INTRODUCTION

Drive, desire and seduction: approaches to a new formulation

of the psychoanalytic theory of sexuality
The myth of sexuality is obsolete. Today, in contrast to Freud’s time, talk
about sexual wishes and fantasies has become highly trivialized, not
least through talk shows and “reality TV.” What was once considered
“perverse” has long since lost that label: rubber, latex and leather seem
to have come out of the closet and moved into many bedrooms. It has
become a matter of course today for young women to take advantage of
artificial insemination rather than—as used to be the case—becoming
pregnant through sexual intercourse.
These three facets illuminate the profound changes in the sexual
realm that we encounter not just in everyday life but in therapeutic
practice as well. It is not only disorders of sexual function in the nar-
rower sense that has changed; rather, an entire spectrum of the most
varied phenomena can be observed. A century after Freud’s ground-
breaking Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905d), psychoanalytic
thinking faces a great challenge, and a situation altered in manifold
ways. It calls for a reconsideration of sexuality, pleasure, and desire,
and a rethinking of our ideas about men and women, the relations

vii
viii INTRODUCTION

among them, and their relationship to one another. The Three Essays,
the central text of psychoanalysis with regard to sexuality, needs to be
fundamentally revised.
This detraditionalization and pluralization of sexual lifestyles has
been observable since the late 1960s. It encompasses sexual orienta-
tions and preferences, new forms of relationships and families, and
notions of what is male and female, masculine and feminine. The
student, women’s, and gay and lesbian movements set fundamen-
tal changes in motion that are commonly labelled as a “sexual revo-
lution,” though that term mythologizes it. Institutions like church or
state, which set norms in the sexual realm in the past, have become
largely irrelevant. Traditional sexual morality has yielded to a nego-
tiated morality (Schmidt, 2004), which presupposes partners more or
less equally strong and neither emotionally nor economically depend-
ent on one another. This new morality presupposes sensitivity to the
wishes and limits of the other, and demands high reflective abilities
which cannot be assumed to be self-evident. A negotiated morality goes
hand-in-hand with considerable changes in sexuality between men and
women, and is reflected not least in changes to court decisions in cases
of sexual assault. One can put it more pointedly: A democratization of
sexual relationships is underway.
Changes in sexual morality are also reflected in a shift in the meaning
of the institution of marriage. On the one hand, it is losing its monopoly
on defining and legitimating relationships and families. On the other
hand, it remains a pivotal societal institution. Faith in marriage appar-
ently remains undiminished, as indicated both by high remarriage rates
and by same-sex civil partnerships, which are legitimated by analogy to
the marriage model.
Alongside matrimony, Giddens (1993) sees a new relationship form
emerging, one he calls the “pure” relationship: A love relationship
hardly serves reproductive or maintenance functions anymore, and it no
longer needs the institution of marriage to legitimate it either. Instead,
it is entered into for its own sake. While this form of relationship is
more evident among same-sex pairs, heterosexual pairs are increas-
ingly drifting in this direction as well. A relationship is maintained only
as long as both partners feel comfortable; permanent instability is one
of its characteristics. Permanence for its own sake would contradict the
perceptions of the ideal, and as Reimut Reiche (2004a) deftly character-
izes it, “serial monogamy”—a term used already in the 1950s by U.S.
 INTRODUCTION ix

anthropologists—is practiced instead. In such relationships, sexual

activity primarily serves to establish intimacy and to express desires for
closeness, security and affection.
The drawback of this intimacy-giving aspect of sexuality can be seen
in the displacement of private and public spheres, which is accompanied
by a high degree of commercialization. The omnipresence of the sexual
in the everyday—whether in advertising, on television, in the movies
or on the internet—leads to a permanent arousal that simultaneously
deadens individuals. The consequences this has for sexual experience,
or for wishes and fantasies, can scarcely be foreseen in detail.
Still, it is within established partnerships that the vast majority of
sexual activities continue to take place. This surprising finding, in stark
contrast to the media image of the omnipresence of the sexual, is the
result of an empirical study on sexual relationships in Germany. In
it, there were remarkable continuities between different age groups.
Cohorts of thirty, forty-five and sixty year-olds of both sexes were inter-
viewed over a thirty-year period, in Hamburg and Leipzig, and the
results showed that around ninety-five per cent of all sexual intercourse
took place in established relationships, a finding independent of sex,
age, and place of residence. Only about one per cent occurred in exter-
nal relationships and only five per cent among those who were single,
though they constituted about twenty-five per cent of the respondents
(see Schmidt, 2004, 2005). These results make actual sexual behaviour
look far more prosaic than garish media productions would have one
believe.
The decisive change during the last years is probably the oft-
proclaimed, general decline in the importance of sexuality. Thus, the
large symbolic importance attributed to sexuality in the context of the
sexual revolution that was part of the student movement in the 1960s is
clearly being reduced again today. Sexuality is no longer seen as a boon
or promise of happiness through which entire societies can be liberated.
By now, it appears to have become less burdened, more self-evident,
and more relaxed. A coexisting tendency now, however, is to mystify
the new forms of sexuality in a negative manner, following the positive
mystification of sexuality as a means for liberation, rapture or ecstasy,
and to associate these new forms with a deprivation of liberty, or with
violence, abuse, illness and gender hierarchy.
The German sexologist Volkmar Sigusch (2001) describes the trans-
formation of sexuality over the past decades as composed of three
x INTRODUCTION

distinct processes: dissociation of the sexual domain, dispersion of

the sexual fragments, and diversification in the forms of relationships.
These transformations have introduced fundamental changes in sexual
life that are of direct importance to every individual, both in terms of
sexual practice and in terms of wishes and fantasies.

Dissociation of the sexual

The key dissociation separated the sexual sphere from that of repro-
duction. This process, which took place over decades, led in the late
1960s to the emergence of the idea of a putatively “clean” and pure
sexuality with the reproductive functions no longer superimposed on
it. This separation, helped by numerous technological innovations,
continues into the present. Thus, the process of reproduction, including
early embryo development, has been increasingly transferred outside
the female body. Cloning techniques for the first time have made even
reproduction without sex possible, hence also separating the reproduc-
tive from the sexual sphere.
It is only an apparent paradox that this separation was accompanied
by a further dissociation: the formulation during the 1970s of an “auton-
omous” female—and hence also male—sexuality. At the time, sexuality
was given a gender, though it certainly had always had one, due to
its implicitly androcentric orientation. Now, however, the assumption
was that sexuality was separated by gender, and a distinction was then
made between female and male sexuality. From that point on, the sex-
ual was seen in terms of gender difference, and the hierarchical proc-
esses and conflicts associated with it. This dissociation into “male” and
“female” sexuality is paradoxical because it was established just when
sex, with respect to reproduction, was losing its importance. It thereby
takes on the function of cementing a culture of two sexes, and thereby
underscoring its function in supporting the social order.
The dissociations of the sexual find further expression in an older but
still valid sexological distinction that remains the basis of the current dis-
course on gender. John Money, in his research on intersex development,
distinguished at the time between sex, gender role and gender identity
(Money, Hampson & Hampson, 1955), dimensions of the sexual that to
that point had been assumed to coincide. While social expectations of
behaviour today hardly seem bound to an individual’s biological sex
anymore, and this dissociation as a result has become part of everyday
 INTRODUCTION xi

understanding, the separation of biological sex and gender identity

often seems far less self-evident. Law and medicine, however, seem to be
ahead of common understanding here. Thus, it is now legally possible
for a person assigned as male at birth who has become a transwomen
to marry a former woman who has become a man. In the specialized
terminology used, this is a marriage between a male-to-female (MtF
or M2F) transgender person and a female-to-male (FtM or F2M) trans-
gender. In the current International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10)
published by the World Health Organization, trans-sexuality is listed as
a “gender identity disorder” that calls for treatment. The dissociations
thereby become fixed and receive societal acknowledgement. What is
interesting about all these phenomena is that the difference between
the sexes is both losing importance and being solidified at the same
time. Nowhere is the significance of biological sex more evident than in
trans-sexuality—which simultaneously makes it clear that anatomy is
not destiny but can be changed through medical operations.
While transsexuals affirm cultural bisexuality with their bodily and
mental suffering, it is seriously questioned by other groups such as the
intersexuals. These are people of unclear sex, with both male and female
biological features, an ambiguity that led them to be called “hermaph-
rodites” in earlier ages. They seem to elude definitive assignment to
one sex. Current practice is to forcibly assign a sex in infancy, reinforced
by operations that need to be repeated multiple times in the course of
development. Those so affected now claim this is a violation of human
rights and an assault on the body. These phenomena also make clear
that it is not just “gender” but also “sex” that is culturally constructed.
This is the main argument in the contemporary gender discourse, par-
ticularly as put forward by Judith Butler (1993a, 1997). Her deconstruc-
tionist and politically subversive effort has been to try to abolish the
culture of two sexes, making her a target of criticism from all possible
directions (see, for example, Nussbaum, 1999 and Reiche, 2004b).
Nevertheless, we have this debate to thank for the important impetus it
has given to the psychoanalytic discussion of male and female, mascu-
line and feminine.
A further dissociation lies in the separation of the sphere of sexual
experience from the realm of bodily reaction. A good example is the
development of Viagra®, which for the first time makes the sex act on
the part of men possible (almost) without sexual arousal. If erectile dys-
function, especially when it occurred only under certain circumstances,
xii INTRODUCTION

used to serve as an important indicator of underlying mental conflicts,

today it is usually biochemically outsmarted. Aside from in the medi-
cal realm, this dissociation of the sexual from the physical today takes
place on a large scale through the media, whether in the form of tel-
ephone sex, e-sex, or cybersex. These offers, whose current range is
immense and whose impact is immeasurable, provide fundamentally
new possibilities for sexual arousal and encounters, the consequences
of which are increasingly evident in therapeutic practice.
Last, one can observe a final dissociation in the separation of the
realm of the libido from the realm of destrudo, the urge to destroy,
the separation of a loving, tender aspect of sexuality from its aggres-
sive, destructive side. This separation found prominent expression in
the discourse on abuse and violence during the 1980s and 1990s. On the
one hand, it served to sensitize the public to sexual violence, in particu-
lar that directed against children, and its serious consequences. On the
other hand, it often equated male sexuality with violent or oppressive
sexuality. Meanwhile, women too have become perpetrators. That robs
them of an exclusive claim to the role of victim. At the same time, it
generally and newly restores an aura of indecency to sexuality, one that
seemed to have been shed in the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s.

Sexual dispersions
“Sexual dispersion” is the term Sigusch (2001) uses to characterize the
fragmentation and dissociation of elements, social segments, and life-
styles. That process goes hand in hand with the cultural dissociation of
previously unitary “sexuality” and with an all-encompassing commer-
cialization of its individual spheres. Commercial interests carve apart
previously interrelated actions in order to offer, and correspondingly
market, the smallest possible units. German newspaper and internet
ads hence offer ZK (French kisses)—more expensive now, in the era of
AIDS—or GB (“facials”) or BW (nipple eroticism), always in abbrevia-
tions that are not easy to decipher or that presuppose a certain degree
of familiarity. This dispersion process is also reflected in the disclo-
sure of all sorts of intimacies in radio and television talk shows. The
functions of such displays are certainly manifold, and could betray a
compulsion to confess, to which Foucault (1977b) argues sex has been
subject for centuries. They could simply be an effort to drive the feel-
ing of shame out of a mass audience, an impulse Freud regarded as the
 INTRODUCTION xiii

powerful counterpart to the “impulse to watch”. Not least as a result of

these manifestations the boundary between normal and abnormal, and
between public and private, has shifted enormously. During the “sex-
ual revolution” of the 1960s, sexuality was presented in the mass media
for the first time, in the form of nudity, partner relationships, and meth-
ods of contraception. Today, the media presents things far beyond what
was previously thought “normal”, and increasingly stages the unusual,
which, in Freud’s sense of “partial drives” or “perversions”, shows off
smaller and smaller elements of what used to be a unitary “sexuality”.
An example would be television shows depicting cages used by sado-
masochists or repair workshops for dildos. What this means at the level
of the psyche remains to be seen. We seldom see this dispersion of the
sexual in psychoanalysis now, but in terms of socialization, its effects
can hardly be overestimated. What seems to be especially significant
for analytic practice, on the one hand, is the constant media staging
of confessions and declarations, which pushes back the boundaries of
intimacy. It makes the intimacy of treatment, and its inherent compul-
sion to confess, appear in a different light. On the other hand, from an
analytic perspective one can also regard these dispersions, like the dis-
sociations and diversifications, as the current manifestation of a defence
against “the activity of the sexual drives”, the pressing, uncontrollable
element of desiring.

Diversifications of the sexual

In speaking of changes to the institution of the family, Sigusch (2001)
uses “diversification” or “deregulation” to characterize the trends
towards contraction and devaluation of that institution as well as the
multiplication of traditional relationship and lifestyle forms. They
enable the aforementioned “dispersions” and “dissociations” to occur,
but are also triggered by, or coincide with, them. What is decisive for
these diversifications is a market-like demand for greater flexibility
in all areas of life, including in the sexual realm. Rigid social roles
and psychological identities, as well as stable life-plans, are scarcely
compatible with this general increase in flexibility. Instead, what is
demanded is a “modular self that functions like a tool-box whose parts
can be taken out as needed, augmented and linked to one another”
(2001, p. 32, translated for this edition). This increased flexibility is
also evident in sexual orientation, for example, which often no longer
xiv INTRODUCTION

remains the same throughout life, or by which individuals no longer

wish to be defined (Düring, 1994; Schmidt, 2004). Thus, after having
a family, a woman may opt for a lesbian relationship, or a man who
has lived as a homosexual may indulge his wish to have children and
marry a woman. In an earlier era, this might have been taken as evi-
dence that these individuals had repressed their “genuine” sexual
orientation, but now it is seen as a sign of increasing liberation. Since
previous boundaries are becoming increasingly permeable, and identi-
ties ever more fragile or even fluid, the conventional rigid division into
homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual is losing its significance, too.
All forms of sexuality are put up for discussion and differentiated, and
even heterosexuality is no longer taken for granted either culturally or
theoretically—which Freud already perceptively mentioned in a foot-
note (1905d, pp. 30–31). Still more important, given the circumstances
of the three aforementioned transformations, the forms of sexuality no
longer constitute an identity. If homosexuality and heterosexuality are
no longer mutually exclusive but instead inclusive, then bisexuality,
understood psychologically, takes on a new meaning. Mainstream psy-
choanalytic theory by now sees it basically as infantile megalomania
or as averted homosexuality, but I consider it a very promising con-
cept whose theoretical significance and potential is still far from being
exhausted.

Challenges for psychoanalytic theory and practice

Studies of cultural changes in sexuality reveal basic alterations that
deeply shake all psychoanalytic concepts of sexuality and gender, of
sexual wishes and fantasies, and of what is regarded as diseased and
regarded as normal in this area. With the exception of theories of the
female in the realm of the sexual, psychoanalytic theorizing even today
essentially remains guided by Freud’s Three Essays. Yet it needs to take
account of these changes and give them a conceptual grounding. Freud’s
pioneering work on sexuality, which decisively influenced the twenti-
eth century, contains a number of significant insights that, despite all the
criticism levelled against them, have lost none of their relevance. Three
central and innovative aspects of this theory that remain significant are
worth briefly noting: 1) the expanded notion of sexuality that is not only
confined to genitality; 2) a non-normative concept that allows for a fluid
boundary between the normal and the perverse, and between what is
 INTRODUCTION xv

healthy and what is diseased; and 3) the assumption of an autonomous

infantile sexuality.
For many decades, in occasional studies covering diverse areas,
Freudian notions of sexuality have been repeatedly taken up and
expanded upon. Still, the questions raised have been highly fragmented
and devoid of inner coherence. As a result, an integration of the individ-
ual aspects into a cohesive theoretical framework is still lacking. That
would make the interior links between the concepts clearer, or to put
it more trenchantly, would provide an overall, seamless concept of the
varied facets of sexuality. Thus, the development of the male and mas-
culine cannot be understood without the development of the female
and feminine, for example. The concept of the genesis of sexuality has
an effect on the understanding of infantile sexuality or of perversions—
or on the perception of maleness and femaleness, and so forth. Such sys-
tematization has clinical utility as well, for sexual practices, wishes and
fantasies are not only the object of every analysis or therapy; rather, as
before, the sexual continues to constitute the core of the unconscious.
The present study is organized in three long Chapters. The first
addresses the genesis and emergence of sexuality. The second puts
the question of sexual dimorphism at its heart and examines male
and female sexuality. Chapter Three examines sexual orientation with
respect to heterosexuality, homosexuality and perversions.
With respect to the genesis of sexuality, which I discuss in Chapter
One, Freud was initially ambivalent. In his later work, he increasingly
took the view that it arose endogenously, and believed that human sexu-
ality followed an innate biological program. His views create a number
of problems. An innate program implies a biological function, which
in the case of sexuality would consist of reproduction. But without a
doubt, human sexuality encompasses far more than procreation: Repro-
duction seems clearly subservient to psychological factors, and tech-
nological innovations have increasingly separated reproduction from
sexuality itself. Assuming that human sexuality is a genetic endowment
also implies that sexual forms—heterosexuality, homosexuality, even
perversions—would be determined prenatally. Sexual orientation thus
would not be acquired and would tend not to be flexible, but rather
fixed throughout life.
In the place of a biological plan in which human sexuality is the
result of maturation processes, I suggest substituting a sexuality whose
foundation lies in an interpersonal relationship. For this, I turn to the
xvi INTRODUCTION

early Freudian writings on seduction theory and its further elaboration

by Jean Laplanche. I want to emphasize the influence of the Other on
the genesis of sexuality, not in the sense of sexual assaults or sexual
violence, as Freud postulated in his theory of seduction, but as a uni-
versal structure. As a rule, the early parent-child relationship is such a
locus of universal, unconscious seduction and elementary gratification.
Desire is inscribed in the infant’s body.
I close Chapter One with a discussion of infantile sexuality. For more
than a century, childhood sexuality has been described again and again
by empirical sexologists, but in more recent writings on infancy, it seems
to have again become controversial whether one can really ascribe sex-
uality to children (see the overview in Dornes, 2005). In this context, the
publications by analysts of the first and second generations, now almost
forgotten, remain meaningful. They provide vivid examples of infantile
forms of pleasure and gratification, and of oral, anal, and urethral eroti-
cism, which continue into adulthood, and under certain circumstances
even provide the basis for so-called “perversions”.
In Chapter Two, I turn to the question of male and female sexual-
ity, and start with the difficulties in determining both. While biological
sex and psychosocial sexual identity have until now been regarded as
one and the same, it is not least the transsexuals who have questioned
this apparently “natural” connection. Not just Geschlecht identity but
biological sex as well can be interpreted as culturally manufactured
and assembled. Freud himself had already remarked on “constitutional
bisexuality” and regarded “maleness” and “femaleness” as conven-
tions, but his explicit theory of sex and gender was clearly phallocen-
tric, and one in which the female had to appear as the inferior, second
sex. Even in Freud’s lifetime, this construction of the female and femi-
ninity was attacked from many quarters and rejected. In the meantime,
the notion of an independent, genuinely female and an independent,
genuinely male sexuality has established itself in psychoanalytic dis-
course. This clear separation does not entirely convince me, however.
My question is whether male and female sexuality, as in other areas
of behaviour and experience, are more similar than they are different.
Speaking sociologically, the question is whether variation within the
sex or gender is larger than variation between the sexes or genders. If
so, then a rigid categorization of a male and a female sexuality is not
valid. Instead, one would need to conceive of a general human sexual-
ity in which men and women were less different from one another than
 INTRODUCTION xvii

among themselves. What significance then would be ascribed to body

dimorphism, generativity, fantasies, or identification would need to be
examined in each case.
From a therapeutic perspective, I also want to call into question the
binary coding of sex and gender assignment. Even if it has long since
become impossible in our society to state what a “real man” or a “real
woman” is, patients still frequently suffer under the burden of imagined
standards they do not think they meet. That could be a successful busi-
ness woman who has no children, and at high risk to her health subjects
herself to the ministrations of reproductive technology. Or it could be
a man who believes he can stabilize his virility only with the help of
Viagra®. These behavioural patterns have meanwhile become possible
through technical innovations, but those affected by them often pay a
high psychological price. Psychological theories increase this degree of
suffering if they contribute to these idealized notions by using rigid
notions of male and female.
Freud indicated a way to overcome this division into two sexes
and genders with his notion of bisexuality. The difference between the
sexes/genders is not thereby superseded, it merely loses its apparent
clarity and its all-encompassing nature, one that essentializes existing
differences into the basis for personality. Maleness and femaleness can,
by contrast, exist in a complementary manner inside a person, and be
thought of as elements that mutually reinforce rather than mutually
exclude one another. Particularly in the realm of the sexual, one finds
both phallic as well as receptive traits which go beyond the anatomical
attributes of the primary sex organs, but are not difficult to translate
into the most diverse practices. To limit female sexuality to the recep-
tive and male sexuality to the phallic is something I find quite problem-
atic, however, even though this is repeatedly implicit in some efforts
to conceptualize an autonomous female or male sexuality. Numerous
studies of the development of sexual identity have resolved a key mis-
interpretation in Freud’s exposition: While Freud did not perceive an
autonomous female development before puberty and regarded the girl
as a “little man”, these studies describe an independent path the girl
takes from birth onwards.
Most likely due to this devaluation, and to the consequent, unavoid-
able efforts at demarcation, such studies tend to engage in a latent ideal-
ization of femaleness. In a manner that is too one-sided, they emphasize
what an asset it is for a girl to become aware of her femaleness. On the
xviii INTRODUCTION

one hand, this ignores the renunciation that accompanies adopting an

unambiguous sexual identity—the renunciation of identifications with
the other sex/gender. From this perspective, I describe the development
of a gender or sexual identity as a melancholy process: unlike sorrow, it
cannot name the loss. This loss, of course, applies to both genders. On
the other hand, the acquisition of a gender or sex identity is regarded
in some psychoanalytic theories as a quasi-indisputable developmen-
tal element resulting from the Oedipus complex, and in consequence is
addressed too little as a psychological process which has to be worked
through.
In Chapter Three, I address the question of “object-choice” (in Freudian
terms) by seeing the three forms of sexuality—homosexuality, hetero-
sexuality, perversion—as different but psychologically equivalent vari-
ants of object-choice. In the psychoanalytic discourse, there has been
widespread consensus until now that sexual orientation is fixed in
childhood or at the latest during adolescence. Research findings, how-
ever, cast increasing doubt on that view (Düring, 1994; Schmidt, 2004).
The extent to which these observations can be brought into accord with
psychoanalytic conceptualizations remains to be established. As with
the development of a gender identity, this “setting of the course” (in
Morgenthaler’s sense) with respect to sexual identity is also linked
to losses that call for working through the sorrow or melancholy. The
“object-choice”, the formation of sexual identity, should therefore also
be understood as a “developmental task”.
The psychological equivalence of homosexuality and heterosexual-
ity is today unquestioned. The development towards heterosexuality,
as Freud already noted, also is not self-evident but is a psychologi-
cal task. But the evaluation of the so called “perversions” as psycho-
logically equivalent is far less clear. The transformations in the sexual
realm already described (Sigusch, 2001) mean that much once regarded
as pathological is now seen as within the bounds of the “normal”
and has lost the aura of shamefulness or wickedness adhering to the
“aberrant”. Psychoanalytic conceptualizations such as those offered
by Fritz Morgenthaler or Joyce McDougall have become correspond-
ingly more influential, though Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, for example,
suggests a diametrically opposed view. The implications of the vari-
ous standpoints need to be examined in detail to establish their utility
for contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice. In this context,
the implication of re-designating “perversions” as “paraphilia” in the
 INTRODUCTION xix

World Health Organization’s ICD manual also needs to be examined.

