Infants have a richer Xual* life than adults

[coberst]

Infants have a richer Xual* life than adults.

 

*Freud defines sexual instinct as an energy or desire with which the human being pursues pleasure. The pleasure sought is the pleasurable activity of all aspects of the human body, including all internal organs. The organ may be the stomach, the genitals, the thumb, the eyes, the mouth, the toes, and etc. Infants are in love with all aspects of themselves.

 

It is clear from Freud’s definition of sexual instinct that he is aiming at something very general and something very fundamental. I suspect that much of the antagonism toward Freud throughout his historical presence is due to this word ‘sex’ that appears often in his work. This abhorrence of everything explicit regarding sex tends to be received with a good deal of antagonism by Christianity and perhaps other religions. But I think it is worthwhile to control this reaction in order to comprehend the message of this great thinker. To focus upon the thought of Freud rather than the inhibiting taboos of culture I will replace the word ‘sex’ with the letter ‘X’.

 

Xual instinct is the energy or desire that drives the human pursuit of pleasure. This is meant to include all organs of the human body whereby the individual finds pleasure or encounters pain. The pattern of normal adult Xuality, love between man and woman, is merely a specific organization of a general energy biologically generated in all humans.

 

Human Xual organization and his or her social organization are deeply connected; it is assumed that both organizations have evolved simultaneously. Parenthood, the prolonged maintenance of children, represents the important aspect of the ape to human transition that binds these two organizations. Family organization is the nucleus of all social organization is an accepted axiom Freud has built into his matrix of theories.

 

Adult Xuality, “in so far as it is restricted by rules designed to maintain the institution of the family and in so far as the desire for Xual satisfaction is diverted and exploited for the purpose of maintaining a socially useful institution, is a clear instance of the subordination of the pleasure-principle to the reality-principle which is repression; as such it is rejected by the unconscious essence of the human being and therefore leads to neurosis.”

 

Prolonged dependency of the human infant has far-reaching consequence. This prolonged infancy creates two major consequences: a subjective omnipotent indulgence in pleasure free from the confines of reality and on the other hand, and an objective powerless dependence on others. These conflicting forces constitute a trauma from which the child become adult never recovers psychologically. This conflict between actual impotence and desires for omnipotence is a basic theme throughout history.

 

Infants have a Xual life and adults have a Xual life but both are much different. For the infant this energy is directed at all aspects of the body while the adult has narrowed this energy thrust almost totally upon the genital activity. The infantile Xuality pattern evolves into the adult Xuality pattern. Therein we can see why Freud took this path for defining the infant pleasure-principle as he did because it provides an explanation for the adult pleasure-principle and shows both wherein there is constant conflict with the reality-principle. The adult Xual pattern, which is a perversion of infancy, is a well organized tyranny. Children explore indiscriminately all erotic potentialities of the human body; by adult standards this is a perversion and by the same token judged by infantile standards adult Xual behavior is a perversion.

 

Questions for discussion

 

Do you think, as I do, that Freud’s use of the s-word has made his thoughts repulsive to many fastidious people?

 

Do you have a problem in comprehending Freud’s concentration on the infantile pleasure-principal?

 

Do you think it is a good idea to do the ‘X for sex’ change?

[ErlyRisa]

I think he was just plainly born in the wrong time, akin to DaVinci - imagine DaVinci today - he would have a fit!

 

We have people like Dr Phil today protangonising individuals and families - and people listen....

 

Freud on the other hand had no choice but to write to the people that were around at the time.

 

-If that is an Excerpt of Freuds thoughts above... I would rather believe what he was trying to say was....

 

Given that animals 'brood' in socetal structures, with 'Young' and old, (including Grand Parents) ... there is a requirement for this stucture to organise to give rise to educative qulities that are otherwise ineducatable in a familyless environment... for example mature copulation in itself, is taught by example in the adult population to the offsrping< concpets such as monogamy and choosing partners are instilled in the offspring. Simplistic and what what the reader percieves to be unmoralistic copulation are lost in the somewhat civilised nature of the family. For example Penguin brooding, not only teaches offsrping to harbour thier own offspring, but also shows a tendancy to co-operate on the rearing of children. ,whereas the tribal behaviour of even our very own ancestors are akin to the workings of lions and leopards. Ever more 'rudimenary' unorganised species, will copulate instinctively, without any eduactive quality.

