Infantile Sexuality

“If we look further into the sexual demonstrations of the child, we would discover the essential features of the sexual instinct; we would include/understand the evolution of this impulse and we would see how it draws with various sources” Sigmund Freud ( Three tests on the theory of sexuality )

By this sentence programming science located in the first page of the second part of the Three tests entitled infantile sexuality summarizes the ambition of Freud at the time where he writes his book (1905). This book will revolutionize the Western perception of childhood and sexuality while affirming and by describing in a coherent and clear way the existence of a sexuality suitable for childhood i.e. a nongenital sexuality .

Presentation of the theses freudiennes

Freud starts by wondering about the difficulties which one has to admit that the children have a sexuality which is clean for them. According to him, one of the main reasons is that we forgot all or most of this period of our life.

Infantile amnesia

This lapse of memory of our sexual activity during the time of early childhood constitutes according to him a true phenomenon of amnesia which seems comparable with the complete lapse of memory that can operate the neurosis among certain patients, for example the hystericals, and who is characterized by “the refusal to admit certain impressions in the conscience (repression).”

But the infantile amnesia of our sexuality is former to amnesia (or Refoulement) hysterical, it constitutes rather what must be regarded as “a kind of prehistory” of the sexual life.

Manifestations of infantile sexuality

Freud, resuming the former work written by other researchers, supports that the suction of the infant is a manifestation of infantile sexuality. Indeed, all the parents can note that the infant who claimed to eat and who could alleviate his hunger often continues with suçoter whereas it is not any more hungry. This suçotement can take place on part of the clean body of the child (lip, inch, foot, etc) or refer on an unspecified object to its range (tétine, cloth, etc) This suçotement is sometimes associated with a rhythmic tugging of another part of the body, for example the ear lobe or the hair. All this constitutes what Freud calls the first manifestation of the autoerotism . Freud also takes again with W. Fliess the expression " latency period sexuelle" who will start towards 3 or 4 years. The child then will sublimate his sexual emotions to build the premises of his adult relation to sexuality, namely the dislike, decency and morals. It should be noted that Freud supposes of it the mechanism in association between the absence of reproductive functionality of this sexuality and a displeasure of the child for an activity which opposes its orientation. This “orientation” however is not developed by Freud, which then does not raise unfortunately the weight of social environment in this one.

Infantile autoerotism

What is characteristic of this infantile sexual activity it is that it goes on the clean body of the child. This rhythmic pleasure that it tested by tétant the maternal center or the feeding-bottle, the child seeks to reproduce it and for this reason it uses same the zone as that which satisfied during was tétée. In fact, the purely functional activity at the beginning which was the act to nourish itself induced in the infant a erotogenic zone made up around the mouth ( oral zone ) ', principal place of the activity of the infant.

For Freud infantile sexuality thus has 3 characteristics:

  • It is supported “on a physiological function essential with the life” : food;
  • It does not know a sex object yet apart from the clean body of the child, it is thus autoérotique' ;
  • “Its goal sexual is under the domination of a erotogenic zone .”

to also see: car-erotic Stage

Erotogenic zones

A priori , it would seem that any zone of the body can be elected Erotogenic zone by the child. This undoubtedly depends on the chance on discovered of the child during his activity on suçotement. However certain parts of the body are more often the support of this autoerotic activity . These parts of the body are those which comprise a mucous membrane and those which are regularly the object of a body excitation induced by a physiological function.

It is what explains why the anal zone also quickly becomes an erotogenic zone in the young child. This zone has in fact all the characteristics which one finds in the oral zone:

  • It is part of the body which is the seat of an essential physiological function;
  • This zone is consisted a mucous membrane bordered of muscles, the sphincters;
  • the anal zone is the object of an alternation of unpleasant feelings and pleasant feelings: the unpleasant feelings are induced by the internal tension coming from the intestinal activity which leads to the relief by the excretion. Moreover at the infant or the whole small child, the incapacity where it is to control this physiological function produces another succession of moments unpleasant then pleasant products by the irritation of the skin to the contact with deposit; then with the relief produced by the parental care.

Infantile masturbation

The contemporary pedagogs of Freud stuck hitherto only to the masturbation teenager, to deplore it and fight it in the name of moral requirements. Freud distinguishes three phases in the infantile masturbation:
# masturbation of the period of the breast feeding which is suçotement translated, as we saw, by the suçotement ;
# the second appears about the fourth year and corresponds to a peak of the sexual interest of the children;
# Finally onanism of the puberty which focused so much the attention of contemporaries of Freud.

By distinguishing these three periods from the infantile masturbation Freud wants to show that the masturbation is to be revalued in a broader context, that it takes another direction which is not to interpret only one moral point of view.

Freud does not reconsider the first period which is described in higher detail, it notes that this period disappears, in general, after a rather short time. The second period appears about the fourth year of the child and it is particularly important insofar as it leaves “deep traces (unconscious) in the memory, that they determine the character of the individual” .

