Freud argues that disturbed sexual life underlies psychoneurotic illness and that childhood sexuality, including perverse tendencies, is continuous with normal development. The deck covers his account of inversion, the sexual impulse and its sources, and the methodological and critical questions raised in the book's introductions.
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Chapter 1 · Question
According to the introduction, what thesis did Freud establish about psychoneurotic illness and sexual life?
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Chapter 1 · Answer
The introduction states that Freud established the thesis that psychoneurotic illnesses never occur with a perfectly normal sexual life. Other emotions may contribute, but some aberration of the sexual life is always present as the cause of especially insistent emotions and repressions. The introduction presents this as a firm footing established by Freud's penetrating work.
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Section 14 cards
According to the introduction, what thesis did Freud establish about psychoneurotic illness and sexual life?
The introduction states that Freud established the thesis that psychoneurotic illnesses never occur with a perfectly normal sexual life. Other emotions may contribute, but some aberration of the sexual life is always present as the cause of especially insistent emotions and repressions. The introduction presents this as a firm footing established by Freud's penetrating work.
Chapter 1
How does the introduction describe the relationship between childhood perversions and normal child sexual life?
The introduction credits Freud with showing that the "perversions" and "inversions" which reappear later in striking shapes belong to the normal sexual life of the young child. They are seen in veiled forms in almost every case of nervous illness. Freud reached this by investigating infancy and early childhood with extraordinary acumen, a period the introduction calls inadequately chronicled.
Chapter 1
What does the introduction say about critics who claim Freud puts sexuality into his patients' histories?
The introduction says critics fret over how much sexuality Freud finds in patients' histories and assume he puts it there. It calls such criticisms evidence of misunderstandings and proof of ignorance. It insists the discoveries are not fanciful deductions but the outcome of rigidly careful observations that anyone who sufficiently prepares can verify.
Chapter 1
What method does the introduction say Freud used to uncover forgotten memories?
The introduction says Freud learned that amnesias of hypnosis and hysteria were relative, not absolute. He urged patients into inexorable scrutiny of unconscious memories and thoughts, making every kind of forgetfulness, including childhood's, yield hidden knowledge. Dreams, even apparently absurd, served as interpreters of repressed thoughts, and layer after layer of motives was laid bare.
Chapter 1
Section 24 cards
According to Putnam, what must a conscientious reader do to understand Freud's contributions?
Putnam argues that readers should not read any single work alone, but study Freud's publications together, since they hang together and supplement each other remarkably. He lists works including the Selected Papers on Hysteria, The Interpretation of Dreams, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious, the case of little Hans, and the Leonardo study. Otherwise critics may find statements far-fetched or too obscure.
Chapter 2
What does Putnam say civilization's progress largely consists of?
Putnam states that the whole progress of civilization, in the individual or the race, consists largely in a sublimation of infantile instincts, especially portions of the sexual instinct, to other ends than those they seemed designed to serve. Art and poetry are fed on this fuel, and the evolution of character and mental force largely shares this origin.
Chapter 2
Why did Freud resist adding five years of new findings to the second edition?
In the preface to the second edition, Freud says he was aware of the volume's gaps and obscurities but resisted the temptation to add results from the last five years of investigation, fearing this would destroy the book's unified and documentary character. He reproduced the original text with only slight modifications and a few added footnotes, and wished the book might speedily become antiquated.
Chapter 2
Why does Freud say the work depends on psychoanalysis rather than general sex biology?
Freud emphasizes the work's intentional independence from biological investigation. He avoided including results from general sex biology or animal species studies, aiming instead to discover how much of the biology of human sexual life can be found through psychological investigation. He notes he did not have to become confused if psychoanalytic methods led in some points to views deviating considerably from those merely based on biology.
Chapter 2
Section 34 cards
What two terms does Freud introduce to analyze the sexual impulse?
Freud introduces the term sexual object, meaning the person from whom sexual attraction emanates, and sexual aim, meaning the action toward which the impulse strives. He argues that closer examination of experience shows many deviations in reference to both object and aim, and that these deviations from the accepted standard require thorough investigation.
Chapter 3
What three classes of inverts does Freud distinguish by behavior?
Freud distinguishes absolute inverts, whose sexual object must always be of the same sex while the opposite sex is indifferent or repugnant; amphigenously inverted persons, psychosexually hermaphroditic, whose object may be either sex so the inversion lacks exclusiveness; and occasionally inverted persons, who under external conditions such as inaccessibility of the normal object take a same-sex object and find gratification.
Chapter 3
What facts does Freud cite against calling inverts degenerates?
Freud argues inversion is found among persons otherwise showing no marked deviation from the normal, and among persons of especially high intellectual development and ethical culture. He also notes inversion was frequent among ancient nations at the height of their culture and is unusually prevalent among savages and primitive races, while degeneration is generally limited to higher civilization.
Chapter 3
What evidence does Freud give for inversion being acquired rather than congenital?
Freud cites three facts: in many inverts, even absolute ones, an early affective sexual impression can be demonstrated after which homosexual inclination developed; in others, outer promoting and inhibiting influences led to fixation, including exclusive same-sex relations, companionship in war, prison detention, dangers of heterosexual intercourse, celibacy, and sexual weakness; and hypnotic suggestion may remove the inversion.
Chapter 3
Section 44 cards
What objection does the chapter raise against the existence of congenital inversion?
The chapter says a more accurate examination of those claimed congenitally inverted would probably reveal that the direction of the libido was determined by a definite early-childhood experience no longer in conscious memory but recoverable under proper influences (Havelock Ellis). Ellis therefore calls inversion only a frequent variation of the sexual impulse determined by external circumstances of life.
Chapter 4
Why does the chapter reject both the congenital and the acquired explanations of inversion?
The chapter argues neither assumption explains inversion's nature. If congenital, one must specify what is congenital beyond the roughest claim of an inborn impulse tied to a fixed object. If acquired, one must ask whether manifold accidental influences suffice unless something in the individual meets them halfway; denying that factor is inadmissible given the chapter's earlier conclusions.
