SE XI p177-190
Download at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Freud (1912)
Biingual at www.Freud2Lacan.com / Freud/Philosophy (34. On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love II-Contributions to the Psychology of Love)
Sigmund Freud published three essays entitled “Contributions to the Psychology of Love” (Beiträge zur Psychologie des Liebeslebens) in 1918. The first two were revisions of his earlier papers, “A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men” (1910h) and “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love” (1912d). He presented the third paper “The Taboo of Virginity” to the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society on 12th December 1917.

Citations by Jacques Lacan

– 13th March 1957 Seminar IV, Para 34, see Seminar IV The Relation from Object (La relation d’objet) & Freudian Structures (1956-1957) : from 21st November 1956 : Jacques Lacan at this site 4 Jacques Lacan (19561121),

13th March 1957 p8-9 of Collective’s translation, It is because this stage exists, or more precisely, this essential central experience of the Oedipus on the imaginary level, that the Oedipus spreads in all its neurotic consequences, found in a thousand aspects of analytic reality. It is through this, in particular, that we see one of the first terms of the Freudian experience enter, this sort of degradation of the amorous life [la vie amoureuse] to which Freud devoted a special study[17 ] which is linked to this, because of the permanent attachment to this real object, to this primitive real-object of the mother as frustrating[18], From then on, no female object will be anything but devalued through relationship [par rapport] to the mother, a substitute, a broken, refracted, always partial mode through relationship [par rapport] to the first maternal object. And we will return to what to make of this a bit later…

F/n 17 Sigmund Freud, On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love (Contributions to the Psychology of Love II) (1912) SE XI p177-190. Op. cit. SE XI p180-181, The affectionate current is the older of the two. It springs from the earliest years of childhood; … It corresponds to the child’s primary object-choice. We learn in this way that the sexual instincts find their first objects by attaching themselves to the valuations made by the ego-instincts, precisely in the way in which the first sexual satisfactions are experienced in attachment to the bodily functions necessary for the preservation of life. [Footnote 1, James Strachey states, The ‘attachment’ (or ‘anaclitic’) type of object-choice was discussed more fully in Freud’s later paper on narcissism (1914c*).] The ‘affection’ shown by the child’s parents and those who look after him, which seldom fails to betray its erotic nature (the child is an erotic plaything’), does a very great deal to raise the contributions made by erotism to the cathexis of his ego-instincts, and to increase them to an amount which is bound to play a part in his later development, especially when certain other circumstances lend their support.

F/n 18 Sigmund Freud (1912) SE XI p181, Two factors will decide whether this advance in the developmental path of the libido is to fail. First, there is the amount of frustration in reality which opposes the new object-choice and reduces its value for the person concerned. … Secondly, there is the amount of attraction which the infantile objects that have to be relinquished are able to exercise, and which is in proportion to the erotic cathexis attaching to them in childhood.

* See On Narcissism – an Introduction : March 1914 : Sigmund Freud at this site /4 Sigmund Freud (19140301) for further references to ‘anaclytic’

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-10th May 1967, Seminar XIV The logic of phantasy (1966-1967) : from 16th November 1966 : Jacques Lacan See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19661116). Note : “Anatomy is destiny” is from this text.

p205-206 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : The encounter that one may have with one or other person, who asks for nothing better than to adopt you, is not always… the best solution is not always not to escape from it!

Why this partiality which, in a way, implies that it would be in the order, in the nature of things, taking them at their proper angle, to do everything necessary to be admitted.

This supposing that “to be admitted” is always to be admitted to a benevolent table.

