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some banal emotional disturbance, to a conflict in the center of which there is no sexual
interest. Psychoanalysis will regularly show that it is the sexual components of the
conflict which make the disease possible by withdrawing the psychic processes from
normal adjustment.
Neurosis and Perversion. A great part of the opposition to my assertion is explained
by the fact that the sexuality from which I deduce the psychoneurotic symptoms is
thought of as coincident with the normal sexual impulse. But psychoanalysis teaches us
better than this. It shows that the symptoms do not by any means result at the expense
only of the so called normal sexual impulse (at least not exclusively or preponderately),
but they represent the converted expression of impulses which in a broader sense might
be designated as perverse if they could manifest themselves directly in phantasies and
acts without deviating from consciousness. The symptoms are therefore partially formed
at the cost of abnormal sexuality. The neurosis is, so to say, the negative of the
perversion.[25]
The sexual impulse of the psychoneurotic shows all the aberrations which we have
studied as variations of the normal and as manifestations of morbid sexual life.
(a) In all the neurotics without exception we find feelings of inversion in the unconscious
psychic life, fixation of libido on persons of the same sex. It is impossible, without a deep
and searching discussion, adequately to appreciate the significance of this factor for the
formation of the picture of the disease; I can only assert that the unconscious propensity
to inversion is never wanting and is particularly of immense service in explaining male
hysteria.[26]
(b) All the inclinations to anatomical transgression can be demonstrated in
psychoneurotics in the unconscious and as symptom-creators. Of special frequency and
intensity are those which impart to the mouth and the mucous membrane of the anus the
rôle of genitals.
(c) The partial desires which usually appear in contrasting pairs play a very prominent
rôle among the symptom-creators in the psychoneuroses. We have learned to know them
as carriers of new sexual aims, such as peeping mania, exhibitionism, and the actively
and passively formed impulses of cruelty. The contribution of the last is indispensable for
the understanding of the morbid nature of the symptoms; it almost regularly controls
some portion of the social behavior of the patient. The transformation of love into hatred,
of tenderness into hostility, which is characteristic of a large number of neurotic cases
and apparently of all cases of paranoia, takes place by means of the union of cruelty with
the libido.
The interest in these deductions will be more heightened by certain peculiarities of the
diagnosis of facts.
±. There is nothing in the unconscious streams of thought of the neuroses which would
correspond to an inclination towards fetichism; a circumstance which throws light on the
psychological peculiarity of this well understood perversion.
². Wherever any such impulse is found in the unconscious which can be paired with a
contrasting one, it can regularly be demonstrated that the latter, too, is effective. Every
active perversion is here accompanied by its passive counterpart. He who in the
unconscious is an exhibitionist is at the same time a voyeur, he who suffers from sadistic
feelings as a result of repression will also show another reinforcement of the symptoms
from the source of masochistic tendencies. The perfect concurrence with the behavior of
the corresponding positive perversions is certainly very noteworthy. In the picture of the
disease, however, the preponderant rôle is played by either one or the other of the
opposing tendencies.
³. In a pronounced case of psychoneurosis we seldom find the development of one single
perverted impulse; usually there are many and regularly there are traces of all
perversions. The individual impulse, however, on account of its intensity, is independent
of the development of the others, but the study of the positive perversions gives us the
accurate counterpart to it.
PARTIAL IMPULSES AND EROGENOUS ZONES
Keeping in mind what we have learned from the examination of the positive and negative
perversions, it becomes quite obvious that they can be referred to a number of "partial
impulses," which are not, however, primary but are subject to further analysis. By an
"impulse" we can understand in the first place nothing but the psychic representative of a
continually flowing internal somatic source of excitement, in contradistinction to the
"stimulus" which is produced by isolated excitements coming from without. The impulse
is thus one of the concepts marking the limits between the psychic and the physical. The
simplest and most obvious assumption concerning the nature of the impulses would be
that in themselves they possess no quality but are only taken into account as a measure of
the demand for effort in the psychic life. What distinguishes the impulses from one
another and furnishes them with specific attributes is their relation to their somatic
sources and to their aims. The source of the impulse is an exciting process in an organ,
and the immediate aim of the impulse lies in the elimination of this organic stimulus.
Another preliminary assumption in the theory of the impulse which we cannot relinquish,
states that the bodily organs furnish two kinds of excitements which are determined by
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