Essay on "Sigmund Freud and Sexuality"

Essay 5 pages (1795 words) Sources: 4

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Sigmund Freud and Sexuality

Sigmund Freud was a pioneer in psychoanalysis and in matters of human sexuality, and his path finding research has had an enormous impact on how psychologists, psychiatrists and other academics view the human sexual experience. Although Freud died -- through an assisted suicide arrangement with his doctor -- in 1939, his seminal investigations and writings are very much alive and well in the literature of today. This paper reviews Freud's theories on sexuality, and brings in other views as well to the discussion.

New York children's psychiatrist Dr. Leon Hoffman asserts that while some aspects of Sigmund Freud's theories on sexuality have "undergone revision," the "central place" that Freud gives to sexuality and intimate personal connections "remain valid" (Hoffman, 2005). Freud's ideas "teach us the value of intimate personal attachment," Hoffman explains in his article in Psychiatric News. Importantly, Freud recognized that as humans go through each developmental stage of their lives, feelings and experiences of their past -- of their childhood -- come into play in a powerful, meaningful way, Hoffman goes on.

These theories and explorations into human behavior have helped society to recognize that "the desire for pleasure" has pivotal motivating influences in our lives. That said, the sexual insights from Freud, which Hoffman calls "revolutionary," have often been "misinterpreted." When Hoffman says Freud's theories have been misunderstood or misinterpreted, he is referring specifically to the wrongful reading by some in society. For example, there has been the false notion that Freud was promoting "uninhibited sexual expression," Hoffman continues on page 1.

Freud on Sexuality and Love: Quite the contrary, he insists, Freud's psychoanalytic ideas were not intended to advocate irresponsible sex but in fact are valuable in terms of helping people "…appreciate the arc of sexual development and the pitfalls" that can occur when people do not reach maturity successfully, in Hoffman's view. Hoffman says that the American culture today is an "oversexualized culture" where sex has become "a commodity" and where "immaturity is often idealized" and where "sexual conquests have been valorized as sport."

Meantime, in the book Sexuality and the Psychology of Love (Freud, et al., 1997, p. 184) Freud explains (in Chapter XIII, "Female Sexuality") that the Oedipus complex is in force when the child is developing libido. it's normal, he explains, for the child to be "tenderly attached" to the parent that is the opposite sex. The child's relationship with other parent is "predominately hostile," he writes (p. 184). For a boy, his mother is his "first love-object," according to Freud, and his mother remains his first love. And as his feelings for her become more passionate he comes to understand his mother's relationship with his father and at that time the father becomes "a rival" to the boy (p. 184).

On the other hand, little girls also love their mother and she is their first love-object; but the little girl's sexual development is "complicated" by the task of "renouncing the genital zone which was originally the principal one, namely the clitoris, in favor of a new zone -- the vagina" (p. 184). In time some girls' attraction switches to her father, but Freud writes that the window of time that a girl is attached to her mother for four or five years before becoming enamored with the father. On pages 185-86 Freud admits that he's not positive about all his theoretical approaches to girls, their mothers, and their fathers.

But Freud does conjecture that girls who cling to mother ("mother-attachment") may later in life experience what he calls "hysteria," and moreover, this dependence on mother can lead to "the germ of later paranoia in women" according to Freud (p. 186). This "germ" he describes is the "surprising, yet regular, dread of being killed (? devoured) by the mother. That said, Freud states that once the girl breaks away from the love interest in mother, and goes through her sex changes, the father must become the "new love-object" (p. 188). Moving back into the discussion of the male child, Freud offers his theory of how the boy develops the super-ego. The following theory -- brilliant and original -- has led some observers to question Freud's thinking.

Freud asserts that only male children love one parent and hate the other "as rival." During the developmental period of the male, there is inevitably the discovery "of the possibility of castration, as evidence by the sight of the female genital." Thinking that the female has been castrated -- because she doesn't have what he has, a penis -- leads the boy into the "Oedipus complex" which in turn leads "to the creation of the super-ego" (p. 188). Once the super-ego has been developed the boy is ready to take his place in "civilized society," Freud continues.

This phase of human development -- Freud calls "remarkable" -- sees the boy acquires an "infantile sexuality" that leads to his "narcissistic genital interest… centered in the preservation of the penis" (p. 188). It is Freud's view that if a male hangs on to the castration complex for an extended period of time, he may end up having a disparaging attitude towards females "whom he regards as having been castrated." And that distrust / dislike of females -- "if reinforced by organic factors" -- may result in "exclusive homosexuality," Freud continues on page 188.

As for the girl and her "castration complex," Freud says that she will acknowledge this complex (that she doesn't have a penis so she has been castrated) and will accept the "consequent superiority of the male and her own inferiority" (p. 188). That having been said, the girl will also rebel against "these unpleasant facts" -- and being divided in her mind as to what is true about her sexuality and what is not true, she "may" follow one of three lines of development. In the first, she may become "frightened by the comparison of herself with the boys, become dissatisfied with her clitoris and give up her phallic activity." This may lead her to "turn her back on sexuality altogether" Freud asserts.

If she pursues the second line, she will cling "in obstinate self-assertion to her threatened masculinity" and may spend a large portion of her life wishing, hoping to grow a penis. It may become "the aim of her life" and there may emerge within her consciousness a fantasy that she is in fact a man. As incredibly far fetched that this might seem to feminists, or others living in a more modern world than Freud enjoyed, the psychoanalyst insists her "masculinity complex" often "dominates long periods of her life" -- and it may be a cause that leads her to homosexuality (p. 189).

The third line that Freud has presented in this book sees the female taking a "very circuitous path" and arriving back at a normal "feminine attitude"; that attitude is manifested itself in her "love-object" feelings for her father. In this scenario the woman is not destroyed by the castration complex.

Freud on Dora and Hysteria: One of the more well-known -- and out of the ordinary -- cases that Freud is noted for is the analysis of an 18-year-old woman named "Dora," who was suffering from what was then called "hysteria." Freud asserts that "Hysterial symptoms hardly ever appear so long as children are masturbating," but after they have stopped masturbating for a time hysteria sets in (Freud, 1997, p. 71). Dora, whose bedroom had apparently been next to her parents' bedroom, apparently had heard her father's heavy breathing while he was having sex with her mother. Freud posits that when children hear things like that, adults having sexual intercourse, they "divine something sexual in the uncanny sounds that reach their ears" and they become sexually excited themselves. In Dora's case, apparently she gave up masturbation and replaced the habit with "an inclination to morbid anxiety" (Freud, 1997, p. 72). Soon after she quit masturbating, her father left the house for a time and, being "devotedly in love with him" she missed him terribly. Soon after she apparently went mountain climbing and was short of breath; the sound of her own shortness of breath reminded her of the sound of her father's shortness of breath when he was having intercourse with her mother. Freud claims this brought back those strange feelings she experienced and which made her stop masturbating and hysteria was the result.

Feminist Response to Freud's View of Hysteria: Jennifer Pierce critiques some of Freud's earlier essays on hysteria, including "Studies on Hysteria" (Pierce, 1989, p. 266). She believes that due to the provocative theories he came up with in the 20th Century, Freud's earliest work has been neglected, that is his practicing and writing in the 1880s. In reviewing carefully the various cases that Freud worked with, she notes that in Freud's lecture to the Society for Psychiatry and Neurology in 1896 he reported "with great clarity and directness" the 18 cases he had worked with up to that time. Six were… READ MORE

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