The essential point that examines Freud is the new importance which on the child the discovery of his genitals exerts, the interest which it tests to contemplate them or to contemplate those of his/her comrades or brothers and sisters. “the occasion to satisfy this curiosity arising only when achieve the functions of micturition and defecation, the children become Peeping Toms, i.e. assiduous spectators of these physiological acts.”

While passing, Freud notes that cruelty seems to be a component of sexuality. This cruelty appears by the impulse of control which is not counterbalanced yet by the social skill of the pity of the pain of others. From where this frequent observation of the cruelty which seem to express much of children with regard to the animals.

Sexual research of the child

After having discovered its sexual organs and those of his/her congeneric child will be caught passion for sexual research. This appears by “an impulse to seek and of knowing” . The impulse of knowing is however not an elementary impulse of the sexual life, it rises from an operation of sublimation i.e. of diversion of a more elementary impulse which is the Pulsion of control . This impulse of knowing is very important because “the child deals with the sexual problems with an unforeseen intensity and one can even say that they are the problems there waking up its intelligence.”

The first question that the child it is posed is that of the origin of the children . The child will be formulated various assumptions that he will seek to check near his entourage. He then will confront himself with the explanations of his close relations who often at the time of Freud (and sometimes still now) give him whimsical or partial explanations. This research, according to Freud, is essential because the child who gives up it following the operations of his entourage will undergo “a durable wrong to his impulse of knowing” .

Sexual research of the child will be mentioned in the study freudienne case of Léonard De Vinci. Freud considers that the child holds more than very to discover the truth. The primal phantasies, i.e. trying to explain the origin of the desire, of the difference of the sexes, and any other question of the origin, will be organizers of the psychic life. But the child has a presentiment of already that to find the truth will not satisfaira it - it fears that the discovery does not bring the worst of the possible answers, namely the primitive Scène, act of love, sexual relationship between the parents. This Intuition will bring the child to a depressive movement .

Infantile sexual theories

Freud indicates by the term of sexual theory infantile the whole of the theories of the children on sexuality, theirs and that their parents, on the manufacture of the babies, etc

Castration belongs to the infantile sexual theories: the little boy discovering the absence of penis of the young girl, supposes that this one lost it in reprisals with a fault. One can note that this infantile theory of the castrated young girl is taken again by Freud itself in its vision of the female Sexualité and of the woman (see: Phallocentrisme).

The reproduction is it also approached by the children and is the subject of theories: initially compared to deposit, the child is then symbolically related to the penis: Freud thus makes go up with the Penis envy the desire of child of the adult woman. This one, private of penis, is comforted by fantasmant the Incorporation penis of the father who transforms himself then into child (It is advisable here not to forget that in the psychoanalytical theory, the Inconscient has its own language, based according to Lacan on the Métonymie and the Métaphore, allowing all kinds of assimilations symbolic systems).

Consequences of the thesis freudienne

The immense shock that produced, at the time of its publication, the Three tests on the theory of sexuality is explained by the effect of opposite course why this text produces on what passed for obviousnesses to the XIXe century. The XIXe century had indeed carried out a fight baited against the masturbation, following the example celebrates it Dr. Simon-Auguste Tissot which went until recommending the excision of the little girls who could not give up these “bad habits”.

But beyond the scandalous effect of the standpoint of Freud which located the masturbation like the effect of an intuitive discovery of its body by the child, most important and the most operative effect of the text freudien remains that it locates infantile sexuality like nongenital . This assertion which is not always taken into account nowadays and which one often tends to forget when one speaks about continuous sexuality to feed a certain number of misunderstandings in the reading of Freud and the comprehension of the psychoanalytical step.

By showing that sexuality started as of the Freud birth upset the design of sexuality completely:

  • sexuality is initially search for pleasure, it is thus not reduced to the reproduction;
  • sexuality was not reduced either to the genitals and their operation;
  • sexuality is instinctual and has thus always to make with the partial one.

Sexuality is before any search for pleasure

Freud shows that sexuality starts in the infant as of the tétée first, by the discovery of a pleasure induced by the association of the rate/rhythm of the suction and the pleasure of organic satiety succeeding the internal dissatisfaction caused by the feeling of hunger.

But most important resides in the continuation of the observation freudienne: the infant wants to prolong this feeling of pleasure while at the same time it is not any more hungry. He then creates for itself a space of recollection of the pleasure tested by prolonging suction by the suçotement and by reproducing itself the rate/rhythm which he discovered at the time of tétée. This space of pleasure which does not have any physiological need constitutes the embryo of what will become the human desire.

Sexuality is not reduced to operation genitals

By affirming that sexuality is primarily polymorphic Freud shows that sexuality could not be reduced to the biological one. This with the advantage of not posing an opposition of principle enters the normal one and the abnormal one as regards sexuality. It is what enables him to affirm in the sexual life : “To detach the sexuality of the genitals has the advantage of enabling us to subsume the sexual activity of the children and the perverts under the same points of view as that of the normal adults.”