On the one hand, the “perversions” thereby lose their central sexual
content, while on the other hand they also lose their stigmatization.
The cultural changes in sexuality are most evident in this transforma-
tion of “perversions”. So the conceptualization of sexuality also raises
one of the greatest challenges for current psychoanalytic thinking. What
is called for is a Lacanian “return to Freud”, a renewed attention to
Freud’s original texts to think beyond or to take them further.
CHAPTER ONE

Seduction, desire, and sexuality

Seduction: the emergence of sexuality

Freud’s seduction theory—an underappreciated idea
The theory of seduction holds a curious place in psychoanalytic theory,
for like no other concept, it is essentially understood in terms of its
rejection. Freud himself, in fact, never spoke of a theory—that label
was first given by historians of psychoanalysis—but rather of a “grave
error” that he tried hard to rectify throughout his life (1925d, p. 33).
As originally formulated, it was meant as a way to get to the bottom of
the riddle of hysteria. In the meantime, it—or rather, its repudiation—
has come to be invoked for the most varied topics and problems. In the
eyes of critics, it was only through this retraction that Freud discovered
infantile sexuality, recognized the significance of unconscious fantasies,
or even made the emergence of psychoanalysis possible. In the eyes
of advocates, Freud’s rapid rejection instead marked the beginning of
the end of psychoanalysis, with some even suggesting that dishonest
personal motives lay behind this change in paradigm (Masson, 1985;
Krüll, 1986; Quindeau, 2004a). I will leave these controversies, which
I regard as not very fruitful, to one side and instead turn to more con-
structive perspectives based on Freud’s early writings that can extend
1
2 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

psychoanalytic theory. In the seduction theory, I see the first efforts to

formulate a theory of sexuality: It suggests theses both for the aetiology
of neuroses and for the emergence of human sexuality.
What is at issue in this theory? Unlike the medical theories common
at the time, Freud did not trace hysteria back either to hereditary or
to somatic, “degenerative” factors. Instead, he suggested a model of
trauma in which the psychological processing of an event as memory—
and not the event itself—plays the decisive etiological role. This insight
was pointedly expressed in the celebrated quip, “the hysteric suffers
mainly from reminiscences” (1950a, p. 286). In so doing, this theory
moves beyond the traditional medical theory of trauma, which con-
trasts the (objective) event with the (subjective) experience, describing
a dialectic, interwoven relationship between “inner” and “outer”, and
between “subject” and “object”.
Freud’s considerations regarding seduction theory originated in
his preoccupation with mental illnesses such as hysteria and obses-
sion, which he called defensive neuro-psychoses. The neurotic symp-
toms originated in the effort to ward off intolerable and embarrassing
thoughts and feelings that could be traced back, in his view, to sexual
experiences during early childhood or during pre-pubescence. His
female patients who suffered from hysteria had talked about them dur-
ing treatment, and included sexual or erotic relationships ranging from
seduction to violent sexual assault carried out by adult carers, relatives,
teachers of both sexes, or even by somewhat older children. Freud saw
these experiences as a major factor in the genesis of neuroses, though
he wondered how frequent such events could really have been. There
could not possibly have been so many perverse adults, and he was sur-
prised that they appeared so regularly in the life histories of his hysteri-
cal female patients.
Plagued by doubts about this regularity, Freud took a step with far-
reaching consequences to free himself of his “overestimation of reality
and underestimation of fantasy” (1896c, p. 440). He subsequently came
to interpret such reports from female patients less as descriptions of real
sexual experiences and more as expressions of unconscious fantasies.
Taking this step set off a controversy that has continued with greater or
lesser vehemence ever since. Hardly worthy of discussion here is the
frequent, but thereby no less absurd, accusation that Freud, and psy-
choanalysis itself, downplayed or even denied the reality of the sexual
abuse of children.
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 3

Nonetheless, it is worth pursuing his paradigm shift to further

develop psychoanalytic theory. As valuable as Freud’s insight into the
significance of unconscious fantasies is, his “underestimation of real-
ity” remains problematic, as does the sharp separation of fantasy from
reality. The constitutive importance of “seduction” in socialization, as
well as the interplay of fantasy and reality in determining the psycho-
logical development of every human being, would only be worked out
much later in Jean Laplanche’s “general seduction theory”. Through
his work, the concept of seduction has led to an enrichment of psy-
choanalytic theory, because it immensely extends our understanding
of psychological development and how psychological structures are
formed. He describes the seduction situation not as a contingent expe-
rience of abuse, but instead as a regular and universal aspect of the
relationship between child and adult (Laplanche, 1988).

Nachträglichkeit—the central mode in the formation of sexuality

Freud’s most important theoretical accomplishment in conjunction
with the seduction theory is the concept of Nachträglichkeit. With it, he
departed from the conventional linear notion of time in which the future
emerges from the present, and the present emerges from the past. The
succession of past, present, and future seems inviolable to our everyday
consciousness. The concept of Nachträglichkeit, however, allows the past
to emerge from the present. In the course of life, earlier experiences
and events, or rather, the traces they leave, are lent new meaning or
reinterpreted in accordance with the actual present at the time, or with a
particular stage of development. I wish to describe the key psychologi-
cal functions with the help of this concept of Nachträglichkeit, for it lies
at the heart of all psychological development and takes on particular
meaning in the emergence of the sexual. In fact, human sexuality is con-
stituted in the mode of Nachträglichkeit.
What exactly does this mean? It can be described more fully by
using one of Freud’s early case histories (1950a). As an adult, Emma
suffered from not being able to go into shops alone. During her treat-
ment, she remembered having gone shopping as a twelve year-old,
and there having encountered two shop-assistants who were laughing.
Frightened, she ran away. She connected this laughter with her dress; in
addition, one of them had been sexually attractive to her (Scene I). This
scene, which initially appears incomprehensible especially in its affect
4 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

of fright, was augmented by a second memory. “On two occasions

when she was a child of eight she had gone into a small shop to buy
some sweets, and the shopkeeper had grabbed at her genitals through
her clothes (Scene II). In spite of the first experience she had gone
there a second time; after the second time she stayed away. She now
reproached herself for having gone there the second time, as though she
had wanted in that way to provoke the assault” (ibid., p. 354).
In this example, one sees several scenes from her personal history
combined together in a constellation to form a memory with a trauma-
tizing effect. It is only in light of the second scene that the first scene
makes sense. In analysis, the patient surmised a possible association
between the two by suggesting that the shop-assistants’ laughter
unconsciously evoked the grinning shopkeeper—and thus the memory
of the sexual assault. Owing to the maturation brought on by puberty,
this unconscious memory had triggered a sexual reaction, though the
repression barrier made this reaction inaccessible to the conscious mind
and it was instead transformed into a reaction of panic. Key to Freud’s
argument is the nachträgliche sexual arousal, meaning the retrospective
attribution. With it, memory receives an affect the earlier experience
did not have. The change brought about by puberty allows for a differ-
ent understanding of what was remembered. The common objection is
that the ground was pulled out from under this explanation by Freud’s
“discovery” of infantile sexuality soon thereafter, however, putting his
notion of Nachträglichkeit in doubt. Nevertheless, he made later use of it
in the Wolf Man case (1918b, p. 45).
The judgment that Nachträglichkeit is an antiquated idea tied to
superseded suppositions is often found in the English-speaking
world, which may be due to its problematic, if not faulty, translation
as “deferred action” in James Strachey’s Standard Edition of Freud’s
works (Laplanche and Pontalis, 1973). Seeing it as action that is delayed
or shifted in time would reduce Nachträglichkeit to a behavioural level.
That would associate it with Freud’s early model of trauma, which saw
it as physiologically-based, and that model is, with good reason, today
regarded as dated.
An interpretation of Nachträglichkeit based on this faulty translation
runs more or less as follows. Because stimulus satiation at a very early
point in the development of an individual can make a still-immature
ego unable to act, action is deferred until it becomes possible, meaning
when the ego is more mature. In this reading, patient Emma’s panic
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 5

would then be seen as an affect of fright, a deferred response to the

shopkeeper’s assault, as she was not capable (owing to stimulus satia-
tion) of responding to the assault at the time. This, however, sees trauma
as an external event, which is an antiquated view not least because
libido development and the ascription of meaning by the subject play
no role.
As an alternative to this problematic reading, I advocate broaden-
ing the potential scope of Nachträglichkeit so that it refers less to actions
themselves than to attributions of meaning in the sense of inscriptions.
To do so, Freund’s own restricted views need to be transcended. In the
context of his meta-psychological considerations used to explain hyste-
ria, Nachträglichkeit was initially intended to describe arousal processes
with the language of neurophysiology. That was meant to explain why
the memory itself, rather than the event, was traumatic in the sense
of stimulus satiation. Freud regarded the ascription of meaning, or in
other words, the sense that patients themselves made of certain experi-
ences at various times in their lives, as less important.
Let us return to Emma’s case to explore the problematic aspects of
the Freudian line of argument. Of key importance is the neural trigger-
ing of sexual arousal that first becomes possible after puberty (called
sexual release: see his notions of attachment and release in the Project
for a Scientific Psychology, first formulated in 1895, in Freud, 1950a).
But in the wake of the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (Freud,
1905d), where he postulated a theory of two phases of human sexual
development as well as the notion of infantile sexuality, this argument
can no longer be supported. I believe it far more likely that the child-
hood scene with the shopkeeper was already accompanied by feelings
(though possibly ambivalent ones) of lust or desire. Speaking in favour
of that are later feelings of guilt and Emma’s thought she might have
wanted to provoke the assault by returning a second time. In light of
the later development of Freud’s theory, I see the traumatic scene as
follows. Apart from the laughter, which she regarded as the key link
between the two scenes, such linkage also can be created through
sexual arousal. This is given a different interpretation in Scene II—in
accordance with the child’s developmental stage—than during or after
puberty. The conjoining of the two scenes in the remembering process
lends Scene I a sexual dimension as well, and ties in with the signifi-
cance not understood at the time, one which afterwards frightens the
girl and is expressed in feelings of guilt and self-reproach. The feelings
6 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

of lust or desire one can assume in Scene II, which probably seemed
unproblematic to Emma as a child, become offensive and unbearable
for Emma in light of her post-puberty genital sexuality. One can add to
this that in her memory, Emma does not see herself as a girl subjected
to the assault of an adult. Instead, what was passively experienced is
later transformed into what was actively induced, which weakens her
feelings of helplessness and vulnerability but at the same time increases
her feelings of guilt.
With an increased horizon of understanding, earlier experiences
can—nachträglich—be given different meaning. Even in my revised
reading of the Freudian concept of Nachträglichkeit, this remains bound
to the underlying bodily processes. However, I no longer see these as
pure quantities of arousal but instead as memory traces in the form of
neurological pathways. As I will explain in greater detail, these memory
traces are differently efficacious at various stages in psychosexual devel-
opment, in particular when subject to drives and their fates, conceived
of as contrasting pairs.
In my reading, the concept of Nachträglichkeit would therefore need
to be understood as follows. In addition to cognitive development,
it is primarily psychosexual development or, in adulthood, dominant,
unconscious, psychosexual conflict constellations that lend previous
experiences, at various points in time, altered if not new meanings.
These conflict constellations incorporate psychological conflicts that are
currently relevant, and that result from various incompatible internal
psychological players and processes. Unlike in constructivist models,
for example, what is of particular importance in these processes of con-
structing meaning is that they are not about the retrospective ascription
of meaning to earlier experiences.
The past is not wilfully constructed, but instead the unconscious,
conflict-laden dimension of earlier experiences continually forces
new inscriptions. Nachträglichkeit thus designates a complex temporal
movement that operates not only from the present into the past, but
also from the past into the present. In so doing, the ordinary linear con-
cept of time from past to present, which sees the present as emerging
causally from the past, is nullified. I call this complex temporal move-
ment a constellation, meaning a mental conjoining of experiences and
events from highly diverse periods in an individual’s life course, in
order to make clear that a linear, temporal ordering does not underlie
the psychological processes. Instead, it is the psychological processes
themselves that create such an order (in detail, Quindeau, 2004a).
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 7

If we again return to Emma’s case, Freud argues from a purely

economic, or energetic, concept of trauma. Despite the problems asso-
ciated with this concept, with its help, he was able to transcend the
rigid juxtaposition of “interior” and “exterior” and turn trauma into a
relational term. Trauma consists in a surge of arousal that supersedes
the ability of the particular individual to deal with it in his or her psy-
chic structure. In Emma’s case, the trauma consisted in the fact that the
memory of the scene with the shopkeeper released such a high degree
of sexual arousal that it could not adequately be dissipated and as a
result was transformed into fright and flight. I emphasize yet again that
the trauma does not lie in the assault of the shopkeeper, that is, not in
the event itself, but in the interaction of the two scenes in memory. The
trauma is to be sought in the recollection, for that is what triggers the
increasing arousal and flight.
These considerations shed light from yet another perspective on the
conceptualization of the sexual. In this case study, sexual arousal is
evoked through memory and not only through, say, visual perception
or tactile stimulation. Even if one can add to the Freudian view, as I
have suggested, the fact that Emma was already sexually aroused in the
scene with the shopkeeper, the high degree of arousal that ultimately
led to flight developed only years later in the scene with the shop assist-
ants, and thus out of linking current perception with memory. In my
view, it is one of the key characteristics of human sexuality, in contrast
to other living creatures, to be (largely) independent of specific sensory
stimuli.
In this interpretation of trauma, designating the constellation and
interaction of “interior” and “exterior” as well as (at least) two points in
time, one can recognize the genuine achievement of the Freudian theory
of seduction. True, Freud often, even emphatically, rejected this theory at
various times in his subsequent work, but one can be suspicious of this
revocation. It seems rather, as if he never entirely gave up on it. After
all, with this retraction, he departs from a direction in the development
of his theory that Laplanche (1999a) calls his Copernican, decentralized
thinking. Laplanche divided Freudian thought into Ptolemaic, recen-
tring and Copernican, decentring modes; poles between which Freud
constantly oscillated. The Copernican revolution is “still more radical, in
that it suggests that man, even as subject of knowledge, is not the central
reference-point of what he knows. No more than they orbit around him
do the stars recognize the primacy of man’s knowledge” (1999a, p. 57).
This insight into the decentring of the subject finds its expression in the
8 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

concept of a dynamic unconscious, which, as is well-known, Freud with

irony called the third narcissistic blow to mankind after Copernicus and
Darwin (Freud, 1916–17).
This dynamic unconscious differs from the descriptive unconscious,
as used in other scientific disciplines such as neurobiology. The dif-
ference has less to do with the idea that behaviour and experience are
essentially steered by it, and to a much smaller degree by conscious
intent, and more to do with the assumption that the unconscious is an
area of human experience that cannot be described positively, by detail-
ing its contents, or by contrasting it with the conscious mind. As an area
fundamentally at some remove from experience (Waldenfels, 2002), or
as a concept for something that is lacking (Gondek, 1990) which tries to
understand the paradox of the unconscious—there is something beyond
experience that nevertheless is known—the unconscious puts the self-
understanding of the modern subject as autonomous permanently in
question. The theory of seduction, which emphasizes the primacy of the
Other, also points in the same direction.
This primacy of the Other is clearer in Laplanche’s reading than in
Freud’s version. One can develop a structural model of the develop-
ment of the psyche based on Laplanche’s general theory of seduction
(Quindeau, 2004a). If one understands seduction as a basic structure of
socialization, then this opens the possibility of understanding human
sexuality as finding its origins in the Other.

