PERVERSIONS AS A FORM OF SEXUAL DISTURBANCE. CASTRATION ANXIETY
One of the most important contributing factors to the oedipal situation is the upsurge of sexual feelings, directed primarily toward the parent of the opposite sex. Little boys have sexual feelings toward their mothers, along with erections, desires to see mother undressed, to sleep with her, and to get rid of the father who simply gets in the way. The little girl has sexual feelings toward her father, wishes for a baby from him, and the desire to eliminate her rival for father’s affections. In both cases, this is referred to as the positive oedipal complex in that positive loving affects are directed to the opposite sex parent. Consolidation and resolution of the positive oedipal complex leads to normal heterosexuality for both sexes.
There is also a negative oedipal complex. This consists of positive loving (sexual) feelings directed toward the same-sex parent and feelings of rivalry and antipathy toward the opposite sex parent. The little boy wishes for approval and affection from his father and competes with his mother for his father’s love. The little girl wishes for closeness, love, and affection from her mother and competes with father for her mother’s affection. The negative oedipal complex exists in all children alongside of the positive oedipal complex. When the bal-lance of instinctual forces is shifted toward the negative complex, the likelihood of homosexuality is increased.
The key in this process is castration anxiety. Castration anxiety arises from the fantasized fear that the father will retaliate against the little boy for his sexual wishes to possess the mother and get rid of the father. The balance of oedipal forces may be shifted as a result of this threat to the negative oedipal configuration, in which the son’s loving attachment and submission to the father serves to defend against castration fears. In the little girl, the castration complex takes a different form because of her genital anatomy. She has no external organ and may feel envious and deprived on this account. This normally leads her to turn to the father who has a penis. The little girl is more threatened by lack of love than by castration. If turning to the father does not satisfy her need for love and approval, she must cling to her mother—the safer and more infantile love object.
In the perversions, infantile sexuality becomes predominant over adult sexuality. Consequently, there must be something in adult sexuality which is threatening or frightening as well as something that is inherently attractive about infantile sexuality. In the perversions, it is almost universally the fear of castration that interferes with the capacity to express full genital sexuality. Because of such castration fear, the individual regresses to that part of the infantile sexuality at which he is developmentally fixated. At what developmental level, and what parts of the instinctual capacities are fixated, are often influenced by an individual’s developmental experience. The dynamic aspects of the genesis of perversion have been described quite succinctly by Fenichel:
Among fixating experiences at the basis of perversion, one type is prominent: experience of sexual satisfaction which simultaneously gave a feeling of security by denying or contradicting some fear. The pervert, when disturbed in his genital sexuality by castration fear, regresses to that component of his infantile sexuality which once in childhood had given him a feeling of security or at least of reassurance against fear, and his gratification was experienced with special intensity because of this denial or reassurance. To put it schematically, the pervert is a person whose sexual pleasure is blocked by the idea of castration. Through the perversion he tries to prove that there is no castration. Insofar as this proof is believed, sexual pleasure and orgasm become possible again.
*221/187/5*
RSS 2.0 Comments Feed | Leave a Response | Trackback
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.