Video – Three Essays on Freud’s Theory of Sexuality

15-minute HD video introductory class on Freud’s book “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality”, published in 1905 and reformulated until 1925

Hello friends!

It’s hard to find anyone who has never heard of Sigmund Freud. The famous saying “Freud explains” means that Freud is considered an author who tried to explain everything, from dreams, fantasies, daydreams, relationship difficulties, faulty acts and sexuality. But, despite being an author often quoted in newspapers, magazines, on TV and in films and series, his work is very vast, with 23 volumes, and complex.

And, to start studying psychoanalysis, we have to understand two fundamental concepts: the unconscious and sexuality.

Sexuality for Freud

Many people, including early psychology students, criticize Freud’s theories because they always come back to sexuality. While this may be a relatively valid criticism, we still need to be clear about the concept of sexuality in Freud’s work.

In the first place, it is important to make it clear – once and for all – that sexuality for Freud is not limited to the sexual act and when Freud says that many of the patients’ questions are related to sexuality, he is not implying that the problem it is from sexual performance, such as premature ejaculation, impotence or frigidity.

In order to begin to understand the concept, we then have to understand that it is not limited to the sexual act and is much broader, including eroticism, autoerotic pleasure, the desire for another person and even falling in love and having sex. which we usually speak of as love.

This is the first point.

The second is that, as Freud has a vast body of work, the concept of sexuality and its importance in the individual psyche was reformulated from 1905 (when the Three Essays were published for the first time) until the end of publications and, especially from 1920, with the introduction of the death drive, sexuality is reinserted into another problem, the concept of life drive.

But since the Three Essays, his theoretical formulations are quite different from what is thought in common sense. Freud says:

“The general conception is that it does not exist in childhood; which manifests itself at puberty, in connection with the maturation process, revealing itself as the irresistible attraction exerted by one sex over the other; as for its purpose, it is supposed to be sexual union, or in any case acts leading to this end. We have reason, however, to believe that these opinions give an extremely erroneous idea of ​​the true situation”.

Thus, Freud ended up being very criticized and misunderstood for the idea of ​​an infantile sexuality. In psychic development, each child goes through certain stages where pleasure would be located in a part of the body: skin, mouth, anus, genitals. This pleasure explains the sexual perversions and also explains the neurotic symptoms, the result of the conflict between the sexual drive and the self-preservation drive (in this period of the work).

See below the content of the Chapters of the Three Essays and below the 15-minute introductory video of our Complete Course!

Chapters of the Three Essays on Sexual Theory

But returning to the Three Essays, the book is divided, according to the title, into three parts:

Essay 1 – SEXUAL ABERRATIONS

(1) Deviations with Respect to the Sexual Object
(A) The Inversion
(B) Sexually Immature Animals and People as Sex Objects
(2) Deviations With Respect to Sexual Aim
(A) Anatomical Transgressions
(B) Temporary Sexual Target Fixations
(3) General Considerations about Perversions
(4) The Sexual Drive in Neurotics
(5) Partial Drives and Erogenous Zones
(6) Clarifications on the Apparent Preponderance of Perverse Sexuality in the Psychoneuroses
(7) Indication of Infantilism in Sexuality

Essay 2 – CHILDHOOD SEXUALITY

1 The Sexual Latency Period of Childhood and Its Disruptions
2 Manifestations of Child Sexuality
3 The Sexual Target of Infantile Sexuality
4 Masturbatory Sexual Manifestations
5 Child Sexual Investigation
6 The Stages of Development of the Sexual Organization
7 The Sources of Child Sexuality

Essay 3-THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF PUBERTY

1 The Primacy of the Genital Areas and Pre-pleasure
2 The Problem of Sexual Arousal
3 The Libido Theory
4 Differentiation between men and women
5 The Encounter of the Object

1 Part of the 1st Video of our Course on the 3 Essays

Conclusion

As we have seen, sexuality for Freud is not limited to the sexual act, nor is it located only after puberty. In this sense, Freud’s concept of sexuality is much broader and encompasses the development of the child’s personality, from early childhood. Acts that are not considered sexual are included in the idea of ​​childhood sexuality, such as contact with one’s own body, the pleasure of sucking (oral phase), the pleasure of the skin, etc.

We will study all these points in our Course Three Essays on Sexuality – Enroll now! (We still have a few spots available!)

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