Chapter 4
What is the doctrine of bisexuality and how does the chapter relate it to inversion?
Following Lydston, Kiernan, and Chevalier, the chapter notes anatomical hermaphroditism: genitals uniting male and female characteristics, rarely both well developed, usually both stunted. A degree of anatomical hermaphroditism belongs to the normal, since no normal male or female lacks traces of the other sex's apparatus. The chapter derives an original predisposition to bisexuality that development changes to monosexuality, leaving stunted remnants.
Chapter 4
Does the chapter find psychic hermaphroditism a sufficient explanation of inversion?
No. The chapter says the expected regular concurrence of inversion with psychic and somatic signs of hermaphroditism was not realized; inversion and somatic hermaphroditism are totally independent. Inverted women may show inversion of character, but in men the most perfect psychic manliness may be united with inversion. The chapter calls substituting the anatomical for the psychological frivolous and unjustified, and rejects the notion of a 'female brain.'
Chapter 4
Section 54 cards
According to Freud, what is the relationship between the sexual impulse and its object?
The author argues the sexual impulse is probably entirely independent of its object and is not originated by stimuli from the object. Experience with so-called abnormal cases shows a connection between impulse and object that we risk overlooking in normal states, where the impulse seems to bring the object with it. He therefore urges separating the connection between impulse and object.
Chapter 5
How does Freud classify perversions in relation to the normal sexual aim?
Freud takes genital union in copulation as the normal sexual aim, serving to loosen tension and quench desire. Even normal sex includes additions like touching and looking that lead to perversions. Perversions are either (a) anatomical transgressions of the bodily regions destined for sexual union, or (b) a lingering at the intermediary relations to the object that should normally be passed rapidly.
Chapter 5
What role does loathing play in restricting the sexual aim?
Freud argues loathing stands in the way of libidinous overestimation of the sexual aim but may be vanquished by the libido. Its limits are often purely conventional: one may kiss a pretty girl fervently yet loathe using her toothbrush. Loathing is one of the forces that brought about restrictions of the sexual aim; as a rule these forces halt at the genitals, though even the other sex's genitals may be loathed, especially by hysterics.
Chapter 5
What does Freud say about sexual abuse of children by teachers and servants?
Freud states that for aesthetic reasons one would attribute excessive sexual aberrations to the insane, but this cannot be done: among the insane no sexual impulse disturbances appear other than those among the sane, or whole races and classes. He notes with gruesome frequency sexual abuse of children by teachers and servants merely because they have the best opportunities for it; in the insane the aberration is only intensified or becomes exclusive.
Chapter 5
Section 64 cards
According to Freud, what makes the fondness for looking pathological?
The author argues the fondness for looking becomes a perversion in three cases: when it limits itself entirely to the genitals; when it connects with overcoming loathing, as in voyeurs and onlookers at excretion; and when it suppresses rather than prepares for the normal sexual aim. He claims the last is most pronounced in exhibitionists, who expose their genitals to bring others' genitals into view.
Chapter 6
When does fetishism become pathological rather than a normal variation?
The author argues a certain degree of fetishism regularly belongs to the normal, especially during wooing when the normal aim seems inaccessible or deferred. It becomes pathological only when the striving for the fetish fixes itself beyond such determinations and takes the place of the normal sexual aim, or when the fetish disengages from the person and itself becomes a sexual object.
Chapter 6
What does Freud say about the sexual role of the anal opening?
The author argues the loathing that stamps anal use as perversion rests on the same shaky basis as hysterical girls' disgust for the male genital because it serves urination. He notes the anal mucous membrane's sexual role is not limited to intercourse between men and has nothing characteristic of inversion; among inverts, mutual masturbation is the most common aim, and pedicatio in men owes its role to analogy with the woman's act.
Chapter 6
What two factors does Freud give for anatomical transgressions beyond the genitals?
The author argues sexual infringement on other body parts offers nothing new and only announces the impulse's intention to dominate the sexual object in every way. Besides sexual overvaluation, he names a second, generally unknown factor: certain parts like the mucous membrane of the mouth and anus, which repeatedly appear in such practices, lay claim to be considered and treated as genitals. He says their claim is justified by the development of the sexual impulse and fulfilled in the symptomatology of certain morbid conditions.
Chapter 6
Section 71 cards
According to Freud, when is a perversion properly called morbid rather than a variation?
The author argues the morbid character lies not in the content of the new sexual aim but in its relation to the normal. It is morbid if the perversion does not appear beside the normal aim and object, or if it has repressed and supplanted the normal under all circumstances. Exclusiveness and fixation justify calling it a morbid symptom.
Chapter 7
Section 84 cards
According to Freud, what psychic forces does the sexual impulse struggle against?
The author argues the sexual impulse struggles against psychic forces or resistances, among which shame and loathing are most prominent. He presumes these forces serve to confine the impulse within accepted normal limits, and if they develop before the sexual impulse reaches full strength, they direct it during development.
Chapter 8
How does psychoanalysis explain the formation of hysterical symptoms?
The author argues symptoms are substitutes for emotionally accentuated psychic processes, wishes, and desires whose discharge through conscious activity was cut off by repression. These unconscious formations strive for discharge and, in hysteria, achieve it through conversion into somatic phenomena. Retrogressive transformation of symptoms back into conscious thoughts, via special technique, yields information about their nature and origin.
Chapter 8
What does Freud mean by 'the neurosis is the negative of the perversion'?
The author argues neurotic symptoms are not formed only at the expense of the normal sexual impulse; they represent converted expression of impulses that could be called perverse if manifested directly in phantasies and acts without deviating from consciousness. Thus symptoms are partially formed at the cost of abnormal sexuality, making the neurosis the negative of the perversion.
Chapter 8
What two contrasting factors does Freud find characteristic of hysteria?