The universality of seduction—desideratus ergo sum

If, with Laplanche, I interpret the theory of seduction structurally,
it means I see the seduction situation not as a violent sexual assault
but rather as part of the development of the psychic structure within
a social context. Seduction provides the basic pattern for the early
relationship of a child to an adult, male or female. The general psy-
chological structure of the child develops from it, as does sexual desire
more specifically. In consequence, I see the origin of human sexual-
ity essentially in a social situation. Biological assumptions, accord-
ing to which the genetic equipping of a human also provides organs
for reproduction, are certainly compatible with this thesis. Yet such
theories, which understand sexuality essentially as constitutionally
given, do not explain the decisive characteristic of human sexuality: the
independence of sexual arousal from sensory perception. That points to
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 9

the significance of conscious and unconscious sexual fantasies, which

I regard not as genetically based but rather as the result of introjection
and identification processes that occur in social interactions. The term
seduction, in addition to emphasizing the primacy of the Other in the
development of the subject, also brings out the fundamentally sexual
character of this relationship, which is shaped by enigmatic sexual mes-
sages sent from the adults to the child.
Laplanche (1988) differentiates among three levels of seduction:
primal seduction, precocious seduction, and paedophile seduction.
The most important in his theory is primal seduction, and he barely
addresses the other forms. While the last refers to contingent, more
or less violent, sexual experiences of a child with an adult, precocious
seduction is of more general significance because it accompanies the
ordinary and unavoidable acts of infant care. By contrast, the term pri-
mal seduction does not refer to behaviour but instead describes the
universal structure of the relationship of a child to an adult. This rela-
tionship is marked by a fundamental asymmetry. Here a child, whose
psychic structure is just beginning to develop, encounters an adult who
already has a developed psychic apparatus. Laplanche’s theory empha-
sizes this basic and momentous difference between child and adult and
asks what its consequences are for human development.
This way of thinking is irritating at first, because it reverses the usual
view of the parent-child relationship: A child’s development is cus-
tomarily seen from the perspective of the child as the subject of this
development. The paradigm of modern developmental psychology is
to regard individuals “as producers of their development” (Lerner &
Busch-Rossnagel, 1981). The parent-child relationship is essentially
conceived of as an interaction, however, as a relationship between what
are, in principle, equal partners who influence each other. In this view,
in contrast to Laplanche’s perspective, the emphasis is on likeness and
not on difference. This paradigm shift in how the child is viewed began
to enter developmental psychology about thirty years ago and today
influences everyday understanding as well. “For a long time, it was
taken for granted that the behaviour of the parents was taken as precon-
dition and the behaviour of the children as consequence. More recently,
one finds the opposite view (the child as the cause of the behaviour of
the parents) more frequently expressed, or one finds an analysis of the
interaction of a parent-child system” (Oerter & Montada, 1982, p. 22;
translation for this edition). Up to this point, the behaviour of the parents
10 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

was regarded as condition and the behaviour of the child regarded as

consequence, but since then one finds a reversal: now the child is the
causes the behaviour of the parents (Oerter & Montada, 1982).
Developmental psychology has continued to follow this line up to
the present (see Oerter & Montada, 1995), in particular in research on
infants using terms such as the “competent infant” (Dornes, 1993; Stern,
1985, 2004). Only a few decades ago, infants were regarded as more or
less passive beings, who in the first months did little other than sleep
and eat, and who correspondingly needed, other than emotional atten-
tion, little beyond basic care.
But today, from the first moment of life, children are considered
active, curious, communicative, and competent. They want to discover
the world, and they prompt adults to behave according to their wishes
and needs. Though all these behaviours can certainly be observed in
infants, this list, with few changes, can almost be taken as a job descrip-
tion for senior managers. The ideals of modern society are projected
into the images of early childhood. Self-determination and autonomy
are apparently constitutive, at the moment, for human self-image and
thus influence, at least in broad contours, our ideas of the infant.
Laplanche contrasts that view with an approach based on differ-
ence theory, and emphasizes the asymmetry in the relationship of child
and adult. He focuses on the structure of the relationship and not on
the interactive, reciprocal behaviour of those involved in it, a position
which is opposed to that held in today’s developmental psychology.
He does not see the child as the “producer of his own development” in
the current sense of the modern autonomous subject. Instead, he sees
the child as structurally subordinate to the Other (as a “subject” in the
literal Latin sense of sub-iectum). Human development therefore does
not start with the ego but is conceived of as stemming from the Other,
the unfamiliar, the unavailable. This point of view—the primacy of the
Other—corresponds with the central preoccupation of psychoanalysis,
which sees experiences and feelings as determined, at their core, by the
unconscious; thus by what is inaccessible and unavailable to the ego.
Laplanche regards primal seduction as a basic, anthropological
situation: From the moment of birth, the child is confronted with the
world of the adults. “However, the adult world is not an objective
world which the child has to discover and learn about in the same
way that it learns to walk or to manipulate objects. It is characterized
by the existence of messages (linguistic or semiological messages,
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 11

meaning pre-linguistic or paralinguistic) which ask the child questions

it cannot yet understand. The child has to make sense of them and give
an answer.” (Laplanche, 1989, p. 124). The infant’s encounter with the
adult world consists, in particular, in being confronted with “enigmatic
messages”. These messages are “enigmatic”, for one thing, because
they can be only very inadequately processed or translated owing to the
infant’s still underdeveloped capacities to respond somatically, cogni-
tively, or affectively. At the same time, they are not completely available
to the adult, either: they do not consist only of conscious elements but
are laced with unconscious aspirations as well. The messages therefore
become enigmatic signifiers for both parties, forcing the infant to make
efforts at translation. A claim emanates from these messages to which
the child cannot not respond.
I regard the notion of claim and response, as formulated for exam-
ple in Bernhard Waldenfels’s (2011) phenomenological philosophy,
as more adequate for describing the seduction scene than calling it a
message. Inherent in the term “message” is the idea that there is some-
thing to communicate or transmit, something that could be precisely
identified and named. But in a “enigmatic message” we are dealing,
rather, with something that is obscure even to the person sending that
message. The German term Anspruch, “claim,” also has the correspond-
ing dual meaning, appropriate in the seduction context, of both appeal-
ing to someone and making a demand: Whenever I address someone,
I unavoidably also assert claims to which the other person must react
(Waldenfels, 2011).
Through these “enigmatic messages”, the infant is confronted with
the desires of an adult, and with unconscious sexual fantasies that are
unavoidably mobilized by this intimate relationship. This last point is
worth re-emphasizing. It is unconscious fantasies that are being evoked
in the relationship to the infant, and they act as enigmatic messages.
These fantasies are also inaccessible to the parents—a crucial, basic
point, because under no circumstances is this about real sexual acts. In
the relationship to the child, the unconscious desire of the adults is per-
ceived as a claim that forces the child to respond. That claim is thereby
transformed and introjected into the child and is physically inscribed in
the child. The unconscious sexual fantasies of the adults become part
of the mental and physical structure of the child through the processes
of introjection and identification. I will describe various aspects of this
more fully in the ensuing chapters.
12 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

Laplanche regards this seduction scene, this confrontation of the

child with the unconscious, the desires, and the sexuality of adults,
as a traumatic incursion into the child’s world. The enigmatic signi-
fiers are implanted in the child and create an internal foreign object
not amenable to any kind of metabolic processing (Laplanche, 1999a).
These considerations have by now shown themselves to be extremely
constructive for psychoanalytic theory—they serve, for example, to
conceptualize the genesis of psychic structures, the unconscious, and
sexuality, or to untangle processes such as repression, introjection and
transference (see Bayer & Quindeau, 2004).
However, Laplanche’s line of argument also raises a number of prob-
lematic and still unresolved points. For example, it gives the impression
that the adult world stands in opposition to a “child’s world”. Instead,
I would like to emphasize that this child’s world is only being consti-
tuted through this process: one cannot speak of an “incursion” as that
would presuppose something that already exists. Rather, the notion of
a “child’s world” independent of adults serves the cliché of the asexual,
“innocent” child. This kind of paradisiacal state before the fall from
grace can be found, for example, in Ferenczi (1933), whom Laplanche
justly critiques because the child is dependent initially for its existence
on “external assistance” and without an adult, would not survive.
But there are other reasons for my questioning whether it makes
sense to describe the infant’s confrontation with adult desires as a “trau-
matic incursion”. The question can be put more sharply: Is this encoun-
ter necessarily a confrontation? I am well aware that in putting it this
way, I question a broad consensus in psychoanalytic theory. Though
they give it different shadings, analysts from the most diverse back-
grounds, be they Freudians, (neo-) Kleinians or Lacanians, are unani-
mous in arguing that there is a traumatic confrontation between the
world of the adult and the world of the child. I would like to encourage
questioning of what is taken as self-evident, because the notion of a
traumatic encounter of child and adult has a number of problems and
inherent contradictions. To resolve them, I suggest a fundamental shift
of emphasis in psychoanalytic theory with respect to the genesis of the
subject, of the unconscious, and of sexuality: a shift from the trauma of
the (emerging) subject to the desire of the Other.
As a fundamental objection, I first want to emphasize that both trau-
matic incursion and confrontation presuppose the (ego) structure—so
that something can even be attacked or overcome in the first place.
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 13

The genesis of that structure should first be explained, however. If the

(sexual) unconscious is ascribed a basic, central importance in the psy-
chic apparatus, it seems problematic to assume that prior to its genesis,
a different psychic structure exists. Laplanche (1988) discusses a similar
question with respect to suppression, which he distinguishes from pri-
mal repression to avoid turning the explanans into the explanandum. But
as far as I can see, he is not referring here to the problem of trauma.
Laplanche’s main argument, which speaks for the traumatic char-
acter of this relationship, is the inadequate somatic, emotional, and
cognitive equipment an infant has for processing the enigmatic mes-
sages. Of particular importance here is the sexual immaturity of the
child, as human sexual development takes place in two widely sepa-
rated phases. It is only nachträglich, after sexual maturity sets in, that the
(former) child can access the meaning of adult sexuality. As in Emma’s
case, it is at this point, beyond puberty, that the universal trauma of the
general seduction situation takes place. However accurate the assump-
tion of inadequate means for processing may appear, the assumption
that this occurs in a traumatic manner seems inconclusive to me, for
another reason as well. Current psychoanalytic theory regards trauma
as composed of a triad of intrusion, denial, and arousal (see Fischer &
Riedesser, 1998).
These three dimensions would need to be recognizable in order
to speak of trauma in a clinical sense. But is the infant really over-
whelmed by the “enigmatic messages”? Does the level of physiological
arousal evoked by the presence of adults rise to such a degree that it
can barely be curbed? Since this is not likely as a rule to be the case,
I find it not very appropriate to ascribe a traumatic character to the rela-
tionship between adult and child. In my critique, I am concerned with
the theoretical ascription of a fundamentally traumatic quality to the
parent-child relationship, but certainly do not deny that there are over-
whelming experiences for an infant. Yet as a rule, these do not occur in
the context of interactions but are caused instead by the absence of a
(caring or protective) Other.
But I would also like to point to a further significant aspect in this
context that could speak for retaining the notion of trauma: the idea that
the enigmatic message is transported into the psyche of the child “like
a foreign object” and forms the unconscious there. To designate this
realm of the Other, foreign, and inaccessible, the term trauma seems
to be extremely appropriate again after all, as it also describes an alien
14 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

object that must be sealed inside the psychic structure and contained so
that mental functioning is possible.
Yet one could ask at this point whether it is actually sensible to
assume that the enigmatic message is only encapsulated and remains
in this form in the child’s psyche. The image of the sealed-off foreign
object evokes possibly inapplicable notions, for it is, after all, the very
confrontation with this message that activates productive psychologi-
cal processes such as the construction and differentiation of the psy-
chic structure. What strikes me as more appropriate, therefore, is the
idea that in the process of confrontation, this message changes. Though
it ultimately remains a foreign object, albeit a continually changing
one, it is partially processed and integrated. In terms of metaphor,
I would like to augment the image of the foreign object with the image
of the trace the “enigmatic message” leaves or inscribes in the body
and in the developing mental structure, a trace that leads to further
reinscriptions.
Proceeding from Laplanche’s argument, I take a different path and
emphasize not the traumatization of the (emerging) subject but instead
the desire of the Other. I conceive of the relationship between the child
and the adult as a place where the psychic structure of the child, the
unconscious mind, and infantile sexuality emerge in a non-endogenous
and not necessarily traumatic manner. It is not the trauma of the subject
but rather the sexual desire of the Other that is of central, constitutive,
significance in my approach. The desire of the adult is directed at the
infant, as a claim or demand that is being made. The infant responds
to this demand by generating his or her own infantile sexual desire.
The constitutive process of sexuality, and beyond this, of the entire psy-
chic structure, could be taken as a pointed modification of the famous
Cartesian cogito ergo sum, and formulated as desideratus ergo sum: I am
desired, therefore I am.
This formulation takes account of the fundamental heteronomy of
human existence. The passive form desideratus points to the prior struc-
tures associated with the individual, structures to which the subject is
subjected, and at the same time to the dependence on the Other in the
course of his or her development. Sexual desire thereby is neither an
endogenous process, meaning something already inherently present in
humans, nor is the individual either the subject or the creator of his or
her desires. Rather, I take every instance of desiring as a response to
being desired. If one formulates the origin of desire as under the primacy
of the Other, one is making not only an assertion about the situation
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 15

in early childhood. Every desire, even in adulthood, is a response to

these internalized scenes from early childhood, of being desired by
mother, father, or other guardians. The desire of the Other constitutes
the subject’s psychic structure and desire. This, in my reading and put
succinctly, is the essence of the Freudian theory of seduction.

Desire as inscription in the body

“Desire” instead of “drive”: reformulating drive theory
The concept of drives is at the heart of Freudian psychoanalysis. With
justification, Wolfgang Mertens (1998) regards it as a constitutive ele-
ment of the entire theory. At the same time, in the last few years it has
increasingly been seen as obsolete and superseded. This loss of signifi-
cance, however, carries grave consequences both for psychoanalytic
theory and for therapeutic practice (see Quindeau, 2005). Freud devel-
oped his drive concept in coming to terms with the problem of human
sexuality. Over the years, this idea was expanded into a theory of drives
and frequently revised. But these revisions continued to lead further
and further away from the sexual. To more closely define the sexual,
I return to Freud’s original drive concept and amass arguments that
speak for maintaining the concept and modifying it. However, the des-
ignation “drive” cannot be salvaged but must be replaced—though I
do so reluctantly, because it unavoidably entails a shift, and thus also a
loss, in meaning.
Freud (1905d) used the term “drive” (Trieb) for the first time in the
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. The term was not his own creation
but was commonly used at the time in medicine by the then leading
sexuality researchers (see, among others, Krafft-Ebing, 1877; Moll, 1897;
Ellis, 1898). I suspect that many of the misunderstandings concerning
the theory of drives are the result of this long history of the term. Freud
took a prevalent term and filled it with different content, but was not
able to prevail and, particularly in his later works, often reverted to the
use of the conventional meaning, one heavily influenced by German
idealism. The term drive served to describe the motives and determi-
nants of human behaviour. In drives (impulses), Kant had seen a natu-
ral propensity:

The predisposition to animality in mankind … is threefold: first,

for self-preservation; second, for the propagation of the species,
16 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

through the sexual impulse, and for the care of offspring so

begotten; and third, for community with other men, i.e., the social
impulse. (1934, p. 22)

Unlike Hegel, who discerned in drives a quest for reason (Vernunft),

Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in particular expanded on the notion of
drives as the dark side of human nature. At the end of the nineteenth
century, Albert Moll, a pioneer in the study of human sexuality, a field
based in medical science, published his studies on the “sex drive”,
a subject into which little serious research had been done (Sigusch,
2005b). Moll opposed the then-prevalent assumption of a reproductive
drive and argued instead for a sex drive that was composed of a
“detumescence drive”—which he described as an organic urge to
empty a secretion—and a “contrectation drive” which led to a conver-
gence of body and spirit (Moll, 1897, p. 94). Even if Freud did not make
explicit reference to Moll, he apparently was deeply impressed by his
works (Sulloway, 1979). In many respects, however, and particularly
regarding the concept of drives, Freud went much further.
Yet the connotation of drives as a dark, inherent part of human nature
has remained right up to the present and apparently cannot be exorcized
from the term. At least in everyday understanding, and worse, even in
German criminal law, the sex drive, which in its cruder form is usually
ascribed to men, is regarded as a biological force that is difficult to keep
under control and that determines behaviour. For Freud, though, at least
in his early works, drives were neither inherent forces nor predisposi-
tions. In his later works, Freud clearly assigns drives to human nature,
but his earlier conceptualizations can be read in terms of socialization
theory as well: The drive, or the “destiny” of drives (Triebschicksal), first
originates, rather, in the interaction of adult and child, and is not to be
understood as innate and dependent on maturation.
But this subtle view, to which even Foucault (2005)—who otherwise
does not much esteem psychoanalysis—gives credit to for addressing
the entwined unit of desire and interdiction, apparently did not reso-
nate among Freud’s audience. Paradoxically, Freud is criticized for a
drive concept he never advocated. Thus, for example, he is supposed to
have proposed a “sex drive” in a functional, hydraulic sense—a kind of
“boiler model” for letting off steam—which might fit Moll’s “detumes-
cence drive” but completely misses the mark with respect to Freud’s
conception of drives. However, the series of misunderstandings in the
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 17

reception history of the psychoanalytic concept of drives seems to take

no end, and not just in the English-speaking world—as reconfirmed
by a wide variety of contributions in a recently published collection of
articles about the Three Essays (Dannecker & Katzenbach, 2005).
But to return to the Three Essays themselves, even on the first page,
and with deliberate rhetorical intent, Freud discusses the assumption of
a biological “sexual instinct”. This is part of our everyday understand-
ing, Freud says, and immediately begins to rebut the “errors, inaccura-
cies and hasty conclusions” (1905d, p. 135) existing in public opinion.
While the energetic dimension of the drive concept was already prefig-
ured in Freud’s early distinction between external and internal stimuli
(Freud, 1950a), here he differentiates the source, object, and goal of the
drive. Unlike instincts, which describe hereditarily fixed behaviour that
is necessary in a biological sense for the preservation of the species,
drives have neither a fixed object nor a predetermined goal. The sources
of the drive can also be quite varied, at least in Freud’s first formula-
tions, where he distinguishes between direct and indirect sources, direct
stimulation of the erogenous zones through various stimuli as well
as general “muscular activity,” “affective processes”, or “intellectual
work” (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1973, p. 424).
It is only in the later revisions of the theory that Freud tries to give
drives an exclusively somatic basis by locating their source in the organs
of the body (Freud, 1915c). Yet Freud does not decide the question of
whether it is a somatic force or mental energy that underlies drives.
Likely with deliberate intent, he retains the ambiguity of the drive in all
his writings, seeing it as lying in a liminal area between the mental and
the physical. In his late works he finally reaches the well-known assess-
ment, “The theory of the instincts is so to say our mythology. Instincts
are mythical entities, magnificent in their indefiniteness” (1933a, p. 95).
Yet as much as one may agree with Freud in his appreciation of the
indeterminate and indefinable, making a mythology the core of a sci-
ence is not without problems. That does not imply an immediate rejec-
tion of drive theory as unusable; instead, it calls for renewed reflection
to fathom and pursue the unrealized potential still contained in this
theory.
I see such potential for the drive concept in Freud’s early writings,
because it is not yet weighted down by the ballast of mystifying specu-
lations about Eros and Thanatos, nor is it as yet understood as, at its
core, a biological predisposition.
18 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

But neither can one simply reverse the shift in the meaning Freud
gives to the idea of drives in his works. To preserve what, as before,
remains a meaningful concept in a modified form, I suggest replacing
the term “drive” with less encumbered terms. One among them is the
term “wish” (Wunsch), which Freud elaborated on in The Interpretation of
Dreams in conjunction with his analysis of hallucinatory wish-fulfilment.
Comparable to the drive, the wish is regarded as “the motor of any
mental activity” (1900a). Yet despite obvious similarities between the
two notions, I do not see the term “wish” as really suitable either, as it
relies too much on mental processes and ignores the somatic dimension.
As an alternative, the term “desire” suggests itself instead. In Freud’s
work, it had no place, though it is the key concept in Lacan’s psycho-
analytic theory. It is of course difficult to disregard Lacan’s usage of the
word, and it makes my venture a tricky one, but nonetheless I want to
revisit the term “desire” without making (explicit) reference to Lacan,
in order to continue the discussion of Freud’s original concept of drives.
If the result is congruence with Lacan, this is more coincidental than
intended.
To triangulate on the term desire, I first want to turn to the most
important aspects of the Freudian drive theory: Desire lies, as a liminal
concept, between the somatic and the mental. It is rooted in the body
and is at the same time a mental representation. With “desire” we also
gain a concept that, in contrast to the concept of drive, is not associated
with the problematic dimension of heredity and the biologically innate.
With this, it becomes possible to understand the emergence of desire in
a manner explicitly connected to socialization, and place it in a social,
“inter-subjective” space.
I intentionally use the term “inter-subjective” guardedly, as many
quite diverse phenomena are understood by this term nowadays in
the psychoanalytic discourse. By “inter-subjective,” I do not mean to
designate interactions between subjects but instead, following the more
recent phenomenological discourse (as in Waldenfels, 2002), designate
the interstice, the intervening space between the “subject” and the Other.
Here, “subject” no long means the subject as autonomously agent, in
the sense of the “cogito” as used in the Enlightenment and German
Idealist traditions, but rather as the one subjugated to the Other, and
which makes the emergence of the subject possible in the first place.
The primacy of the Other encompasses language and culture as well
as social structures and functions, and extends to specific persons. The
Other I understand in this context as existing prior to the subject.
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 19

It is not just the term “drive” that is problematic. The drive concept’s
increasing loss of significance might be related to various later distinc-
tions Freud undertook with respect to the theory of drives. In the Three
Essays, Freud spoke only of a single drive—the sexual drive—but in
his later works, he diversified drives, distinguishing between the sex-
ual drive and the ego or ego-preservation drive in Instincts and their
Vicissitudes (1915c), and finally contrasting the libido with the death
drive in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, his last essay on the theory of
drives (1920g). The last concept, in particular, probably the most specu-
lative and controversial, in which Freud both borrows from mythol-
ogy and anchors drives in biology, arguably sealed the fate of Freudian
drive theory. With these distinctions, the prominent position he had
given the sexual drive was lost, and it became re-conceived as one drive
among others; thus, he himself contributed to reducing the significance
of the sexual. Freud’s successors have added other drives arbitrarily,
with Adler (1924) adding self-assertion and Bowlby (1951) adding
attachment, while Balint (1933) replaced libido with primary love. This
process has continued in the notions formulated by psychologists of
the self, right up to the newer theories of infancy in which, for example,
the drive concept merges into non-specific motivation(al) systems (as in
Lichtenberg, 1989).
While psychoanalytic theory has largely accepted this diversification
of drives, there are hardly any theories that build on the primacy of the
sexual, as formulated originally in the Three Essays. The only exception
is Laplanche’s (1999b) general theory of seduction, noted above, which
regards the death drive as a sexual drive as well, and thereby reasserts
a monism in the drive theory that emphasizes the central significance
of the sexual.
Yet should one continue to give sexuality such a central place in
psychoanalytic thinking? I certainly do not intend to perpetuate the
pan-sexualism of the nineteenth century and assume that every set of
symptoms is of sexual origin. Instead, I inquire about the importance
and relative significance of the sexual in a theory of humankind in
general.
The drive theory is of paramount importance for psychoanalysis for
three reasons: 1. as a science of the unconscious, 2. as anthropology,
and 3. as a theory of socialization (Quindeau, 2005). It is indispensable
in psychoanalytic thinking, for without it, it is difficult to make sense
of the contradictory, conflict-laden, and non-identical dimension pre-
sented by the psychic life of civilized man.
20 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

Sexual desire is paradigmatic for the unconscious, for the Other, for
that which is foreign to the ego. By conceptualizing an unconscious
that goes beyond the descriptive unconscious to encompass what is not
(yet) conscious, Freud ascribes the central motive force in humans, that
is, everything that is key in determining a person’s behaviour and expe-
rience. Yet this is something that eludes the (self-)consciousness and the
(self-)determination of the modern subject.
With his drive theory, Freud brought a fundamental matter into relief:
in desire lie the roots of conflict and yet desire is largely inaccessible to
conscious awareness. The lines of conflict run between the conscious
and the unconscious, but also inside the unconscious and between indi-
vidual subjects. Conflict is thereby unavoidably inscribed in the psychic
structure, and is not a disorder or deviation, as some theories in psy-
chology or psychotherapy argue.
How significant the idea of conflict is for constructing psychoanalytic
theory can also be seen in developmental psychology concepts, such as
that of psycho-sexual development (a topic I will return to in greater
detail below). In the course of psychosexual development, a child
acquires (or searches for) various modes of gratification and these are
organized as polar contrasts between the active and the passive. These
wishes are tied to basic body processes and experiences and are associ-
ated with various zones or areas of the body. Thus there are the gratifi-
cation modes of orality (with the contrast pair “ingesting, devouring”
and “being eaten or devoured”), of anality (with the contrast pair “hold-
ing on” and “releasing”) and of genitality/phallicity (with the contrast
pair “penetrating” and “receiving”). Emotional conflicts arise from the
polarity of these gratification modes. For one, simultaneous achieve-
ment of active and passive wishes is contradictory: One cannot both
hold on and release at the same time, or both enter and receive. For
another, the wishes are often at odds with one another, as when there a
simultaneous (oral) wish for merging and an (anal) wish for demarca-
tion or individuation. These conflicts are represented doubly. On the one
hand, they are located within internal psychological processes, and on
the other, they manifest themselves in object- relations. As a rule, such
conflicts are mastered through psychological defence mechanisms, as a
functioning defence enables a broad spectrum of gratification modes.
Only during a crisis, as in the case of mental illness, does this spec-
trum become more limited, with desire being distorted into a symptom.
These distortions of desire are what psychoanalytic therapy tries to treat
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 21

in order to make the full variety of gratification modes available again.

