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After reading this article you will learn about Freud’s views on sex behaviour of an individual:- 1. Psychic Reality and Psychic Determinism 2. Theory of the Mind or Psyche 3. The Structural View 4. The Functional Divisions 5. Narcissism or Self-Love 6. Sadism and Masochism.
1. Psychic Reality and Psychic Determinism:
According to Freud, life as experienced by a person, on the one hand involves actual reality including things, people and events, and on the other psychic reality, which includes things which are psychologically real to the individual, how he perceives, and interprets the facts, events and experiences and also his own internal psychological tendencies.
According to Freud, the same facts mean different things to different persons, as a result of varying interpretations which derive from a person’s experiences mainly psychological, past and present. Except in the case of bare routine activities, it is the psychological reality which is more crucial in determining an individual’s behaviour and this is more so in the case of complex behaviour, particularly interpersonal behaviour, and sex behaviour.
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This dominant influence of psychological factors or psychological reality on human actions is described by Freud as “psychic determinism”. Examples of the dominance of psychic reality can be clearly seen in the case of dreams, where the individual is completely estranged from physical reality and actually lives and experiences very realistically, dream reality which is psychological and not factual.
Similar is the case with a person suffering from behavioural abnormalities because in such instances, behaviour, cognitive, affective and creative is totally controlled by his or her experiences or fantasy. On this point, one may raise the question, why does such a thing not happen in all people and under normal conditions?
The answer is that in most cases we share the same psychic realities. Further, most of our daily actions are routine and devoid of psychological contents. In simple terms, according to Freud, we do not live just in a world of things, but in a world of meanings, things as they mean to us. If most of us share common meaning then our psychic realities do not differ.
Further, if things carry different meanings to different people, then our psychic realities are different. Here when the term “meaning” is used, it is not merely “a knowledge based meaning”, but a meaning which includes an emotional component, what may be called semantic meaning.
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For example, if you and your friend are walking on the road and come across a huge tree, your friend looks at it as a very large and old tree, the like of which he has not seen before. But for you it may mean much more, maybe it is the tree from the top of which you fell down as a child and broke your leg.
Your friend does not know this nor would you like to tell him that and make him unhappy, and perhaps, you yourself may not like to remember such a sad experience. But all the same emotionally the tree has a different meaning and significance for you.
2. Theory of the Mind or Psyche:
Naturally, when Freud emphasized the primacy of psychic reality and psychic determinism, he had to think of a mind or a psyche that is the “organ” or ‘centre’ concerned with psychical phenomena.
While employing the concept of mind Freud looks at the mind as a structural entity consisting of different regions” or parts and also as a functional system. A simple analogy may be drawn by comparing the use of the two terms ‘house’ and ‘home’.
When you think of your house, you say there is the front room, verandah, back room, a central room, etc. Here each room is described as a part or a region, in terms of its location, and position in the total physical structure of the building.
On the other hand, we may think of the same house as a home and describe it in terms of a sitting room a reading room, drawing room, bed room, etc., bringing out how these rooms are used or in other words, their functional importance.
Here one may see that the same rooms which are basic facts of realities can be described in structural terms or functional terms. Freud’s distinction between the structure of the mind and his theory of functions is analogous to the distinction between the terms “house and home”, to some extent.
The Structural View:
According to Freud, the structure of the mind consists of three regions, the conscious, the pre-conscious, and the unconscious. The conscious region includes all the ideas, experience, conscious states, etc., of which we are aware of at any particular point of time. For example, if I am sitting and writing, I am aware of what I am writing, the need to complete it within an hour, that a friend is expected to visit me in the afternoon etc.
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But suddenly, I feel that I have forgotten something. I try to recall the same. After a few seconds, I remember that I had promised my friend that I would have .dinner with him in the evening.
This act of recalling or bringing back to awareness or consciousness something of which I was aware of earlier, but lost consciousness of the same, occurs according to Freud, because such forgotten ideas and events which can be brought back to consciousness with certain amount of effort, exist in the second region of the mind called the preconscious or ‘foreconscious’ elements of the conscious which we have forgotten and which fortunately we can recall or remember when needed.
According to Freud, the third region of the mind, the unconscious is the most important region. It contains all the basic biological impulses, prenatal memories, and the instinctual tendencies with which an individual is born. But more important, it contains all the memories, ideas, tendencies and perceptions, which have been pushed into it by a mechanism called repression.
Such a process or mechanism of repression comes into operation whenever the continued presence of such elements in the conscious region can threaten the normality, and integrated functioning of the individual.
Repression thus is a psycho-biological safety mechanism or a preventive security measure. Elements in the unconscious unlike those in the preconscious can never be brought to the level of consciousness by a mere effort or act of will on the part of the individual.
However, there are some special techniques like hypnosis, psychoanalysis, etc., which can help in bringing the repressed contents of the unconscious to the level or region of consciousness. According to Freud, the contents of the unconscious, which have been repressed continue to be active and emotionally charged.
They can find their way into the conscious, under certain conditions and in certain forms, disguised and symbolic. They find expressions through dreams, neurotic symptoms, and even art, literary creations and mythology. Further, they appear in the form of symbols. This symbolic expression is made use to prevent them being recognised by the conscious and also to save the conscious life and adjustment of the individual from being disturbed.