It is, undoubtedly, not something undisturbing or something that may not appear to us, on occasion, to require to be highlighted, to remark that one or other thing that may happen in the world, and for example, quite simply at the moment, in a certain little district of South West Asia. What is at stake? It is a matter of convincing people that they are quite wrong not to want to be admitted to the benefits of capitalism! They prefer to be rejected! It is starting from there, it seems, that there ought to be posed questions about certain meanings. And specifically the following, for example, which will show us – which will show us no doubt, but today it not the day that I will even take the first steps in this direction – that if Freud wrote somewhere that “anatomy is destiny”, there is perhaps a moment, when people have come back to a sound perception of what Freud discovered for us, that it will be said – I am not even saying “politics is the unconscious” – but, quite simply, the unconscious is politics!

(7) I mean that what binds men together, or what opposes them, is precisely to be justified by that whose logic we are trying for the moment to articulate.

Because it is for want of this logical articulation that these slippages can be produced. This means that before noting the fact that in order to be rejected, for the “to be rejected” to be essential as a dimension for the neurotic, the following, in any case, is essential: that he offers himself.

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On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love (Contributions to the Psychology of Love II) : 1912 : Sigmund Freud, SE XI p177-190, p259 of James Strachey’s translation, Penguin Freud Library (pfl) :

Why is the relation of the lover to his sexual object so very different?

It is my belief that, however strange it may sound, we must reckon with the possibility that something in the nature of the sexual instinct [drive] itself is unfavourable to the realisation of complete satisfaction. If we consider the long and difficult developmental history of the instinct [drive], two factors immediately spring to mind which might be made responsible for this difficulty Firstly, as a result of the diphasic onset of object-choice, and the interposition of the barrier against incest, the final object of the sexual instinct is never any longer the original object but only a surrogate for it. Psycho-analysis has shown us that when the original object of a wishful impulse has been lost as a result of repression, it is frequently represented by an endless series of substitutive objects none of which, however, brings full satisfaction. This may explain the inconstancy in object-choice, the ‘craving for stimulation’ which is so often a feature of the love of adults.

Secondly, we know that the sexual instinct is originally divided into a great number of components – or rather, it develops out of them – some of which cannot be taken up into the instinct in its later form, but have at an earlier stage to be suppressed or put to other uses. These are above all the coprophilic instinctual components, which have proved incompatible with our aesthetic standards of culture, probably since, as a result of our adopting an erect gait, we raised our organ of smell from the ground. [Footnote 3] The same is true of a large portion of the sadistic urges which are a part of erotic life. But all such developmental processes affect only the upper layers of the complex structure. The fundamental processes which produce erotic excitation remain unaltered. The excremental is all too intimately and inseparably bound up with the sexual; the position of the genitals – inter unrinas et faeces – remains the decisive and unchangeable factor. One might say here, varying a well-known saying of the great Napoleon: ‘Anatomy is destiny.’ The genitals themselves have not taken part in the development of the human body in the direction of beauty: they have remained animal, and thus love, too, has remained in essence just as animal as it ever was. The instincts of love are hard to educate; education of them achieves now too much, now too little. What civilisation aims at making out of them seems unattainable except at the price of a sensible loss of pleasure; the persistence of the impulses that could not be made use of can be detected in sexual activity in the form of non- satisfaction.

Thus we may perhaps be forced to become reconciled to the idea that it is quite impossible to adjust the claims of the sexual instinct to the demands of civilisation; that in consequence of its cultural development renunciation and suffering, as well as the danger of extinction in the remotest future, cannot be avoided by the human race.

[Footnote [3] : James Strachey : Cf. two long footnotes to Chapter IV of ‘Civilisation and its Discontents’ : 1930a, in which this idea is explored in greater detail. See Civilisation and its Discontents : 1929 : Sigmund Freud, SE XXI p58-145, Download bilingual at www.Freud2Lacan.com /Freud/Philosophy (31. CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS (Das Unbehagen in der Kultur)]

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Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex : 1924d : Sigmund Freud, SE XIX p173-179, Published bilingual at www.Freud2Lacan.com /homepage (The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex (Der Untergang des Ödipuskomplexes))

p320 of James Strachey’s translation, pfl : At this point our material – for some incomprehensible reason – becomes far more obscure and full of gaps. The female sex, too, develops an Oedipus complex, a super-ego and a latency period. May we also attribute a phallic organization and a castration complex to it? The answer is in the affirmative; but these things cannot be the same as they are in boys. Here the feminist demand for equal rights for the sexes does not take us far, for the morphological distinction is bound to find expression in differences of psychical development. [Footnote 2] ‘Anatomy is Destiny’, to vary a saying of Napoleon’s.

