Byways

We change the scene slightly and presume that the man feels the impulse to kiss the hand of his dead mother tenderly. This behavior we consider normal. We cannot deny that the kiss is nothing but a descendant of the bite, only its milder, mitigated form. The original aggressiveness is so far softened that the kiss becomes the expression of the opposite feeling of tenderness. We would not consider the kiss a perverted act.

A careful and unprejudiced re-examination of the problem leads to a surprising question: are sexual perversions only sexual in their origin and nature? The answer is surprising too: they never are. We admit that Freud's theory is founded on excellent observations, but they are used as a springboard for diving into the dark. I believe that in all perversions, not sex, but the ego-drives are predominant. I admit that the original impulse is of a sexual nature, but it has met external or psychical hindrances on its way to its gratification and has had to yield its place for a shorter or longer time to the other drives, which alone can help to reach this original goal. I return here to the characterization of the sex drive as an organic need to remove or at least to relax a purely physical tension, to get a somatic release. This elementary and crude drive can never be the source of the psychical energy which leads to the activities and fantasies of perverted persons. The most which an external hindrance can achieve is a stop, a delay. The energy which is necessary to overcome the frustration is secured by the ego-drives.

You can assume that sadism justifiably is labeled a sexual perversion. Sadism tends to humiliate or degrade the object, to overcome its resistance by violence, and to inflict pain and shame upon it. Let us admit that the child approaches the object with vague sexual impulses. He meets the unexpected resistance of the object, he finds hindrances in his way. The object or, if you like, the victim, does not want to be used in this way, he or she refuses to be a willing instrument or toy. Then the child increases his efforts, uses his energy, wants to overcome the resistance of the reluctant person, to enforce his will, and to achieve his object. He uses his physical strength to overcome the unwillingness of the person and to achieve his desire.

It is very possible that such a junction between sex-wishes and violence occurs when the resistance of the object is anticipated and overcoming it is imagined. The source of the satisfaction is thus a mixture of gratification of the sex- and of the ego-drives. Otherwise put: the sex-drive was arrested on the way to its goal and had to call on the older instinct for support. Now the older and more powerful aggressive impulses take precedence. If the aim is reached with their help, they have a considerable share in the gratification which results. It is as if, to make a comparison, a little boy on the playground should want to carry out his will on another, resisting child and then, realizing that he cannot do it alone, calls on his older and stronger brother to force the opponent. Can you assert then that it was the first boy's own strength which overcame the resistance, that the result was reached by his own efforts.

The gratification derived from sadistic activity is to a great extent the satisfaction of aggressiveness. The psychoanalysts may now argue that it is precisely this aggressiveness which belongs to the very nature of sexuality, because without it the resistance of the object of sexual impulses cannot be broken. Such an argument, however, would be as meaningful as if one were to say that aggressiveness is inherent in hunger.² Hunger in itself is not aggressive. It can become aggressive if gratification is denied, from outside, but nothing in its nature points to any such immanent quality. The whole argument is founded on a preconceived idea about the character of sex which is no more justified than the claim of the little boy in our story that he alone had overcome his opponent unassisted.

If the fact is taken into account that the ego-drives are the older and more urgent ones and that the sexual impulses are junior partners which try to make themselves independent, the whole problem moves into a new field. Then the primacy of the drives is reversed: there is an original aggressive impulse towards the object, a tendency to take possession of it. This old drive assumes a new shade when sexual impulses awaken and join it. The aggressiveness in normal sexuality is of course restricted, but it can come to the foreground when the sexual approach is resisted. In the effort to overcome this resistance the lust for domination and violent conquest can be reawakened. Under these circumstances sadism would take the form of gratification by violence of an original ego-drive which had become focused upon a sexual object. In reaching its goal, the sexual component of a later date derives a considerable advantage and gains by the victory as did the younger boy by the success of his older brother.

