Freud proposes the idea that sexual excitation is derived not from the so-called sexual parts alone, but from all the bodily organs. This culminates in the idea of a quantity of libido - with a mental representation - the ego-libido, whose production, increase or diminution, distribution and displacement explains observed psychosexual phenomena. This ego-libido is only accessible to study, though, when it has been put to use on objects - i.e. when it has become object-libido - but from this representation, the theory proposes, it should be possible to express all phenomena in terms of the economics of the libido.
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