The author argues hysteria shows an exaggerated sexual repression beyond normal limits — shame, loathing, and instinctive flight from intellectual occupation with sex, sometimes producing complete sexual ignorance till maturity. Yet this is often concealed by the second constitutional factor: an enormous development of sexual craving. Analysis reveals both an immense sexual desire and a very exaggerated sexual rejection.
Chapter 8
Section 94 cards
According to Freud, how do paired partial impulses appear in psychoneurotic symptoms?
Freud states that partial impulses usually appear in contrasting pairs and are prominent symptom-creators in the psychoneuroses. Whenever one such unconscious impulse is found, its passive counterpart can regularly be demonstrated: the unconscious exhibitionist is also a voyeur, and sadistic feelings are accompanied by masochistic reinforcement. In the disease picture, however, one opposing tendency plays the preponderant role.
Chapter 9
How does Freud define an impulse and distinguish impulses from one another?
Freud defines an impulse as the psychic representative of a continually flowing internal somatic source of excitement, as opposed to a stimulus arising from isolated external excitements. He assumes impulses possess no quality in themselves but are a measure of the demand for effort in psychic life. What distinguishes them and gives them specific attributes is their relation to somatic sources and aims; the source is an exciting process in an organ, and the immediate aim is eliminating that organic stimulus.
Chapter 9
What is an erogenous zone, and which zones does Freud assign to looking mania and cruelty?
Freud assumes bodily organs furnish two chemically distinct kinds of excitement; the specifically sexual form is called an erogenous zone, and the sexual element emanating from it is the partial impulse. The eye corresponds to an erogenous zone in looking and exhibition mania, while the skin takes that role in the pain and cruelty components. In hysteria these zones act as additional apparatus and substitutes for the genitals.
Chapter 9
Why does Freud say perversions appear so prominently in psychoneurotics?
Freud argues the manifest tendency to perversion in psychoneurotics may be collaterally conditioned and increased. When the principal bed of the libido stream is dammed—by repression or failure to attain normal gratification—it fills collateral roads previously empty. Sexual repression must be added as an inner factor to external ones like restricted freedom or inaccessibility of the normal sexual object. Constitution and experience cooperate; it would be unjust to construe a contrast where cooperation exists.
Chapter 9
Section 102 cards
What conclusion does Freud reach about the congenital basis of perversions?
The author argues that something congenital does underlie perversions, but it is something congenital in all persons: a predisposition that may fluctuate in intensity and is brought into prominence by influences of life. These congenital roots of the sexual impulse may develop into perversion, undergo insufficient repression producing morbid symptoms, or, in favorable cases, yield normal sexual life through effective restrictions and other elaborations.
Chapter 10
Where does Freud say the constitution showing the roots of all perversions is demonstrable?
The author states that the assumed constitution showing the roots of all perversions will be demonstrable only in the child, though all impulses can be manifested in it only in moderate intensity. If neurotics conserve or return to the infantile state of sexuality, interest must turn to the child's sexual life and the influences controlling its development toward perversion, neurosis, or normal sexual life.
Chapter 10
Section 114 cards
Who first proposed bisexuality as an explanation of inversion, and when?
According to a report in the Jahrbuch f. sexuelle Zwischenstufen, E. Gley is supposed to have been the first to mention bisexuality as an explanation of inversion, publishing 'Les Abérrations de l'instinct Sexuel' in the Revue Philosophique as early as January 1884. The chapter notes that most authors tracing inversion to bisexuality apply the factor to normal persons too, interpreting inversion as a disturbance in development.
Chapter 11
How does psychoanalysis explain the psychic mechanism of inversion's genesis?
Freud reports that in all cases examined, later inverts pass through childhood a phase of intense but short-lived fixation on the woman, usually the mother. After overcoming it they identify with the woman and take themselves as sexual object; on a narcissistic basis they seek young men resembling themselves, loving them as their mother loved them. Alleged inverts are often not indifferent to women, but transfer that excitation to a male object, repeating the mechanism through life.
Chapter 11
What does psychoanalysis claim about homosexual object choice in all people?
Psychoanalytic investigation strongly opposes separating homosexuals as a group of a special nature. Studying sexual excitations beyond the manifestly open ones, it discovers that all men are capable of homosexual object selection and actually accomplish this in the unconscious. Attachments of libidinous feelings to same-sex persons play no small role in normal psychic life and, as causative factors of disease, a greater role than those to the opposite sex.
Chapter 11
How does Freud contrast ancient and modern emphasis in sexual life?
The author argues that the most pronounced difference between the sexual life of antiquity and ours lies in emphasis: the ancients placed it on the impulse itself, while we put it on its object. The ancients extolled the impulse and were ready to ennoble even an inferior object through it, whereas we disparage the activity of the impulse as such and only countenance it on account of the merits of the object.
Chapter 11
Section 123 cards
What does Freud claim the shoe or slipper symbolizes?
Freud states that the shoe or slipper is a symbol for the female genitals. This appears in his discussion of fetishism, where he argues that foot and shoe fetishes arise because the foot substitutes for the penis that is missed in the woman, so the female genital is imagined as male in line with infantile expectation.
Chapter 12
How does Freud explain the origin of foot fetishism?
The author argues that fetish selection depends on a coprophilic smell-desire lost through repression; feet and hair, being strong-smelling, become fetishes once the smell is renounced. Only the filthy, ill-smelling foot is the sexual object. He adds that the foot replaces the missing penis in women, and that repressed looking-desire, blocked from the genitals, adheres to foot or shoe.
Chapter 12
What popular belief about childhood sexuality does Freud reject?
Freud rejects the popular belief that the sexual impulse is absent in childhood and first appears at puberty, calling it a common and serious error due to ignorance of sexual life. He notes occasional medical reports of premature sexual activity are treated as curiosities, and that no author has recognized the normality of the sexual impulse in childhood.
Chapter 12
Section 133 cards
According to Freud, what is the relationship between infantile amnesia and hysterical amnesia?
