Three contributions to the sexual theory By Sigmund Freud
Excerpt:
The fact of sexual need in man and animal is expressed in biology by the assumption of a " sexual impulse." This impulse is made analogous to the impulse of taking nourishment, and to hunger. The sexual expression corresponding to hunger not being found colloquially, science uses the expression " libido."
Popular conceptions assume very different ideas concerning the nature and qualities of this sexual impulse. It is supposed to be absent during childhood and to commence about the time of and in connection with the maturing process of puberty; it is supposed that it manifests itself in irresistible attractions exerted by one sex upon the other and that its aim is sexual union or at least such actions as would lead to union. But we have every reason to see in these assumptions a very untrustworthy picture of reality.
The Behavior of Inverts. — The above-mentioned persons be- have in many ways quite different.
(a) They are absolutely inverted; i. e., their sexual object must be always of the same sex, while the opposite sex can never be to them an object of sexual longing, but leaves them indifferent or may even evoke sexual repugnance. As men they are unable, on account of this repugnance, to perform the normal sexual act or miss all pleasure in its performance.
(b) They are amphibiously inverted (psychosexually hermaphroditic) ; *. e., their sexual object may belong indifferently to either the same or to the other sex. The inversion lacks the character of exclusiveness.
(c) They are occasionally inverted; i. e., under certain external conditions, chief among which are the inaccessibility of the normal sexual object and imitation, they are able to take as the sexual object a person of the same sex and thus find sexual gratification.