Thus, at the end of an analysis the goal is less a pleasant identity con-
struct than a heightened tolerance for ambiguity, as well as the insight
that the contradictions of desire can never be resolved.
In the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud turned against the
prevailing understanding of human sexuality as basically instinctual
behaviour or biological programming. At the same time, he described
the essential features of anthropology: desire, the striving for pleasure
and gratification, as the main driving force of human action. That force
applies not just to sexual activity in the narrower sense but lies the base
of all human activity.
By no means is this driving force, which Freud called the sex drive or
libido, to be understood as organic and endogenous or as a biological
predisposition. Instead, it develops over the course of an individual’s
life. Freud was far more indecisive on this point, though, for on the one
hand, he regarded the drive as liminal and lying between the mental
and the physical, and neither unequivocally the one or the other. On the
other hand, throughout his life he clung to the hope of someday find-
ing and demonstrating the organic foundation of drives. I will not pur-
sue at this point the possible reasons for this continued back-and-forth
between psychology and biology—one finds it, incidentally, in other
places in his works (see Quindeau, 2004a)—but instead want to empha-
size Freud’s hesitation. The history of reception shows that Freud’s
successors were far more decisive, increasingly regarding drives as an
endogenous, biological predisposition. My argument takes a different
direction, as I regard drives as something acquired during the course
of life, something that finds expression in somatic processes or struc-
tures. Drives, in my view, do not belong to the biological endowment
of humans, they are not predispositions that develop into behavioural
or experiential patterns during the course of maturation. Rather, drives
constitute themselves and arise in the relationship between the child
and an adult.

Wish and need

The effort to better understand the sexual while maintaining the inde-
terminate, in an oscillating process, is not confined to the term “drive”.
Other facets of the sexual can be discussed by using the idea of the
wish, as Freud sketched out in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a),
22 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

in connection with the infant’s primary experience of gratification.

Freud derived his concept of hallucinatory wish-fulfilment from
these experiences, and wish-fulfilment is regarded as the most
important function of dream-work. Beyond that, it is also of signifi-
cance for other forms of psychic work as well as quite fundamental
in the construction and differentiation of psychic structure. For the
infant, the experience of gratification—as exemplified by nursing or
feeding—comes about through the actions of another person. Formu-
lated in Freud’s terms, the gratification that results from removing
the tension of unpleasure requires an object that cancels the inner
stimulus.

An essential component of this experience of satisfaction is a

particular perception (that of nourishment, in our example) the
mnemic image of which remains associated thenceforward with
the memory trace of the excitation produced by the need. As a
result of the link that has thus been established, next time this need
arises a psychical impulse will at once emerge which will seek to
re-cathect the mnemic image of the perception and to re-evoke the
perception itself, that is to say, to re-establish the situation of the
original satisfaction. An impulse of this kind is what we call a wish;
the reappearance of the perception is the fulfilment of the wish …
(1900a, pp. 565–66)

The notion of the wish has central importance in Freudian thought,

for it is the main feature of human sexuality. “As opposed to
love, desire is directly dependent on a specific somatic founda-
tion; in contrast to need, it subordinates satisfaction to conditions
in the fantasy world which strictly determine object-choice and
the orientation of activity” (Laplanche and Pontalis, 1973, p. 421
et seq).
The wish concept does not designate an intentional process or one that
is consciously accessible; instead, Freud uses it to describe the working
method of the unconscious. The wish, and in particular wish-fulfilment,
are the key characteristics of the psychic work of the unconscious. What
should be emphasized in the aforementioned attempt at definition is
the demarcation of wish from need. While need makes reference to vital
physiological requirements such as nourishment, sleep, warmth and so
forth, wishing is a psychological category, a movement in the mind that
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 23

leaves traces in memory and that wants to re-establish the perception of

gratification. Unlike in everyday understanding, there is no sexual need
under this definition, as human sexuality is not based on an absolute
demand that must be met for survival. Rather, it is a wish whose aim
is gratification, but such gratification cannot be achieved fully or for all
eternity.
The term wish alone does not adequately encompass human
sexuality, however, as it only insufficiently accommodates the somatic
dimension. This, by contrast, is contained more fully in the concept of
“need”, which is why it makes sense to connect the wish idea with cer-
tain elements of the idea of need. Differentiating wish from need leads
to differing respective forms of fulfilment. The need, the releasing of an
inner tension, requires a particular, “specific action”, as well as an object
in order to achieve gratification.
One can readily see this in the need for nourishment. Hunger makes
itself noticed as a tension and a displeasure that can be allayed by taking
in nourishment: the food itself functions as object while eating functions
as a “specific action”. A wish, by contrast, cannot be fulfilled in such a
material, specific manner. Its “fulfilment” consists much more in psy-
chic activity—the re-cathexis of memory traces with the goal of creating
a “perceptual identity”, that is, a repetition of the particular percep-
tion tied to the gratification of the need. “The structure of Wunsch has
taught us that a wish or a desire is not a tension that can be discharged;
desire, as Freud himself describes it, reveals a constitution that is insa-
tiable” (Ricoeur, 1970, p. 322). For Paul Ricoeur, the wish is a liminal
term lying between the organic and the psychological, which points to
the affinity of this concept with Freud’s later notions of the drive. While
the wish, in this early version of The Interpretation of Dreams, appears
as a largely solipsistic event freed from the inter-subjective matrix of
its genesis, its inter-subjective character is much more clearly evident
in the drive concept. With respect to the conceptualization of sexual-
ity, what is of importance is the inter-subjective context of origin—in
the form of the seduction scene between child and adult—as well as
the at least partial or temporary gratification, that, similar to the need
to reduce tension—for example, in an orgasm—can be achieved. The
term wish makes evident that this is not a purely physiological activity
but instead rests on psychological processes. It shows on the one hand
why sexual desire is fundamentally insatiable, or can be gratified only
partially and temporarily, and continually renews itself. On the other
24 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

hand, this underscores the constitutive meaning of fantasy in sexual

experience, which aims at a repetition of the perception of gratification,
and to that end, not only cathects memory images but also changes and
reshapes them.
The wish goes back to a memory. It consists of the cathexis of an
image, in memory, of a situation of gratification, and the striving for
renewed gratification that is bound to it. In that regard, the wish can
be regarded as the motor of every psychic activity. With the concept
of hallucinatory wish-fulfilment in the Interpretation of Dreams, though,
Freud focuses exclusively on mental processes and ignores the bodily
dimension. On this point, it would therefore be necessary to add a link
between the two formulations, one that derives not just the concept of
wish-fulfilment but also the genesis of sexual arousal and of the erog-
enous zones from the primary gratification experience of the infant.

Trace and reinscription

In his theory of sexuality, Freud transcended the mind-body problem
and in addition—though this was certainly not his intent—provided a
starting point for formulating an exogenous, socially-based constitution
of sexuality. Here, I cannot fully play the intellectual game of radically
deconstructing what appears to us to be so natural and immediate—the
level of the body and the somatic—but can only indicate the direction
of a further discussion of Freud’s texts.
As in the past, it is common to ascribe a constitutive significance for
sexuality to bodily processes. They provide the basis on which psy-
chological activities such as fantasies are added, and thus lend human
sexuality a specific cast. In his early theory of sexuality, Freud tended to
replace this primacy of the body with the primacy of the psychological.
However, this change in perspective was not entirely successful, and
for that reason Freud repeatedly fell back into the traditional view, as in
his repeated—unsuccessful—attempts throughout his life to search for
the origin of sexuality in endogenous, somatic processes, in preference
to completely rejecting the original thought.
However, with the concept of erogenous zones, he paved the way
for a different perspective, and described how the body of a new-
born becomes a sexual body, one that can be sexually aroused. From
this, I derive the thesis that sexuality, the striving for pleasure and
gratification, is inscribed in the body through a social process, namely
in the encounter an infant has with an adult.
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 25

To regard desire as inscription is certainly an unconventional way

of reading the Freudian text. With this thesis, I draw on Freud’s early
conceptualizations in which he was preoccupied with the connection
between memory and the origin of psychic structure. In a December 6,
1896 letter to Wilhelm Fliess, he laid out his completely new insights
about how memory worked. It did not simply depict perceptions but
rather recorded them in various systems of signification. In doing so, the
psychic structure was both constituted as well as continually altered:

As you know, I am working on the assumption that our psychic

mechanism has come into being by a process of stratification: the
material present in the form of memory traces being subjected
from time to time to a rearrangement in accordance with fresh
circumstances—to a reinscription. Thus what is essentially new
about my theory is the thesis that memory is present not once but
several times over, that it is laid down in various kinds of indica-
tions. (Masson, 1985, p. 207)

He had ambitious plans at the time he was developing this reinscription

model, and was convinced that “if I could give a complete account of
the psychological characteristics of perception and of the three registra-
tions, I should have described a new psychology” (ibid., p. 208), but he
apparently never pursued the idea.
Alfred Lorenzer’s theory of socialization contains a notion of forms
of interaction that I see as an elaboration of the Freudian idea of multiple
coding, though Lorenzer does not make reference to it. Lorenzer distin-
guishes between different levels of interaction forms that are formed, in
the course of ontogenesis, out of interaction practices, and that can be
understood as reinscriptions, or as particular forms of interaction that
are emotionally symbolic and linguistically symbolic (Lorenzer, 1977).
These forms are the traces that remain of a variety of actual interactions
that took place between a child and his or her reference person, and
they form a structure underlying later behaviour and experience, in the
sense of a pattern of expectation and orientation. With respect to the
question discussed here, it is the earliest structures or forms of interac-
tion, ontogenetically, that are of particular interest, and these are laid
down at the sensory, motor, organismic, and pre-verbal level.
As an example, one can examine the way a child is taken into the
arms of his or her mother. This gesture creates a kinaesthetic memory
trace that as much shapes the active behaviour of the child as it fixes a
26 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

passive expectation for the future. This is underscored by many clinical

observations that mothers usually have a self-evident sense of how
to carry their child. Evidently, memory traces of their own childhood
experiences are expressed here, reflecting the way they themselves
were carried. Impressive evidence of these kinaesthetic memories also
can be found in the well-known case history of “Monika” provided by
René Spitz (1959).
The countless repetitions of this interaction are then reflected in an
interaction structure or a “specific form of interaction”. This registra-
tion, in a pre-verbal, sensory-motor, organismic period, is an inscrip-
tion in the body that takes place without a reflective consciousness.
Going beyond Lorenzer, I want to propose the thesis that the inscription
or of sensory-motor interactions not only structures a kind of body
memory but beyond that, reinscription structures this body itself and
its perceptual abilities.

Erogenous zones
I want to use the erogenous zones to illustrate this formation of the
sexual body based on memories. With the term “erogenous zone”,
Freud designated a “skin or mucous membrane in which stimuli of a
certain sort evoke a feeling of pleasure possessing a particular quality”
(1905d, p. 183). This pleasurable feeling does not primarily adhere to
that area of the body; hence it does not originate in the genetic equip-
ping of the body and is then triggered in some manner. Rather, it first
arises through the actions of another person.
Take breast-feeding as an example. By suckling at the mother’s
breast, the lips and mouth of the child becomes an erogenous zone. The
experience of gratification shapes the infantile sexual body, supplying it
with a specific ability to be aroused. “The satisfaction of the erotogenic
zone is associated, in the first instance, with the satisfaction of the need
for nourishment” (ibid., pp. 181–82). This “attachment” is a key charac-
teristic of infantile sexuality and predestines certain areas of the body
to be erogenous zones. At the same time, sexual activity frees itself from
these zones and “precisely as in the case of sucking, any other part of the
body can acquire the same susceptibility to stimulation as is possessed
by the genitals and can become an erotogenic zone” (ibid., p. 184).
The erogenous zones are thereby formed through the sexual activity,
by the experience of pleasure and gratification whose starting-point is
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 27

in the care activities of the adults. This is true, of course, not only of
breast-feeding but of all body contact between an adult and a child,
from changing diapers and bathing to playing and cuddling. In the first
months of a child’s life, interactions are basically body-oriented. From
these experiences, a body memory develops that particularly focuses
on those areas especially sensitive to pleasure. This view is supported
by the observation that though certain areas of the body are erogenous
in all humans, individuals also have highly individualized erogenous
zones, areas of the body that evoke feelings of pleasure in some peo-
ple but not in others. It is just this idiosyncrasy that surely cannot be
adequately explained if one argues for a biological equipping—as in
the sense that for certain people, sensitive nerve endings are bundled
at certain points on the body. It is far more plausible to argue that inter-
action experiences are the reason for the differences. Every new-born
has specific individual experiences in bodily interaction with his or her
parents, and therefore develops specific erogenous zones.
Thus, erogenous zones are memory traces of early gratification expe-
riences that are inscribed on the body. Sexual arousal is based not on
the particular physiological condition of individual zones of the body
but instead on unconscious memories. These memories may be acti-
vated by stimulating the erogenous zones, but this is not necessarily
needed. In my view, the fundamental independence of sexual arousal
from sensory perception is specific to human sexuality, for such arousal
also can certainly be triggered by fantasies and memories. That makes
sexual arousal a highly complex, multi-layered mental process that can-
not be activated mechanically or technically through particular stimuli.
Rather, it results from an interaction between fantasies and memory
that can be intensified through tactile and kinaesthetic as well as visual
and auditory perceptions.

Memory and fantasy

Freud conceptualized a connection between memory and fantasy in his
early writings:

The aim seems to be to reach the earliest (sexual) scenes. … For

fantasies are psychic façades produced in order to bar access to
these memories. Fantasies simultaneously serve the tendency
toward refining the memories, toward sublimating them. They
28 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

are manufactured by means of things that are heard, and utilized

subsequently, and thus combine things experienced and heard,
past events (from the history of parents and ancestors), and things
that have been seen by oneself. They are related to things heard, as
dreams are related to things seen. In dreams, to be sure, we hear
nothing, but we see. (Masson, 1985, p. 240)

Fantasy is based on perceptions, such as auditory impressions that are

later processed and embellished. Fantasies are therefore—in this early
view of Freud’s—ways of processing memory traces. In Freud’s later
writings, this origin of fantasy in life history is increasingly rejected in
favour of a universal, phylogenetic origin. Yet with respect to sexual
desire, it is particularly interesting. Whilst Freud regards the “primal
scene”—the sexual act between parents that is the origin of one’s
own existence—basically as the origin of hysterical illness, I see it in
addition, against the backdrop of the general seduction scene between
adults and child, as a means for processing this seduction. The primal
scene thereby is a universal expression of the creation of sexual fantasy,
a prototype out of which extremely different variations develop in
the course of life. Unlike those versions that see the primal scene as
a universal structure or phylogenetic inheritance, fantasy in my view
is based on actual perceptions that are nonetheless organized within a
socially predetermined scheme: the triad of father, mother and child.
In this primal scene, perceptions with the most diverse origins have an
influence. A specific perception of parental intercourse is thereby nei-
ther necessary nor in a particular manner conducive to the construction
of this scene. On the other hand, the specific experiences with parents
and other reference persons have great importance. This is particularly
true for the seduction scenes in Laplanche’s reading of the general
seduction situation. These unconscious dimensions of the parent-child
interaction are processed in and with the primal scene. This scene thus
becomes an organizer in structuring the “enigmatic” messages, bun-
dling them together like a prism, and subsequently, nachträglich, lend-
ing them a form.
These constructs of the primal scene change in the course of child
development, and in adulthood. In an ideal-typical manner, and like
memories, they are subject to a permanent process of reinscription,
nachträglich. Thereby they are accommodated to the specific cognitive
and affective stage relevant at the time. They also correspond to the
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 29

needs, and, in particular, change in response to the unconscious conflict

constellations of that particular moment.

We must not suppose that the products of this imaginative activity

(…) are stereotyped or unalterable. On the contrary, they fit them-
selves in to the subject’s shifting impressions of life, change with
every change in his situation, and receive from every fresh active
impression what might be called a “date-mark”. The relation of
a fantasy to time is in general very important. We may say that
it hovers, as it were, between three times—the three moments of
time which our ideation involves. Mental work is linked to some
current impression, some provoking occasion in the present which
has been able to arouse one of the subject’s major wishes. From
there it harks back to a memory of an earlier experience (usually an
infantile one) in which this wish was fulfilled; and it now creates
a situation relating to the future which represents a fulfilment of
the wish. What it thus creates is a day-dream or fantasy, which car-
ries about it traces of its origin from the occasion which provoked
it and from the memory. Thus past, present and future are strung
together, as it were, on the thread of the wish that runs through
them. (1908e, p. 147)

Though Freud wrote this in the context of artistic fantasy, I would like
to apply his remarks to the realm of sexual fantasy. By this, I do not
mean just fantasies with an explicitly sexual content. Far more deci-
sive is their function. “Sexual fantasies” are therefore those that lead to
sexual arousal and not just the fantasy but also the arousal can remain
unconscious. What is particularly interesting is the tension between a
permanent transformation and reshaping of the fantasies in the course
of a life, on the one hand, and the immutability of the unconscious
infantile wishes on the other. As I will detail, the gratification modes of
the various phases of psychosexual development are reflected in sexual
fantasies.
I assume that in the course of child development, the corresponding
phase-specific dominant modes—orality, anality, phallicity—also domi-
nate fantasy life. While I regard these modes, which Freud called partial
drives, as subsequent (nachträgliche) inscriptions and reinscriptions of
the infantile gratification experiences I also see puberty as the decisive
juncture for these reinscriptions. It is here that these experiences are
30 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

newly structured, under the primacy of the genital, and reinscribed

into an adult sexuality. The partial drives thereby come to take on new
meaning, nachträglich.
The concept of Nachträglichkeit is, in my view, the main point of the
Freudian theory of sexuality. Astonishingly for a concept given great
prominence in other early works, it is not mentioned in the Three Essays
at all. Therefore, I want to inscribe this aspect into the Freudian theory
of sexuality—as it were, as a nachträgliche reinscription of this theory.
As described above, experiences, impressions, and memory traces are, at
a later point in time, reworked as a result of new experiences or because
of a new stage of development. With this reworking, the earlier experi-
ences simultaneously gain new meaning and new psychic effectiveness.
What is decisive is the dissolution of a linear concept of time: earlier
experiences are just as significant for later ones as later experiences are
for earlier ones. If one looks at sexuality in this manner, not as some-
thing that inheres in the body “by nature” and that merely unfolds in
the course of maturation, but instead as the bodily inscription of pleas-
urable experiences, then it is precisely such a constellational under-
standing of time that is useful for understanding human sexuality. For
in every sexual activity, numerous experiences, gained at the most dif-
fering times, come together and are processed as a new reinscription.

