Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality is a work by Sigmund Freud which advanced his theory of sexuality, in particular its relation to childhood. Freud considered these essays to be his second greatest work. His most important work, according to him was The Interpretation of Dreams. Freud began developing these theories after working with female patients Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality Book Description: Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality by Sigmund Freud Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (German: Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie), sometimes titled Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, is a work by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in which the author advances his theory of sexuality, Jul 06, · But in his text Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud proposed that when it comes to our sexual desires, nurture matters too. George Paul Meiu: One thing that strikes me as so resonant in Freud's three essays is this persistent questioning of the sexual. Is there something that can be called sexual
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality () by Sigmund Freud
Instead of looking for biological or hereditary traits, Freud looked at the development of the human psyche, eventually questioning our relationship to notions of normativity and perversion. His questions laid a foundation for the later development of queer theory. George Paul Meiu is Professor of Anthropology and African American studies at Harvard University.
He is the author of Ethno-erotic Economies: Sexuality, Money, and Belonging in Kenya and the upcoming book Queer Objects: Intimacy, Citizenship, and Rescue in Kenya.
George Paul Meiu: Freud is probably best known as the founder of psychoanalysis, which, unlike psychology or clinical psychology, really questions the subject, really questions this idea that there is an immutable subject, that you are right there where you sit, that there is a certain kind of immutable identity or interiority to you. It breaks the subject apart and shows them how desire or aspiration, etc.
All we are is a quest for that kind of unity. My name is George Paul Meiu, and I'm associate professor of anthropology and African American studies at Harvard University. Specifically, how human sexuality develops. The common sense view before Freud was that sexuality was a matter of nature, that it was determined on a biological level. But in his text Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud proposed that when it comes to our sexual desires, nurture matters too.
George Paul Meiu: One thing that strikes me as so resonant in Freud's three essays is this persistent questioning of the sexual. Is there something that can be called sexual. Is there some sort of an essence, whether in this subject, in our relations, in our desires, that is distinctly sexual? Or is the sexual but a label for something that is much more amorphous, much more ambivalent, not readily able to pin down, something that is not readily identifiable, if you will?
Zachary Davis: Freud looked at childhood to understand how sexuality develops. That is, there is no such thing as one instinct, i. There's always a certain kind of multiplicity to it.
That composite instinct never goes away. Zachary Davis: Welcome to Writ Large, a podcast about how books change the world. George Paul Meiu: Now he was born in in Freiberg, which was then part of the Austrian empire.
Zachary Davis: When Freud was young, his family moved to Vienna. George Paul Meiu: He studied medicine and neurology at the University of Vienna. Zachary Davis: Freud lived in Vienna for most of his adult life. Through his clinical practice, Freud established theories on how the human psyche develops and behaves.
He wrote many books and essays where he expanded on these theories. Some of his most famous works include The Interpretation of DreamsThe Psychology of Everyday Life, Civilization and Its Discontents, which we covered in another episode, and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. George Paul Meiu: And his work covered a very wide range of topics, probably the best known among these topics are his theories of the unconscious, repression, and sexuality, three essays on the theory of sexuality, especially the notion of the libido that he developed in the three essays, three essays on the theory of sexuality.
Zachary Davis: How did people think about sex before Freud's more… I don't know, is it fair to call it a medical kind of examination? George Paul Meiu: I do think that the patriarchal family, heterosexual family, does become an important normative ideal in this context.
At the same time, if one were to tap into the archives of city life, let's say, in Vienna or Berlin or London at that time, I'm sure one finds a very rich, kind of a set of sexual landscapes, if you wish, with, you know, certain areas in which prostitution three essays on the theory of sexuality place, certain brothels in which, you know, same sex relations are possible, in which various forms of transgender subjectivity become possible, even if not necessarily legitimate, under a certain kind of normative order.
As they began to study sexuality and gender, sexology and the sexual sciences took root. George Paul Meiu: You see the sexual science that became so prominent in the second half of the 19th century itself try to make sense of this growing multiplicity, complexity, to categorize it, to get to its interiority, just what's the seed of truth beyond behind a prostitute, behind a homosexual, you know, how can we pin that down? Zachary Davis: Many of these early sexologists believed there was some biological element that predisposed a person to become homosexual or transgender or a prostitute.
This was the time of Darwin after all. Injust a few years after Freud was born, Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species which revolutionized many scientific fields which turned anew to biology to prove various hypotheses. But Freud questioned this growing embrace of biological reductionism. George Paul Meiu: He really questions, for example, the kind of biological origin of sexual instinct is is it all hereditary three essays on the theory of sexuality is it all innate or are we dealing with something else?
Are we dealing perhaps with the early impressions of our childhood that are probably much more important than what's passed down to three essays on the theory of sexuality hereditarily?
Zachary Davis: Instead of looking for biological and hereditary traits that determine sexuality, Freud looked at how the development of the human psyche in childhood impacts sexuality. He shared his theories in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexualityoriginally published in and again in George Paul Meiu: Indeed. There are three essays. Freud spends much time trying to debunk ideas about sexual pathology, of degeneracy and innateness of particular kinds of tendencies, orientations, and desires that were very common at that time, three essays on the theory of sexuality.
A key intervention happens already in the first pages of the book where he distinguishes, for example, between sexual instinct and the sexual object. Now, instinct is what we would call now probably a drive—actually, translated from the German, sexualtrieb.