The author argues that hysterical amnesia, which serves repression, depends on infantile amnesia. Repressed recollections already withdrawn from conscious disposal seize material acted on by repelling forces from consciousness. Freud concludes that without infantile amnesia there would be no hysterical amnesia, linking the two as more than a mere play of wit.
Chapter 13
What is sublimation and when does it begin in individual development?
Sublimation is the deviation of sexual motive powers from sexual aims to new aims. Freud notes historians of civilization agree it furnishes powerful components for cultural accomplishments, and he adds that the same process acts in every individual's development, beginning during the sexual latency period. The energy of infantile sexuality, diverted from sexual use, is conducted to other aims.
Chapter 13
Why does Freud claim thumbsucking is a sexual activity?
Thumbsucking is rhythmic sucking contact with the mouth excluding the purpose of nourishment; it may involve the lip, tongue, or big toe, and is often combined with rubbing sensitive parts like the breast and genitals. Lindner recognized its sexual nature. Freud argues psychoanalytic investigation justifies claiming it as sexual activity and studying infantile sexuality through it, despite objections from pediatrists and neurologists.
Chapter 13
Section 144 cards
What three characters of infantile sexual manifestation does thumbsucking illustrate?
Freud states that thumbsucking shows three essential characters of infantile sexuality: it originates in conjunction with a bodily function important for life (nourishment), it knows no sexual object yet, and it is autoerotic with its sexual aim under the control of an erogenous zone. He assumes these characters hold true for most other activities of the infantile sexual impulse.
Chapter 14
How does Freud explain the child's preference for its own skin over a foreign object?
Freud argues the child prefers its own skin because it is more convenient, because it makes itself independent of the outer world it cannot yet control, and because it thus creates a second, even if inferior, erogenous zone. The inferiority of this region later urges it to seek the same parts—the lips of another person.
Chapter 14
What does Freud claim happens to thumbsucking children if repression comes into play?
Freud claims that if repression comes into play, these children experience disgust for eating and show hysterical vomiting, since the community of the lip-zone lets repression encroach on the nourishment impulse. He adds that many of his female patients with eating disturbances such as hysterical globus, choking sensations, and vomiting were energetic thumbsuckers in infancy.
Chapter 14
How does Freud define an erogenous zone and its relation to bodily regions?
Freud defines an erogenous zone as a portion of skin or mucous membrane where stimuli produce a pleasure of definite quality. While certain regions are predestined, any skin or mucous membrane may assume the function, so the pleasure depends more on the quality of the stimulus than on the bodily region. He notes erogenous and hysterogenous zones show the same characters.
Chapter 14
Section 154 cards
How does Freud explain the erogenous significance of the anal zone in infancy?
Freud argues the anal zone's erogenous significance was originally very large, though psychoanalysis reveals many transformations of its excitations. Infantile intestinal catarrhs produce intensive irritation there, and the zone often retains a fragment of genital irritability for life. He adds that one should not laugh at old medical literature linking hemorrhoidal influences to neurotic states.
Chapter 15
What does a child's retention of feces signify according to Freud?
Freud argues children may hold back fecal masses until violent muscular contractions occur, since passage through the anus irritates the mucous membrane and yields pleasure alongside pain. The stool is treated as an additional body part, the first 'donation' whose disposal expresses pliability and whose retention expresses spite. From this 'donation' idea the child later derives the 'babe' of infantile sexual theories.
Chapter 15
What are the three phases of infantile masturbation Freud distinguishes?
Freud states infantile masturbation should be divided into three phases: the first belongs to the nursing period, the second to the short flourishing period of sexual activity around the fourth year, and only the third corresponds to what is often considered exclusively the onanism of puberty. He notes the second phase leaves the profoundest unconscious impressions, determining character in health and neurotic symptomatology after puberty in illness.
Chapter 15
How does Freud describe the return of infantile masturbation in childhood?
Freud argues sexual excitation from the nursing period returns as a centrally determined tickling demanding onanistic gratification, or as a pollution-like process attaining gratification without action, more frequent in girls and in the second half of childhood. Its symptomatology is poor because the genital apparatus is undeveloped, so signs appear via the urinary apparatus; most bladder disturbances of this period are sexual, and enuresis nocturna (when not epileptic) corresponds to a pollution.
Chapter 15
Section 164 cards
What does Freud say seduction can make a child become?
Freud states that under the influence of seduction a child may become polymorphous-perverse and be misled into all sorts of transgressions, showing the disposition is carried within. Such perversions meet slight resistance because psychic dams like shame, loathing, and morality are not yet erected or only forming, depending on the child's age.
Chapter 16
Does Freud claim seduction is necessary to awaken a child's sexual life?
No. Freud explicitly says it is obvious that no seduction is necessary to awaken the sexual life of the child, and that such awakening may come spontaneously from inner sources. He also concedes he once placed higher value on seductions than on sexual constitution and development, not knowing normal individuals might have the same childhood experiences.
Chapter 16
What two impulses does Freud name as regarding other persons as sexual objects from the start?
Freud names the impulses for looking and showing off, and for cruelty, which manifest somewhat independently of the erogenous zones and only later enter intimate relationship with sexual life. Alongside erogenous activity they appear in infantile years as separate, independent strivings. The child is above all shameless, taking pleasure in displaying its body and especially its sexual organs.
Chapter 16
What practical interest does Freud say starts the child's investigative activity?
Freud argues it is not theoretical but practical interests that start the child's investigation. The threat to its existence through the actual or expected arrival of a new child, and fear of losing care and love, make the child thoughtful and sagacious. Its first problem is not the difference between the sexes but the riddle of where children come from.
Chapter 16
Section 174 cards
What does Freud say the little girl does upon seeing the boy's genital?
Unlike the boy, who tenaciously defends the assumption that all persons have a male genital (the castration complex), the little girl does not refuse the differently formed genital. She is immediately prepared to recognize it, soon becomes envious of the penis, and this envy reaches its highest point in the wish that she also should be a boy.