But if this view is correct, the whole libido theory of Freud breaks down: the child does not appear as polymorph-perverse, sexuality has not the components of sadism, masochism, of peeping and showing off. The perversions are exaggerated manifestations of the old ego-drives, now directed to a sexual object. To return to our previous instance: the older brother who is on the playground is called by the younger one who cannot work his will on the third boy. The older brother, who realizes that his help is needed, knocks the opponent down, enjoys this act of violence thoroughly, and then walks away, allowing his younger brother to enjoy his share of the success.

That is the image sadism presents to me: the nature of its pleasure is really the lust for violent conquest, for domineering, for brute force, and this form of gratification is mixed with sexual enjoyment or is followed by it. This neo-psychoanalytical theory is just the reverse of Freud's view of the character of perversions and of the nature of infantile sexuality. Compare, for instance, the following contrasting pictures: Freud states that active muscular activity is a sexual need for the child, who gets extraordinary satisfaction from it. He then points out that a number of persons have reported that they experienced the first signs of excitement in their genitals while wrestling with their playmates. In this sport, of course, the skin of the contestants is brought into long and intimate contact. Inclination for muscular contest with a certain person will give the pattern for later verbal contests. (There is a German proverb which Freud quotes: “Who love each other tease each other.”) Freud interprets this inclination as one of the good early symptoms of an object-choice directed to this person. He recognizes in the sexual excitement by muscular activity one of the roots of sadistic attitudes. The infantile junction between wrestling and sexual excitement becomes one of the determining factors for this preferred direction of the sex-drive. Modern education uses sport, he says, to a great extent to divert youth from sexual activity or—he corrects himself—to substitute motion for sexual lust, to restrain sexual activity through the agency of one of its autoerotic components.

I would prefer to suppose that originally the enjoyment of muscular activity has for the child not the slightest sexual meaning and is an expression of his sense of power and efficiency. It is true that many boys have felt sexual excitement in wrestling, but the sexual stimulus is certainly not the motive for wrestling. It merely became mixed up with wrestling and is of a later origin. The sexual excitement is a late ingredient added to the satisfaction of the aggressive drives which are activated in the contest. Of course the same argument is valid for verbal contests, in which the enjoyment of mental activity is determined by the same factors. Sport might be used to distract youth from sexual interests, but this practice is not equivalent to reducing the sexual activity to one of its autoerotic compounds, but to leading it to the field of competitiveness, and thus to an expression of the ego-drives.

Freud states that the idea of sadism oscillates between an active and then a violent attitude towards the sexual object and that the sadist attains satisfaction exclusively through the submission and maltreatment of the object. Strictly speaking, he states, only this extreme case can properly be called a sexual perversion. Is that not an odd misinterpretation? Would such an extreme case not be better considered as an expression of aggressiveness and brutal possessiveness, and the sexual gratification connected with it as the waste-product which every great industry produces?

The origin of sadism is to be found in the elementary aggressive drives; its junction with the sexual impulses is secondary and a trait which may be entirely lacking. This is one of the cases in which the ego-urges become amalgamated with the sex-needs. This case occurs frequently when an intense sexual impulse meets strong resistance from its object or when other obstacles hinder it from reaching its aim. Here is an important dynamic development: at first, when the reaching of the sexual aim is inhibited, the person resorts to violence and cruelty to attain satisfaction. Later on, sexual gratification becomes so blended with the other that violent or cruel fantasies or actions arouse sexual desire. Later on moral inhibitions within the person—fear and anxiety, for example—also function as such obstacles. To overcome them an aggressive and violent rage often develops, which treats the object as if it were itself the personification of the inhibition. The condition of the forbidden becomes then, as in all perversions, an increased stimulus. To have overcome the external and internal prohibitions and inhibitions increases the gratification. The resort to violence in breaking through a tabu then clearly proves that the sadistic impulse originated in the rebellious drives of the ego.

The inclination to peep and to watch for sexual excitement, is of the same nature; it is, so to speak, a milder form of sadistic behavior restricted to the eyes. To spy on an object originally means to take possession of it by observing it, and it need not have a sexual meaning. The specific lust in peeping at naked or undressing women is also, of course, an attempt to possess them visually because hindrances from outside or of a physical nature forbid an immediate sexual approach. This preparatory activity can become independent from the final goal of the sexual-drive and an be enjoyed as if it were itself an aim. The aggressive character of this spying is undeniable. It is, like sadism, an alloy of aggressive and sexual tendencies. It is obvious that here also the overcoming of an inhibition intensifies the satisfaction.