In other words, who you're interested in, three essays on the theory of sexuality. And this distinction, I think, is central for it dissociates who one is attracted to from the drive itself. Freud says the instinct, the drive, actually has nothing to do with the object. The object comes later. Zachary Davis: In other words, Freud separates the desire itself from what it is attracted to. He calls the desire the sexual drive or libido. George Paul Meiu: So this is already a way to, I would say, the way I read it, de-pathologize, to pull apart this idea that there are such things as immutable types.
Zachary Davis: By linking sexuality to childhood development, Freud shows that sexual drive is flexible. George Paul Meiu: But this kind of, like, undecidability, this kind of in-between, I think, is a really important, important thing.
At the same time that he's already trying to remove it at least a little bit from biology compared to the scholars who have written about it previously.
And three essays on the theory of sexuality way in which he did that was—and this, I think, is perhaps another major intervention of three essays on the theory of sexuality book—is to pay close attention to infant sexuality. And what he does do here is to question the seeming separation between infancy and then puberty in sexual life.
Well, he says no, actually there are lots of continuities and careful attention to what's happening in infancy is quite central here. Zachary Davis: Freud argues that as we grow up, we pass through five stages of development. In each stage, our innate sexual drive, our three essays on the theory of sexuality, focuses on a different erogenous zone.
During these developmental stages, the libido is not yet experienced as adult sexual desire. If a child has a traumatic experience during one of these stages, it can impact their psychological development and can be expressed later in life through various personality traits, neuroses, dependencies, depression, and addictions. George Paul Meiu: One starts with the oral stage during which, you know, the breast of the mother, which was used for a certain kind of almost holistic fulfilment at the moment of birth is replaced by the sucking of the thumb as a kind three essays on the theory of sexuality a repetitive gesture, which now is separated from the pleasure of nourishment and is associated with the pleasure of what might now loosely be called the sexual.
Zachary Davis: During the oral stage, from birth to around age 1, we discover the world through our oral senses. It begins with breastfeeding and thumb sucking. When a child is weaned from breastfeeding, three essays on the theory of sexuality, they move past the oral phase. However, according to Freud, if the child was weaned too soon or if there was trauma or neglect during this transition, this can result in an oral fixation such as extended thumb sucking, chewing gum, or even smoking.
After the oral phase we pass through the anal phase. During this stage we gain some control over our bowels and bladders. This is when children stop using diapers and learn to use a toilet. After the anal stage comes the phallic stage. During this stage, Freud argues that children become aware of differences between the sexes, and they develop romantic attachments to their parents.
Boys become attached to their mothers and girls to their fathers. After the phallic stage comes the latency stage. Instead of wanting to be with their parents, they want to be their parents. Children begin to identify with the parent of the same sex and focus their energy on three essays on the theory of sexuality a sense of self. The final stage is puberty, or the genital stage. In this stage the sexual drive is focused outside the family and towards viable sexual partners.
This stage begins at puberty and ends at death. George Paul Meiu: What's so interesting about infant sexuality is that it doesn't presuppose yet a zone of the body, which in puberty, with a certain kind of normative incitement to a reproductive sexuality, sexuality becomes genitality.
And what is not revolving around their genital pleasure is perverse. But Freud tells us we are all perverts to a certain extent because childhood is about a certain engagement of erotic pleasure through the whole body, three essays on the theory of sexuality. The rocking of the child, right, to put the child to sleep is itself erotic, three essays on the theory of sexuality.
There is not yet a certain kind of, like, distinctly sexual, at least not normatively so, kind of pleasure. The point is to acknowledge these multiple, polymorphous erotogenic zones that the body is itself—the palms, the sight, the kind of, like, lips themselves are sources of erotic pleasure.
And it's not that we abandon three essays on the theory of sexuality, he says, three essays on the theory of sexuality. This is in the third essay in the book. It's not that we abandon them. Foreplay is very much still about the engagement of these all these multiple erotogenic zones. But those who linger, he says—and I love this word, linger; it's a temporal deferment.
Rather than go where you must and engage in the proper kind of thing, you linger and drive satisfaction from these other erotogenic zones typically associated with infancy—become, according to the normative kind of script, perverts or engaged in perversions. But for Freud, these perversions are not abnormal. And by making that argument, Freud calls into question the entire distinction between the normal and the perverse. George Paul Meiu: It's easy to remark how he does that. So here you have it again.
Zachary Davis: Let's talk now about what happened when this was published. George Paul Meiu: For one thing, it informed generations to come of psychoanalysis. And I would just mention to people here, Jacques Lacan, whose work went back to Freud and went back very centrally to Freud's work on sexuality to try to understand the question with which we started: What is sexuality and is there a set of distinct processes that we can call sexual?
Sigmund Freud - Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex - Psychology audiobook
, time: 3:32:42Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality — Writ Large
In this work Freud advanced his theory of sexuality, in particular its relation to childhood. The three essays are "The Sexual Aberrations", "Infantile Sexuality" and "The Transformation of Puberty." In its final version, the "Three Essays" also included the concepts of "penis envy", "castration anxiety", and the "Oedipus complex".Cited by: Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality Book Description: Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality by Sigmund Freud Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (German: Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie), sometimes titled Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, is a work by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in which the author advances his theory of sexuality, Jul 06, · But in his text Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud proposed that when it comes to our sexual desires, nurture matters too. George Paul Meiu: One thing that strikes me as so resonant in Freud's three essays is this persistent questioning of the sexual. Is there something that can be called sexual
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