Chapter 17
How does Freud describe children's birth theories and their fate in memory?
The author reports that children solve the question of where children come from with theories such as coming out of the breast, being cut out of the body, or the navel opening. Children get children by eating something special and are born through the bowel like a passage. Outside analysis these investigations are seldom remembered, having long merged into repression, though their results were uniform.
Chapter 17
What two unknown elements make infantile sexual investigation fail?
Freud states that infantile sexual theories reproduce the child's own sexual constitution and show more understanding than credited, and children often correctly interpret the mother's pregnancy despite the stork fable. But two elements remain unknown: the role of the propagating semen and the female genital opening. These are precisely where the infantile organization is backward, so the investigation ends fruitlessly in renunciation, sometimes with lasting injury to the desire for knowledge.
Chapter 17
What characterizes the oral and sadistic-anal pregenital organizations?
In the oral (cannibalistic) organization, sexual activity is not yet separated from taking nourishment, and the sexual aim is incorporating the object into one's own body, the prototype of identification; thumbsucking is a remnant. In the sadistic-anal organization, contrasts are called active and passive rather than masculine and feminine, with the bowel mucosa as a passive organ; Bleuler named its near-equal opposing impulses ambivalence.
Chapter 17
Section 184 cards
According to Freud, when do the two periods of object selection occur?
The first shift originates between ages three and five and is halted or reversed by the latency period, marked by infantile sexual aims. The second shift begins with puberty and determines the definitive formation of sexual life. The double selection, essentially due to the latency period, becomes significant for disturbances of this terminal state.
Chapter 18
What happens to infantile object selection results after repression sets in?
The results of infantile object selection reach into the later period, preserved or refreshed at puberty, but the repression developing between the two phases makes them unutilizable. The sexual aims become softened into tender streams. Psychoanalysis alone shows that behind tenderness like honoring and esteeming lie the old infantile partial impulses, now useless.
Chapter 18
What three kinds of influences produce sexual excitation through mechanical shaking?
Freud lists influences acting on the sensory apparatus of the vestibular nerves, on the skin, and on deep parts such as muscles and joints. The resulting excitation seems pleasurable, evidenced by children's fondness for passive motion like swinging, and rocking used to put restless children to sleep. Excessive shaking combined with fear, he suggests, produces severe hysterical traumatic neurosis.
Chapter 18
How does muscular activity relate to sexual excitation and the sadistic impulse?
Freud notes children need strong muscular activity and draw pleasure from it, though whether this is sexual may be critically questioned. Still, some report first genital excitement during fighting or wrestling with playmates, where exertion plus skin contact act together. He suggests this infantile fighting-sexual excitement connection may be one source of the sadistic impulse and a determinant of later sexual preference.
Chapter 18
Section 194 cards
According to Freud, what sexual effect can intensive affective processes have on children?
The author argues that all more intensive affective processes, even excitements of a terrifying nature, encroach upon sexuality. In school children, fear of an examination or exertion on a difficult task can trigger sexual manifestations, such as an urge to touch the genitals or a pollution-like process. The sexually exciting influence of painful affects like fear, shuddering, and horror is felt by many throughout life.
Chapter 19
What does Freud claim about mental application and sexual excitement?
The author argues that mental application or concentration of attention on an intellectual accomplishment often results in simultaneous sexual excitement, especially in youthful persons but also in older ones. He regards this as the only justified basis for the otherwise doubtful etiology of nervous disturbances attributed to mental overwork.
Chapter 19
What two factors does Freud blame for the lack of certainty in his general propositions?
The author holds two factors responsible: first, the novelty of this manner of investigation, and second, that the nature of sexual excitement is entirely unfamiliar to us. He states it seems impossible at present to shed more light on these general propositions, though he still discusses two points promising future prospects.
Chapter 19
What does Freud mean by the paths of opposite influences and sublimation?
The author argues that the connecting ways from other functions to sexuality must also be passable in reverse. For example, if the lip zone lets sexual gratification arise during feeding, disturbance of that zone can also disturb feeding; similarly, sexual excitement may influence voluntary attention. He suggests these same paths accomplish the sublimation of sexuality, though little is definitely known about them.
Chapter 19
Section 203 cards
What did direct child observation confirm about Freud's psychoanalytic conclusions on infantile sexuality?
The author argues that assertions about infantile sexuality made in 1905 rested mainly on psychoanalytic investigations of adults, since direct observation of children was then limited to individual indications. Later analysis of nervous disease in childhood allowed direct understanding, and the author points with satisfaction that direct observation fully confirmed the conclusions drawn from psychoanalysis, furnishing good evidence for that method's reliability.
Chapter 20
What did the analysis of a five-year-old boy's phobia teach that psychoanalysis had not prepared for?
The author states that the 'Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy' taught something new: sexual symbolism—representing the sexual by non-sexual objects and relations—reaches back to the years when the child is first learning to master language. The same analysis, with Bell's work, also showed that children of three to five can evince very strong object-selection accompanied by strong affects.
Chapter 20
How does Freud describe the onset of puberty and the differing development of the sexes?
With puberty, changes transform infantile sexual life into its normal form: the previously preponderantly autoerotic impulse now finds a sexual object, and partial impulses and erogenous zones subordinate themselves to the primacy of the genital zone. Because the new sexual aim assigns different functions to the sexes, their developments part company—the man's more consistent and easier to understand, while in the woman a form of regression appears.
Chapter 20
Section 214 cards
What new sexual aim does the man acquire at puberty, and how does it relate to pleasure?
The new sexual aim is the discharging of sexual products. Freud says this is not contradictory to the earlier aim of obtaining pleasure; rather, the highest amount of pleasure is connected with this final act. The sexual impulse thus enters the service of propagation and becomes, in his words, so to say altruistic.
Chapter 21
How does Freud classify all morbid disturbances of sexual life?