Infantile sexuality
The concept of infantile sexuality is likely the most significant accom-
plishment of the Freudian theory of sexuality. Among psychoanalysts,
the concept remains an undisputed element of the theory, yet its actual
meaning seems increasingly unclear. How does infantile sexuality
manifest itself? Can a sexual character be ascribed to infantile behav-
ioural manifestations at all, or is it not rather a matter of (retrospective)
projection by adults? There are many empirical psychoanalytic studies
on these questions, the best-known of which are the classic investiga-
tions by Spitz (1962), Spitz and Wolf (1949), and Kleeman (1966).
Yet such questions can hardly be answered empirically. There is
no need to enter into a discussion of the details of empirical research
and debate whether the individual research designs are appropriate.
As soon as meaning or inner, non-observable concepts such as fanta-
sies come into play; research needs actors capable of speech who can
provide information. That is precisely what infants or small children
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 31

cannot (yet) do. The memories of adults or of older children, who often
are called upon to act as substitutes in such research, do not seem very
reliable and are often informed more by current discourse than by what
actually occurred earlier. What remains is a comparison of the differ-
ent arguments with respect to what it means—both for thinking about
human beings in general and for understanding sexuality specifically—
to ascribe sexual experience and behaviour to new-borns.
An extended understanding of sexuality was a central concern for
Freud. It was neither to be confined to adulthood nor reduced to geni-
tality, but was meant to encompass a broad spectrum of possibilities
for pleasure and gratification. That is, sexuality possessed a “poly-
morphously perverse” character and began with the infant’s very first
manifestations of life, hence with suckling. The designation “polymor-
phously perverse” may sound pejorative, but Freud did not use the
term “perverse” with a normative intent. Rather, it was meant as a more
general way for describing forms of sexuality that did not serve the goal
of reproduction, thus including not only infantile sexuality but also the
so-called perversions. The many different forms in which infantile sex-
uality was expressed were described as “polymorphous”. In Freud’s
understanding, infantile sexuality was quite clearly separated from
adult sexuality. Moreover, it was also thought of as auto-erotic.
Before turning to the problems with the Freudian line of argument,
I first want to look at what can be gained from it. Accepting the existence
of infantile sexuality means it lies along a continuum with adult sexual-
ity. That reveals, for one thing, a perspective suggesting a continuum of
sexual experience and behaviour, and for another, the diversity of this
continuum. Sexuality is not confined to a biological, reproductive func-
tion but expresses itself in various psychically equivalent forms. This
applies both to heterosexual and homosexual object-choice and to the
so-called perversions. This concept of sexuality, which was originally
broadly conceived and neither conventionally judgmental nor hierar-
chically ordered, is found in particular in the first of the Three Essays.
However, Freud himself kept retracting and changing it so that it more
closely approximated the prevailing “common understanding”. Yet the
original formulation offers a number of advantages, and it is for that
reason that I want to return to and expand on it.
What strikes me as of special significance is that this model avoids
creating a normative hierarchy of sexual experience and behaviour.
The possibility of conceptualizing psychologically equivalent forms of
32 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

sexuality calls for a concept of sexuality that does not begin only in
adulthood, meaning with the sexual maturation accompanying puberty.
The primacy of genitality at that point perforce carries with it a primacy
of reproductive function that subsumes other forms. In terms of psy-
chological equivalence, however, the question of pathologizing sexual
behaviour and experience can also be put differently. Thus, as is gener-
ally the case in the psychoanalytic understanding of illness, a specific
behaviour is not to be regarded as pathological. Rather, the function
that behaviour performs is the key to determining whether an illness is
present or not. Accordingly, the boundary-line between so-called nor-
mal and deviant or pathological behaviour can be determined only in
the individual case and not in general terms.
The concept of infantile sexuality can be, paradigmatically, divided
into two large groups or positions: homological and heterological
(Schmidt, 2005). In research on sexuality, the former is associated with
the work of Albert Moll, who in the early twentieth century wrote a com-
prehensive work on the sexual life of the infant (Moll, 1912). He empha-
sized the structural similarity of infantile and adult sexuality, and was
primarily interested in the quantitative differences. He regarded infantile
sexuality as a precursor to the later sexuality of adults. This view was
shared by Havelock Ellis, one of Moll’s contemporaries, as well as by
later researchers like Alfred Kinsey. One still finds this view today
among researchers who engage in empirical studies, including John
Bancroft. What is investigated includes both sexual behaviours (such
as masturbation or sexual activity with others) and sexual responses
(such as orgasm, arousal and erection) as well as psychosexual aspects
(such as fantasies) or socio-sexual phenomena (such as being in love).
In methods used are observation, and survey of carers or retrospective
interviews. There is consensus among sexologists that nearly all the
sexual expressions found among adults can also be observed among
small children, from sexual curiosity to arousal to orgasm, with all the
characteristics, including the “lost gaze”, rapid breathing, and muscle
spasms.
These behavioural expressions differ in their frequency from those of
adults, and are both far less common and far less goal-oriented. Thus,
about sixty per cent of younger adults today remember pre-pubescent
sex play with others, and about forty per cent, pre-pubescent masturba-
tion (Schmidt, 2005). Compared with Kinsey’s surveys, the frequency
has increased, and there is a marked convergence in accounts from
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 33

both women and men (Bancroft, 2003). Similar trends are also evident
among children, reflecting the changes in sexual behaviour among
adults and youths: liberalization and “gender equalization” (Schmidt,
2004). However, what remains open is whether behaviour has genu-
inely changed, or whether this is not simply remembrances in accord
with current discourses. For in the course of liberalization, such mem-
ories currently, unlike earlier, are not only wholly unproblematic but
probably even socially desired. In addition, research shows only mini-
mal differences in homosexual and heterosexual activity in childhood
and, in addition, a steady rise in sexual activity as puberty approaches.
In light of such findings, the psychoanalytic assumption of a latency
period cannot be empirically confirmed (Schmidt, 2005).
As informative as such a quantifying perspective is, the meaning of
the findings is often not sufficiently considered. Even if similar sexual
behaviours are observable in children and in adults, they can hardly be
expected to carry the same meaning. The shift in meaning during the
life span, the role played by (changing) fantasies, and the overall influ-
ence of personality development on sexual experience and behaviour
are given too little attention by advocates of the homological position.
In this research, sexuality is only one variable, and it is kept largely sep-
arate from other areas of experience and behaviour. One can therefore
agree with Gunter Schmidt (2005) when, in referring to the contribution
the homological position makes to arguments about sexual socializa-
tion, he describes it as insufficiently complex.
By contrast, meaning is emphasized in the heterological position, the
most prominent example of which is the Freudian conception. What
is crucial in this position is the clear differentiation between infantile
and adult sexuality. However, some authors regard this distinction as
so rigid that in the end it is unclear whether an infant’s behavioural
expressions are about sexuality at all. Unlike those who promote the
homological position, Freud wrote that “we much reject as being too
narrow-minded” (1916–17, p. 320) the reduction of the sexual to the
genital and to the reproductive function. However, that leaves one with
the difficult task of making plausible why the pleasurable activities
children engage in, which at first glance do not appear sexual, should
in fact be called “sexual.”
In his Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Freud discussed the
difficulty of precisely determining the sexual, finally suggesting one
completely abstain from efforts to define it. Instead, he described
34 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

“deviant”, “perverse” sexual activities and showed their connection

with so-called “normal” sexuality. Freud arrived at infantile sexuality
through the perversions in assuming that “all these inclinations to per-
version had their roots in childhood” (1916–17, p. 311). He had arrived
at this view through careful observation: Perverse sexuality was “noth-
ing else than a magnified infantile sexuality split up into its separate
impulses” (ibid., p. 311). Correspondingly, he then called infantile sexu-
ality “polymorphously perverse.” To make his meaning clear, I must
add that the term “perverse” is not meant in its pejorative, colloquial
sense; instead, it encompasses all forms of sexuality that do not aim
at the genital and potentially reproductive union of man and woman.
Unlike many researchers engaged in empirical research, Freud admitted
that these observations of infants essentially rested on interpretations—
in this case, on interpretations that emerged from the retracing of
symptoms during the process of analysis. This procedure, as is well
known, is extremely vulnerable to attack. Yet the positivist claim, raised
repeatedly in the empirical research on infants, that the observation is
theory-free or theory-independent also cannot be sustained. It leads
back again to the point that the question whether infantile sexuality
exists cannot be empirically answered. One can only examine whether
it is a theoretically meaningful construct. I have already noted above in
what manner it would make sense. The concept of infantile sexuality
makes it possible to give explanations for how adult sexuality emerges
or develops that go beyond arguing it results from the sudden onset
of endogenous maturation processes. In this manner, one can avoid
reducing sexuality to the reproductive function, which is unavoidable
if one argues from maturation processes. This, in turn, enables non-
normative, non-judgmental conceptualizations of sexual activities that
are psychologically equivalent. This applies as much to heterosexual-
ity and homosexuality as to the “perversions”. All these forms can be
diagnosed as illnesses, but are not to be regarded from the outset as
pathological.
What is today uncontested with respect to homosexuality—at least
there is a broad consensus today that this is not an illness—does not yet
seem to be the case for the “perversions”. On the one hand, the spread of
what are called neo-sexualities (McDougall, 1995; Sigusch, 2005a) gives
the impression that sexual forms once regarded as “perverse” have now
become mainstream. On the other hand, renaming what were earlier
called “perversions” as “paraphilia” or disorders of sexual preference
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 35

in the World Health Organization’s International Classification of

Diseases makes evident that sexual practices such as fetishism, voyeur-
ism or sadomasochism are—albeit only beyond a certain extent—per se
regarded as pathological. In the psychoanalytic understanding of illness,
pathology only begins when such activities serve a specific (defensive)
function in mental functioning. This classification once again provides
evidence that a non-normative definition of sexuality still does not exist
in clinical practice. Yet the concept of infantile sexuality can contribute
to formulating such a definition.
Sándor Ferenczi, in a widely regarded essay on the “Confusion of
Tongues between Adults and the Child” (1933), drew a particularly
clear distinction between infantile and adult sexuality. Ferenczi, even
more than Freud, can thereby be regarded as a decided representative
of a heterologous position. In his essay, Ferenczi revisited the Freudian
theory of seduction and emphasized how important the “exogenous
moment” was for sexual development in infancy. After revising his the-
ory of seduction, Freud increasingly gave dispositional and constitu-
tional factors the key role in the aetiology of neuroses, so Ferenczi drew
attention yet again to the sexual offences often perpetrated on children,
and the devastating effects these have on mental functioning. He dis-
tinguished between the infant’s language of tenderness and the adult’s
language of passion, describing the psychodynamics of a “relationship
of abuse” as follows: Unlike in a loving relationship between a child
and his or her carers, whose interaction could certainly take on erotic
aspects, yet remains at the level of tenderness, sexual abuse is character-
ized by a crossing of this boundary. The child then is mistakenly taken
to be a sexually mature person. That child does not react, as one might
expect, with refusal or disgust but is instead absolutely paralysed by
enormous anxiety and fear. This fear forces the child to submit to the
will of the assailant, whose desires need to be guessed and followed. In
other words, the child must identify with the aggressor.
Though the introjection of the aggressor, the aggressor disappears as
external reality and becomes internalized in the psyche. Thus the earlier
level of tenderness can be maintained. The introjection of the aggressor
includes his or her feelings of guilt, so the child feels not only threat-
ened by the assault but guilty as well: “The misused child changes into
a mechanical, obedient automaton … his sexual life remains undevel-
oped or assumes perverted forms” (1933, p. 163). This identification
with the aggressor, into which a weak, underdeveloped ego is forced,
36 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

has often been confirmed in research on trauma. Thus the ego tries to
defend itself from further regression or fragmentation.
More controversial is Ferenczi’s distinction between tenderness and
passion (see the critique, for example, in Laplanche, 1988). With Freud,
Ferenczi quite rightly pointed out that object love is preceded by an
identification stage, which he called a stage of passive object love or
tenderness. However, the question is what the child identifies with. The
sexual desire of the adult includes both tenderness and passion. Both
are so amalgamated, however, that it is difficult to imagine that a child
can separate them and then only identify with the tenderness. Ferenczi
himself, in an appendix to his essay, admitted that he had only meant
to differentiate descriptively between tenderness and passion, which
“leaves open the problem of the real nature of the difference” (1933,
p. 166). He saw the decisive difference in the feeling of guilt, which in
adult eroticism subjects the love-object to ambivalent emotions, while
such ambivalence is lacking in the tenderness of the child. Still, even
this differentiation can be assumed only among very small children,
because the guilt feelings appear with the constitution, in about the
third year of life, of a conscience. By contrast, ambivalence is already
present in orality, in what is called oral sadism, which I will discuss in
greater detail below. The next criterion Ferenczi employs to differenti-
ate infantile from adult sexuality is also questionable. Infantile eroticism
remains at the “pre-pleasure level” and only knows gratification in the
sense of “satiation”, but not the “feelings of annihilation” of orgasm
(ibid., p. 167). Ferenczi did not expand on these feelings, but likely
meant the feeling of the dissolution of ego boundaries. Even if it cannot
be empirically determined how the child experiences an orgasm, one
can assume such feelings are not wholly alien to the child. On the con-
trary: I assume that “feelings of annihilation” during adult orgasm are
relics from experiences in very early childhood.

Variants of infantile sexuality

Oral eroticism
The first sexual activities of an infant are sucking, or to use Freud’s
term, ludeln (a repetitive, rhythmic suckling, sometimes on inappropri-
ate objects), and ingesting objects. The sexual shows itself in a man-
ner similar to other vital functions, in this case the need to take in
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 37

nourishment. Initially, it accompanies the intake of nourishment, but

then it becomes separate and independent. The sexual wish consists in
the cathexis of a memory trace, as Freud described in connection with
primary gratification in The Interpretation of Dreams. While hunger can
be stilled through nourishment, ludeln is insatiable, and though it can be
satisfied for a time, it keeps re-emerging anew. This fundamental insa-
tiability distinguishes pleasure—and thus the sexual—from need. The
experience of pleasure and gratification equips the infant body with the
ability to be aroused, and erogenous zones form, initially in the area
around the mouth and lips.
In suckling at the mother’s breast, Freud sees the genesis of sexual
development and “the unmatched prototype of every later sexual satis-
faction” (1916–17, p. 314). The breast is the first object of the sex drive,
which is transformed and substituted in numerous ways during the life
span. A first substitution and transformation is the activity of sucking.
It enables the infant to become independent of the mother’s breast by
replacing it with a part of its own body (the tongue, the thumb). The
pleasure gained thereby becomes independent of the consent of the out-
side world.
With this independence, a key characteristic of infantile sexuality is
named: auto-eroticism. Infantile sexuality seeks and finds its objects on
its own body. But as convincing as it is to regard sucking at the mother’s
breast as an infant’s first sexual activity, Freud’s subsequent argument
is implausible.
In my view, it over-emphasizes the child’s striving for autonomy
and auto-eroticism, relegating the constitutive function of the mother
or the nursing scene to the background. If one starts with the primacy
of the Other, the breast—in the manner stated, conceivable only as bio-
logical equipment—does not seem to be the first object of the sexual
drive. Rather, it is the other way round: It is the “breast”, representing
the overall nursing or feeding scene, which first evokes the sex drive
and sexual desire. Auto-eroticism in that sense is a secondary mani-
festation, a response to being desired and to the loss involved with
being desired, owing to the repeated necessity of being parted from the
“breast”. Pleasure is generated as a memory of the experience of gratifi-
cation. Put more pointedly, gratification precedes pleasure. Freud him-
self had argued this in discussing the primary gratification experience
in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), but had apparently forgotten his
reasoning only a few years later. The child’s striving is directed at (re-)
38 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

establishing the perceived identification with the original gratification,

yet that can never be achieved. In that sense, pleasure or desire is insa-
tiable and at the same time cannot be stilled. This search starts at the
beginning of life and continues until death. In terms of structure and
function, infantile sexuality thus does not differ from adult sexuality,
though it takes on other forms and is therefore also associated with
other functions.
One can of course question whether this striving for pleasure and
gratification can properly be called “sexual”. There are those (see, for
example, Dornes, 2005) that contest it and cite empirical studies, though
without suggesting an alternate term. But regardless of that, to refer to
empirical studies is extremely questionable: Like other psychological
constructs, “infantile sexuality” is highly dependent on interpretation
and must be deduced from the specific behaviour than can be observed.
That problem bedevils other, comparable constructs—intelligence,
attachment behaviour, sexuality—as well. There are no facts that can
be empirically proven beyond a doubt. There are only assumptions that
make more or less sense. As noted above, the assumption that an infan-
tile sexuality exists has a number of advantages with regard to theory
formation, but conversely, I do not see what advantages there would
be in a theory of human beings that does not regard a child as a sexual
being. Such a rationale has thus far not been produced.
But, to follow Freud as well as return to the psychosexual develop-
ment of orality, in addition to sucking, an important part of oral eroti-
cism is the ingesting of objects. In its early form, it has cannibalistic
elements, which you still find in expressions such as liking someone
so much you “could eat them up”. This is explainable by noting that
in this phase of a child’s development, individuals are not perceived as
objects but rather as providers of food or as nourishment themselves.
By ingesting, you become one with the object. Oral introjection is con-
ducive to primary identification at the same time. The notion of eating
objects, or of being eaten by them, determines how the union with the
object is unconsciously represented (Fenichel, 1946, pp. 63–66). That is
also shown impressively by the Catholic ritual of communion, which
is supported by the conviction that by ingesting the host, which has
been transubstantiated into the body of Christ, the believer will become
more similar to the incorporated object.
Iris Därmann (2004) has discussed this mixture of person and gift
in a quite different context and in a very subtle manner. Using Marcel
Mauss’s theory of the gift, she reconstructs Laplanche’s general theory
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 39

of seduction to argue that nourishment stands for the gift. The nursing
or feeding situation makes the mixing of person and gift clear. With the
gift, a person gives of himself or herself, and that gift is taken in by the
recipient, the infant. Thus, the infant is literally “possessed” by the other
person. With this theory, Därmann puts the idea of inter-subjectivity
on an alimentary-oral-cannibalistic basis. In this view, the carer makes
a gift of her or his own sexual life—a gift to which that carer has no
access—and thereby endows the infant with sexuality. Därmann shakes
up biological certainties by arguing this way, not only for sexuality but
also for the notion of self-preservation. In the end, it reveals itself to be
the preservation of the self through the other.
Beyond the modalities of pleasure, one can also name specifically
oral fears and anxieties. They correspond to the goals of oral eroticism.
However, their pleasurable character is hidden and appears rather as
fears, the most frequently observed of which among children, accord-
ing to Fenichel, is the fear of being eaten. One can see in this the desire
to be incorporated by a larger object and in that way gain security and/
or omnipotence (1946, pp. 63–64). The goal of oral incorporation often
takes on sadistic overtones, which as Melanie Klein (1962) suggests,
may have constitutional causes, or which, according to Fenichel, may
be the result of frustrations. Without wishing to pursue this controversy
in detail, I want to note that the oral incorporation of an object does in
fact destroy it, giving oral erotic goals an ambivalent character. How-
ever, it does not seem sensible to speak of destruction until the child has
developed a notion of objects. Only then—once an infant can perceive
an object separate from itself—can one assume destructive, sadistic fea-
tures. This distinction goes back to Abraham (1925) who differentiated
between a pre-ambivalent stage in the oral phase, where no object is yet
present and the infant only wants to suckle pleasurably, and an ambiva-
lent stage when, in addition to the object, the first teeth and thereby
the goal of biting appear. Fenichel, on the other hand, correctly points
out that this connection between the development of the object and
the emergence of oral-sadistic impulses is not only manifested by bit-
ing, as oral-sadistic elements also occur in sucking fantasies, such as in
vampirism. On the other hand, the analysis of sadistic perversions indi-
cates that their symptoms ultimately go back to the oral goal of biting
(1946, p. 65).
I want to emphasize that these early forms of oral sadism are not
about aggression. The child does not bite out of aggressiveness, perhaps
because it is angry or frustrated, but instead out of pleasure. As a mode
40 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

of pleasure, biting is a variant of sucking. This distinction between oral

sadism and aggression stands in contrast to everyday understanding.
It is not a matter of inflicting pain that could be pleasurable; pain is
rather a side-effect that results from searching for pleasure. This may
also cast a different light on certain “perversions”, in particular sado-
masochistic practices generally associated with aggression and pain
and less with pleasure modalities in the early phase of life.
The example of biting also shows that desire and prohibition are
interwoven. An infant who bites during breastfeeding leads the mother
to turn away and interrupt the pleasurable game. Pleasure is not
thereby dissipated; rather, the state of tension and arousal is maintained.
Through the delay, hence, the prohibition intensifies the pleasure.
Oral eroticism remains in force, in various forms that are more or
less altered, to the end of life. Decisive for these feelings of pleasure
is the stimulation of the mouth or mucous membranes, as in kissing,
in eating and drinking, or also while smoking. On the other hand, the
incorporation of objects is also sensual, as is true for swallowing and
for breathing.

