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PARTISAN REVIEW
In their original form, therefore, the first two essays have the character
of grand inferential constructions which happen somehow-almost
incidentally, one might say-to coincide with or catch up a good deal
of the truth . Based on experience of some kind , they are nonetheless
not primarily empirical in nature but are systematic and relatively
coherent reworkings of glimpses into, intuitions of, and insights about
hidden truths which still remain partly hidden.
In order to gain some sense of how this work might have affected
its early readers, let us reconstitute in a general way part of the argu–
ment of the text of 1905. (I will, of course, refer to later additions and
revisions when it seems appropriate.) Freud begins the first essay on
"The Sexual Aberrations" by making an axial distinction . He divides
all sexual behavior into two categories . One has
to
do with the" sexual
object," the person toward whom sexual activity is directed or sexual
desire felt. The second has to do with the' 'sexual aim, " the act toward
which the sexual instinct inclines. Both of these categories contain
numerous deviations, and Freud classifies these deviations by means of
this distinction. The first class of aberrations contains those sexual
activities which are deviant in respect of the sexual object. The most
important and largest population in this class consists of adults whose
sexual object has been" inverted ." These inverts , or homosexuals as
they are ordinarily called , "vary greatly in their behavior in several
respects ." Freud divides such behavior according
to
exclusiveness at
one end of a scale and contingency at the other. He also notes variations
that have
to
do with the subjective views of inverts toward their own
behavior and with the date of onset and persistency of such behavior.
Although the range of variation is great, the variations seem nonethe–
less connected, and he is forced to conclude that they form "a con–
nected series." If there is a totality here, it is organized heterogen–
eously.
When he turns to contemporary explanations of this aberration,
he finds that the explanations explain very little. As for the currently
popular medical ascription that inversion is "an innate indication of
nervous degeneracy," Freud rejects both parts of the diagnosis as in–
adequate in classificatory precision and explanatory value. Homo–
sexuality occurs among too many othetwise normal and indeed gifted
and highly developed people to be regarded as a sign of some kind of
organic degeneration. As for the argument about whether homo–
sexuality is innate or acquired, Freud refuses
to
choose exclusively be-