Freud states that all morbid disturbances of the sexual life may justly be considered as inhibitions of development. He compares this to other cases where new connections and compositions form in complicated mechanisms: if the new order of things does not get itself established, morbid disturbance is possible.
Chapter 21
In what three ways can the sexual apparatus be set in motion by stimuli?
Freud says observation teaches that stimuli can affect the apparatus in three ways: from the outer world through the familiar erogenous zones; from the inner organic world by ways still to be investigated; and from the psychic life, which merely represents a depository of external impressions and a receptacle of inner excitations. All three produce sexual excitation with psychic and somatic signs.
Chapter 21
What distinguishes fore-pleasure from end-pleasure in Freud's account?
Fore-pleasure comes from excitation of the erogenous zones and is the same as that furnished by the infantile sexual impulse, though on a reduced scale; it increases tension and supplies motor energy. End-pleasure, or gratification pleasure, is new, probably tied to determinations first appearing at puberty, produced through discharge, highest in intensity, and it temporarily extinguishes the tension of the libido.
Chapter 21
Section 224 cards
According to Freud, what danger arises from excessive fore-pleasure?
The author argues that too much fore-pleasure with too little tension shortens the sexual process: the motive power for continuing escapes, and the preparatory act replaces the normal sexual aim. This is more likely when the erogenous zone or partial impulse already gave unusual pleasure in infantile life; with added fixation factors, a compulsion results, and many perversions are merely a lingering at a preparatory act.
Chapter 22
Why does Freud reject the idea that sexual tension comes from pleasure itself?
He argues the supposition is improbable and untenable: during the greatest pleasure, connected with voiding sexual substance, there is no production of tension but rather a removal of all tension. Therefore pleasure and sexual tension can be only indirectly connected, and the origin and nature of the tension remain unexplained by that route.
Chapter 22
What evidence does Freud cite linking sexual tension to accumulated sexual products?
He cites nocturnal pollution in continence, where discharge occurs at changing but not capricious intervals, interpreted as tension from accumulated semen taking the short hallucinatory road. He also cites exhaustibility of the sexual mechanism: without a stock of semen the sexual act is impossible and erogenous zones lack excitability, so a certain amount of tension is itself necessary for their excitability.
Chapter 22
Why does Freud say the sexual glands have been overestimated?
Castrated males sometimes retain libido despite the operation, though the opposite is usually the rule; C. Rieger notes loss of male germ glands in mature age exerts no new psychic influence. Removal of ovaries likewise cannot do away with sexual character. Castration before puberty comes nearer the aim, but inhibition of development and other factors must also be considered.
Chapter 22
Section 233 cards
What happens to object libido, and what is the ego-libido's role?
Object libido becomes accessible to psychoanalysis only when psychic energy is employed on sexual objects. It concentrates and fixes on objects, leaves them for others, and directs sexual activity. It can be withdrawn, held in tension, and taken back into the ego, becoming ego-libido again—called narcissistic libido. The narcissistic libido is the great reservoir sending energy to objects and drawing it back, the primitive state of first childhood.
Chapter 23
What does Freud claim about the libido's gender and bisexuality?
The author argues the libido is regularly and lawfully masculine in nature, whether in man or woman, and its object may be either. He notes male and female dispositions are recognizable in infantile life, with repression tendencies greater in girls, yet autoerotic activity is the same in both sexes. Freud holds bisexuality as decisive, believing observed sexual manifestations in men and women cannot be understood without it.
Chapter 23
What happens to clitoris excitation as the girl becomes a woman?
The clitoris is the chief erogenous zone in the female child, homologous to the male penis. Puberty brings the girl a new wave of repression concerning clitoris sexuality—part of male sexual life sinking into repression. The clitoris then conducts excitement to adjacent female parts, like pine wood setting harder wood aflame. Delay causes temporary anesthesia; permanent if the clitoris zone refuses to yield excitability.
Chapter 23
Section 244 cards
According to Freud, what must happen for a woman to change her leading sexual zone?
The author argues that erogenous excitability must be transferred from the clitoris to the vagina; if this succeeds, the woman changes her leading zone for future sexual activity, while the man retains his from childhood. Freud claims the main determinants of women's preference for neuroses, especially hysteria, lie in this change of leading zone and in the repression of puberty.
Chapter 24
Why does Freud call object-finding a re-finding?
The author argues that the infant's first sexual object is the mother's breast, outside its own body, and this object is later lost as the impulse becomes autoerotic. After the latency period the original relation resumes. Freud states the object-finding is really a re-finding, and that the suckling at the mother's breast has become the model for every amour.
Chapter 24
How does Freud explain children's fear of strangers and darkness?
The author argues that children's fear is originally an expression of missing the beloved person. They meet strangers with fear and fear the dark because they cannot see the beloved person, calming when they can grasp that person's hand. Freud says only children with excessive or prematurely developed sexual impulse, or one made exigent by pampering, absorb frightening stories.
Chapter 24
What is the incest barrier and why does society demand it?
The author argues the incest barrier is a moral prescription excluding from object selection the beloved person of infancy or blood relation. It is above all a demand of cultural society, which must guard against the family absorbing interests needed for higher social units, so society uses every means to loosen authoritative family ties, especially in the boy. Overcoming incestuous phantasies accompanies breaking from parental authority.
Chapter 24
Section 252 cards
According to Freud, what happens to the libido of a person who falls ill after an unhappy love affair?
Freud states that when a previously healthy person becomes sick after an unhappy love affair, the mechanism of the disease can be explained as a return of the libido to the persons preferred in infancy. This illustrates the significance of incestuous object-selection in psychosexual disturbances.
Chapter 25
What does Freud say about the first serious love of young men and women?
Freud argues that even those who escape incestuous fixation are influenced by it. The first serious love of a young man is often for a mature woman, and a girl's for an older man with authority—persons who revive the images of mother and father. Object selection generally follows these prototypes.
