Few concepts in the depth-psychology corpus carry greater definitional weight—or greater contestation—than ‘sexual.’ Freud’s foundational move in the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality was to wrest the term free from its equation with ‘genital’ or ‘reproductive,’ insisting on a polymorphous infantile sexuality that encompasses erotogenic zones, component instincts, and the full arc from thumb-sucking to adult object-choice. This radical expansion provoked immediate resistance, including from within psychoanalysis itself: Jung argued that Freud’s sexual terminology, though logically consistent, was biologically inadmissible when applied to the earliest stages of infancy, preferring to reserve ‘sexual’ for properly differentiated instinctual development. Hillman, writing from an archetypal perspective, historicized the very category, noting that ‘Sexualwissenschaft’ was the last domain claimed by nineteenth-century psychological language and that the imagination of antiquity had already elaborated all sexual fantasies without pathologizing them. Post-Freudian clinicians such as Signell explore feminine sexuality in its archetypal and dream dimensions, while developmental trauma theorists like Heller locate the love-sexuality split as a structural wound of early misattunement. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology disrupts the purely drive-based account by grounding sexual being in embodied intentionality. Across these traditions, ‘sexual’ functions simultaneously as etiology, symbol, relational field, and cultural construction.
most people declare ‘sexual’ identical with ‘pertaining to reproduction’—or, if you like it expressed more concisely, with ‘genital’; whereas we cannot avoid admitting things as ‘sexual’ that are not ‘genital’ and have nothing to do with reproduction.
Freud’s definitional thesis: the concept ‘sexual’ must be expanded beyond the genital and reproductive, a move the perversions compel but which cultural taboo has long resisted.
, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1917thesis
the sexual instinct is in the first instance independent of its object; nor is its origin likely to be due to its object’s attractions.
Freud’s structural claim that the sexual instinct and the sexual object are contingently, not necessarily, conjoined, thereby loosening the bond between drive and aim.
, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905thesis
the purpose of the symptom is either a sexual gratification or a defence against it; in hysteria the positive, wish-fulfilling character predominates on the whole, and in the obsessional neurosis the negative ascetic character.
Freud demonstrates that symptoms are structured by the polarity of sexual gratification versus defence, with neurotic form determined by which pole dominates.
, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1917thesis
although no fault can be found with Freud’s sexual terminology as such, since he logically gives all the stages of sexual development the general name of sexuality, it has nevertheless led to certain conclusions which in my view are untenable.
Jung concedes Freud’s internal logical consistency while contesting the biological admissibility of labelling infantile sucking ‘sexual,’ marking the theoretical divergence over the scope of the term.
, Collected Works Volume 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis, 1961thesis
A good portion of the symptomatology of the neuroses, which I have traced to disturbances of the sexual processes, is expressed in disturbances of other, non-sexual, somatic functions.
Freud argues that sexual disturbance radiates outward along shared pathways to produce somatic and non-sexual symptoms, establishing sexuality as the explanatory nucleus of neurosis.
, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905thesis
THE LAST AREA TO BE CLAIMED by the language of psychology in the nineteenth century was sexuality. Although there are no new sexual practices or fantasies not elaborated by the Greek and Roman imagination.
Hillman historicizes the medicalization of sexuality, arguing that ‘Sexualwissenschaft’ was a late institutional annexation of territory already fully imagined in antiquity.
, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972thesis
That part of the theory, however, which lies on the frontiers of biology and the foundations of which are contained in this little work is still faced with undiminished contradiction.
Freud acknowledges that his theory of sexuality remains the most contested part of psychoanalysis, even as other psychological theses gain acceptance.
, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905thesis
the process is diphasic, that is, that it occurs in two waves… characterized by the infantile nature of the sexual aims… The second wave sets in with puberty and determines the final outcome of sexual life.
Freud describes the diphasic structure of sexual development, establishing that infantile sexuality is interrupted by latency before being reorganized at puberty.
, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905supporting
all comparatively intense affective processes, including even terrifying ones, trench upon sexuality—a fact which may incidentally help to explain the pathogenic effect of emotions of that kind.
