Chapter 4) Masturbatory Sexual Manifestations of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality - Study Guide by Sigmund Freud

4) Masturbatory Sexual Manifestations

Having understood the nature of the instinct rising from a single of the erotogenic zones, the only distinction to be made between zones is the manner of stimulation for satisfaction - i.e. sucking or other muscular actions.

Activity of the Anal Zone

By its position this is well positioned to act as a medium through which sexuality may attach itself. Retention of the faecal mass is thus carried out intentionally by the child to serve as a masturbatory stimulus upon the anal zone, despite this being in disobedience with his educators. In older children such masturbation of the anal zone by means of the finger, is also found.

Activity of the Genital Zones

The sexual activities of this erotogenic zone, part of the sexual organs proper, are the beginning of what is later to become 'normal' sexual life. The pleasure evoked by this area of the body is easily discovered by virtue of its location and therefore involvement with washing, etc. Freud proposes that three phases of infantile masturbation are to be distinguished: the first belonging to early infancy, the second to the brief overdrive of sexual activity in the fourth year, and the third corresponds to pubertal masturbation - often the only one to be taken into account.

Second Phase of Infantile Masturbation

After the lull from early infancy, sexual instinct revives before the fourth year until it is either suppressed or otherwise continues. This phase leaves the deepest impressions, determining his character, if he remains healthy, or his symptoms if he falls ill. In the latter case this phase will be repressed and only recalled through psychoanalysis.

Return of Early Infantile Masturbation

This returns as either a tickling sensation or a nocturnal emission. This reappearance of 'sexual activity' is determined by internal causes and external contingencies (such as seduction of the child), both of which can be guessed in cases of neurotic illness. However it is important to add that Freud believed that seduction is not necessary to arouse a child's sexual life and that it normally, indeed healthily, comes about spontaneously from internal causes.

Polymorphously Perverse Disposition

Since children have not been instructed otherwise and have hardly constructed resistance through shame, disgust or morality, they are susceptible to incorporating every sort of perversion into their sexual activities - if, and only if, they are ill influenced. This suggests an innate, contingent, aptitude for them in children's disposition.

Component Instincts

Infantile sexual instinct exhibits components from which the very first involve people as objects. Such instincts are scopophilia (looking), exhibitionsm (active version of scopophilia) and cruelty - which appear independently of erotogenic zones, and do not enter into intimate relations with genital life until later.