In other words the question of sexual matter normality is above all social , which does not mean that it does not even exist nor as it is obligatorily unjustified but that it could not presuppose a normality resulting from the natural or natural .

Sexuality is instinctual

The discovery of sexuality by the infant is carried out at a subject which does not have yet a unit vision of its person. Any watch on the contrary which it does not distinguish its own body from the center only it tète. The sexual life finds a unit later but this unit is second and the sexual behavior of the individual is marked by this origin partial of the impulse. This is completely perceptible in the genital practices of each one among us but more generally in our sexual behavior in the broad sense which appears by our emotional preferences or our social conduits.

Principal criticisms addressed to the text freudien

Criticisms addressed to the text freudien did not miss. Let us try to raise the principal ones which appeared the alive one of Freud and which persists often nowadays.

Indignation " idéaliste"

The alive one of Freud its work caused a storm of indignations coming initially from all those which were estimated shocked by a vision of childhood in complete rupture with their point of view. Those which define, by principle, childhood by the absolute purity , the innocence could not accept the vision of a child worked by impulses being located apart from any morals. This vision rather summary Idéaliste is found still nowadays.

However Freud does not deny the role of morals but it assigns it at the company via education: it is the company which must work out the rules making it possible to limit dimension pressing and asocial impulses which want only their satisfaction. It is the education which makes it possible to the children to learn the rules which will enable them to compose with the others and living in company.

The refusal of the pansexualism

Very early also one reproached Freud his pansexualism i.e. a reduction of the human behavior to the only sexual operation. However according to Freud: the sexual one is not reduced to genital the . In fact the misunderstanding often comes from two great reasons:
# meaning It sexual sex or is very often compared to the genitals by the adults, who according to the psychoanalysts forget that they crossed a phase of their life where “the primacy of genital” the had not emerged yet on their premises (explainable by the infantile amnesia, to see higher);
# When Freud speaks about infantile sexuality it describes before a a whole relation in the world and the others. Those which had a child could notice that the infant head the world : its mouth is its mode of privileged investigation, the oral zone becomes its criterion of appreciation and comparison. When Freud describes the pleasure which the infant repu expresses (inflated cheeks dew, lips, eyes with half-counterirritated happiness) this description evokes with all the adults the acme jouissif of the genital report/ratio but it would be then about our own projection. For the child this happiness does not have anything genital, it is the happiness of a plenitude such as we would envy it to him because out of our range.

The refusal of the primacy of the unconscious one

Criticisms strongest and most current with regard to the message freudien are however founded on the dissension about an unconscious determinism of human sexuality. DSM in particular wants to be have-theoretical, making abstraction of any etiology and a fortiori of any allusion to unconscious processes. Holding of a psychodymanic explanation of the mental health disorders thus could reproach him the atomization of clinical descriptions in a multitude of redundant or contradictory symptoms.

The point of view of the Sexologie is based on the same dissension about the unconscious one: the sexual disorders would be thus genital disorders (with the physiological, or psychological direction current: without reference to a history and unconscious of the patient).

Research post-freudiennes

Karl Abraham tried to break up the stages of infantile sexuality. It refined thus the vision développementale sexuality, it studied the composite aspect of it. It inscivit par excellence vision of sexual stages registered in the history, where other authors propose a vision much less historical, développementale, with the profit of the singular.

Melanie Klein distinguished a total Objet and a partial Objet. It is a question of describing the object of sexuality, including aggressiveness, like being able to be split: aspects of this object seem contradictory on the subject, which does not integrate this object as having a coherence - only the subject would thus have to be said does not integrate the possibility even of contradiction, a little according to the model of the Manichéisme. The partiality of sexuality, within the meaning of independence of various sexual motions, is thus supplemented by a partiality in the representation of the outside world.

References

Related articles

External bond

  • Sexuality in nursery school on France 5
  • Gheorghe Marinesco, sexual Instinct and pansexualism, “Introduction to the psychoanalysis” (Talk of the theories of Freud - Section I), Re-examined General of sciences pure and applied , Volume 34, Gaston Doin Editor, Paris, 1923.
  • Karl Abraham, an infantile theory of the International design of the female sex Re-examined for the Psychoanalysis (International Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyze), IX, Book March 1st, th and th 1923.

Texts of Freud

  • Sigmund Freud, " Three tests on the theory sexuelle" , Folio-Gallimard, 1989, ISBN 2070325393
  • Sigmund Freud, the sexual life , PUF, Paris, 1969

Studies

Popularizing works

  • Gabel Mr., the children victims of sexual abuses , P.U.F.1992
  • Clerget S., Our children also have a sex , Paris, Robert Laffont, 2002
  • Rufo Mr., All that should never know to you about sexuality of your children , Anne Carrière, 2003.

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