Thalassa

A Theory of Genitality

Sandor Ferenczi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780946439614
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429919954
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Human Sexuality in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book expands the symbols of the phallus and vagina into cosmic symbols, not by reference to myths but by his interpretations of embryonic, physiological, psychological facts. It develops the view that the whole of life is determined by a tendency to return to the womb, equating the process of birth with the phylogenetic transition of animal life from water to land, and linking coitus to the idea of "thalassal regression": "the longing for the sea-life from which man emerged to primeval times".

Ontogenesis

Chapter 1
Amphimixis of Erotisms in the Ejaculatory Act

It was reserved for psychoanalysis to rescue the problems of sexuality from the poison cabinet of science in which they had been locked away for centuries. A certain perhaps necessitous sequence is clearly apparent, however, in the actual selection of the problems to which psychoanalysis has addressed itself. Just as in the matter of the sexual enlightenment of children even the most liberal approach boggles at the riddle of how the child comes to be in the mother's body, in the same way psychoanalysis has up to the present dealt to a relatively much greater degree with pregnancy and birth, with the acts preparatory to coitus, and with the perversions, than with the meaning and explanation of the phenomena of the act of coitus itself. I too must confess that the ideas which I should now like to communicate, at least in their broad outlines, have lain buried in my desk for more than nine years, and I suspect that my hesitancy in making them known—in giving birth to them, if you like—was attributable not alone to external causes but to my own resistances as well.

My reflections on the subject had their origin in certain psychoanalytic observations on impotence in the male. This seemed a promising lead; we know how often it is that what is in effect a caricature of normal functioning makes it possible to detect certain factors ordinarily masked and thus clarify the course of events in the normal process. Abraham, an especially zealous investigator of the so-called "pregenkal organizations", has attributed ejaculatio prœcox to a too intimate association of urethral erotism with genitality. Patients who suffer from premature ejaculation manifest the same attitude of indifference towards their semen as they would towards their urine, that is to say, as a valueless excretion of the organism. In contrast to this group of observations I have established the fact from a fairly large number of cases that other patients are excessively economical of their semen, many of them so much so that they suffer, properly speaking, only from impotentia ejaculandi;; that is, they are capable of erection and intromission and are incapable only of ejaculation. In the unconscious and to some extent even in the conscious mentation of these patients the equating of coitus with the act of defalcation plays an important part (equating of the vagina with the water-closet, of the semen with faeces, etc.). Not infrequently these patients have displaced upon the sexual act the self-will and obstinacy with which in childhood they opposed the strict regulation of their excretory habits imposed on them by convention; they are impotent if the partner desires intercourse, they have erections only when the performance of the act is for some reason impossible or impracticable (as for example in the case of menstruation), they have outbreaks of rage or hatred or suddenly become cold if their partner opposes their willfulness in the slightest imaginable degree. It is easy, then, to assume in these patients as intimate an association of anal elements with the acts of coitus as Abraham has shown to be true of urethral elements in the case of ejaculatio prœox; in other words, it has to be assumed that there is such a thing as a specific anal technique in impotence in the male.

It then occurred to me that less pronounced disturbances of the act of coitus similarly connected with anal functioning are not especially uncommon. Many men have a compulsion to defecate before performing the sexual act; moreover, severe nervous digestive disorders may disappear when emotional inhibitions of sexuality have been analytically resolved; one is familiar too with the obstinate constipation which is a not unusual consequence of excessive masturbation and squandering of semen. Among the "character regressions" which I have described I would cite as worthy of mention in this connection the case of men who, in other respects generous, are very petty and even niggardly in the matter of giving money to their wives.

To avoid misunderstanding I should remark that in the psychoanalytic treatment of both anal and urethral impotence the psychic determinants of the disorder need not be sought in such a deep level of the biological substratum as in the case of the transference neuroses, in the œdipus complex and the related castration complex. The above-mentioned division of impotence into anal and urethral came about as a mere speculative by-product intended to indicate the ways in which the underlying motivation regressively enforces the overt appearance of the symptom. It should also be said that the two impotence mechanisms are almost never observed as separate entities; that much more often in actual practice a patient suffering from ejaculatio prœox, hence an urethral individual, acquires a capacity for erection and intromission in the course of the analysis but thereby loses temporarily his potestas ejaculandi, that is, he becomes aspermatic. In such patients it would seem that their original urethrality became converted into anality in the course of treatment. The result is an apparent super-potency, which however is satisfactory only to the patient's wife. It is only with the continuation or completion of the analysis that there is brought about a harmonizing, as it were, of the two opposed types of innervation and the establishing of satisfactory potency in consequence.

These observations have led me to suspect that in normal ejaculation a synergetic harmony of anal and urethral innervations is essential, their presence going unrecognized owing perhaps only to the fact that each innervation normally covers up or masks the other; whereas in ejaculatio prœox the urethral component, in ejaculatio retardata the anal, is alone in evidence.