Anal eroticism
Freud, as was typical for his time, conceived of psychosexual develop-
ment as taking place in phases or stages, with the anal and phallic-genital
phases following the oral phase. But the notion of stages is misleading,
as the pleasure and gratification modalities of the individual phases
do not succeed one another but continue simultaneously throughout
life, albeit with changing significance and intensity. I therefore regard it
as more useful to abandon the Freudian notion of stages and to speak
more precisely of orality, anality, phallicity or genitality as different
expressions of human sexuality that emerge at particular points in life
and remain in force.
According to Freud, infantile sexuality continues to develop along
the lines of elementary organic needs, as in the case of sucking or ludeln
(1916–17). What was clearest in the case of feeding is repeated in part
in excretion. Erogenous zones also form through the voiding of the
bladder and intestines, so feelings of pleasure accompany elimination
processes as well as become independent of them. In early psychoana-
lytic theory, these feelings of pleasure were investigated and described
with considerable specificity. Now, perhaps incorrectly, these categories
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 41

play hardly any role in psychoanalytic practice (on anal eroticism,

see, among others, Ferenczi, 1914; Jones, 1919; Abraham, 1923). Thus,
Abraham differentiated between pleasure at actual excretion and enjoy-
ment of the products of that process, in which pleasure at both the sight
and the smell play a role. These feelings of pleasure can be most clearly
observed among children, and undergo multiple metamorphoses
over time. In his article “Character and Anal Erotism” (1908b), Freud
documented the interweaving of bodily and mental processes in these
transformations. Upbringing contributes its part to limiting the pleas-
ure taken in infantile coprophilia and in the excretion process. By and
large, this pleasure is repressed in adulthood and can only be found in
rudimentary forms, or it becomes visible again only under particular
conditions, as in the form of “perversions.”
Unlike oral gratification, which to a large extent remains unchanged
even in adult sexuality, anal pleasures are far more affected by repres-
sion and transformation processes. The fate of anal eroticism thus far
more often became the object of psychoanalytic investigation than
did oral eroticism (Abraham, 1925). Characteristic of anal eroticism,
and less subject to later transformations, according to Abraham, is the
pleasure taken in the tension, which is far more pronounced than in
oral eroticism. This tension arises because the child realizes it is not just
the process of excretion itself that is pleasurable, but so is holding it
back, as that leads to more intense stimulation of the intestinal mucous
membranes. Retention thereby intensifies the feelings of pleasure at
defecation. This intensification through retention is not only found in
excretion processes but exists in every form of postponing or delaying
feelings of pleasure.
According to Freud (1905d), the intestinal contents have considerable
significance for the infant. They are first dealt with as a part of its own
body, and are the first “present” that, by relinquishing them, the child
makes. The child shows that they are compliant with adults, and by
refusing to comply, can show their resistance. Fenichel (1946) points out
that faeces are first part of one’s own body and then become an external
object, serving as a model for all that can be changed and thereby lost.
They thus stand on the one hand for “possession”, that is, for external
things that simultaneously have an ego quality. On the other hand, they
also stand for “loss” of a part of one’s own body or one’s own person
and thereby are “the model of anything that may become lost” (p. 67).
This second sense underscores the melancholy aspect of excretion,
42 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

and reflects the difficulty of parting with certain things. According

to Fenichel, for the infant, control of its sphincter is connected with a
feeling of social power that is reflected in the most diverse scenarios
between parents and child in the course of toilet training, which offers
ample scope for “sensual and hostile gratifications” (1946, p. 67).
Regardless of whether this toilet training is conducted in a permis-
sive or a disciplined manner, in light of the above mentioned feelings
of pleasure at excretion and at holding back, it is evident that this is
not just a question of power and control but also a variant of love play.
Once again the adults perforce take on the role of the child’s seducers.
Remarkable in this example is that at their core, the feelings of pleas-
ure here are not the result of actually touching the other person. The
“love play” consists less in the parents touching the child than in ver-
bal or gesticular interactions around the “potty”. Excretion or retention
processes are embedded in the parent-child relation and are—in what-
ever manner—commented upon. Even if parents do not intend it, the
pleasurable feelings of the child are thereby addressed and supported,
praised or even reprimanded.
Of particular significance here is prohibiting the child from taking
pleasure in his or her excretion process or products, though today this
is mostly implicit. As Lou Andreas-Salomé (1916) established, this pro-
hibition is decisive for the entire development of the child. The child
is first confronted with an environment that is antagonistic toward the
“stirring of its drives”, and he or she must dissociate its own being from
that hostile, foreign world. Then he or she is forced to the first repres-
sion of his or her pleasure. After that, the “anal” stands for all that is to
be rejected, for all that is undesirable, and it undergoes various transfor-
mations intended to make it unrecognizable, or comes to light again as
a “perversion” that serves to override the repression. At least, to judge
by the innumerable sources of advice, ranging from glossy magazines
to television programs, one can see a vestige of what were once modali-
ties for pleasure in the high significance many people bestow on bowel
movements.
In the context of anal eroticism as well, frustrations create specific,
characteristic anxieties. In this case, it is the notion that one might, say,
be robbed of what one has inside. This fear often appears as “revenge”
for anal-sadistic tendencies, with the idea that what “one wished to per-
petrate anally on others will now happen to oneself” (Fenichel, 1946,
p. 68). The anal-sadistic variants are largely analogous or similar to
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 43

those found in oral sadism. While there is an aspect of social power or

control as in orality, it is far less pronounced, owing to a lack of physi-
ological possibilities to exert comparable control over the respective
bodily functions. Like the oral striving, the striving for anal pleasure is
ambivalent with respect to the object. In its archaic manner, anal pleas-
ure can be as much expression of love and tenderness as of antagonism
and contempt. The latter is encouraged particularly by the prohibition
on anality. Karl Abraham divided anality into an earlier phase shaped
by “a sadistic aim in excretory pleasure without consideration of the
object, and a later period characterized by a prevalent retention pleas-
ure” (ibid., p. 68) in which the object remains intact. The concern about
the welfare of the Other, the basis of all love, is constituted in this later
phase and reveals itself first in the willingness to sacrifice the faeces for
the sake of the love object.

Urethral eroticism
Urethral eroticism plays a particular role in conjunction with the pleas-
ures at excretion, one that, and rightly so, was understood in the early
days of psychoanalysis as an independent form of sexual expression.
This differentiation has been lost over time, and what remains, if any-
thing, is anal eroticism—hardly as an expression of “normal” pleasure
but instead ostracized as a “perversion”. That is unfortunate, as it is
precisely such voiding processes that often play a significant role in
clinical practice—by which I mean an urge to urinate, that cannot be
delayed, sometimes manifested by patients during analysis sessions.
For understanding transference, the aspect of pleasure and gratification
it entails seems to me of great significance, and not just what is com-
monly focused on in this context, namely resistance, defensiveness, or
(castration) anxieties. In a distorted form, urethral eroticism can also be
expressed in (what are usually chronic) illnesses of the urinary tract.
The primary goal of urethral eroticism lies in the pleasure gained
by urination. As with the anal, I see a urethral pleasure at retention
as well as conflicts that arise from such retention. Urethral eroticism
is also closely connected with infantile genital eroticism. In urinating,
the child inevitably becomes aware of the difference between the sexes,
from which the castration complex takes its power. Earlier analysts, in
a manner today seen as problematic, began from the premise that girls
felt castrated and inferior in this situation, and boys feared suffering the
44 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

same fate. In the meantime, the topic of castration has been extended
to apply to both sexes in the sense of a threat to the inviolability of the
body. Envy, in addition, is not directed only at the penis but as much
to the ability to give birth. With respect to sex differences, the task of
development, conflict-ridden, is to force both girls and boys to give up
the illusion of their bisexuality, hence of omnipotence, and confront
the limits of their respective sex. I will revisit this topic in subsequent
chapters. In any case, the bisexual illusion continues to be effective in
the unconscious. It is manifested in urethral eroticism, for example, by
the fact that the pleasure taken in urination can have phallic signifi-
cance for both sexes.
Following Fenichel, urination becomes the equivalent of active
penetration, and can incorporate sadistic admixtures such as fanta-
sies of damage or destruction. A further dimension of meaning, found
among both boys and girls, is contained in the notion of letting flow
as a form of passive self-abandonment and the relinquishing of con-
trol. Thus, small children often urinate intentionally in their pants or in
their beds, just for the pleasure of it. Among older children, by contrast,
bed-wetting no longer occurs with intent but is better understood as
the unconscious equivalent of masturbation. The active goals of phallic
urethral-erotic pleasure among boys, in their subsequent development,
in essence merge with genitality. But the passive goals can readily come
into conflict with genitality; that is why these goals sometimes merge
with sadistic fantasies, as in serious cases of premature ejaculation. The
idea of letting flow is often, particularly among girls, displaced from
urine to tears (1946, p. 69). Urethral erotic difficulties manifest them-
selves among girls usually in conflicts related to penis envy.
According to Fenichel, the pleasure at retention is less pronounced in
urethral eroticism than in anal eroticism, and among boys is often com-
pletely absent. Urethral erotic conflicts are therefore less characterized
by the opposition between “eliminating” and “retaining” and far more
by the contradiction between the wish to enjoy pleasure and arousal
(through urination) on the one hand, and on the other hand, the narcis-
sistic gratification or pride resulting from a successful control of the
bladder. Fenichel (ibid., p. 69) describes the close connection between
urethral eroticism and a sense of shame. He regards shame as a resist-
ance to urethral-erotic temptations, comparable to the oral or anal anxi-
eties of being eaten or of being robbed of one’s innards. Ambition, often
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 45

regarded as the product of urethral-erotic conflicts, is the fight against

such shame.

The eroticism of skin and sight

In addition to the oral, anal, and genital zones of the body, skin is a
further, significant erogenous zone. Depending on the subjective expe-
riences of the individual, it can be stimulated to different degrees at
various sites. This excitability is formed, as in the case of the other erog-
enous zones, in the interaction of infant with adults, as during bodily
hygiene or play. From the stimulation of the skin, a specific pleasure at
being touched emerges, one which has both active and passive compo-
nents. The mode of caressing and being caressed surely ranks among the
most basic forms of experiencing pleasure and gratification. The goal of
this desire to be touched can be, as with oral eroticism, a form of incor-
poration. In Lewin’s view, such “introjection through the skin” plays as
important a role in magical thinking, in the most diverse cultures, as it
does in unconscious sexual fantasies and in forms that are manifested
as “perversions” (Lewin, 1930). In more recent psychoanalytic think-
ing, the skin is seen less in terms of its pleasure-giving properties than
in its communicative and ego-forming aspects—or in conjunction with
limitations brought about through illness, as in neurodermatitis (see
Anzieu, 1986; Pines, 1994).
Through this de-sexualization, which can be observed in numerous
other realms, I see a serious limitation in psychoanalytic thinking: The
constitutive meaning of the energetic moment in the dynamic (sexual)
unconscious can no longer be made intelligible. Absent the notion that
unconscious desire becomes effective and forces actions and experi-
ences, influencing them in a fundamental way, psychoanalysis becomes
one psychology among others.
In the interaction of an infant with his or her parents, additional
feelings of pleasure are created, for example in the kinaesthetic realm.
It is not just being touched: being rocked or cradled also can lead to
arousal in the infant. Among children, and even among some adults,
one can still observe vestiges of this in an enthusiasm for being on
swings or riding on carousels. An increase in basic anxieties is also con-
nected with the sexualisation of the sense of balance or space. Thus,
Alice Balint (1933) starts from the premise that the infantile fear of
46 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

losing his or her balance could be the basic pattern on which all further
fears are modelled.
Beyond the kinaesthetic, there are also erogenous effects proceeding
from other modalities of the senses—hearing, smelling, tasting—that
are of significance both in infant and in adult sexuality. While taste has
a close connection with oral eroticism, smell is more connected with
anal eroticism (see Abraham, 1923). The sexually arousing function of
the voice and of experiences with smell and taste is well known from
everyday clinical practice and to a high degree has been commercial-
ized and used to increase sales. Despite its evident significance, hardly
any psychoanalytic investigations exist that address the erogenous rel-
evance of these sense modalities.
Sexual pleasure in looking and being looked at is analogous to
pleasure in being touched. While the erotic goal of such gazing lies
initially in regarding the sexual object or—as Freud notes—in gazing
at the genitals or watching the process of excretion, the excitability of
the eye as a sexualized sensory organ increasingly separates itself and
becomes independent. “Sexualized seeing” means that seeing is not
only about perceiving but also about searching for sexual pleasure and
gratification. In the most obvious case, this consists in looking at what
is arousing. Less obvious though no less significant is that watching
itself is arousing. Voyeuristic curiosity can therefore be satisfied in de-
sexualized contexts, for example through reading or in the cinema.
(There is a broad psychoanalytic literature by now on such curiosity,
or scopophilia, in the cinema, much of which is Lacanian; see Mulvey,
1989)
Following Fenichel, the sexualisation of sensory impressions has all
the characteristics necessary for perception: the activity of the organs of
perception, the motility needed for perception, and the “incorporation”
of what has been perceived, with the consequent change to the ego.
The ego accommodates itself to what is perceived. Scopophilia, visual
pleasure, thereby functions according to the symbolic equivalence of
watching = devouring (Fenichel, 1937), which one can also note in the
locution “to devour something with one’s eyes”.
Incorporation is found in all erogenous zones, and Fenichel
distinguishes between oral, anal, epidermal, respiratory, and even
ocular introjections. Incorporation is not the only goal, though; there
is also the phallic significance of the eye, the moment of penetration
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 47

into the Other. In all these processes, the eye plays a dual role, both
active-penetrating and passive-receptive. Fundamental to all develop-
mental processes is introjection as a form of identification: The infant
watches something to imitate it, to become similar to that which is seen.
Later, this identification is phantasmal; one wants to observe something
in order to empathize with it. The pleasure of a voyeur who observes
couples largely comes from identifying with the partner of the oppo-
site sex (Fenichel, 1937). Pleasure in watching is closely associated with
sadistic impulses, also orally tinged: One wants to watch something so
as to destroy it, or to reassure oneself that the attempt at destruction
failed. The very process of looking at something can be a (weakened)
symbolic form of destruction. Thus, in fairy-tales and myths, the power
of the gaze to enchant or bewitch or paralyse those being looked at
recurs again and again.
According to Fenichel, the wish to look is one of the chief compo-
nents of sexual curiosity among children, and one that has an arousing
character. “Knowing about sexuality”, or wanting to, could then substi-
tute for actually observing sexuality itself (Lewin, 1939). The “knowing
about” can be displaced onto other topics, and thereby unleash a flood
of ceaseless questions that drives adults at times to distraction. This
curiosity is stimulated or blocked on the one hand by actually observ-
ing sexual activity among adults, and on the other hand by the birth of
a sibling. As a particularly characteristic anxiety, one corresponding to
the shame accompanying urethral eroticism, is the shyness connected
with the pleasure at observing (Fenichel, 1946, p. 72).
Exhibitionism is a complement to scopophilia. The two mostly occur
together, which Freud (1915c) attributed to both having a common sex-
ual goal, namely to observe oneself. For this reason, exhibitionism is
more narcissistic than any other partial drive. The pleasure gained from
it is associated with a (temporary) increase in the sense of self, achieved
by having the Other—in reality or in anticipation—observing the sub-
ject. Exhibitionism in early childhood aims in both sexes to display the
genitals and other erogenous zones. In the course of later development,
this becomes largely fixated on the genitals among men, though it is
displaced onto the entire body among women (1946, p. 72, p. 316).
However, the notion of “displacing” female exhibitionism away
from the genitals and onto the entire body is evidence, in my view, of
the problematic view of women as “castrated” and deficient beings.
48 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

Correspondingly, Fenichel also noted that it is only in men, under

special circumstances, that the close relationship to the castration
complex can also lead to the formation of an exhibitionist perversion.
Among women, by contrast, one does not observe such a perversion.
As I will show in the following Chapters in greater detail, exhibition-
ism among women is by no means “displaced”. It is far more the case
that the entire female body can function as a sexual organ (see Pines,
1994). In fact, there are numerous, widely distributed and by no means
pathological phenomena that allow exhibitionism among women to
be expressed, whether in clothing and the fitness studio or in apply-
ing make-up or tattoos. It is just that these phenomena are rarely
discussed in such terms. In addition, various authors provide clinical
case histories of female patients who show exhibitionist behaviour (see
Welldon, 1988).

Genital eroticism
Sexual arousal becomes concentrated on the genitals towards the end
of the development of infantile sexuality, and they become the leading
erogenous zone. Freud therefore speaks of the phallic or the infantile-
genital phase of psychosexual development, and that phase prefigures
the final form sexuality takes among adults (Freud, 1923e). The simi-
larity is largely that an object-choice, as is characteristic for puberty, is
made during this phase: All sexual strivings focus on a single person,
through whom the goals are to be realized. The other characteristic of
adult sexuality—the subordination of the partial drives under the pri-
macy of the genital—begins to manifest itself. Freud regarded the emer-
gence of the primacy of the genital, in the service of reproduction, as the
last phase of sexual organization.
At this point, I agree with the critique of the Freudian theory of sexu-
ality that is frequently raised. The central significance of reproduction,
which Freud introduces here, is not plausible. Adding this biological
aspect unavoidably creates a hierarchy of the various sexual forms, and
it is one that prescribes norms and by and large supports a particu-
lar social order. Arguing for the primacy of reproduction means that
“polymorphously perverse” sexuality, the diversification of modalities
for pleasure and gratification as found in infantile sexuality, is to remain
confined to childhood. If it nevertheless persists into adulthood, it is
regarded as potentially pathological, “perverse” or immature.
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 49

According to Roiphe and Galenson (1981), genital activity begins

between the fifteenth and eighteenth months and is accompanied by
erotic thoughts and feelings associated with the mother. The authors
trace this association back to the use of soft toys and blankets that func-
tion as transitional objects and hence stand for the mother. In addition,
the connection with the mother results from the unavoidable sexual
stimulation in the course of infant care.
According to Freud, the most important characteristic of infantile
genital organization, and one that simultaneously distinguishes it from
that of the adult and that is relevant to both sexes, is the idea that only
one genital apparatus, the male, is important. More precisely, genital
primacy is a primacy of the phallus. Despite all the justified critique of
his assumption, and it is one often dismissed out of hand, it is never-
theless worthwhile to more closely examine this single-sex focus with
respect to its importance for the theoretical edifice of psychoanalysis.
Freud uses the contrast of “phallic” and “castrated” to form a basis
for discussing the castration complex. His intent is to describe the devel-
opmental task of how to deal with the difference between the sexes, and
the anxieties and fears typically associated with it. This task, of course, is
one both sexes face, even if Freud only addressed male development.
As I will discuss below in Chapter Two, the perception of a differ-
ence between the sexes, and psychologically working through what this
means, is a major challenge for the child. The child must come to terms
with their bisexual fantasies of omnipotence and the unquestioned
assumption that they can be both sexes. They must integrate that loss
and the fact that they are limited to being only one sex. That is the main
task of infantile genital organization. Fear of castration is regarded as
characteristic for this phase, much like the oral fear of being eaten, and
it is also the highpoint of all fears related to damage the body can suffer.
The intensity of the castration anxiety corresponds to the special valu-
ation of the genital (Fenichel, 1946). The typical conflicts in conjunction
with phallicity consist in penis envy among girls and in a correspond-
ing envy of the vagina or of the ability to give birth among boys. These
conflicts also emerge from the need to abandon the bisexual fantasies
of omnipotence.
Such considerations make evident that the phallic phase need not
stand as the paradigm for male development. In my view, still more
basic than embracing one’s own sex or acquiring a gender identity is
the perception of the child that it has a sex at all. In this phase, sex
50 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

becomes relevant as an (additional) category for distinguishing between

people, and yet also stands for desire: The child becomes the subject
of its desire, and becomes aware of its desire. That is seen particularly
in the Oedipal constellation. In the phallic phase, the child (actively)
adopts what it has thus far (passively) experienced. With the adoption
of phallicity, it reverses the constellation of the general seduction situa-
tion. The seduced child becomes the seducing child. Unlike in the previ-
ous phases, it becomes conscious of its ability to seduce others.
I therefore suggest shifting the emphasis of the phallic phase to the
acquiring of desire. Thus the alternative suggested by Freud of either
having a phallus or being castrated can be recast as the ability both sexes
have to feel pleasure and to experience themselves as the subject(s) of
desire.
Yet a problem remains in the Freudian construct of phallic monism,
which equates “phallus” with male genitalia and thereby insinuates
a valuation that separates the sexes. In the alternative Freud poses—
either having a phallus/penis or being castrated—female development
is unavoidably characterized as having a fundamental lack. Critique
of this conceptualization of femaleness began already during Freud’s
lifetime, as from Karen Horney, and has continued ever since.
Among girls, phallic sexuality is generally associated with arousal
of the clitoris. But there are also studies that speak of an early vaginal
sexuality (Eissler, 1939; Lorand, 1939). Karen Horney (1933, Chapter
Two.), in her vigorous controversy with Freud and Jones about female
sexuality, even saw, in the heightened erogeneity of the clitoris, an over-
compensation for denying the role of the vagina. Whatever their relative
significance is judged to be, one should at least note that the infantile
genital sexuality of girls is characterized by two major erogenous zones:
the clitoris and the vagina. Following Fenichel (1946, p. 83), male geni-
tals, in accordance with their bisexual nature, also have two such cen-
tres: the penis and the seminal colliculus (or verumontanum), a point
in the prostatic urethra. In particular, men with marked passive anal
or urethral desires mention this—or often, incorrectly, the nearby peri-
neum or root of the penis—as the location of the most intense sexual
sensations.
Genital erogeneity is just as elemental as oral or anal erogeneity.
The erogenous zones do not shift but remain present and co-exist.
Nevertheless, a concentration on genital arousal develops in the course
of maturation, while other areas of the body lose erogeneity and their
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 51

cathexis is yielded, in part, to the genitals. Only in the case of fixations

do these shifts fail to occur, and pre-genital excitability remains at full
strength, though according to Freud this can lead to limitations on
genital sexuality. Just as with other forms of pleasure, genital eroticism
starts at the beginning of life; genital masturbation can be observed
already in infants. The urinary organs and the genitalia are largely iden-
tical, so the first efforts at genital activity are closely connected with
the urethral-erotic. Infantile genitality is primarily expressed in mas-
turbation, seldom in interactions with others, and it is rare to observe
acts bearing similarity to adult intercourse. While masturbation among
infants is generally confined to simple stimulation of the genitals, dur-
ing the phallic phase it becomes associated for the first time with fanta-
sies relating to objects (ibid., p. 75).
René Spitz (1962) describes early childhood masturbation as an indi-
cator of healthy development in the small child. In his investigation of
development during the first three years of life, he found a connection
between the quality of the mother-child relationship and the occurrence
of infantile auto-erotic activity. He observed genital play significantly
more frequently among children who had a good relationship with
their mothers. Beyond this, such play was regarded as an indicator of
the developmental stage of the child. Spitz even regarded the lack of
genital play as evidence of a developmental disorder. Abandoning mas-
turbation at elementary school age, and not because it was denounced,
could also point to a disruption in psychosexual development. Clower
(1980) concludes that children’s urge to touch their own genitals means
they want to re-evoke the pleasant feelings they had while being cared
for by their mother or father.
Other authors, such as Marina Gambaroff (1977, 1984) or Maria Torok
(1994), regard infantile masturbation as a form of separation behaviour
by which a child loosens its bonds to its mother. Masturbation serves the
childish wish for autonomy: Since I can do it myself, the child says, I have
overcome those who decided, at will, to provide or keep pleasure from
me. Infantile sexuality is understood as an emancipatory act, one even
more important for girls than for boys, who, owing to their “different”
bodies, are more able to dissociate themselves from their mothers. How
important masturbation is for separation is also confirmed by empiri-
cal findings indicating girls or women masturbate less frequently than
boys or men of the same age (Schmidt, Klusmann & Zeitschel, 1992).
This indicates how much more difficult it is for daughters to dissociate
52 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

themselves from their mothers, and how much the emergence of their
own sexual autonomy is thereby hindered.
Freud understood masturbation primarily as an auto-erotic activity,
adding the relationship to an object only later. He called auto-eroticism
the most important characteristic of infantile sexuality, though not-
ing this was a secondary development by which the child made itself
independent of the mother’s breast. While Freud focused in his theory
on the increasing independence of the child—the child separates from
the mother by selecting itself as an object—Ernst Simmel (1948) speci-
fies this process in greater detail with respect to its significance in the
relational involvement of adult and child. He described infantile mas-
turbation as a social act, and as the processing of loss:

