Page:Freud - Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses.djvu/205

Rh the unexpected result, that the sexual histories of their childhood need not differ essentially from the infantile life of neurotics, and that especially the rôle of seduction is the same in the former, so the accidental influences receded still more in comparison to the moments of "repression" (which I began to use instead of "defense"). It really does not depend on the sexual excitements which an individual experiences in his childhood but above all on his reactions towards these experiences, and whether these impressions responded with " repression " or not. It could be shown that spontaneous sexual manifestations of childhood were frequently interrupted in the course of development by an act of repression. The sexual maturity of neurotic individuals thus regularly brings with it a fragment of "sexual repression" from childhood which manifests itself in the requirements of real life. Psychoanalysis of hysterical individuals show that the malady is the result of the conflict between the libido and the sexual repression, and that their symptoms have the value of a compromise between both psychic streams.

Without a comprehensive discussion of my conception of repression I could not explain any further this part of the theory. It suffices to refer here to my "Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory," where I have made an attempt to throw some light on the somatic processes in which the essence of sexuality is to be sought. I have stated there that the constitutional sexual predisposition of the child is more irregularly multifarious than one would expect, that it deserves to be called "polymorphous-perverse," and that from this predisposition the so called normal behavior of the sexual functions results through a repression of certain components. By referring to the infantile character of sexuality, I could form a simple connection among normal, perversions, and neurosis. The normal resulted through the repression of certain partial impulses and components of the infantile predisposition, and through the subordination of the rest under the primacy of the genital zones for the service of the function of procreation. The perversions corresponded to disturbances of this connection due to a superior compulsive-like development of some of the partial impulses, while the neurosis could be traced to a marked repression of the libidinous strivings. As almost all perversive impulses of the infantile predisposition are