524
PARTISAN REVIEW
Freud concludes this section by remarking that the present state of
knowledge does not provide a position on which
to
base' 'a satisfactory
explanation of the origin of inversion. ' , Nevertheless, his investigation
of the material before him has led him to discover that the connection
between the sexual instinct and the sexual object is not as intimate as is
commonly supposed:
Experience of the cases that are considered abnormal has shown us
that in them the sexual instinct and the sexual object are merely
soldered together-a fact which we have been in danger of over–
looking in consequence of the uniformity of the normal picture,
where the object appears to form part and parcel of the instinct.
We are thus warned to loosen the bond that exists in our thoughts
between instinct and object. It seems probable that the sexual
instinct is in the first instance independent of its object ; nor
i~
its
origin likely to be due
to
its object's attraction.
In this passage of speculative flight Freud is making a number of theo–
retical proposals. He is suggesting that the sexual instinct is plastic and
labile, that it can be displaced, that it is not entirely dependent upon
its object-or the object world-and that it may indeed be at first
independent and without an object. All of these suggestions will lead
to momentous consequences later on. One of them is to be found in a
footnote that he added in 1910:
The most striking distinction between the erotic life of antiquity
and our own no doubt lies in the fact that the ancients laid the
stress upon the instinct itself, whereas we emphasize its object.
The ancients glorified the instinct and were prepared on its ac–
count to honour even an inferior object; while we despise the in–
stinctual activity itself, and find excuses for it only in the merits of
the object.
Deviations in respect
to
the sexual aim comprise those practices
that are known as "perversions." They begin for Freud with activities
in which the mucous membranes of the lips and mouth are brought
into contact with the genitals of another person. Such practices, Freud
remarks, "have no doubt been common among mankind from prime–
val times." And those who condemn these acts as perversions "are
giving way to an unmistakable feeling of
disgust,
which protects them
from accepting sexual aims of the kind. The limits of such disgust are,
however, often purely conventionaL" In other words, perversions are
commonly known or recognized by the subjective feeling of disgust