In the stage of developing its object relations, masturbation may be

regarded as the infant’s first social activity. For through this activ-
ity the child withdraws from the disappointing object which rejects
its love and stimulates aggressive destructive reactions. In its own
body, the child finds a substitutive gratification for the narcissistic
trauma, replacing the object by its own genital as an object, and
finding in itself a way of discharging object-directed erotic and
aggressive tendencies. It has thus renounced direct instinctual grat-
ification from the real objects, but keeps an ideational relationship
with them in masturbatory fantasies. (1948, p. 15)

From this sketch, as brief as it is plausible, of the psychodynamics

of infantile masturbation, one can conclude that the Freudian thesis
regarding autoeroticism in infantile sexuality is not particularly appo-
site. As numerous investigations have shown, satisfying object relations
are in fact a pre-condition for masturbation (Spitz, 1961). The child, in
striving for pleasure, is not independent of the mother or of adults in
general, but rather remains oriented to them, even when—or especially
when—it turns away. The maintenance of the relationship, as Simmel
argues, occurs as phantasm, as in masturbation fantasies. The fantasy
thus proves to be a form of working through “reality”, in this case a
way of coming to terms with a loss or a separation.
In addition, I regard masturbation as a form of remembering, one
that preserves a gratification that cannot be attained again. Even if
masturbation repeatedly reanimates the loss, at the same time it per-
mits the separation to be overcome. This does not take place only
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 53

phantasmally—that is, on the path fantasy provides, as Simmel

describes it—but also is oriented to action and to the body. The ques-
tion is whether masturbation recapitulates what an infant has experi-
enced as parental attention and caregiving. He or she would thereby
actively enact what had been passively experienced. On the other hand,
it would not be a pure repetition but always a remaking or re-forming
as well, a type of reinscription. Thus, it is not only the parents and the
elementary organic needs that structure the sexually excitable body of
the child but the child himself or herself who does so as well, through
masturbatory activity.
In Freudian notions of psychosexual development, phallic sexuality
in my view acquires an odd dual role that results from Freud’s one-
sided focus on male development. Like oral, anal, and urethral sexual-
ity, phallic sexuality is a partial drive and hence a form through which
infantile sexuality is expressed in both sexes. On the other hand, in the
Oedipus complex, and as part of the phallic phase, it derives from the
identification of the boy with his father. That means that phallicity for
Freud was also characteristic of adult male sexuality, which is, in addi-
tion, completely in accordance with how it is commonly understood.
Yet this means subsuming genital sexuality under one of those partial
drives that—at least in the Freudian view—are supposed to be subor-
dinated to it.
For that reason, I would like to suggest seeing phallicity as a form
of infantile sexuality that exists among both boys and girls, and to dis-
sociate adult male sexuality from it. The latter, in my view, consists far
more in integrating the bisexual aspects of the “male” phallic and the
“female” receptive forms. Applied to the male body, that means, in
Fenichel’s sense, an integration of the two genital centres, the penis and
the seminal colliculus, and thus an integration of inner and outer male
genitality (I discuss this at greater length below). This integration occurs
analogously in female sexuality, in which the “male” and the “female”
parts can be assigned to the various areas of the female genitalia, to the
“male”-clitoral and a “female”-vaginal modalities of lust, pleasure and
gratification. This assignment follows traditional psychoanalysis with
respect to differentiation between a clitoral sexuality that is regarded
as “male” and a “vaginal” sexuality that is regarded as “female”. How-
ever, such a differentiation may simply create more confusion when it
comes to understanding the fundamentally bisexual character of sexu-
ality in both men and women—one thinks here of the fruitless debate
54 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

over “vaginal” vs. “clitoral” orgasm. In contrast to the Freudian view,

I regard the integration of “male” and “female” parts not as a change or
shift in the key erogenous zones but much more as a linkage leading to
a comprehensive unity. Male sexual development calls for just such an
integration, though it is one often hidden by the primacy of the phal-
lic, and is anatomically not as evident as in the female body (see also
Chapter Two).

Oedipal desire
The highpoint and culmination of the phallic phase in infantile genital
organization is the Oedipus complex. It plays an essential role in struc-
turing personality more generally and structuring sexuality in particu-
lar. Despite its core importance, Freud never systematically elaborated
it (see Laplanche & Pontalis, 1973). At the synchronic and structural
level, its function is directed at recognizing the limitations of one’s own
sex. At the diachronic level, it is directed at recognizing the difference
between the generations. Key in this context is establishing the incest
taboo. With respect to the development of sexuality, one should empha-
size the simultaneity of both homosexual and heterosexual object-
choice.
Freud formulated the Oedipus complex at about the same time as,
in the context of his self-analysis; he abandoned the seduction theory
(see letters 139, 141, and 142 to Fliess in Masson, 1985, pp. 285–86,
290–293):

A single idea of general value dawned on me. I have found, in my

own case too, [the phenomenon of] being in love with my mother
and jealous of my father, and I now consider it a universal event
in early childhood. … If this is so, we can understand the gripping
power of Oedipus Rex, in spite of all the objections that reason raises
against the presupposition of fate. … Everyone in the audience was
once a budding Oedipus in fantasy and each recoils in horror from
the dream fulfilment here transplanted into reality, with the full
quantity of repression which separates his infantile state from his
present one. (ibid., p. 272)

Freud (1923b) distinguished between “positive” and “negative” forms

of the Oedipus complex, which—depending on the basic bisexuality
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 55

of the child—together formed the “complete” Oedipus complex. The

positive form is drawn from the Oedipus myth and describes the love
felt for the parent of the opposite sex and the simultaneous rivalry with
and death wished upon the parent of the same sex. In the negative
form, the love is felt for the parent of the same sex, while the rivalry is
directed at the parent of the opposite sex:
A boy has not merely an ambivalent attitude towards his father and
an affectionate object-choice towards his mother, but at the same
time he also behaves like a girl and displays an affectionate femi-
nine attitude to his father and a corresponding jealousy and hostil-
ity towards his mother. (ibid., p. 33)

The ambivalence that results from bisexuality characterizes the object-

relations to both parents. Out of these four efforts comes identification
with the father and with the mother in the resolution of the complex.
The identification with the father fixes the mother object in the positive
complex (in the case of the boy) and simultaneously replaces the father
object in the negative complex. The identification with the mother pro-
ceeds in a similar fashion. This mechanism of replacing an object-relation
through identification and introjection of the earlier object can be first
found in Freud’s study of Leonardo da Vinci, in which he describes
homosexual development: The boy replaces his love for his mother by
identifying with her (Freud, 1910c). In The Ego and the Id (1923b), finally,
Freud sketches the emergence of the super-ego out of these identifica-
tions, which then take the place of Oedipal object-relations.
Freud sees the denouement of the Oedipal situation in identifying
with the father or mother, as dependent in both sexes on the relative
strength of their sexual predispositions, which he sees as biologically
determined. Their expression is manifested in the differing strength of
the identifications:
The broad general outcome of the sexual phase dominated by
the Oedipus complex may, therefore, be taken to be the forming
of a precipitate in the ego, consisting of these two identifications
in some way united with each other. This modification of the ego
retains its special position; it confronts the other contents of the ego
as an ego ideal or super-ego. (1923b, p. 34)

It remains unclear why Freud regards sexual orientation as biologi-

cally predisposed, for he describes it in the same breath as the result
56 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

of identification, hence as the result of social interaction. What is

important to emphasize is that the super-ego takes the place of the
abandoned love relationship; in this manner it is preserved as an intro-
jection in the psychic structure. This melancholy mode of sexual devel-
opment will be addressed again in Chapter Two.
Following Freud, the super-ego thereby establishes the choice of
love-object:

In order to complete our picture of infantile sexual life, we must

also suppose that the choice of an object (…) has already frequently
or habitually been effected during the years of childhood: that is to
say, the whole of the sexual currents have become directed towards
a single person in relation to whom they seek to achieve their aims.
(1905d, p. 199)

Following the Oedipal play with homosexual and heterosexual com-

ponents, the definite fixing of the love-object occurs in two stages, in
the Oedipal phase and during puberty, whereby the first presages the
second. In his essay on The Infantile Genital Organization of the Libido
(1923e), Freud assumes that a “complete object selection” took place
already in childhood.
The Oedipus complex provides the child—corresponding to the
bisexual predisposition—with two possibilities for gratification, one
active and the other passive:

He could put himself in his father’s place in a masculine fash-

ion and have intercourse with his mother as his father did, in
which case he would soon have felt the latter as a hindrance; or
he might want to take the place of his mother and be loved by
his father, in which case his mother would become superfluous.
(1924d, p. 176)

The dual aspect of the Oedipus complex, with its active and passive
variants, corresponds to the active and passive sexual goals of both
sexes. In the sexual life of the child at this time, masturbation, together
with the Oedipal complex, has an important role: “masturbation is only
a genital discharge of the sexual excitation belonging to the complex,
and throughout his later years will owe its importance to that relation-
ship”. (ibid., p. 176)
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 57

In Freud’s view, the Oedipal complex ends in different ways for girls
and for boys. While it “shatters in the threat of castration” among boys,
it only “slowly leaves” girls, because the girl’s desire to receive a child as
a gift from her father is not fulfilled (ibid.). The libidinous strivings that
belong to the complex are repressed, de-sexualized, and sublimated,
transformed into tender emotions. In the process, the repressed Oedipal
wishes are preserved in the unconscious. Or so Freud asserts for the
development of girls. Among boys, ideally, the complex is completely
destroyed and nullified. This notion brought critique from many quar-
ters, and I discuss them in greater detail in Chapter Two.

Puberty and adolescence: the transition to adult sexuality

In the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud (1905d) argues that
human sexual development, unlike that of other life-forms, is a dipha-
sic process that can be traced to delayed sexual maturity. After a period
of latency, the developments of pleasure and gratification modalities,
introduced during the Oedipal phase, are taken up again. The Freudian
notion of latency, according to which the abating of the Oedipus
complex is accompanied by an almost complete de-sexualisation of
the relationship to the parents, has meanwhile come under doubt.
Nonetheless, in the psychoanalytic literature, there is widespread con-
sensus that during this time, a clear weakening of Oedipal desire takes
place, and that until adolescence, no new sexual goals, that is, forms
of gratification, are developed (see Blos, 1967). Beyond that, the devel-
opment of the ego experiences further differentiation and stabilization
which allow for increasing control over the demands made by drives.
Sexual activity in this phase has the role of a temporary counterbal-
ance of tension. Blos notes that a key criterion for latency is the shift
in cathexis from external to internal object: cathexis is replaced by
identifications.
With puberty, changes start taking place that convert infantile sexual
life into its final, adult form. In the Three Essays, Freud describes the fol-
lowing processes: “The sexual instinct has hitherto been predominantly
auto-erotic; it now finds a sexual object” (1905d, p. 207). Now “the ero-
togenic zones become subordinated to the primacy of the genital zone”,
and the partial drives are bundled together under this primacy to focus
on a new sexual goal. The new sexual goal assigns different functions to
the two sexes, and among women, there is even a kind of “involution”
58 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

in sexual development. Among men, “the new sexual aim … consists

in the discharge of the sexual products”, and the prior sexual goal—
achieving pleasure—becomes tied to the final act of the sexual process:
“The sexual instinct is now subordinated to the reproductive function;
it becomes, so to say, altruistic” (ibid., p. 207).
With the primacy of the genital, according to Freud, comes a differ-
entiation of various kinds of pleasure, in particular initial or prelimi-
nary pleasure (Vorlust) and terminal or end pleasure (Endlust). In this
context, the erogenous zones of the body serve the new function by
bringing about anticipatory lust, and through this preparation, help
make possible the greater gratification that results from discharging the
sexual products. This differentiation leads to creation of a hierarchy of
different forms of sexual activity. Compared with coitus, there (or these)
are “inferior” pleasures that can add little to the increase in pleasure.
With this conceptualization of the primacy of the genital in the service
of reproduction, Freud gives us a highly conventional reading of adult
sexuality, which is clearly demarcated from the variety and aimlessness
l found in infantile sexuality. Conceptually, during the course of adoles-
cence the dominance of heterosexuality is reasserted, and a polarization
and hierarchy of the sexes is established. Thus, Freud asserts that “it is
not until puberty that the sharp distinction is established between the
masculine and feminine characters. From that time on, this contrast has
a more decisive influence than any other upon the shaping of human
life” (ibid., p. 219). An example of the reversion to conventional views
that Freud signals in his theory is his depiction of female sexual devel-
opment as “involution”. With this, he means a “fresh wave of repression,
in which it is precisely clitoridal sexuality that is affected. What is thus
overtaken by repression is a piece of masculine sexuality” (ibid., p. 220).
In the adult woman, by contrast, the clitoris only has “the task, namely,
of transmitting the excitation to the adjacent female sexual parts, just
as—to use a simile—pine shavings can be kindled in order to set a log
of harder wood on fire” (ibid., p. 221). Thus, the woman also switches
her leading “erotogenic zone” during puberty, while the man retains
his from childhood.
In the further course of the Three Essays, however, some aspects are
augmented or relativized in a manner that again runs counter to the
tendency to give a conventional account of sexuality. Thus, in passing,
the new sexual goal of the man is described as “penetration into a cavity
in the body which excites his genital zone” (ibid., p. 222), a formulation
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 59

that limits the primacy of heterosexual coitus. In addition, the

aforementioned “predominantly auto-erotic” sexual instinct in infancy
is downplayed by the observation that the sexual instinct only becomes
autoerotic after the loss of the mother’s breast, and that “the finding of
an object is in fact a refinding of it” (ibid., p. 222).
Since, according to Freud, it is natural to return to the sexual objects
of early childhood after puberty, “time has been gained in which the
child can erect, among other restraints on sexuality, the barrier against
incest and can thus take up into himself the moral precepts which
expressly exclude from his object-choice, as being blood-relations, the
persons whom he has loved in his childhood” (ibid., p. 225). This incest
taboo is, according to Freud, at its heart a social demand. In psycho-
analytic treatment, by contrast, one can recognize “how intensely the
individual struggles with the temptation to incest during his period of
growth and how frequently the barrier is transgressed in phantasies
and even in reality” (1905, p. 225). While incest in parent-child rela-
tions is today discussed as a punishable offense, the transgressing of the
incest barrier among siblings is even today a topic that is largely taboo.
Though sexual relations between siblings including coitus are repeat-
edly reported during analysis, and generally, though not exclusively,
occur during adolescence, there are barely any publications about this
problem.
The choice of object takes place during puberty, and it is initially at
the level of fantasies, that is, imaginings not meant to be carried out.
These are connected to infantile exploration of the genitals, which was
abandoned already in childhood, and are held either wholly, or in part,
unconsciously. Freud regarded them as very important because they
created a place where the repressed components of the libido could be
satisfied. Among them one frequently finds the “primal fantasies”, uni-
versal, often stereotyped, fantasies that are largely independent of the
experience of the individual. They are about overhearing the parents
having intercourse, or being seduced at an early age by a loved person,
or the threat of castration, or being in the mother’s womb. In these fan-
tasies, the infantile tendencies re-emerge with increased intensity due
to changes occurring to the body, and as a rule in the positive Oedipal
constellation. In overcoming and rejecting the incestuous fantasies, and
in the detaching from parental authority that accompanies it, Freud
saw one of the most significant, but also most painful, psychic achieve-
ments of puberty, “which is so important for the progress of civilization,
60 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

between the new generation and the old” (ibid., p. 227). Insufficient
separation from the parents and retention of the incestuous object-choice
were, by contrast, the cause of numerous psychological symptoms and
illnesses. Yet even without an incestuous fixation, this early choice of
object remains viable. While the first serious infatuation of a boy is
often directed at an older woman, and that of a girl at an older man; the
later choice of object is “freely related” to these models. Unconscious
“memory images” from earliest childhood play a particular role here,
and in Chapter Three, I will return to this question of object-choice, in
conjunction with modern psychoanalytic conceptualizations.
While Freud and many other early analysts usually spoke of puberty,
“adolescence” has largely replaced that term by now, as a more compre-
hensive designation with respect both to biology and to psychosocial
aspects. In earlier psychoanalytic theory, this phase of life was appar-
ently largely ignored, with Anna Freud (1980) calling it the “stepchild”
of psychoanalytic theory and therapy. It does not even warrant an
entry in what has become the near-canonical Vocabulary of Psychoanaly-
sis (Laplanche and Pontalis, 1973). However, psychoanalytic interest
in adolescence has grown since the 1950s, as witnessed by work con-
ducted by Peter Blos (1941, 1967), Moses and M. Eglé Laufer (1984),
and Louise Kaplan (1984). It is precisely this phase of life that is of great
significance for psychosexual development and the development of
gender identity.
In psychoanalysis, the first to address adolescence was Helene
Deutsch, who dealt specifically with the development of female ado-
lescence in the context of her Psychology of Women (1944), a work that
closely adhered to the controversial Freudian conceptualizations of the
female. Even so, with the exception of a normative emphasis on sex
polarity and the primacy of heterosexuality, she was able to create a
quite differentiated, sensitive picture of female adolescence. It paved
the way for many later theories, and for that reason I wish to present
her approach a little more fully, though not uncritically. I focus particu-
larly on her conceptualization of bisexuality with respect to the devel-
opment of a gender identity and object-choice—as it were, as the new
staging of the Oedipal event—as well as the integration of the bodily,
especially the genital, developments into the psyche.
Helene Deutsch understood adolescence as a revolution in the psy-
che that was at heart a “clash of two worlds” (1944, p. 115). It is mani-
fested in all that happens during these years: progressive and regressive
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 61

