The Polymorphously Perverse
If some of Freud reads as if it were trapped within the repressive apparatus of its era: ie the bourgeoise family, much else of Freud reads as if it were written this afternoon, if not arriving from an as-of-yet unfamiliar tomorrow. This is true in particular for the Three Essays on Sexuality (1905).
There is probably no topic with more cognitive dissonance, let alone cognitive estrangement, than the topic of infantile sexuality. The very term seems like a charged oxymoron to the square mind of the well-defended adult. Indeed, a great part of Freud’s argument is that our psyche is structured so that we cannot think about the erotic nature of an infant. It is surrounded by our own primal repression, not to mention the tangled thicket of taboo.
This is why the three essays reads as if they were written in the future. Its message only gaining clarity as the witchy power of nachträglichkeit is allowed to unfold. That is, we can only accept the erotic experience of an infant sexuality retroactively, refracted through the dark star of our own infant amnesia (Laplanche, 2011).
Within the bewildering topic of infantile sexuality lies the weird phenomena of the polymorphously perverse (Freud, 1905, p. 190). This phenomena alone has enough gravitational force to bend much of the discourse on gender, on sex, on the family, completely out of square. In short, the polymorphously perverse is the “seduced” infant’s uncanny ability to turn any part of their body into an erogenous zone. the most classic example of this, as depicted in Lacan’s graph of desire, is that of the nook; the simulated nipple and the comfort of sucking alone.
Freud would later sum up the polymorphously perverse and the discoveries of the Three Essays in this neat paragraph:
“The sexual instinct does not originally serve the purposes of reproduction at all, but has as its aim the gaining of particular kinds of pleasure. It manifests itself in this way in human infancy, during which it attains its aim of gaining pleasure not only from the genitals but from other parts of the body (the erotogenic zones), and can therefore disregard any objects other than these convenient ones. We call this stage the stage of auto-erotism, and the child's upbringing has, in our view, the task of restricting it” (Freud, 1908 p. 188).
Curiously enough Freud claims that the child shares their polymorphous perversion with: “an average uncultivated woman…Prostitutes exploit the same polymorphous, that is, infantile, disposition for the purposes of their profession; and, considering the immense number of women who are prostitutes or who must be supposed to have an aptitude for prostitution without becoming engaged in it, it becomes impossible not to recognize that this same disposition to perversions of every kind is a general and fundamental human characteristic” (Freud, 1905, p. 190).
In one paragraph Freud chases the polymorphously perverse from a seduced infant, to the uncultivated woman, to “a general and fundamental human characteristic.” It is if even Freud himself is shocked by what he is proposing.
Helene Deutsche carries on the discourse of this weird polymorphous phenomena but now discarding the infant. The phenomena now belongs to the adult woman alone.
The primal distribution of libido over the erotogenic zones is subject to far less modification than in the male, and the female, owing to the lesser tyranny of the clitoris, may all her life remain more 'polymorph pervers', more infantile; to her more than to the male 'the whole body is a sexual organ'. In the wave of development occurring at puberty this erotogenicity of the whole body increases, for the libido which is forced away from the clitoris (presumably by way of the inner secretions) flows back to the body as a whole. (Deutsch, 1925, p. 408)
And again Deutsche marks out the whole body: “libido must be drawn from the whole body. Here we have a perfect analogy to the woman's breast, which actively takes possession of the infant's mouth and so centres the libido of the whole body in this organ.” (Deutsch, 1925, p. 409)
What is peculiar is not only the ability to transfer libido across the erotogenic zones of the body, but also the transfer of this libido across separate bodies: between mother and infant. This is what Julie Kristeva will call in time “maternal eroticism.” In Jean Laplanche’s view it is this transfer of libido from the alien adult that will jump start the infant’s own unconscious (Laplanche, 2011).
works cited:
Deutsch, H. (1925) The Psychology of Women in Relation to the Functions of Reproduction. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 6:405-418
Freud, S. (1905) Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud 7:123-246
Freud, S. (1908) ‘Civilized’ Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud 9:177-204
Laplanche, J. (2011) Freud and the Sexual. (translated Fletcher. J) The Unconscious in Translation