 

--a Darwinian veiw point.

[coberst]

Erly

 

I am an admirer of Darwin also but I think that Freud is one of those giants upon whose shoulders we all stand. I suspect many people who know nothing about his theories take a negative attitude toward his theories because I suspect that religions are his foe because of his focus on the word 'sex'.

[coberst]

Energy is the eternal delight

 

Freud is convinced that our human essence lies in infantile Xuality. “Our noble illusion, fostered by our higher aspirations, that we are all soul and no body, set in motion one or another of the number of mechanisms of intellectual flight whenever the topic of Xuality is taken seriously…we slip into the evasion of abhorrence or amusement. We are likely to withdraw our willingness to listen when we are told that infantile Xuality is polymorphous perverse.”

 

Polymorphous means assuming various forms. The infant’s Xuality is polymorphous perverse because the infant finds pleasure with all aspects of his or her body and such is perverse from an adult view because Xuality for the adult is narrowed only to genital organization. Thus, infantile Xuality is perverse to the adult view whereas the adult view is perverse to the infantile view.

 

To be objective about matters of Xuality is difficult but very important; if we adults are to learn something about why we behave as we do we must push aside our first instinct to be amused by or to take intellectual flight from an analysis of Freud’s views.

 

William Blake (1757-1827) the great English poet said “Energy is the only life, and is from the body…Energy is Eternal Delight”. Freud might be well considered, not as an inventor of frivolous-novelties, but as the inventor of a rational and scientific view of matters that have bedeviled the imagination of poets and philosophers throughout both the Romantic as well as the Modern intellectual era.

 

For two thousand years our monotheistic culture has tried to turn wo/man into an ascetic animal, strict self-denial has been the message for entry into heaven, however, lurking in the unconscious is the energy to deny this goal because the child has tasted the fruit of the tree of life. “Thus Freud’s doctrine of infantile Xuality, rightly understood, is essentially a scientific reformulation and reaffirmation of the religious and poetical theme of the innocence of childhood.” Freud is not, however, saying that we can return to that early innocence, he is saying that childhood remains wo/man’s indestructible goal.

 

Quotes from “Life against Death” by Norman Brown

[CraigD]

Do you think, as I do, that Freud’s use of the s-word has made his thoughts repulsive to many fastidious people?

Yes. I believe the significance of this reaction, however, has varied considerable over the roughly 100 years that psychologists, physicians, and laypeople have read and discussed his writing, and across the various cultures of it readers.

 

Within the medical community of 1890s Vienna, Freud’s major writings, and even more so his earlier, lesser ones, were greeted with strong disapproval, at least as much for their perceived vilification of the image of the strong father as for their portrayal of women and children as having sexual drives as strong or stronger as those of adult men. Interesting, even Freud himself appears to have reacted in a somewhat similar manner to his own ideas, as exemplified by his analysis of his own his own “you are requested to close the eyes” dream. For this and other reasons, many Freud scholars believe that Freud significantly “toned down” and altered his major theories of personality and psychotherapy.

 

The reception of Freud’s ideas in the US in 1909 appears to have been more enthusiastic, resulting in academic and critical acceptance there that he would not enjoy until decades later in Europe

 

By the 1950s, more than a decade after Freud’s death, society both in Europe and America was much more liberal and open concerning human sexuality. In terms of its acceptance and use, Freudian psychotherapy enjoyed a heyday from the next couple of decades, as did many similar “psychoanalytic” therapeutic approaches.

 

At present, psychoanalysis is little used by mental health clinicians. Part of the reason for this is the increasing popularity of evidence and outcome based medicine. Although the various psychodynamic models of Freud, Jung, and others are fascinating fields of study, when subjected to sound statistical analysis of their efficacy, controlling for such factors as the psychiatric benefit obtained by anyone – an MD trained in psychoanalysis, a clergyperson, a trusted friend - listening and providing reflective feedback, they are unimpressive, compared to therapeutic approaches such as RET/REBT, which are based on no compelling theoretical model of personality. And, although it pains me to admit it, all of the “talking cure” therapies compare poorly to “assembly line” therapies involving drugs (primarily antidepressants), despite the prediction of psychodynamic theories such as Freud’s that such therapies should typically be disastrous, based as they are, in Freudian terms, essentially on nothing bur “chemical repression”.

