20TH, 21ST, 22ND, 23RD LECTURES (THE CONCEPT OF DRIVE)
(299-300, 310, 322 and 329)
Sigmund Freud (1917)
Summary:
We want to tell you what we know about a child's sex life. Let us introduce the concept of libido, which, like hunger, represents a
force that externalizes a drive: in this case, the sexual drive.
Infant sexual practices are often interpreted on the basis of analytical inquiries. The first manifestations of sexuality in infants are
linked to vital functions, such as the reception of food. When you fall asleep after your satiation in your chest, you express a
satisfaction similar to that of sexual orgasm. We observe that the infant wants to repeat the action of receiving food without
hunger, which we call sucking, and that it gives him pleasure in itself.
Pediatrician Lindner was the first to suggest that this practice is sexual in nature. Child-rearers often consider pacifiers a bad habit
that needs to be abandoned, sometimes through painful impressions. We realize that the infant performs actions whose sole
purpose is the gain of pleasure. We believe that he initially experiences this pleasure with the reception of food, but it soon
separates him from this condition. We attribute this gain of pleasure to the arousal of the mouth and lip area, calling them
erogenous zones, and we call sexual the pleasure achieved through sucking.
If the infant could speak, he would certainly recognize that the act of suckling from the mother's breast is the most important act
of his life, since it simultaneously satisfies his two great vital needs. Psychoanalysis reveals to us the enormous psychic importance
that this act retains throughout existence. Suckling from the mother's breast is the starting point of all sexual life and the unattained
model of subsequent sexual satisfaction, to which fantasy often returns in times of need. The mother's breast is the first object of
the sexual drive, the importance of which is fundamental for all subsequent discoveries of objects and has profound effects on our
psychic life.
The infant resigns the mother's breast to the activity of pacifying, replacing it with a part of his own body, such as the thumb or
tongue. Thus, it becomes independent of the outside world in terms of the gain of pleasure and adds the excitement of another
area of the body. Not all erogenous zones are equally generous, and it is important for the child to discover his particularly excitable
genital areas, which takes him from sucking to onanism.
When considering pacifiers, we observe two decisive characteristics of infantile sexuality: it is based on the satisfaction of great
organic needs and it behaves in an autoerotic way, seeking and finding its objects in its own body. This is clearly manifested in the
reception of food and is partly repeated with regard to excretions. The infant experiences pleasurable sensations when emptying
his bladder and bowels and organizes these actions to maximize pleasure by arousing the erogenous zones of the mucosa.
At this point, as Lou Andreas-Salomé pointed out, the outside world confronts him for the first time as an inhibiting power hostile
to his aspirations for pleasure, anticipating the external and internal struggles he will wage later. He should not expel his excrement
at will, but when other people determine it. In order for you to give up these sources of pleasure, you are taught that these
functions are indecent and must be kept secret.
Today we will study the connection of the partial sexual impulses with the object. Some components of the sex drive, such as
sadism and the drives to see and know, have an object from the beginning. Others, such as oral drives, have an initial object (the
mother's breast) that they then resign, becoming autoerotic by substituting the object for parts of their own body.
Later development seeks to abandon autoeroticism and change one's own object for someone else's, unifying the different objects
of the drives into a single one, which must be a total body similar to one's own. This process involves relegating some autoerotic
impulse motions.
In infancy, when the process has reached a certain closure before the latency period, the object found is almost identical to the
first object of the oral drive, such as the mother's breast or the mother. We call the mother the first object of love. By then, the
child has already begun the psychic work of repression, concealing part of his sexual goals. This choice of the mother as the object
of love is related to the "Oedipus complex", crucial in the psychoanalytic understanding of neuroses and a source of resistance
against psychoanalysis.