Freud traces the sources of infantile sexual excitation to affective processes of all intensities, including fear, connecting sexuality to the broader economy of emotional life.
, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905supporting
We remain in complete ignorance both of the origin and of the nature of the sexual tension which arises simultaneously with the pleasure when erotogenic zones are satisfied.
Freud acknowledges the unresolved problem of sexual tension—its origin distinct from pleasure itself—indicating the limits of the economic model of sexuality.
, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905supporting
special chemical substances are produced in the interstitial portion of the sex-glands; these are then taken up in the blood stream and cause particular parts of the central nervous system to be charged with sexual tension.
Freud proposes a proto-endocrinological mechanism for sexual excitation, grounding the psychological concept in a somatic chemistry of tension.
, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905supporting
Experiencing love as conditional and sexuality as shameful creates a lack of integration between loving and sexual feelings that has lifelong repercussions for how they relate to their own bodies and to an intimate partner.
Heller identifies developmental misattunement as producing a structural split between love and sexuality, with lasting somatic and relational consequences.
, Healing Developmental Trauma How Early Trauma Affectssupporting
One patient no longer seeks sexual intercourse of his own accord. Obscene pictures, conversations on sexual topics, the sight of a body do not arouse desire in him.
Merleau-Ponty uses clinical phenomenology to argue that sexual being is grounded in embodied intentionality, not representation, a direct challenge to purely drive-based accounts.
, Phenomenology of Perception, 1962supporting
The gold figure showed her something true about women’s sexuality—that it is complicated to go to its depths. She herself had to take it ledge by ledge—step by step, as is true in learning more about sex.
Signell employs dream imagery to present feminine sexuality as a layered, archetypal depth requiring progressive discovery rather than mechanical gratification.
, Wisdom of the Heart: Working with Womens Dreams, 1991supporting
Too little or too much sex are common problems in our sexual matchings and mismatchings… the dreams pointed out two very different effects this can have on a marriage.
Signell uses paired dreams to demonstrate how sexual imbalance in relationship manifests in the unconscious, treating sexuality as both relational reality and symbolic register.
, Wisdom of the Heart: Working with Womens Dreams, 1991supporting
We have learned to see with the eye of the genitals. We can’t imagine attractions that are based in imagination. For our culture today, desires must really be unconsciously sexual.
Hillman critiques the reductive hermeneutics of suspicion that collapses all affectionate attraction into concealed sexuality, arguing for imagination as an autonomous erotic principle.
, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996supporting
mating, contrary to what the popular mind thinks, is not a necessary drive that builds up like hunger or thirst (although it seems so because of consciousness), but an elaborate behavior pattern waiting to be triggered off by very specific stimuli.
Jaynes argues that the experience of sexuality as a mounting drive is an artifact of conscious introspection rather than a biological given, complicating drive-based psychoanalytic models.
, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976supporting
Her sexual instinct is less active and her resistance against its impulses greater. We traced this difference in her attitude to the new onset of repression at puberty.
Abraham attributes gender differences in the relationship to sexuality to differential repression at puberty, extending the Freudian developmental schema to social behavior.
, Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis, 1927supporting
the influences of this area on sexuality presently appear to be more evident in the behavioral than the psychological realms.
Panksepp locates sexual behavior primarily in preoptic hypothalamic circuits, noting a gap between the neurological substrate and the psychological experience of sexuality.
, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998supporting
Sex means many things to many women. It can be vitally important or incidental. Anticipation of sex can bring warmth, calm, excitement, dread, reluctance, indifference.
Signell opens her chapter on feminine sexuality with a phenomenological inventory of its variability, resisting any single-register account.
, Wisdom of the Heart: Working with Womens Dreams, 1991aside
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN SEXUALITY AND ALCOHOLISM… alcohol is never associated with the social life of women to anything like the extent that it is with that of men.
Abraham explores sexuality as a variable mediating the differential susceptibility of men and women to alcoholism, linking libidinal economy to social behavior.
, Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis, 1927aside