theory of sex / Sigmund Freud ; translated by A.A. Brill.

p. cm.

Reprint. Originally published: Washington, D.C. : Nervous and Mental Disease Pub. Co., 1930. 4th ed.

Includes index.

9780486151243

1. Sex. I. Brill, A. A. (Abraham Arden), 1874–1948. II. Title.

HQ21 .F813 2001

306.7—dc21

00-052299

Manufactured in the United States of America

Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y 11501

Table of Contents

DOVER BOOKS ON BIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY AND MEDICINE

Title Page

Copyright Page

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION

INTRODUCTIONS TO TRANSLATION

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

CONTRIBUTION I - THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS [7]

CONTRIBUTION II - INFANTILE SEXUALITY

CONTRIBUTION III - THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF PUBERTY

SUMMARY

INDEX

DOVER BOOKS ON WESTERN PHILOSOPHY

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

Although the author is fully aware of the gaps and obscurities contained in this small volume, he has, nevertheless, resisted a temptation to add to it the results obtained from the investigations of the last five years, fearing that thus its unified and documentary character would be destroyed. He accordingly reproduces the original text with but slight modifications, contenting himself with the addition of a few footnotes. For the rest, it is his ardent wish that this book may speedily become antiquated—to the end that the new material brought forward in it may be universally accepted, while the shortcomings it displays may give place to juster views.

VIENNA, December, 1909.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

After watching for ten years the reception accorded to this book and the effect it has produced, I wish to provide the third edition of it with some prefatory remarks dealing with the misunderstandings of the book and the demands, insusceptible of fulfillment, made against it. Let me emphasize in the first place that whatever is here presented is derived entirely from everyday medical experience which is to be made more profound and scientifically important through the results of psychoanalytic investigation. The Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex can contain nothing except what psychoanalysis obliges them to accept or what it succeeds in corroborating. It is therefore excluded that they should ever be developed into a theory of sex, and it is also quite intelligible that they will assume no attitude at all towards some important problems of the sexual life. This should not however give the impression that these omitted chapters of the great theme were unfamiliar to the author, or that they were neglected by him as something of secondary importance.

The dependence of this work on the psychoanalytic experiences which have determined the writing of it, shows itself not only in the selection but also in the arrangement of the material. A certain succession of stages was observed, the occasional factors are rendered prominent, the constitutional ones are left in the background, and the ontogenetic development receives greater consideration than the phylogenetic. For the occasional factors play the principal role in analysis, and are almost completely worked up in it, while the constitutional factors only become evident from behind as elements which have been made functional through experience, and a discussion of these would lead far beyond the working sphere of psychoanalysis.

A similar connection determines the relation between ontogenesis and phylogenesis. Ontogenesis may be considered as a repetition of phylogenesis insofar as the latter has not been varied by a more recent experience. The phylogenetic disposition makes itself visible behind the ontogenetic process. But fundamentally the constitution is really the precipitate of a former experience of the species to which the newer experience of the individual being is added as the sum of the occasional factors.

Beside its thoroughgoing dependence on psychoanalytic investigation I must emphasize as a character of this work of mine its intentional independence of biological investigation. I have carefully avoided the inclusion of the results of scientific investigation in general sex biology or of particular species of animals in this study of human sexual functions which is made possible by the technique of psychoanalysis. My aim was indeed to find out how much of the biology of the sexual life of man can be discovered by means of psychological investigation: I was able to point to additions and agreements which resulted from this examination, but I did not have to become confused if the psychoanalytic methods led in some points to views and results which deviated considerably from those merely based on biology.

I have added many passages in this edition, but I have abstained from calling attention to them, as in former editions, by special marks. The scientific work in our sphere has at present been retarded in its progress, nevertheless some supplements to this work were indispensable if it was to remain in touch with our newer psychoanalytic literature.

VIENNA, October, 1914.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION ¹

Now that the floods of war time have subsided one may state with satisfaction that the interest in psychoanalytic research has remained unharmed in the great world. Yet not all parts of the doctrine have met with the same fate. The purely psychological declarations and discoveries of psychoanalysis concerning the unconscious, repression, the conflict which leads to illness, the advantage gained by illness, the mechanisms of symptom formation, etc., enjoy growing recognition and find consideration even with opponents who are such on principle. That portion of the theory which borders upon biology, the basis of which is given in this small work, continues to call forth undiminished opposition and has even moved persons who had for a time occupied themselves intensively with psychoanalysis to turn away from it and to adopt new conceptions through which the role of the sexual factor for the normal and the pathological psychic life should be again restricted.