The simple consideration of the nature of the sex act from the intromission of the penis to ejaculation would seem to support these assumptions. The terminal event of coitus, the ejaculation of semen, is undoubtedly an urethral phenomenon, which has in common with the voiding of urine not only its channel of excretion but the fact of being the ejection of a fluid under great pressure; on the other hand, during the frictional process inhibitory influences, in all probability of sphincteric origin, seem to assert themselves and to be capable, if they gain the upper hand to an untoward degree, of bringing about complete absence of ejaculation. Everything points to the fact that the urethral (i.e., ejaculatory) tendency is at work from the beginning, throughout the entire frictional process, and that in consequence an unceasing struggle occurs between the evacuatory and the Inhibitory purpose, between expulsion and retention, in which the urethral element is eventually victorious. This two-fold innervation might, among other things, manifest itself also in the to-and-fro motion of the frictional process, in which penetration would correspond to the ejaculatory tendency, withdrawal to an ever recurring inhibition. Naturally one would have to ascribe significance also to the increase of excitement consequent upon continued friction, and to assume that this increase is capable, on exceeding a certain level, of finally overcoming the spasm of the sphincter.

This assumption presupposes a highly complicated and finely graduated coordination, a disturbance of which would produce just that ataxia and dyspraxia which one may describe as premature and inhibited emission. One is thereby forcibly reminded of a certain similarity between the anomalies of seminal emission of which I have spoken and the speech disorder which goes under the name of stuttering. In this instance, likewise, the normal flow of speech is assured by the proper coordination of the innervations necessary to the production of vowels and consonants. But if speech is interfered with from time to time by impeded vocalization or by the spasmodic character of the enunciation of consonants, there result the varieties of stuttering which specialists in speech disorders refer to as vocalic and consonantal stuttering. It is not difficult to guess that I should like to compare the innervation necessary to the production of tone with urethrality, and the interruptions of tone by consonantal sounds, which are in many ways suggestive of sphincter action, with anal inhibition. Yet that this is no mere superficial parallel but on the contrary has reference to a fundamental similarity between the two pathological conditions which goes much deeper, is attested by the remarkable fact that the disturbances of innervation which characterize stuttering are in fact traceable psychoanalytically to anal erotic sources on the one hand and to urethral erotic on the other. In a word, I should like to conceive the pathophysiological mechanism of disturbances of ejaculation as a kind of genital stuttering.

In this connection the embryological fact should not be disregarded that the penis, on which devolves the terminal act of coitus, the emission of semen, is ab initio adapted to the uniting of anal and urethral tendencies; for we must not forget that it grows out of the gut, or, in the lower mammals, out of the urogenital cloaca, as a quite late acquisition in developmental history.

Let us return from this physiological digression to our well-founded psychoanalytic knowledge and attempt to bring the situation as we have described it into line with Freud's sexual theory.

The sexual development of the individual culminates, according to the Drei Abhandlungen, in the supersession by the primacy of the genital zone of the hitherto active autoerotisms (excitations of the so-called erotogenic zones) and of the previous organizations of sexuality, whereby the erotisms and the stages of organization which have been thus transcended are retained in the final genital organization as mechanisms of fore-pleasure. At this point, however, the question presents itself whether the analysis of the ejaculatory act into its separate elements, which we have attempted in the preceding paragraphs, does not supply a means of conjecturing, even if only partially, the subtler processes involved in the establishing of genital primacy. For what I described in physiological terms as a coordination of urethral and anal innervations may be expressed in the vocabulary of the sexual theory as a synthesis or an integration of anal and urethral erotisms Into genital erotism. I may be permitted to emphasize this new conception by giving it a name of its own; let us term such a synthesis of two or more erotisms in a higher unity the amphimixis of erotisms or instinct-components.

But already this very first step towards a psychoanalytic theory of genitality encounters difficulties which seem to throw considerable doubt on its validity. One of these difficulties arises out of the fact that physiology fails to provide us with any means of conceiving how such an amphimixis might take place. Are actual nerve impulses transmitted from one organ to another or even from two organs to a third, or have we to do with chemical processes somewhat after the manner of an accumulation of endocrine products which reciprocally stimulate or inhibit one another? In all these matters we must confess our deep ignorance; but this particular difficulty should not by any means deter us from the pursuit of our theoretical considerations. For the explanation of a given process may be correct and from the standpoint of the psychoanalyst perfectly clear without the physiological side of the process being at the moment completely intelligible. Freud's entire sexual theory is a purely psychoanalytic one; the biological evidence for its correctness must be supplied subsequently by the physiologists.