If you study these comparisons further, you will notice their weaknesses. Therefore, we will make a direct formulation: it is possible
that each sexual aspiration has parts that are delayed in earlier stages of development, even though other parts have reached the
1
Made by MatyBuda
(299-300, 310, 322 and 329)
Sigmund Freud (1917)
Summary:
We want to tell you what we know about a child's sex life. Let us introduce the concept of libido, which, like hunger, represents a
force that externalizes a drive: in this case, the sexual drive.
Infant sexual practices are often interpreted on the basis of analytical inquiries. The first manifestations of sexuality in infants are
linked to vital functions, such as the reception of food. When you fall asleep after your satiation in your chest, you express a
satisfaction similar to that of sexual orgasm. We observe that the infant wants to repeat the action of receiving food without
hunger, which we call sucking, and that it gives him pleasure in itself.
Pediatrician Lindner was the first to suggest that this practice is sexual in nature. Child-rearers often consider pacifiers a bad habit
that needs to be abandoned, sometimes through painful impressions. We realize that the infant performs actions whose sole
purpose is the gain of pleasure. We believe that he initially experiences this pleasure with the reception of food, but it soon
separates him from this condition. We attribute this gain of pleasure to the arousal of the mouth and lip area, calling them
erogenous zones, and we call sexual the pleasure achieved through sucking.
If the infant could speak, he would certainly recognize that the act of suckling from the mother's breast is the most important act
of his life, since it simultaneously satisfies his two great vital needs. Psychoanalysis reveals to us the enormous psychic importance
that this act retains throughout existence. Suckling from the mother's breast is the starting point of all sexual life and the unattained
model of subsequent sexual satisfaction, to which fantasy often returns in times of need. The mother's breast is the first object of
the sexual drive, the importance of which is fundamental for all subsequent discoveries of objects and has profound effects on our
psychic life.
The infant resigns the mother's breast to the activity of pacifying, replacing it with a part of his own body, such as the thumb or
tongue. Thus, it becomes independent of the outside world in terms of the gain of pleasure and adds the excitement of another
area of the body. Not all erogenous zones are equally generous, and it is important for the child to discover his particularly excitable
genital areas, which takes him from sucking to onanism.
When considering pacifiers, we observe two decisive characteristics of infantile sexuality: it is based on the satisfaction of great
organic needs and it behaves in an autoerotic way, seeking and finding its objects in its own body. This is clearly manifested in the
reception of food and is partly repeated with regard to excretions. The infant experiences pleasurable sensations when emptying
his bladder and bowels and organizes these actions to maximize pleasure by arousing the erogenous zones of the mucosa.
At this point, as Lou Andreas-Salomé pointed out, the outside world confronts him for the first time as an inhibiting power hostile
to his aspirations for pleasure, anticipating the external and internal struggles he will wage later. He should not expel his excrement
at will, but when other people determine it. In order for you to give up these sources of pleasure, you are taught that these
functions are indecent and must be kept secret.
Today we will study the connection of the partial sexual impulses with the object. Some components of the sex drive, such as
sadism and the drives to see and know, have an object from the beginning. Others, such as oral drives, have an initial object (the
mother's breast) that they then resign, becoming autoerotic by substituting the object for parts of their own body.
Later development seeks to abandon autoeroticism and change one's own object for someone else's, unifying the different objects
of the drives into a single one, which must be a total body similar to one's own. This process involves relegating some autoerotic
impulse motions.
In infancy, when the process has reached a certain closure before the latency period, the object found is almost identical to the
first object of the oral drive, such as the mother's breast or the mother. We call the mother the first object of love. By then, the
child has already begun the psychic work of repression, concealing part of his sexual goals. This choice of the mother as the object
of love is related to the "Oedipus complex", crucial in the psychoanalytic understanding of neuroses and a source of resistance
against psychoanalysis.
If you study these comparisons further, you will notice their weaknesses. Therefore, we will make a direct formulation: it is possible
that each sexual aspiration has parts that are delayed in earlier stages of development, even though other parts have reached the
1
Made by MatyBuda