I need not deal extensively with the psychological character of masochism because I treated the subject in a book published four years ago.³ I tried to demonstrate in that work that masochism is a detour to reach the same goals of aggressiveness, force, and revenge as the sadistic impulses; and that it is not so much a counterpart of them as their inverted form, sadism upside down. It reaches its aim by a strange demonstration of the opposite. Its formula is best expressed by the words “victory through defeat.” It reaches its concealed purpose by means of apparent passivity and pretended submission.

To make the character of perversion clear, I shall present a single instance of a masochistic fantasy. Passing through a hotel lobby, a masochistic patient sees a WAC (member of the Women's Army Corps) in a chair with her legs crossed. He imagines that if he were to be under her command, she would be an extremely severe superior, would scold and punish him physically, and might even kick him so hard that it would hurt. The emphasis seems thus to be on the feeling of submission and punishment, but this fantasy also arouses him sexually.

Later on, the patient remembers that at the end of this fantasy another image appeared, just as a kind of appendix. He had forgotten it because it was unimportant and of no consequence, scarcely worth mentioning. This neglected continuation of his fantasy had the following content: he saw for a fleeting moment the fact of the same girl on a pillow. The expression was the one which women have in the “moment supreme” of orgasm, one of abandon and unrestricted surrender, her eyes glazed. The meaning of the fantasy is clear: “Even if you are severe with me and punish me, you will give yourself to me at the end, and there will come a moment when you will be soft and submissive.” The masochistic enjoyment is due to the displacement of this final pleasure by a preceding phase. Such sojourn at preliminary actions and fantasies is a characteristic trait of all perversions.

Exhibitionism is a milder or mitigated expression of the same fundamental emotional drives which cause the masochistic attitude. It invites the other person to take possession of one's own body by means of looking, and is thus the detour by the road of passivity to the same unconscious aims which masochism tries to reach in its own particular manner.

In all these “sexual” perversions the ego factor is predominant. They are all called sexual merely because the ego-drives work in the sexual realm. The sexual drives alone prove unable to reach their aim and aggressiveness and possessiveness are called upon to force the way. As a secondary gain in the mixed gratification of both impulses the conquest of an inhibition may often be enjoyed; indeed the desire to do the forbidden becomes significant in all perversions. Stolen fruit is the sweetest. The more we know about the nature of the sexual drive, the stronger becomes our impression that it rarely appears as crude sex-desire and that its general manifestation is already blended with different drives of the ego-realm. Just the “sexual” perversions present the image of such a mixture, in which the proportion of lust for domination and conquest in the gratification is greater than the purely sexual share.

The genius of Freud as a psychologist will in the days to come be more and more recognized and admired. His libido system, however, will, I am afraid, have the sad destiny which Herbert Spencer once bemoaned in speaking of “a beautiful theory that was murdered by a gang of brutal facts.” Neo-psychoanalysis comes to the conclusion that the psychological research into the perversions is a study of violence and degradation, of fear and defiance rather than of sex. I know, of course, that the view here expressed is only a provisional hypothesis accounting roughly for the facts known to us, but I hope it accounts more satisfactorily for them than the outdated analytical theory, the shortcomings of which are obvious.

We have a final question: what is the relation of the perversions to love? I am of the opinion that perversions are aberrations of the impulses of aggressiveness and domination directed towards a sexual object. Their character is a blending of a large proportion of ego-drives with a minor quantity of sex-urge. Is there a place in this mixture for love, for tenderness and affection? Offhand, one would not think so. Nevertheless, analytical experience proves that such a strange alloy is possible. Frequently a certain adoration for the object can be united with the other two. It will then soften the sharp taste of brutal domination and will give a strange flavor to sexual satisfaction, a kind of tender or sweet after-taste. I know persons who appreciate such a mixture as a delicacy, but even they admit that it can be found very rarely and that it is more appetizing than nourishing.