I cannot, however, bring myself to believe that this portion of the psychoanalytic doctrine could be so much further removed from the reality to be divined than the other parts. Memory and constantly repeated investigation tell me that it has originated from just as careful and unprejudiced observation and that this dissociation of the sexual theories in public recognition is not difficult to explain. In the first place, only those investigators are able to confirm the beginnings of human sexual life here described who possess sufficient patience and technical skill to carry the analysis forward into the patient’s earliest childhood. The possibility for this is often lacking inasmuch as medical treatment desires a seemingly quicker discharge of the case. But others than physicians who are practising psychoanalysis have no access at all to this field and no opportunity to form for themselves a judgment which would be uninfluenced by their own repugnances and prejudices. Did mankind know how to learn from direct observation of children, then these three contributions might have remained wholly unwritten.

Moreover, it must be remembered that some of the ideas in this work, namely, the emphasizing of the importance of the sexual life in all human achievements and the extension of the concept of sexuality attempted here, have always furnished the strongest motives for the resistance against psychoanalysis. In their desire for a resounding slogan some have gone so far as to speak of pansexualism of psychoanalysis and to hurl at it the senseless reproach that it explains everything through sexuality. One would wonder at this were one able to forget altogether the confusing and forgetable effect of affective factors. For quite some time ago the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer had already upbraided man with the degree in which his actions and thoughts are determined by sexual strivings—in the usual sense of the word—and one could expect that a world of readers would have been unable to drive so impressive a reminder completely from memory! But as to the extension of the idea of sexuality, which becomes necessary through the analysis of children and of so-called perverts, may all those who from their exalted standpoint look down scornfully upon psychoanalysis remember how closely the extended sexuality of psychoanalysis corresponds with the Eros of the divine Plato. (See Nachmansohn : Freud’s Libidotheorie verglichen mit der Eroslehre Platos, Inter. Zeitschr. f. Psychoancalyse, III, 1915.)

VIENNA, May, 1920.

INTRODUCTIONS TO TRANSLATION

The somewhat famous Three Essays, which Dr. Brill is here bringing to the attention of an English-reading public, occupy—brief as they are—an important position among the achievements of their author, a great investigator and pioneer in an important line. It is not claimed that the facts here gathered are altogether new. The subject of the sexual instinct and its aberrations has long been before the scientific world and the names of many effective toilers in this vast field are known to every student. When one passes beyond the strict domains of science and considers what is reported of the sexual life in folkways and art-lore and the history of primitive culture and in romance, the sources of information are immense. Freud has made considerable additions to this stock of knowledge, but he has done also something of far greater consequence than this. He has worked out, with incredible penetration, the part which this instinct plays in every phase of human life and in the development of human character, and has been able to establish on a firm footing the remarkable thesis that psychoneurotic illnesses never occur with a perfectly normal sexual life. Other sorts of emotions contribute to the result, but some aberration of the sexual life is always present, as the cause of especially insistent emotions and repressions.

The instincts with which every child is born furnish desires or cravings which must be dealt with in some fashion. They may be refined ( sublimated ), so far as is necessary and desirable, into energies of other sorts—as happens readily with the play-instinct—or they may remain as the source of perversions and inversions, and of cravings of new sorts substituted for those of the more primitive kinds under the pressure of a conventional civilization. The symptoms of the functional psychoneuroses represent, after a fashion, some of these distorted attempts to find a substitute for the imperative cravings born of the sexual instincts, and their form often depends, in part at least, on the peculiarities of the sexual life in infancy and early childhood. It is Freud’s service to have investigated this inadequately chronicled period of existence with extraordinary acumen. In so doing he made it plain that the perversions and inversions, which reappear later under such striking shapes, belong to the normal sexual life of the young child and are seen, in veiled forms, in almost every case of nervous illness.

It cannot too often be repeated that these discoveries represent no fanciful deductions, but are the outcome of rigidly careful observations which any one who will sufficiently prepare himself can verify. Critics fret over the amount of sexuality that Freud finds evidence of in the histories of his patients, and assume that he puts it there. But such criticisms are evidences of misunderstandings and proofs of ignorance.

Freud had learned that the amnesias of hypnosis and of hysteria were not absolute but relative and that in covering the lost memories, much more, of unexpected sort, was often found. Others, too, had gone as far as this, and stopped. But this investigator determined that nothing but the absolute impossibility of going further should make him

Reviews for Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex

[danielstj · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very interesting material.

[jonfaith · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

We are not in a position to give so much as a hint as to the causes of these temporal disturbances of the process of development. A prospect opens before us at this point upon a whole phalanx of biological and perhaps, too, of historical problems of which we have not even come within striking distance.

I admire Freud in a similar way to that which I encounter Augustine. Despite glaring mistakes, there is a pellucid grace to the prose. The reasoning in a local sense is wonderful, despite the conclusions being wrong. It always is an instance of application. The layered nature of conclusions is compelling in these Three Essays, the footnotes allude to the editing, insertion and omission which Freud adjusted his thoughts, all the while admitting that he was lost in the weeds and that we were all damaged goods The taxonomy of inversion and perversion is a ticklish curiosity. Such must have been dangerously transgressive at the time. Kinsey eventually told everyone that there isn't a normal and that we should all relax and self-medicate.

I read this as to bolster myself for further exploration and spelunking into Irigaray and Derrida