THREE ESSAYS ON SEXU I. THE SEXUAL ABERRATIONS it in fact is. Experience of the cases that are considered ab- hat is particularly significant, it may become exclusive and ormal has shown us that in them the sexual instinct and the replace normal sexual satistaction entirely. sexual object are merely soldered together-a fact which we ave been in danger of overlooking in consequence of the uni- al variations and the descending scale from health to in- formity of the normal picture, where the object appears to form anity gives us plenty of material for thought. I am inclined to art and parcel of the instinct. We are thus warned to loosen believe that it may be explained by the fact that the impulses of e bond that exists in our thoughts between instinct and object. sexual life are among those which, even normally, are the lea It seems probable that the sexual instinct is in the first instance controlled by the higher activities of the mind. In my exp independent of its object; nor is its origin likely to be due to its ence anyone who is in any way, whether socially or ethically object's attractions. abnormal mentally is invariably abnormal also in his sexual (B)SEXUALLY IMMATURE PERSONS AND ANIMALS AS life, But many people are abnormal in their sexual life who in every other respect approximate to the average, and have, along SEXUAL OBJECTS with the rest, passed through the process of human cultural People whose sexual objects belong to the normally inappro- development, in which sexuality remains the weak spot. priate sex-that is, inverts-strike the observer as a collection of individuals who may be quite sound in other respects. On The most general conclusion that follows from all the other hand, cases in which sexually immature persons cussions seems, however, to be this. Under a great nu hildren)are chosen as sexual objects are instantly judged conditions and in surprisingly numerous individuals, oradic aberrations. It is only exceptionally that children are and importance of the sexual object recedes into the back the exclusive sexual objects in such a case. They usually come ground. What is essential and constant in the sexual instinct is to play that part when someone who is cowardly or has become something else. impotent adopts them as a substitute, or when an urgent instinct (one which will not allow of postponement)cannot at the oment get possession of any more appropriate object. Never- (2)DEVIATIONS IN RESPECT OF THE theless, a light is thrown on the nature of the sexual instinct by SEXUAL AIM the fact that it permits of so much variation in its objects and The normal sexual aim is regarded as being the union of the uch a cheapening of them-which hunger, with its far more genitals in the act known as copulation, which leads to a release ergetic retention of its objects, would only permit in the most of the sexual tension and a temporary extinction of the sexual instinct-a satisfaction analogous to the sating of hunger. But intercourse with animals, which is by no means rare, especially even in the most normal sexual process we may detect rudiments among country people, and in which sexual attraction seems to which, if they had developed, would have led to the deviations override the barriers of species One would be glad on aesthetic grounds to be able to ascribe relations to the sexual object, such as touching and looking at these and other severe aberrations of the sexual instinct to it, which lie on the road towards copulation and are recognized insanity; but that cannot be done. Experience shows that dis- as being preliminary sexual aims. On the one hand these turbances of the sexual instinct among the insane do not differ added 1910: 1 The most striking distinction between the from those that occur among the healthy and in whole races or rotic life of antiquity and our own no doubt lies in the fact that the ccupations. Thus the sexual abuse of children is found with nanny frequency among school teachers and child attendants ts obiect. The ancients glorified the instinct and were prepared on its ccount to honour even an inferior object; while we despise the instinc mply because they have the best opportunity for it. The insane al activity in itself, and find excuses for it only in the merits of the merely exhibit any such aberration to an intensified degree; or