A much more serious objection to the theory of amphimixis is a metapsychological one—more serious since it emanates from the field of psychoanalysis itself. Metapsychology has heretofore worked with the hypothesis of mechanisms which are charged with energy and from which energy is withdrawn. The difference in reactions was thought of as being caused by a difference in mechanism, whereas in the case of energy it was only the quantity and not the quality or character of it that mattered. We conceived of the mental always as a variety of mechanisms operated by one and the same energy, in such manner that this energy might shift from one system to another; but we have never spoken specifically of a shifting of qualities, above all of qualitative differences in the energies themselves, such as the amphimixis theory would demand. If we look more closely, however, we find that such a conception, even if only implicit, has underlain certain psychoanalytic views. I have in mind in particular the psychoanalytic conception of the phenomena of hysterical conversion and materialization.¹ The latter we were obliged to consider as a "heterotopic genital function", as a regressive genitalization of earlier autoerotisms, or in other words as processes in which typically genital erotisms, such as erectility, frictional activity, and the ejaculatory tendency, constituting a qualitatively well-defined syndrome, are displaced from the genital to innocuous parts of the body. This "displacement from below upwards" is very possibly nothing but a reversal of the amphimictic downward trend of erotisms to the genital whereby, according to the theory here propounded, the primacy of the genital zone is established. Therefore, the metapsychological objection to the amphimixis theory need not disturb us any longer; on the contrary, we ought to consider whether we shall not have to exchange the conception of one energy but many mechanisms, attractive though this theory Is by reason of its simplicity, for that of a multiplicity of forms of energy. This we have already unwittingly done, in that we have considered psychic mechanisms as charged now with ego-tendencies, now with sexual ones.

We are therefore not guilty of any inconsistency in working with erotisms which are displaceable and capable of interoperation, while preserving their qualitative individuality.

The question now presents itself whether the urethro-anal amphimixis which I have described cannot be corroborated by other kinds of linkages between these erotisms, whether other characteristics of coitus can also be referred to similar mixtures of erotisms, and finally whether these can be brought into harmony with the sexual theory.

Between urethral and anal autoerotism there seems in fact to exist a kind of reciprocity well prior to the establishing of genital primacy. The child has a tendency to obtain an extra dividend of pleasure from emptying the bladder and from retaining the stool, but learns to renounce a part of this pleasure in order to insure the love of those who take care of him. But whence does the child derive the ability to follow the instructions of mother or nurse and overcome his prodigality with urine and his parsimony with fæces? I believe that this ability is a result of the fact that the organs participating In urethral functioning are crucially influenced from the anal sphere, the organs of anal functioning from the urethral, so that the bladder acquires a degree of retentiveness from the rectum, the rectum a degree of liberality from the bladder—or, scientifically stated, by means of an amphimixis of the two erotisms in which the urethral erotism receives anal admixtures and the anal erotism urethral. If this is so, we should have to ascribe to the constitution of the admixture and to the finer or grosser apportionment of the ingredients of this combination of erotisms, an enormous importance as regards not only genital normality or individuality but character formation in particular, which latter, as Freud has taught us, is to be regarded as in large measure the psychic superstructure and the psychic transcript of these erotisms.

Even apart from this consideration, the assumption of a urethro-anal amphimixis in the copulative act is notably facilitated by this pregenital amphimixis. The genital would then no longer be the unique and incomparable magic wand which conjures erotisms from all the organs of the body; on the contrary, genital amphimixis would merely be one particular instance out of the many in which such fusion of erotisms takes place. From the standpoint of individual adaptation this special instance is most significant, however; we see by what means in general the force of education brings about renunciation of pleasure and the adoption of an unpleasurable activity, namely, only by a clever combination of mechanisms of pleasure. The bladder learns to retain urine only by making use of another type of pleasure, that of retention; and the bowel renounces the pleasure of constipation by borrowing from the urethral pleasure in voiding. It is possible, perhaps, that in a sufficiently deep analysis the most successful sublimation, even an apparently complete renunciation, might be reduced to such hidden elements of hedonistic gratification, without which, apparently, no living organism can be induced to make any change in its activity.¹

The question whether there occur other mixtures and transpositions of erotisms can be answered categorically in the affirmative.² Observation of children alone affords numerous indications of their existence. Children are fond of fusing pleasurable activities of the most various kinds into a single act; they like in particular to combine the pleasure of eating with that of emptying the bowel; even infants, as Lindner, the first to make the observation, emphasized, are prone to combine thumb-sucking with rubbing or picking at various skin areas such as the lobe of the ear, the finger, or even the genital. One may very properly speak of a mixture of oral and anal or of oral and skin erotisms in these instances. Furthermore, the well-known activities of perverts customarily strive for such a summation of erotisms, most conspicuously in those voyeurs who obtain gratification only by simultaneously watching the act of defalcation and smelling or eating faeces. The most characteristic example of an amphimictically urethro-anal performance I owe, however, to a two-year-old boy who would sit on a chamber and alternately pass a few drops of urine and a little fasces or flatus to the accompaniment of a continuous cry of, "egy csurr, egy pú—egy csurr, egy pú", which may be translated into English, in the vernacular of childhood, as "now a pee, now a poop".

In a few patients I have even obtained some insight into the psychic motivation of such combinations; for example, an essentially anally impotent patie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Ontogenesis
• Phylogenesis
• Epicrisis
• Index