526
PARTISAN REVIEW
As he moves toward a conclusion of this section, Freud notes once
again that the sexual life of healthy adults is rarely without perverse
constituents in it , and he repeats his admonition that when it comes to
the sphere of sexuality "we are brought up against peculiar and ,
indeed, insoluble difficulties as soon as we try to draw a sharp line to
distinguish mere variations within the range of what is physiological
from pathological symptoms. " This" most unruly of all the instincts"
can lead people whose behavior is in other respects normal to activities
of the most astonishing and repulsive kind . In such activities , Freud
observes, it is impossible to overlook the important role played by the
mind in the transformations of the sexual instinct. "It is impossible to
deny that in their case a piece of mental work has been performed
which , in spite of its horrifying result , is the equivalent of an idealiza–
tion of the instinct."
It
was the ancients, one recalls, that Freud de–
scribes as idealizing the instinct; and the inference must follow that in
the perversions the past survives in the present , and that there is some–
thing archaic about these expressions of sexuality in which the highest
and the lowest intersect and are joined . Indeed, some perversions are
intelligible only if we assume such a convergence . "If such perversions
admit of analysis," Freud concludes, "that is , if they can be taken to
pieces, then they must be of a composite nature . This gives us a hint
that perhaps the sexual instinct itself may be no simple thing, but put
together from components which have come apart again in the perver–
sions ." The obscure circularity of this chain of reasoning may be inter–
preted as follows. The sexual instinct is not a single or unitary entity.
It
is made up of different components which are brought together–
amalgamated , aggregated , or synthesized-in normal adult sexual
activity . In the perversions , however, we see that the components have
come apart again; they have decomposed, and some of them have
been recomposed to form these alternate kinds of behavior. The dis–
aggregation and decomposition that Freud had chosen as the analytic
and expository form in which to treat the sexual aberrations is now
revealed to be an essential attribute in the formation and structure of
those aberrations themselves. The fit between form and content or
analytic intellectual style and material structure is very snug indeed .
At this point, Freud abruptly shifts gears and begins without
warning or transition a new section entitled "The Sexual Instinct in
Neurotics ." At once the reader becomes aware that the territory has