forces collide. With the notion of a new staging and new structuring,
the author contradicts the thesis often put forward in psychoanalytic
theory of “psychic determinism” of early childhood, after which ado-
lescence is only at heart a repetition of infantile conflicts. Kurt Eissler
(1958) returned to this notion in characterizing adolescence as a “second
chance.” What, according to Deutsch, can be progressive or facilitating
in certain areas can at the same time work in a regressive or inhibi-
tory manner in others. Thus, for example, increased narcissism can be
beneficial with respect to ego development but can hamper the devel-
opment of object-relations. One and the same psychic form of expres-
sion serves countervailing tendencies, so the identification of the girl
with her mother, for example, can mean that she accepts her feminin-
ity, but can also embody all the Oedipal difficulties and be more of a
hindrance in accepting that femininity. Adolescents are torn between
the opposed wishes to “be grown up” or to “remain a child”. Helene
Deutsch devotes particular attention to the pre-puberty phase and its
onset, and comes to the important insight that the psychological mani-
festations occurring then are not confined to adolescence: “In varying
degrees we all carry our infantilism, our prepuberty, and our puberty
with us right into old age” (1944, p. 4).
In both sexes, according to Deutsch, the libidinous tendencies
directed at the mother, as the first love-object, are reanimated in prepu-
berty. Central to this is the conflict between separating from the mother
while simultaneously loving her. Even if the shift in object is never fully
successful, disengaging from the mother is decisive for the autonomy
and independence of the girl. That disengagement is underscored by a
shift in the homoerotic love for the mother towards intense friendships
with other girls, as well as a fondness for older women that can even
take on tones of rapturous infatuation. Adolescence thus not only has
the goal of working through the Oedipus complex and overcoming it,
but also of transforming the primary bond to the mother into a more
mature form.
While the prepuberty period is characterized by homosexual love-
relations—to the mother as well as to girlfriends—this relationship
structure shifts to a bisexual triangle that includes a male love-object.
Fundamentally, however, this phase of early adolescence is governed
by a “general sexual disquiet, usually without the presence of a real
heterosexual impulse” (ibid., p. 37). Among girls during this phase, the
bisexual orientation is less repressed than it is among boys. Girls are
62 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

often proud of their “manliness” and process it in manifold day-dreams

and fantasies, while boys are more ashamed of and denying their
“femaleness”.
Deutsch links the bisexual love-desires with the development of
gender identity in an insightful manner. If a girl, owing to external or
internal inhibitions, is not able to express her love-wishes in both direc-
tions, whether through direct relationships or through sublimation,
there is a danger that the “bisexual tendencies may remain locked up
in her psyche without an object. Her problem in this dangerous case
is not “Do I love men or women?” or “How will I manage these two
emotional tendencies?” but “Am I a man or a woman?” (ibid., p. 86).
In this manner, the question of object-choice changes into a question of
gender affiliation. This indecisiveness, according to Deutsch, is often
the object of typical fantasies among young girls in which they take on
both the male and the female roles, and thereby stage what has been
lost: membership in the other sex.
The processes of prepuberty and early adolescence are basically con-
tinued during “actual” adolescence, according to Deutsch. At the centre
stands liberation from the dependencies of childhood: “the old emo-
tional ties must be cast off, and new ones created” (ibid., p. 91). The
casting-off of emotional ties is accompanied by an increase in narcis-
sism, because the earlier object cathexis is retracted into the ego tempo-
rarily. This makes adolescents not just very sensitive and intolerant of
criticism but also much more vulnerable during this phase of life. In the
further course of adolescence, new object relations develop from these
narcissistic cathexes, and in them, currents of tenderness and sexuality
flow together (ibid., p. 115). Helene Deutsch calls sexual currents those
which at heart serve biological reproductive needs, and thereby argues
for a clear separation of the sexuality of the child from that of the adult.
Unavoidably accompanying this is the primacy of heterosexuality and
a normative hierarchy of the various forms of sexuality.
The differing physicality of men and women also leads, in Deutsch,
to diverging psychological developments. She justifies stereotyped sex
roles in this manner:

The path to be followed by the boy is traced in advance by the func-

tional readiness of his organ; his progressive goal is clearly and
unequivocally before him, and the only difficulties he has to solve
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 63

are the dissolution of old object ties, the discovery of new ones, and
the mastering of passive tendencies. (ibid., p. 117)

With this, she proposes an extremely limited image of maleness that

one-sidedly emphasizes phallicity and wards off passivity and recep-
tivity. Similarly, female sexuality is curiously disembodied. While the
erotic fantasies of the boy are accompanied by direct arousal of his geni-
tals, eroticism among girls, in the view of the author, remains separated
longer from bodily reactions: “the vaginal sensations cannot be com-
pared with the pressure of the male organ” (ibid., p. 119). She summa-
rizes her view of sex differences as: “The organic contrast between the
extroverted activity of the boy’s sexual apparatus and the veiled, less
consciously perceived, and less urgent activity of the girl’s is reproduced
in the life of the psyche” (ibid., p. 130). The most important sex-specific
difference she sees is a greater degree of willingness to identify, to fan-
tasize, to be more subjective, and to use intuition, which she regards as
stemming from the fundamental passiveness inherent in women.
Such formulations betray how time-bound Helene Deutsch’s theory
is (see also the critical comments in Chapter Two). What is interesting,
though, is the persistence of such ideas in everyday awareness even
today. In Chapter Three, I will discuss in greater detail what Deutsch
regards as the key issue of adolescence: the development of homosexu-
ality and heterosexuality.
Peter Blos (1967) divides the process of adolescence into five phases:
pre-, early, actual, late and post-adolescence, devoting particular atten-
tion to its pre-Oedipal and pre-genital aspects. However, the concep-
tual distinction he draws between puberty, as a term for the bodily
manifestations of sexual maturation, and adolescence, as a term for the
corresponding psychological accommodations, isolates somatic from
psychic processes in a problematic manner, based as it is on a unidirec-
tional assumption that bodily sexual maturation influences the psyche.
This view obscures the possibility that it may be the other way around
or that the influences may be mutual. Blos describes the goal of adoles-
cent development, as the answer to the assault of the drives on the ego
during puberty, as achieving a “stable ego and drive organization”.
He summarizes the processes of change during adolescence as
follows: “The urgent necessity to cope with the novel condition of
puberty evokes all the modes of excitation, tension, gratification, and
64 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

defence that ever played a role in previous years—that is, during the
psychosexual development of infancy and early childhood” (1967,
p. 11). The emotional needs and conflicts must be recapitulated before
new solutions can be found that have qualitatively differing goals for
the drives and ego-interests. Alongside this, the pre-genital phases of
sexual organization continue to exert influence and try to gain the upper
hand. They stand opposed to the maturation process: “The gradual
advancement during adolescence toward the genital position and het-
erosexual orientation is only the continuation of a development which
temporarily came to a standstill at the decline of the oedipal phase”
(ibid., p. 12). Here, too, one revisits the problem of a normative model
of development: The manifold aspects of human sexuality become lost
in the process.
According to Blos, the heightened “instinctual pressure” in pre-
adolescence or pre-puberty leads to indiscriminate cathexis of all
possible libidinal modes of gratification from early childhood. Every
experience can have a sexually stimulating effect, and it is not necessar-
ily an erotic stimulus that calls forth genital arousal. The first ejacula-
tions that occur in a waking state are more often the result of a random
affect than of erotic stimulation. As an example, Blos cites body-oriented
competitions such as wrestling where spontaneous ejaculations occur:
“This state of affairs in the boy entering pubescence testifies to the
function of the genital as a nonspecific discharge organ of tension:
this is characteristic of childhood up to adolescence proper, when the
organ gradually acquires exclusive sensitivity to heterosexual stimuli”
(ibid., p. 58).
Such formulations influence the image of male sexuality and, with
respect to psychoanalytic theory-formation, can only astonish. This
view ignores key psychoanalytic concepts such as the unconscious, for
one thing, in the form of sexually simulating yet unconscious fantasies,
making it clear that sexual arousal is by no means as indiscriminate
and non-unspecific as might appear, and for another, in the form of
(unconscious) bisexuality with respect to gender identity as well as to
sexual orientation, which preserves, life-long, the receptiveness of the
male genitals to homosexual and heterosexual stimulation.
Similar objections to this theory are relevant for its conceptualization
of maleness and femaleness, as Blos largely adopts Freud’s controversial
model of femaleness. Blos, too, assumes a sex-specific development in
adolescence that plays out differently for boys and for girls. In Chapter
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 65

Two, I will discuss these differing paths again, in the context of the
formation, among both men and women, of an adult gender identity
and sexuality.
From Freud and Deutsch to Blos, Eissler, and Laufer and Laufer,
there is consensus in the psychoanalytic discourse that separation from
the primary love objects—along with the revitalizing and overcoming
of the Oedipal conflict—is the key task of “actual” adolescence.
Adolescence thereby is an opportunity to compensate for adverse influ-
ences during early childhood and modify them. Otto Fenichel (1946,
p. 113) already pointed out that experiences “in puberty may solve con-
flicts or shift conflicts into a final direction”. Kurt Eissler (1958) took this
further, clinically, seeing in adolescence a “second (and in most cases,
last) chance.” Adolescence grants, so to speak, a respite and allows the
acquired psychological conflict structures and their processing patters
to become more fluid. Adolescents can now encounter the re-activated
Oedipal conflicts in a different manner, and turn to love objects out-
side the family. The goal is to overcome the narcissistic and bisexual
ambitions, to enable heterosexuality and object-love to prevail, and to
satisfy the search for love objects outside the family. This description of
goals makes clear that during adolescence, all youths are subjected to a
remarkable degree to social notions of order, and the “polymorphously
perverse” infantile sexuality becomes socially regimented. This “sub-
mission”, however, is rewarded by a hitherto unattained pleasure: the
orgasm of genital sexuality. The primacy of genitality, under which all
partial drives are subsumed, is in that sense an ambivalent achieve-
ment. On the one hand, it limits the variety of possibilities for pleasure
and gratification, now downgraded to “anticipatory pleasures”, but on
the other hand this is compensated for by a distinct gain in pleasure
through orgasmic experiences. Sexuality, too, is now placed in an inter-
personal context: Sexual activity and experience is based on manifested
reciprocity. Infantile sexuality, on the other hand, was by and large, or
at its core, auto-erotic because of the incest taboo. The only exceptions
to this were sibling relations or erotic play with peers, though largely
confined to the preschool years.
A concept of adolescence less oriented to societal notions of order
can be found in the work of Lillian Rotter, another early analyst who
argued the young were always rebellious and disruptive, and keen on
overturning the existing order (1989, p. 191). She provides interesting
insights into the question of masturbation during adolescence, which
66 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

she understands not just as an aspect of separation but also as an effort

at self-healing (ibid., p. 198). Masturbation not only serves to heighten
pleasure, but also has a soothing function, as true for menstrual cramps
as for psychological tension. In this manner, disquiet and sorrow can
be discharged or dissipated. The content of adolescent masturbation
fantasies is, as before, childlike but takes on a narcissistic tinge
pervaded with pride, and at its core is derived from Oedipal wishes.
Lillian Rotter points out that during puberty, the young must
engage in grief work, mourning their first love-objects, as well as
their lost childhood. Only then can there be separation, replacement,
and the achievement of maturity (ibid., p. 187). The changes occur-
ring in puberty brings also confront parents with great psychological
challenges—how children experience puberty often depends on how
their parents experienced, and assess, their own lives and especially
their own puberty (ibid., p. 190). During their children’s puberty,
parents experience a second puberty. Ulrike Schmauch (2004) takes this
thought further and sees a mutual sexual socialization of adolescents
and their parents. Important to the analysis of adolescence is that it be
understood within a relational structure, most particularly with respect
to sexual experience. Whether sexuality is experienced with fear and a
sense of guilt, or with delight and enjoyment, and whether new means
of pleasure ensue, depends very heavily on the relationship between
parents and adolescents, and indeed in both directions: Parents and
adolescents mutually influence one another here.
Vera King (1992) has addressed the potential for conflict that exists
in the psychic acquisition of female genitality during adolescence, par-
ticularly against a backdrop of the cultural devaluation of femininity.
During puberty, the girl’s sexual wishes and fantasies are connected for
the first time with the possibility of pregnancy. Helene Deutsch (1944)
and Judith Kestenberg (1968) point out that with the onset of men-
struation inner genitality takes on a new significance and needs to be
integrated. Identification with the mother plays an important role here.
This process is made more difficult by a cultural definition of femaleness
that is based on an antagonism between motherhood and sexual passion
(Poluda-Korte, 1986). The young woman is then faced with the dilemma
that the physical changes brought on by puberty, such as menstruation,
breast growth, and pleasurable vaginal sensations, form the body-ego
anew. These are connected with sexual fantasies and wishes, yet on the
other hand the cultural image of motherhood seems incompatible with
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 67

sexuality. For that reason, the positive cathexis of female genitality, and
often of the entire female body, is highly conflicted. Additionally, the
culturally isolated and devalued realm of motherhood, highly threat-
ening images have been created of an all-powerful mother and of a
father “castrated” and robbed of power by the mother. Hence it is much
harder for girls to acknowledge their mother’s desire and to “mirror”
it in their own arousal, meaning to identify with their mother and yet
be her rival. In bodily terms, for a daughter to be like her mother is
both arousing and fear-inducing at the same time. In the desire(s) of the
mother, the daughter sees her own desire(s) reflected and vice versa.
This recognition implies both a homoerotic-narcissistic component in
the mother-daughter relationship and the perception of desire and pas-
sion between the parents (King, 1992).
This notion of a reciprocally influenced formation of desire(s) on
the part of mother and daughter seems to me extremely productive.
In it, however, I see less the character of a “mirroring” than of a mutual
reshaping and new staging. One can also ask what role the father might
play as the man in the adolescent restaging of female desire.
Finally, I would like to return to the question raised at the outset
about the difference between infantile and adult sexuality, in other
words, the contrast between the homological and the heterological
position. The notion that adult sexuality differs from infantile sexual-
ity, the heterologous position, is supported by the Freudian notion of a
diphasic human sexual development occurring at two different points
in life: in early childhood and during puberty. This proposal leads to the
dual difficulty noted above. On the one hand, it is debatable whether
one is even dealing with sexuality at all in infant behaviours, and on
the other hand, whether one wants to abandon what the concept of
infantile sexuality engendered: a non-endogenous, non-hierarchical,
“polymorphously perverse” multiplied sexuality.
As a result, my question is whether infantile and adult sexuality are
really as fundamentally different as the Freudian notion of a diphasic
process, and its associated primacy of genitality, makes them appear.
Perhaps the assumption of a fundamental difference owes more to
efforts to make psychoanalytic theory more conventional, which Freud
did engage in at various points in his work. If one takes Freud’s rever-
sion to conventional notions as a failure in psychoanalytic theory-
formation as Peter Passett (2005) suggests then other perspectives open.
Passett denies the primacy of the genital, and sees instead precisely
68 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

the infantile, polymorphously perverse as the central characteristic

of human sexuality. The question, unlike in Fenichel, is then not why
infantile sexuality can be called “sexual” (Früh, 2005). Rather, it is
the “infantile”—meaning the “polymorphously perverse”—that is
seen as the specifically human element of sexuality. Here no linear,
quasi-natural development from infantile to mature, adult sexuality
is assumed. Instead, a subjective history of sexuality is shaped by the
subject (Passett, 2005). Also untenable, following this view, is the thesis
of a diphasic sexual development, a thesis that, astonishingly, is barely
questioned in psychoanalytic discourse. However, it is worth consider-
ing how sensible the conceptualization of such a break as the diphasic
model proposes might be, as it calls for starting over again. For one
thing, bodily maturation, which in the traditional view requires such a
restarting of the developmental process, is not a one-time, datable event,
but rather a multi-year process occurring on many levels. For another,
it is also quite problematic to divorce the physical, bodily development
from its psychological and social dimensions. Instead, one needs to see
the three dimensions as a complex, interrelated set of conditions.
The perspective of the general theory of seduction, described in
detail initially, which serves as the foundation for my own notions, pro-
vides an alternative to the diphasic theory. Adolescence is not so much
a new start as a specific constellation, a junction-point in the course
of development where various reinscriptions at various levels come
together. The “enigmatic messages” are newly interpreted, in light of
the body’s development and of genital developments in particular,
and worked through to come to new answers. Using the metaphor of
a continuous reinscription, I want to suggest a more distinct connec-
tion between the various pleasure and gratification modes, including
their conflicts, than the thesis of a diphasic process allows. At the same
time, seeing adolescence as a juncture where various reinscriptions are
concentrated emphasizes the special character of a specific phase of life
and development. Finally, the concept of reinscription permits sociali-
zation experiences to be understood as inscriptions in and on the body.
Bodily changes during adolescence are understood thereby not only as
endogenous and caused by maturation but also as dependent on psy-
chological and social factors. This perspective, which brings into focus
the influence of interactive experiences on the body and the structure of
the body, has thus far been largely ignored in psychoanalytic discourse.
I see it as an important direction for future research.
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 69

A brief digression on adult sexuality

There is a not infrequent complaint about psychoanalytic notions of
human sexuality that they end with adolescence and give little separate
attention to the love life of adults. The discussion of psychosexual devel-
opment here, too, ends with adolescence. That should not be understood
as a deficit that shows gaping holes in research, but is instead based
on the specific logic underlying psychoanalytic theory about human
development. As is well known, psychoanalysis is interested less in
phenomena that deal with the manifold expressions of human (love-)
life than in the structures and functions underlying them. In that sense,
the chronicity of the course of human life plays a relatively subordinate
role in theory-building. As noted initially in this chapter, it is the “con-
stellations” that are of interest, the conjunction of various scenes from
different points in a life-history at least as compared with linear time.
But there are other reasons for psychoanalytic accounts of psychosex-
ual development to end with adolescence. The underlying modalities of
pleasure and gratification, and the unconscious conflicts associated with
them, become fixed in the psychic structures by that point. They remain
there for life, not in an “original” form but rather by being permanently
reinscribed in the course of life and development. In the best case, the
ways of consciously and unconsciously handling pleasures modes and
their conflicts—the so-called defence formations—are expanded in
the subsequent course of life. In the worst case, they become limited,
as with mental illnesses. In certain situations of life, the conflicts may
again become virulent and call for special psychic work. I have already
described such situations as junction-points, junctures where the most
differing reinscriptions, at different levels, come together. I regard ado-
lescence as such a point in the course of psychosexual development.
Menopause is a similar juncture, but so are life-events such as preg-
nancy, parenthood in its various stages, and experiences of loss in its
diverse manifestations (death, illnesses, separations).
Such a conceptualization of development is not so chronologically
oriented with respect to the life course. In this model, a temporal per-
spective is only necessary to indicate the particular point in time when
individual pleasure and gratification modes, including their conflicts,
emerge in the psychic structure or develop psychic effect. That is the
case for establishing orality, anality, phallicity and oedipality, basically,
up to the period of latency. Adolescence, by contrast, is not without
70 SEDUCTION AND DESIRE

further ado to be subsumed into this scheme. In the developmental

logic of classic psychoanalysis puberty/adolescence is regarded as a
repetition of the infantile psychosexual phases, though with the inno-
vation of establishment of genital primacy.
It is thus understandable that Freud described psychosexual devel-
opment only up to that point in life. Even without agreeing with these
Freudian assumptions, though, I regard it as sensible to see adolescence
as a separate unit of sexual development—one similar to the infantile
modes of pleasure and gratification. I would like to emphasize again
that, in contrast to academic developmental psychology or everyday
understanding, psychoanalysis does not see relevance in adolescence
as a specific, chronological, stage of life. Even though genitality, in the
Freudian sense of a primacy that subordinates the other pleasure and
gratification modes, is not established in adolescence, the unique feature
of adolescence is in a fundamental alteration of genitality. This results
from the acquisition of a sexually mature body and, through orgasm if
nothing else, generates a pleasure differing from that of infantile geni-
tality. This step in development is ideal-typically located in adolescence,
though this does not mean it is completed during this phase.
In the love-life of adults, the “polymorphously perverse, infantile”
modalities of pleasure and gratification—orality, anality and phallicity—
are just as present as is genital desire. The one is inseparable from the
other, since the individual modes stand in a complex, reciprocal rela-
tionship to one another. In addition, there is the potential reproduc-
tive function which also helps determine what is sexually experienced.
I return to the topic of the acquisition of the sexually mature body as a
key task of adolescence in Chapter Two, and address it from a gender-
specific perspective. There I also discuss other junctures in sexual devel-
opment, for example, menopause.
The modes for pleasure and gratification are reinscribed in a multi-
tude of ways in the course of a life, depending on subjective experiences
and life conditions. Differing sexual goals and sexual objects can take
on significance at differing times. This variability and changeability
applies in principle to sexual orientation or sexual preferences, too—
an object-choice that may be heterosexual, homosexual, or “perverse”,
a topic I return to in greater detail in Chapter Three. Limitations on the
spectrum of pleasure and gratification modes as well as on their flex-
ibility appear as “pathological” or as “disorders” of sexual life, though
 SEDUCTION, DESIRE, AND SEXUALITY 71

I only mention them in passing in this book, and will address them in a
separate publication.
From the psychoanalytic perspective, the significance of early child-
hood sexual socialization for the later love-life of adults is obvious. This
is not the view in other disciplines. Thus, Gunter Schmidt (2005) assumes
every love relationship means a “new opportunity”. Psychoanalysts as
a rule regard the scope of “new chances” as more limited. Early child-
hood experiences with the various pleasure and gratification modes
create the framework in which adult sexuality develops, in the sense of
reshaping and reinscription. That does not allow for new chances every
day, but at least it provides sufficient scope for some change.