Sexuality and perversion in Freud's three essays on psychosexual development

¶ … Sexuality can be discussed and analyzed through concepts made in other works of the author. These essays revolve around the idea of sexual perversions and why they develop in the first place. In the second essay, Freud talks about the various psychosocial stages of development. The third essay revolves around the genital stage and how a person is more included to sexuality when he or she begins puberty. Freud has stated that normal sexual activity between a man and a woman and is only limited to sexual intercourse. Anything apart from that is considered a perversion or a deviation from normal human sexual activity.

Conclusion derived from this the theory of sexuality and other Freudian concepts is that: Abnormal sexual perversions develop in a person due to psychosocial conflict in life and these perversions are a threat to stability of civilization. Freud insists on the notion that sexuality is a repercussion of different psychosocial stages and it is possible for sexuality to be fixed at one point and time. The normal sexual activity id between a man and a woman and a deviation from it will signal towards some sort of perversion.

Freudian Concepts

Ego is one of the three components of psyche. It is basically the part of psyche that is related to reality. It was proposed before that the conflict between ego and sexuality leads to somatic sexual tension. Id is one of the three components of the psyche and it functions to serve the instinctual urges. The Oedipus complex is a set of desires and beliefs that are present in the childhood. This complex is the desire for a person to sleep with his mother and kill his father. All of these things are linked to the development of sexuality and libido.

Three Essays on the theory of sexuality

In his first essay, Freud talks about sexual aberrations and goes on to make a distinction between sexual object and sexual aim. The deviation as is discussed below can occur in the sexual object, sexual aim or both. Sexual object is defined, as a desired object and sexual aim are the acts that are desired with the object. Furthermore, the idea of inversion and perversion are also hinted on this essay. This can be linked to the idea of instinct and how these desires are naturally present in every single person. Perversions were discussed with the idea that the human abnormally directs his libido towards something that is not normal for our species.

The idea of psychosexual developed is also linked with infantile sexuality. Things like thumb sucking, autoeroticism and sibling rivalry are identified as infantile sexual emotions. Again, conflict in any of the stages of psychosexual development can lead to development of perversions as well. Whether or not the child has resolved the oedipal conflict, the instinctual drives of the id cannot be accessed to the ego because of repressed defense mechanisms. A neurosis that is established during any of these stages can prevent the child from directing his energies to activate that are socially acceptable. The ultimate result is that abnormal sexual behavior results and the person becomes a reason for disruption of civilization.

Underdeveloped or malformed libido energy in a person's adolescence or childhood can also lead to perversions that manifest later in the person's life. This explains why certain people alter their sexuality after puberty or a later stage in their life. Modern sexology itself is split into two camps. One of normal orientation and the other is paraphilia that includes fetishism, bestiality and necrophilia. The underlying concept is that these can be traced to negative psychological experience that was related to a sexual concept.

Man and Instinct

Freud has always gone to talk about the basic desires and need for man. In doing so, he has hinted upon sexuality, hunger and respiration. The Three Essays goes on to establish the expression of the sexual instinct. In his work Instincts and Vicissitudes, Freud talks about the idea of instincts and how they are basically representative of psychical and mental simulations (148) The idea of instinct and the act of putting away an instinct feeling means repression. In this work, Freud emphasized on the idea that happiness from satisfying wild instinctual impulses is more intense than going after a rather tame instinct (Freud 20) Due to this reason, many people can find sexual perversions irresistible. Even though these perversions provide intense happiness, they lead to disruption of civilization. Where these perversions provide happiness, their repression is linked to conflict with the ego. This therefore leads to repression, resistance and reality testing. Sexual instinct has always been present in man but sexuality is limited due to the development of communal bonds.

Love and sexuality

The ideology can be compared with the entire idea of love as is that many people try to make their love their center of attention and find their ultimate path to happiness through it. In the simplest terms, man, hates to let go of his sexual object for example a woman ( Freud 25) Similarly, a woman is excessively attached to her child because that child was once a part of her.

Animals on the other hand love their own property or their own territory. They would be willing to fight one another if another animal takes over their property. This can be linked to the idea of security being the ultimate definition of happiness (Freud 47)

In his work, The Ego and the Id, Freud talks about love within the context of the Oedipus complex. Freud basically insisted on the idea that love is bisexual. This can be explained using the example that a child will love the parent of the opposite gender but he will relate with the parent of the same gender. This can be termed as the positive Oedipus complex.

Freud believed that love that is established on a joint interest in work, safety and sex should be sufficient to keep the society going. On the other hand, love is often attributed to objects and things that can cause people a lot of suffering. This is because they have placed that love as their center of happiness and when things go wrong, they end up in disappointments.

Many people go on to expect different things from love. If a person is going through psychological problems, he might go on to resolve his conflicts through a relationship. In that relationship, the person is able to attain gratification and domination through sadism or masochism. This is an example of love, intact and sexual perversions all in one category. A person placed the love or the relationship as the center of their attention. However, they link the perversions and the abnormal sexual behavior with that relationship as well. This sort of relationship can rarely lead to marriage and a peaceful life. Therefore, it was that psychological conflict led to sexual perversion and ultimate disruption of civilization.