[Footnote 2 : by James Strachey : See ‘Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes’ : 1925j, p331 of pfl. Much of what follows is elaborated there. (See Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes : 1925j : Sigmund Freud, SE XIX p241-258. Published bilingual by www.Freud2Lacan.com /homepage (Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction Between the Sexes (Einige psychische Folgen des anatomischen Geschlechtsunterschieds))) The paraphrase of Napoleon’s epigram had appeared already in the second paper on the psychology of love (1912d)]

Citations

-“There is no sexual relation” What does it mean? Clinical Consequences of Lacan’s Formulae of Sexuation : 28th September 2013 (Dublin) : Patrick Monribot See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Monribot)

P156 As we can see, masculine sexuality is reducible to the logic of the fantasy that this arrow recalls. This is to show that a woman is desired by a man. Freud calls reducing the partner to an object the “tendency to debasement in the sphere of love”.

On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love (Contributions to the Psychology of Love II) : 1912 : Sigmund Freud, SE XI p177-190.

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– Introduction I to ‘Jacques Lacan & the École Freudienne, Feminine Sexuality’ : 1982 : Juliet Mitchell. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Mitchell)

p6 It is this process that, to Lacan, lies behind Freud’s statement that ‘We must reckon with the possibility that something in the nature of the sexual instinct [drive] itself is unfavourable to the realisation of complete satisfaction’ (Freud SE XI p188-9)

SE XI p188-189, It is my belief that, however strange ti may sound, we must reckon with the possibility that something in the nature of the sexual instinct [drive] itself is unfavourable to the realisation of complete satisfaction. If we consider the long and difficult develop- mental history of the instinct, two factors immediately spring to mind which might be made responsible for this difficulty.

Firstly, as a result of the diphasic onset of object-choice, and the interposition of the barrier against incest, the final object of the sexual instinct [drive] is never any longer the original object but only a surrogate for it. Psycho-analysis has shown us that when the original object of a wishful impulse has been lost as a result of repression, it si frequently represented by an endless series of substitutive objects none of which, however, brings full satisfaction. This may explain the inconstancy in object-choice, the ‘craving for stimulation’ [1] which is so often a feature of the love of adults.

Secondly, we know that the sexual instinct is originally divided into a great number of components-or rather, it develops out of them-some of which cannot be taken up into the instinct in its later form, but have at an earlier stage to be suppressed or put to other uses.

Footnote [1], James Strachey writes, [‘Reizhunger.’ This term seems to have been introduced by Hoche and Bloch. See Freud’s Three Essays (1905d), Standard Ed., 7, 151n.(SE VII p123-245 see this site /3 Sigmund Freud (19050101 or Index of Freud’s texts) Published bilingual at www.Freud2Lacan.com /homepage (THREE ESSAYS ON SEXUALITY (Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie))]

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– Infant Analysis : 1923 : Melanie Klein. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Klein)

P115-116, The most prevalent form of degradation in erotic life, Collected Papers vol iv*: Yet we shall come to attribute to these a very great importance when we consider at how big a sacrifice of instinctual energy the normal man purchases his health. ‘If, however, instead of attributing a wide significance to the term psychical impotence, we look about for instances of its peculiar symptomatology in less marked forms, we shall not be able to deny that the behaviour in love of the men of present-day civilization bears in general the character of the psychically impotent type’. * this paper, SE XI p177-190.

