Sigmund Freud who was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, i.e., a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies in the psyche founded the Three essays on the theory of sexuality, also known as the Three contributions to the theory of sex, in 1905. According to Freud, sexuality starts in the infant stage and contributes to personality development which changes over time with maturity. Freud believed that human life is composed of tension and pleasure. He describes this tension as a product of sexual libido built up within the body, and the solution to that tension is pleasure, i.e., sexual release. The three essays on the theory of sexuality by Freud were the second most important work. These three essays on the theory of sexuality mainly focused on the childhood period of individuals.
The three essays on the theory of sexuality are about sexual aberrations, infantile sexuality, and the transformation of puberty. Sigmund Freud founded these three essays in 1905, and he re-edited this over the course of his life, and the last edition was published in 1949. In the last stage of the three essays, the concept of penis envy, castration anxiety, and the Oedipus complex is also included.
The first essay, which is the sexual aberrations, discusses several perversions to challenge commonplace ideas about human sexuality. First, infants and children do not have sex lives or sexual pleasures because sexual impulses begin with puberty. Secondly, sexual instincts are automatically directed to the opposite sex and procreation. Freud discusses Inversion or homosexuality to demonstrate that sexual instincts do not carry an innate sexual object. Freud finds several theories on the inversion of his time and finds out several problems with all of them.
Next, under the category of sexual aim, he describes the perversions proper, like fetishes for feet or other body parts. Freud concludes that the sexual instinct is of different types and nonunitary, but its primitive and partial components combine or amalgamate to create several macro-level sexualities. In some cases, the result of amalgamation is normal, and in some other cases, it is called perversion.
From here, Freud turns to neurotics and their sexual lives. According to him, sexual instincts are key to the creation and maintenance of symptoms of neurotics, as sexual libido is what charges or gives energy to neurotic's symptoms. Freud said that an impact on the sex life of the neurotics is nothing more than the experience of their symptoms.
In the second essay, i.e., infantile sexuality, Freud turns to early childhood, which plays a pivotal role in developing adult sexual preferences and human psychological development. The nature of infantile sexuality is fundamentally autoerotic and polymorphously perverse. Freud argues that a wide variety of neurotic and normal psychological structures emerge from the process of psychosexual development that begins with oral satisfaction and thumb sucking and proceeds through the so-called erotogenic zones, which involve anal, arriving finally at genital sexuality. It was regrettable that the existence of sexual life in infancy has been disputed and that the sexual manifestations often observed in children have been elaborated as abnormal occurrences. It seems like the child brings germs of sexual activity into the world. Sigmund Freud discusses the key idea: the incest barrier, i.e., an apparatus for ego defense against incestuous desires, and penis envy, i.e., the young girls feel deprived and envious that they do not have a penis. This feeling leads to a desire for access to a penis and normal heterosexual development in this part. During infancy, the erogenous zone of the genitals begins to make noticeable, either by the fact that, like any other erogenous zone, it furnishes gratification through a suitable sensible stimulus or because, in some incomprehensible way, the gratification from other sources causes the same time the sexual excitement which has a special connection with the genital zone.
In the third and final essay, i.e., the transformation of puberty, Freud describes the changes ushered in by puberty following the latent stage- which starts around the age of five. In a normal case, the adolescent starts showing an attraction towards the opposite sex and begins to break away from the emotionally incestuous confines of the family unit. While some adolescents make the transition to adult sexuality in a normal way, others do so differently, leading to what is known as perversions and to several other neurotic formations that may not at first seem like they are related to sexual life. A sharp differentiation can be seen in the character of males and females at puberty. Sexual inhibition development can be seen earlier in the little girl than in the little boy. The chief erogenous zone in the female is the clitoris which is homologous to the male penis. Puberty leads a boy toward the advancement of libido and distinguishes itself from the girl through a new wave of repression, which especially concerns clitoris sexuality. During the transition period of puberty, the bodily and psychic processes of development proceed side by side, but separately, until the breakthrough of an intense psychic love stimulus for the innervation of the genitals, the normally demanded unification of the erotic function is established.
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that Sigmund Freud founded three essays on the theory of sexuality which concerns childhood sexual life. The three essays involve sexual aberrations, infantile sexuality, and the transformation of puberty. These three essays describe the development of the sexual lives of the child from infancy to adolescence. Professionals criticized Freud for overemphasizing sex in his three essays on the theory of sexuality.
Physics
Biology
Chemistry
Mathematics
Economics
Psychology
Environmental Science
Social Studies
Fashion Studies
English