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PARTISAN REVIEW
and discovering the point or points at which variations subtly pass over
into new or different species . And just as the principal theme of Dar–
win 's work was the "transmutation" of species, so the fundamental
preoccupation of the
Three Essays
is with' 'the transformation[ s] of the
sexual instinct. " Yet each time that he works out such a transforma–
tion, Freud hastens to remind us "that an unbroken chain bridges the
gap between the neuroses in all their manifestations and normality."
The distinctions between variation and species or the normal and the
pathological are never simple , nor are they ever held simply. The
purpose of Freud's taxonomy is not merely to create new distinctions
and classifications ; its purpose is to understand how all the distinctions
are related to one another , and how one is created out of the transfor–
mation of another.
Freud also reminds us of Darwin in some of his larger statements
and speculations. The penultimate paragraph of the section on " De–
viations in Respect of the Sexual Object" reads as follows :
The very remarkable relation which thus holds between sexual
variations and the descending scale from health to insanity gives
us plentyof material for thought . I am inclined
to
believe that it
may be explained by the fact that the impulses of sexual life are
among those which , even normally, are the least controlled by the
higher activities of the mind. In my experience anyone who is in
any way, whether socially or ethically , abnormal mentally is in–
variably abnormal also in his sexual life. But many people are
abnormal in their sexual life who in every other respect approxi–
mate to the average , and have, along with the rest , passed
through the process of human cultural development , in which
sexuality remains the weak spot .
What Freud is saying in this passage , among other things, is that in
human cultural evolution-which the species as a whole has under–
gone , and which each individual recapitulates in his own develop–
ment-sexuality remains the ' 'weak spot." That is
to
say , it is the part
of us that is most recalcitrant to civilized constraints and does not
undergo evolution smoothly . Hence individual development is pre–
carious , and "normal" heterosexual maturity is in fact something that
has
to
be achieved . Nothing about it is assured or inevitable; it is con–
tingent upon almost everything else. In a similar sense, Freud regards
the childhood ofeach person as a "primeval period , which falls within