Chapter 25
Section 264 cards
What did Freud claim about the sexual life of infants and its disputed existence?
The author argues it is regrettable that infantile sexual life has been disputed and that observed childhood sexual manifestations were called abnormal. He holds that the child brings germs of sexual activity into the world, enjoying sexual gratification even while feeding and later seeking it through thumbsucking. This childhood sexuality does not develop like other functions but first merges into the latency period from age three to five.
Chapter 26
How does Freud describe the sexual impulse of childhood?
The author states the childhood sexual impulse is objectless or autoerotic. Excitations arise from many sources, including adapted sensible stimulation of erogenous zones (any skin region or sensory organ may serve, though certain distinguished zones are assured from the beginning) and as a by-product of many processes, especially strong emotional excitements even of a painful nature. These excitations do not yet unite but pursue their aim individually, that aim being merely gaining a certain pleasure.
Chapter 26
What two criteria of puberty did Freud select for study?
The author selected two criteria: the subordination of all other sources of sexual feeling to the primacy of the genital zones, and the process of object finding. Both are already developed in childhood. The first is accomplished through the mechanism of utilizing fore-pleasure, whereby other independent sexual acts become preparatory acts for the new sexual aim, the voiding of sexual products. He also notes that becoming a woman requires a new repression abolishing a piece of infantile masculinity.
Chapter 26
What did Freud report about syphilis in the fathers of his neurotic patients?
The author reports that in more than half of severe cases of hysteria, compulsion neuroses, and similar conditions treated by psychotherapy, he positively demonstrated that the fathers had gone through a syphilitic attack before marriage, suffering tabes, general paresis, or a definite history of lues. The later-neurotic children showed no signs of hereditary lues, so the abnormal sexual constitution was considered the last offshoot of luetic heredity. He expressly denies making this a regular or indispensable cause.
Chapter 26
Section 274 cards
What three final outcomes can abnormal sexual dispositions lead to, according to Freud?
Freud lists three outcomes: a perverse sexual life if abnormal dispositions keep their proportion and strengthen with maturity; a psychoneurosis if powerful components undergo repression (not suspension) and are driven into symptoms; or sublimation, where excitations are discharged into other spheres, producing increased psychic capacity and possibly artistic activity.
Chapter 27
How does Freud describe the relationship between neurosis and perversion?
Freud states that the neurosis is the negative of the perversion. He notes perversion and hysteria can appear distributed across different sexes of the same family, and that in one person a perversion may be relieved by a neurosis after a repressive change, usually before puberty but sometimes much later, without extinction of the old feelings.
Chapter 27
What does Freud mean by sublimation and reaction-formation in character formation?
Sublimation discharges powerful sexual excitations into other spheres, yielding increased psychic capacity and forming a source of artistic activity; complete or incomplete sublimation shows a blending of productive ability, perversion, and neurosis. A sub-species is suppression through reaction-formation, beginning in the infantile latency period and continuing through life; Freud argues character is largely built from sexual excitations fixed since infancy and won through sublimation.
Chapter 27
How do constitutional and accidental factors cooperate in sexual development?
Freud argues the two cooperate rather than exclude each other: the constitutional factor must wait for experiences to bring it to the surface, while the occasional needs constitutional support to become effective. He imagines an etiological group where declining intensity of one factor is balanced by rising intensity of others, and denies no extremes exist. He also gives early childhood experiences preference among occasional factors.
Chapter 27
Section 284 cards
According to Freud, what does the timing of an impulse's appearance versus its counterstream affect?
Freud argues that whether a component impulse appears earlier or later than its counterstream matters, because repression cannot be made retrogressive; a temporal deviation in the composition of components regularly changes the result. He also notes that intensely appearing impulses may end surprisingly fast, as with the heterosexual attachment of later manifest homosexuals.
Chapter 28
What psychic factor does Freud add to explain why premature sexual impressions persist in neurotics and perverts?
Freud posits a heightened adhesion or fixedness of sexual-life impressions, of unknown origin, which must be added to other facts for later neurotics and perverts. The same premature manifestations in others do not impress deeply enough to repeat compulsively. He suggests part of the explanation may lie in the preponderance of memory traces over recent impressions, which grows with personal culture.
Chapter 28
How does Freud contrast the role of childhood sexual life in lower versus higher stages of culture?
The author argues that because culture and free sexual development stand in opposition, the child's sexual life matters very little for later life in lower stages of culture and civilization, but very much in higher ones. He ties this to the preponderance of memory traces, which grows with personal culture, contrasting the 'savage' as 'the unfortunate child of the moment.'
Chapter 28
What four factors does Freud say cause deviations from normal sexual life established in childhood?
Freud lists the responsiveness of the constitution, prematurity, the quality of heightened adhesion, and accidental excitement of the sexual impulse through outside influence, such as seductions by other children or adults. These impressions, received during the allegedly sexually free period of childhood, may become fixed as a permanent disturbance in later neurotics and perverts.
Chapter 28
Section 294 cards
According to Freud, how does the incest barrier relate to human heredity and individual development?
The author argues the incest barrier probably belongs to humanity's historical acquisitions and, like other moral taboos, must be fixed in many individuals through organic heredity. Yet psychoanalytic studies show how intensively each individual struggles with incest temptations during development, frequently putting them into phantasies and even into reality.
Chapter 29
How does Freud explain positive perversions in relation to infantile tendencies and therapy?
The author argues positive perversions are attributable not only to fixation of infantile tendencies but also to regression to these tendencies when other paths of the sexual stream are misplaced. Because of this, positive perversions are also accessible to psychoanalytic therapy, citing works by Sadger, Ferenczi, and Brill.
Chapter 29
What happens when a normal sexual stream begins at puberty but is internally weak?
Freud states one often sees a normal sexual stream begin at puberty, but owing to its inner weakness it breaks down at the first outer hindrance and then changes, through regression, to perverse fixation.
Chapter 29
What does Freud say about the clitoris and the change of leading erogenous zone in women?