SE XI p184-185, translated by James Strachey, If the concept of psychical impotence is broadened and is not restricted to failure to perform the act of coitus in circumstances where a desire to obtain pleasure is present and the genital apparatus is intact, we may in the first place add all those men who are described as psychanaesthetic: men who never fail in the act but who carry it out without getting any particular pleasure from it—a state of affairs that is more common than one would think. Psycho-analytic examination of such cases discloses the same aetiological factors as we found in psychical impotence in the narrower sense, without at first arriving at any explanation of the difference between their symptoms. An easily justifiable analogy takes one from these anaesthetic men ot the immense number of frigid women; and there is no better way to describe or understand their behaviour in love than by comparing it with the more conspicuous disorder of psychical impotence in men.[1]

If however we turn our attention not to an extension of the concept of psychical impotence, but to the gradations in its symptomatology, we cannot escape the conclusion that the behaviour in love of men in the civilized world to-day bears the stamp altogether of psychical impotence. There are only a very few educated people in whom the two currents of affection and sensuality have become properly fused; the man almost always feels his respect for the woman acting as a restriction on his sexual activity, and only develops full potency when eh si with a debased sexual object; and this in its turn is partly caused by the entrance of perverse components into his sexual aims, which he does not venture to satisfy with a woman he respects. He is assured of complete sexual pleasure only when he can devote himself unreservedly to obtaining satisfaction, which with his well-brought-up wife, for instance, he does not dare to do. This is the source of his need for a debased sexual object, a woman who is ethically inferior, to whom he need attribute no aesthetic scruples, who does not know him in his other social relations and cannot judge him in them. It is to such a woman that he prefers to devote his sexual potency, even when the whole of his affection belongs to a woman of a higher kind. It is possible, too, that the tendency so often observed in men of the highest classes of society to choose a woman of a lower class as a permanent mistress or even as a wife is nothing but a consequence of their need for a debased sexual object, to whom, psychologically, the possibility of complete satisfaction is linked.

Footnote [1] Sigmund Freud, I am at the same time very willing to admit that frigidity in women is a complex subject which can also be approached from another angle. [James Strachey, The question is examined at length in ‘The Taboo of Virginity’ (1918a), SE XI p191-208, p. 201 ff. below.]

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– Introjektion und Übertragung [Introjection and transference] : 1909 : Sándor Ferenczi. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Ferenczi). Ferenczi is quoted by Freud and this text is given in a footnote to this reference from Ch VIII Being in Love & Hypnosis of Mass Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego : 1921 : Sigmund Freud, SE XVIII p69-143 : Published bilingual at www.Freud2Lacan.com /Freud: The Metapsychological Papers, Papers on Technique and others.

SE XVIII p113, It is now easy to define the difference between identification and such extreme developments of being in love as may be described as ‘fascination’ or ‘bondage’. In the former case the ego has enriched itself with the properties of the object, it has ‘introjected’ the object into itself, as Ferenczi [1909] expresses it. In the second case it is impoverished, it has surrendered itself to the object, it has substituted the object for its own most important constituent. [1] [Footnote 1 James Strachey, 1 [The ‘bondage’ of love had been discussed by Freud in the early part of his paper on ‘The Taboo of Virginity’ (1918a) SE XI] Note : Freud presented “The Taboo of Virginity” to the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society on December 12, 1917. He published it in 1918 as the third of three essays entitled “Contributions to the Psychology of Love” (Beiträge zur Psychologie des Liebeslebens ), the first two of which were revisions of his earlier papers, “A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men” (1910h) and “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love” (1912d). (Notes and References at this site /4 Sigmund Freud (19120101))]

Ferenczi, S. (1909) ‘Introjektion und Übertragung’, Jb psychoanalt. psychopath. Forsch., I, 422 [Trans.: Introjection and transference, First Contributions to Psycho-Analysis, London, 1952, Chap. II] [Sándor Ferenczi : Introjektion und Übertragung [Introjection and transference] : 1909. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Ferenczi)]