Three Essays on The Theory of Sexuality (1905) was Freud's most important and original contribution to psychology after The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). They were written simultaneously with Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, and cover examples of normal and abnormal sexuality, provided by Freud's patients. Relating all illness - hysterical or neurotical - to sexual matters, was a revolutionary idea, which Freud supports as he discusses the aberrations and how these relate to vital childhood years, in which sexual manifestations are very important. Freud finishes with a look at how sexual instinct changes from childhood in puberty, but acknowledges that within his theory the division of responsibility between constitution (heredity) and life experiences remains unclear.
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
By Sigmund Freud
- Table of contents
- Summary
- Biography
- Background
- Psychodynamic Theory and Psychoanalysis
- SYNOPSIS
- I The Sexual Aberrations
- Introduction
- Deviations in Respect of the Sexual Object
- a) Inversion
- b) Sexually Immature Persons And Animals As Sexual Objects
- c) Significance of Other Regions of the Body
- d) Fixations of Preliminary Sexual Aims
- e) The Sexual Instinct in Neurotics
- II Infantile Sexuality
- Introduction
- 1) The Period of Sexual Latency in Childhood and its Interruptions
- 2) The Manifestations Of Infantile Sexuality
- 3) The Sexual Aim of Infantile Sexuality
- 4) Masturbatory Sexual Manifestations
- 5) The Sexual Researches of Childhood
- 6) The Phases of Development of the Sexual Organization
- 7) The Sources of Infantile Sexuality
- III The Transformations of Puberty
- Introduction
- 1) The Primacy of the Sexual Zone and Fore-Pleasure
- 2) The Problem of Sexual Excitation
- 3) The Libido Theory
- 4) The Differentiation Between Men and Women
- 5) The Finding of an Object
- Freud's Summary
- Critical Approaches
- Sample Questions
- Further Reading