 

Do you have a problem in comprehending Freud’s concentration on the infantile pleasure-principal?

No. The pleasure principle is a rather simple one, intuitively obvious, in my experience, to everyone acquainted with it.

 

It’s worth noting that, AFAIK, Freud considered the pleasure principle, or, more objectly, the id or libido, to be a critical component of all minds, not just infant ones. It is, according to Freud, more observable in infants, because they have not yet developed the other components of their psyches as much as typical adults.

 

:hihi: I must also call attention to the implied claim that Freud or “Freudians” stated any words to the effect that “infants have a richer sexual life than adults”. Although many psychologists before and after Freud have emphasized that, contrary to some idealized ideas about them, infants experience pleasure from the stimulation of their genitals, and that pre-pubescent sexual behavior is more likely a psychological norm than an aberration, I’m unaware of any writing by Freud or contemporary theorists suggesting that such behavior constituted a “richer sexual life” than the sexual behavior of adults.

 

Coberst, if you know of such material, please post references to it.

Do you think it is a good idea to do the ‘X for sex’ change?

No. It strikes me as a silly renaming, unlikely to be easily recognized by people familiar with the term “sex” in a psychoanalytic context, or likely to mollify people who are offended by the open discussion of sex. Also, it’s association with the movie rating “X” (now known as NC-17 in the US, and generally used in multiples in non-trademarked branding such as “XXX”) is, I think, confusing in a psychological context, implying a connection between the term “Xual” and pornography.

[coberst]

Craig

 

The reference "infants have a richer sexual... is direct quote from page 26 of "Life against Death" by Norman Brown. This is not Freud I am quoting but the author.

 

I post on several other forums and I have been posting Freud stuff for several weeks and I have been amazed at the negative attitude so many people have to Freud. I am certain this is not based on knowledge but evidently these young people have heard a great deal of negative comments about Freud. What do you think might be the cause? These young people display a closed mind toward Freud. I do not know if this is just standard teen stuff or what.

 

I thought that if I illuminated this sex thing right up front I would get these young people to look beyond these words into the deeper meaning of Freud's theory.

[CraigD]

I post on several other forums and I have been posting Freud stuff for several weeks and I have been amazed at the negative attitude so many people have to Freud. I am certain this is not based on knowledge but evidently these young people have heard a great deal of negative comments about Freud. What do you think might be the cause? These young people display a closed mind toward Freud. I do not know if this is just standard teen stuff or what.

I too am surprised by this reaction. Recalling my own youth in the 1960s and 70s, Freud’s psychodynamic was pretty popular with young people curious about psyche, in large part, I think, because of its simplicity. It was also “real psychiatry” – we knew thought respected adults and the popular media that Freudian psychoanalysis was actually used to treat mental illness.

 

In the decades since then, Freud’s psychodynamic model has not become less simple, nor less accessible. The esteem it enjoys among knowledgeable adults, particularly physicians, and in the popular media, is, however, much lower.

 

My guess, then, as to an explanation of your experience with it being poorly regarded by present-day teenagers, is that it is due to the decline in esteem of psychodynamic theories in general, and Freud’s in particular, in professional and academic society. My impression is that such theories have remained popular mostly among Philosophy and Humanities academics, disciplines that are less respected than Medicine by the general public.

 

There’s more, I think, to the decline in popularity of psychodynamic theories, than changes in popularity in different professions and academic disciplines. With advances in neurology and functional brain imaging, I believe a consensus is emerging that favors models of the psyche of a detailed, mechanical nature, supported by neurochemical and brain imaging data. Though interesting, none of the psychodynamic models with which I’m familiar have proven informative or useful in interpreting this data – in short, they appear not to be objectively, physically, correct.

