In 1905, Sigmund Freud had psychology's equivalent of 1993 for Steven Spielberg, producing not ONE epochal, game-changing masterpiece but TWO. The Interpretation of Dreams is more famous if only for title and content, but Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality may be the most significant in terms of understanding how the human mind works. He certainly could never have created the extensive work on the Oedipus complex, the ego, id, and superego, and the pleasure principle without understanding sex and the libido. The ideas in the essays have been adapted, modified, or rejected more often than not in the past century, but like most of Freud, the ideas at their core are as sound as a church bell on Sunday morning.
The essays were the last and largest part of Chicago's assigned readings of Freud, and also the one I was most curious to read. I've mentioned this at least once on the blog before (see August 4th), but, two months shy of 25, I am a virgin with very little practical experience with women, let alone romantic experience. However, my recent breakthroughs in my mental well-being have finally allowed me to not just accept this but try to move forward with the right mind and open heart I need. That being said, I wondered if Freud could tell me anything about myself, to say nothing of sex in general.
One of the key points I came away hit me early on in the first essay, "Sexual Aberrations," when Freud describes inversion/homosexuality. His tone and vocabulary when discussing why gays and lesbians exist, debating whether or not the condition was innate, were somewhat distressing, until I read his equivalency of homosexuality with adopting the character of the opposite sex—the stereotypical gender role. It took longer than it should have, but that passage convinced me Freud's ideas in defining the normal sexual life came not from a purely psychological insight but from the cultural mores and norms of his time. I have a feeling Freud deep-down had more ideas contradictory to the status quo, for he points out the ideal man-boy love of classical Greece and Rome as fostering civilization and flat-out acknowledges homosexuality is not the mark of illness or other abnormalities. But as a man walking a thin line in this essay already, he might have chosen not to be too explicit in that case. He WOULD get explicit on a subject common to all of us, straight, bi, or gay, the sexuality of children and adolescents and how it shapes us, which in the big picture was much more important, needed to be heard. His refusal to call homosexuality a disease was excellent for the time. (I also believe future problems involving the psychological classification came from Freud's unfortunate general terminology: as with his straight subjects, he keeps using the word "choice" in trying to analyze the gay mind.)
The sexuality of children makes sense because there is an innate sexual instinct within all of us. Freud made this discovery when studying homosexuals—another reason for overall importance—when he realized that many children develop "gay" attachments before eventually becoming "straight," while others undergo the reverse, and other stay the same for life. A child does not have a strong ego and is more swayed by the id, the almost infinite reservoir of all instincts and desires. They want what they want and are willing to try anything because they don't understand why they want it. As they age, and this is crucial in the latency period when real senses of self and other emerge, the ego grows stronger with each new perception, and eventually their more confident self-knowledge allows them to articulate in their minds and hearts what they TRULY want. Intimacy is, after all, a fusion of ids and egos alike, an overwhelming desire matched with intellectual knowledge of suitability.
"Disgust," one of the moral senses developing from the superego: a man is more than willing to kiss a woman but would not want to use her toothbrush despite little difference in relative cleanliness of the oral cavities. The mouth is a very personal part of the body…sex is as natural and important to sustaining life as food, hence our eventual idea of oral pleasures involving the part of the body from which food is ingested. We put great importance on the personal parts and set limits for ourselves, so I have to believe that the intense pleasure of a kiss comes from more than touching another mucous membrane on an etorogenous zone. In its own way, a kiss breaks a taboo, and that's a thrill.
Just as first loves endure, Freud says, so do the original impressions we make during childhood, when every perception allows the ego and superego to grow and reach more equilibrium with the id, thus developing the human personality. These strong impressions from our sexual learning curve result in the fetish: a search for a substitute sexual aim when the actual is unavailable, a substitute which can take on all the power of the primary. When we're young, we come to associate certain characteristics with the gender we'll ultimately be attracted to, and constant reinforcement makes these characteristics become almost indivisible with our ultimate desire, so youth does engender fetish. I know this to be true, and am unashamed to say it now, for I have two fetishes, both of which relate to my growing up in Youngstown, when I was reading everything I could get my hands on and absorbing a greater knowledge of the world.
There are, one, a group of physical objects, and two, a certain physical condition, the first absorbed from my mother's magazines, the second from copious Saturday morning cartoon watching, which to this day touch a part of my sexual instinct. I NEVER actively seek these visions, nor do I ever encourage them, at least not since my days of sexual immaturity which were cleared up by age sixteen. However, they are there, I know they are there, and they probably always will be there. This is acknowledgment of parts of my character, not an invitation or suggestion. It is useless to deny them unless they naturally fade away.
No comments:
Post a Comment