The clitoris is the chief erogenous zone in the female child, and its sexuality is part of male sexual life. At puberty clitoris sexuality is repressed in the girl, and the leading zone must transfer to the vagina; this change of leading zone, a mark of womanhood, determines woman's preference for neuroses.
Chapter 29
Section 304 cards
What two groups make up the etiological group in Freud's index?
The etiological group is composed of the dispositional group and the definitive group. Freud uses this pairing to organize the causes behind sexual phenomena, separating predisposing factors from the decisive ones. The index entry cross-references page 97, where the composition of the etiological group is discussed.
Chapter 30
What does Freud say about fore-pleasure and the normal sexual aim?
The author argues that fore-pleasure is the excitation of erogenous zones, and that its mechanism contains a danger to attaining the normal sexual aim. Too much fore-pleasure endangers reaching that aim. Fore-pleasure is the same as that furnished by the infantile sexual impulse, and its connection with infantile life is strengthened by its pathogenic role.
Chapter 30
How does Freud describe the libido's character in both man and woman?
The author argues that the libido is regularly of a masculine character in both man and woman, and that its object may be either a man or a woman. He also calls the ego-libido the narcissistic libido and notes its greater significance in psychotic disturbances. The libido is described as a force of variable quantity capable of measuring sexual processes.
Chapter 30
What does the index say about fear in children and neurotics?
Infantile fear only expresses the child's missing beloved person, and the fear of being alone is alike in child and neurotic. The fear of a grown-up neurotic is like that of children. Only children with an excessive sexual impulse are disposed to fear, and fear's influence can be sexually exciting.
Chapter 30
Section 313 cards
According to the index, what is the mechanism of many perversions?
The index states that lingering at an intermediary relation, specifically at a preparatory act of the sexual process, is the mechanism of many perversions. This links perversion to fixation at an early stage rather than to a wholly separate impulse, tying perversions to normal sexual processes as additions or exaggerations.
Chapter 31
What does the index say about masculine and feminine?
The index equates masculine and feminine with activity and passivity, and states that in a biological or sociological sense there is no pure masculine or feminine. It adds that the biological significance of masculine and feminine permits the clearest determination, and that the sexual development of man is more consistent and easier to understand.
Chapter 31
What does the index say about object finding?
The index states object finding is consummated on the psychic side at anatomical puberty and is really a re-finding of the mother. It notes two paths shown by psychoanalysis, that object selection must avoid the beloved person of infancy, is first accomplished in imagination, and follows prototypes of parents, with incestuous selection significant in psychosexual disturbances.
Chapter 31
Section 324 cards
What does Freud say premature spontaneous sexual development does to the latency period?
The author argues that premature spontaneous sexual development breaks through, shortens, or suspends the infantile latency period. This prematurity can then become a cause of disturbances by provoking sexual manifestations with the character of perversions, and it runs parallel with intellectual prematurity.
Chapter 32
According to Freud, what is the most striking process of puberty?
The author states that the most striking process of puberty is the growth of the genitals. Puberty is also when the primacy of the genitals is attained, though it is already sketched out in infantile life, and it marks the last phase of sexual organization directed toward propagation.
Chapter 32
What does Freud claim about repression in relation to sexual life?
The author argues repression is not a suspension but a special process cutting off conscious discharge of wishes. Its inner determinations are unknown, and its effect cannot be made retrogressive. The result of repression can be an almost normal sexual life, while repression of certain powerful components also occurs.
Chapter 32
What does Freud say about seduction as a cause of sexual activity in childhood?
The author argues seduction is not necessary to awaken the sexual life of the child and does not explain the original relations of the sexual impulse. Seduction, treating the child as a sexual object, is described as an outer cause of the return of sexual activity in childhood, and it does not necessarily produce inverts.
Chapter 32
Section 334 cards
What does Freud identify as the chief erogenous zone in the female child?
The author identifies the clitoris as the chief erogenous zone in the female child. At puberty the sexuality of the clitoris is repressed in the girl, and erogenous excitability is transferred from the clitoris to the vagina, a transference that belongs among the transformations of puberty.
Chapter 33
How does Freud define sublimation and its relation to reaction formation?
The author argues sublimation is a deviation of sexual motive powers from sexual aims toward higher ends, such as artistic sublimation. He holds that sublimation and reaction formation are two diverse processes, though reaction formation is linked with sublimation. The inner processes of sublimation, he states, are totally unknown.
Chapter 33
What role does shame play in sexual life according to this index?
Shame is described as a force opposed to the peeping mania and as a resistance opposed to the libido. It also acts as a force exerting an inhibition on sexual life. Voyeurs and exhibitionists are cited as examples of overcoming loathing, showing how such resisting forces can be surmounted.
Chapter 33
How do sports and intellectual work relate to sexual activity in this text?
Sports are said to turn youth away from sexual activity, while intellectual work is listed as a source of sexual excitement. The text also notes that the germinating sexuality affects children's behavior in school and that all intensive affective processes encroach upon sexuality.
Chapter 33
Section 342 cards
What does the notice say about coverage of foreign journals and books?
The notice states that all the leading foreign psychoanalytic journals are regularly abstracted, and that all books dealing with psychoanalysis are reviewed. This indicates the publication aimed to survey international psychoanalytic literature, not just original articles, for its readership.
Chapter 34
Which article in Volume IV addresses homosexuality, and who wrote it?
Volume IV lists "The Genesis and Meaning of Homosexuality" by Trigant Burrow. It appears among other entries such as William A. White's "The Mechanism of Transference," Isador H. Coriat's "The Future of Psychoanalysis," and John E. Lind's "Phylogenetic Elements in the Psychoses of the Negro."
Chapter 34
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Text used: Project Gutenberg eBook #14969 (Public domain in the United States). Generated from the full text; cards paraphrase the source.
Version: Public domain edition. Retrieved 2026-10-31. Cards reviewed 2026-10-31.
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