[coberst]

Craig

 

I have been thinking about this matter and have decided that we are less interested in matters of psychology and psychoanalysis because we have found that we can medicate people such that they can go back to work and live with their 'hang-ups'.

 

It appears that at one time we sought knowledge about human nature so that we might heal the suffering but have since then learned how to placate this suffering with drugs and therefore the interest in understanding human nature has drastically diminished. We have found drugs to be more effective than knowing. But it seems that if this is so we are not curing anything but are merely medicating the symptoms so that the disease won't be so noticeable.

 

Do you think this analysis is in the ball park?

[CraigD]

I have been thinking about this matter and have decided that we are less interested in matters of psychology and psychoanalysis because we have found that we can medicate people such that they can go back to work and live with their 'hang-ups'.

…

But it seems that if this is so we are not curing anything but are merely medicating the symptoms so that the disease won't be so noticeable.

 

Do you think this analysis is in the ball park?

Definitely in the ball park, but perhaps, I think, outside the foul line. There are a lot of poorly exposed assumption on all sides of the “psychoanalysis vs. psychopharmacology” debate, and connections to far older debates, such as the “religion vs. psychoanalysis”.

 

Having been involved in large-scale “assembly line” mental health care for the last quarter century, I’ve had something of a front row seat on this debate (though, as “support staff – one of the guys who makes psychiatrists’ computers work - I can’t count myself a player in it). Ca. 1990, when the first generation of safer (eg: antidepressants that didn’t permit suicide by eating cheese) SSRIs (eg: Prozac) began to gain clinical acceptance, several of my clinicians acquaintances worried that the therapies these drugs made possible were simply masking symptoms, possibly setting us and our patients up for an “explosion” months, years, or decades later. This was more than an academic concern – with tens of thousands of patients under treatment, such a therapeutic error could have been a human, business, and careers catastrophe, something akin to a combination of a Romero movie (or perhaps Michael Moorcock’s much more obscure short story “The Deep Fix”) and the great depression. As decades passed, and independent (eg: non-government, non-pharmaceutical company) long-term studies showed drug-based therapies to be overwhelmingly safe and effective, and our clinical experience was positive, these concerns faded, becoming almost purely academic.

 

On the other side of the debate, increasingly effective psychopharmaceuticals offered dramatic improvements in measurable outcome. A key psychiatric metric is attempted or successful suicide by depressed patients, and therapies using the new antidepressants were undeniably far better at reducing this than “talking cures” (Freudian psychoanalysis, Rogerian reflective therapies, etc). What’s more, they were “workforce multiplier” – a single clinician could effectively treat many more patients with brief assessment followed by periodic “med check” visits than with non-drug-using therapies. In the typical insurance-funded care delivery scenario, this meant that people who could not have afforded any therapy before could now. It must be remembered that, prior to these changes in mental health care approaches, psychotherapy was essentially available only to the very wealthy, and the very severely mentally ill.

It appears that at one time we sought knowledge about human nature so that we might heal the suffering but have since then learned how to placate this suffering with drugs and therefore the interest in understanding human nature has drastically diminished. We have found drugs to be more effective than knowing.

There certainly appears to have been a transition from the idea of the psychiatrist as a sort of “philosopher physician” who tailors successful therapies from a series of expert insights gained from lengthy patient sessions, to the psychiatrist’s (and, increasingly, non-MD clinicians, such as Licensed Clinical Social Workers) as a technician applying diagnostic criteria and dispensing meds. As I discussed above, from a practical perspective – preventing mentally ill people from hurting themselves and others, living in inhumane conditions, etc – this transition appears a good thing.

 

The idea that the decline in clinical popularity of psychoanalytic approaches is accompanied by a decline in interest in understanding human nature is troubling. Among psychiatrists, I suspect this correlation exists – a practicing psychiatrist’s training and continuing education these days is more about observation and pharmacology than about understanding the id, ego, and superego, Jung’s complexes, or other psychodynamic concepts. Following the lead of this community, I believe the general population is also less interested and informed about psychodynamic models.

 

I think, however, that this transition is not altogether a bad thing. Freud, his contemporaries, and the diverse generation of psychodynamic personality theorists that followed him, were for the most part pre-scientific in approach. Although compelling and beautiful, their models appear to bear only marginally greater resemblance to how the human mind actually works, as tested in scientific, objectively reproducible ways, than earlier models provided by religionists and mystics that these psychologists rejected – or at least recast in terms of their own models. I’m optimistic that a scientific understanding of the psyche, based in neurophysiology, will provide better (though likely more difficult to master, and less emotionally comforting) models.

 

When considering the psyche, or any part of the universe, we must never fail to remind ourselves that it is what it is, not what we would wish it to be. There appears to be no cosmic principle that assures that the best models of reality are the most esthetically pleasing.

[coberst]

Craig

 

It seems to me that the sciences of psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis sought to understand human psychic nature for two reasons. One reason was to find a means to relieve the suffering of individuals with psychotic conditions and the second, and very important reason, was that with understanding of human nature comes the possibility of developing a better “science of man”.

 

This new and better science of man could hopefully develop a secular moral code that could perhaps help humans live together in harmony with out all the killing and destruction that is a constant part of our history.

 

It seems that with the discovery of medication for relieving human psychic suffering we are less concentrated on studying human psychic nature and thereby failing in our serious need to find a better secular moral code.

[coberst]

Sapiens are fulfilled only in play

 

Properly understood, Freud’s doctrine of infantile Xuality is a scientific formulation and reaffirmation of the fact that childhood innocence, as displayed in their delight with their body, remains wo/man’s indestructible unconscious goal.

 

Children on one hand pursue pleasure and on the other hand are active in that pursuit. A child’s pleasure is in the active pursuit of the life of the human body. What then are we adults to learn from the pursuits of childhood? The answer is that children play.

 

“Play is the essential character of activity governed by the pleasure-principle rather than the reality-principle. Play is ‘purposeless yet in some sense meaningful’…play is the erotic mode of activity. Play is that activity which, in the delight of life, unites man with the objects of his love, as is indeed evident from the role of play in normal adult genital activity…the ultimate essence of our being is erotic and demands activity according to the pleasure-principle.”

 

As a religious ideal childhood innocence has resisted assimilation into rational-theological tradition. Although there is a biblical statement that says something to the effect that unless you become children you cannot go to heaven, this admonition has affected primarily only mystics. However, poets have grasped this meaning in its philosophic-rational terms.

 

In his “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man” Schiller says that “Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.” Sartre says “As soon as a man apprehends himself as free and wishes to use his freedom...then his activity is play.”

 

H. H. Brinton, modern American archaeologist, considers the essence of man is purposeful activity generated by desire. The perfect goal generated activity is play. Play expresses life in its fullest. Play as an end, as a goal, means that life itself has intrinsic value. Adam and Eve succumbed when their play became serious business.

 

Jacob Boehme, a German Christian mystic, concluded that wo/man’s perfection and bliss resided not in religion but in joyful play.

 

John Maynard Keynes noted modern economist, takes the premise that modern technology will solve wo/man’s need to work and thereby lead to a general “nervous breakdown”. He thinks we already experience a manifestation of this syndrome when we observe the unfortunate wives of wealthy men who have lost meaning in this driving and ambitious world of economic progress. He says “There is no country and no people who can look forward to the age of leisure and abundance without dread.”

 

From the Keynesian point of view it will be a difficult task to transfer our ambitions from acquiring wealth to that of playing. But for Freud this change is not as difficult because beneath the habits of work acquired by all wo/men lay an immortal instinct for play.

 

Huizinga, a noted anthropologist, testifies to the presence of a nonfunctional element of play in all of the basic categories of our sapient cultural activity—religion, art, law, economics, etc. He further concludes that advanced civilization has disguised this element of play and thereby dehumanized culture.

 

The author, Norman Brown, concludes that psychoanalysis have added to these expressed statements regarding the importance of “The play element in culture provides a prima facie justification for the psychoanalytic doctrine of sublimation, which views ‘higher’ cultural activities as substitutes for infantile pleasures.”

 

Quotes from “Life against Death” by Norman Brown