However, if the entry of such repressed unconscious content exceeds a certain level and volume, the same can result in a loss of orientation, disturbance of normal life and lead to other forms of dysfunctional behaviour. According to Freud, much of such repressed contents relates to sex and sex motivation or aggressive impulses.
The Functional Divisions:
According to Freud there are three functional divisions of the mind or psyche, just as there are three structural or regional divisions. He named these Id, Ego and Superego. The Id is the basic biological division with which a person is born.
This is the division responsible for the activation of all the basic physiological, biological and instinctual impulses, and also the energiser of these activities. It is the storehouse of all energy. The activities of the Id take place at an unconscious level. The Id is the only functional division at birth. In fact, at birth the entire mind or psyche is ‘Id’.
The second functional division according to Freud arises after birth as a result of interaction with the environment. Its functions are perceptual, motor, cognitive and logical. The Ego is the link between the native and unconscious. Id on the one hand and the society on the other.
In view of this, it has an unconscious division and a conscious division. Sensing, perceiving, moving, talking, learning, thinking, in fact all the conscious activities of the individual are carried out by the Ego.
The Ego is the messenger and the mediator between the Id, on the one hand and the society on the other, and in a way also the battle ground between the two because, Freud holds that the Id and society are antithetical in their nature. The Id impulses and instinctual urges crave and push for unbridled and unfettered discharge and expression, being essentially biological, primitive and animal-like in nature.
Of course, society and social systems have been mainly evolved to restrict and keep in check and if necessary even checkmate these very tendencies whose unbridled expression can render social life impossible. Hence there is a natural state of “conflict” between the two.
Here Freud introduces two concepts or principles. The first one the Pleasure Principle, which guides the functioning of the Id, aims at total, immediate and unregulated satisfaction of the biological impulses. The other principle is the Reality Principle which guides the functioning of the Ego.
This principle, involves a stipulation that the conditions of reality and prescriptions, proscriptions, restrictions and regulations of the society and reality have to be taken into account, to ensure continued survival and growth of the person as well as society – the reality principle stands for reason, rationality and prudence and discretion.
It may be seen that these two principles are totally divergent from each other and this can create severe conflicting states in the individual, particularly if the social demands are as uncompromising, rigid and severe as the demands of the Id impulses.
The third functional unit is named by Freud as Superego. As the name itself suggests, the Superego is a more powerful agency than the Ego. The Superego is also formed by a transformation of part of the Id, and is unconscious.
But, it is again an agency opposed to the Id, working in a direction counter to the tendency of the Id impulses to seek full and complete satisfaction. The Superego on the other hand is guided by the expectations and demands of the forces of reality.
The Superego is like a “primitive policeman” within the Id to keep a rigorous and uncompromising check on the Id. It is an ‘enemy within’.
The Superego is formed by what Freud called the mechanism of “introduction of external authority” automatically. If the external authority is very strict and uncompromising, so will be ‘the Superego. The Superego shares the impulsive and demanding nature of the Id, the only difference being that it acts as a force against the pleasure seeking tendencies of the Id.
There are many variations in the views of various psychoanalysts about the nature and the formation of the Superego. But it is not necessary for us to go into these. Leading psychoanalysts like Rank, Melarne Kleiv and others have attempted to modify the basic views of Freud in this regard, and postulated different stages in the formation of the Superego.
Freud, while discussing the formation of the Superego, emphasised that it is patterned or even an exact replica of the male authority or more particularly, the father. One may see here that the three functional divisions are involved in different functions. The Id’s functions are biological and innate and true to the species characteristics. It is un-socialised.
The Ego on the other hand has a major social function of mediating between the Id and society and though formed out of a process of transformation of the Id, functions on the basis of perceptions, learning, thinking and reason. The Superego while being essentially socio-regulatory in its function, is as demanding and uncompromising as the Id, and is also unconscious.
We may now visualize how there can be severe conflicts among these three agencies. There can be conflicts between the Ego and the Id, Id and reality, the Id and the Superego and occasionally the Ego and the Superego.
According to Freud such conflicts always are part of human psychic life and one’s life is full of them some being persistent and enduring while others are transitory and occur at different stages. Every conflict generates anxiety and it is this anxiety which is at the base of all forms of abnormal behaviour. A delicate balance has to be maintained among the Id, Reality, Superego and the Ego.
3. Theory of Development and the Primacy of Early Childhood Experiences:
One of the cardinal features of Freud’s theory in general and particularly the development of sex motivation and behaviour is that development proceeds in stages. As the individual grows and develops from infancy, one can see behaviour changing. But these changes are not continuous and linear and they proceed in different stages.
These stages more or less correspond to the development of the functional systems of the body, particularly the nutritive and other functional systems. Each stage spreads over a few years.
Freud names them as Oral stage, which is the earliest, when the mouth is the most dominant organ, followed by the Anal Stage, when anus or the excretory organ is the most dominant, followed by the Phallic Stage when the external organs of the sex apparatus become dominant.
This is followed by a prolonged latency period, and the final stage is the Genital stage, when the genital organs achieve sexual maturity and become functional.
In coming out with this scheme of stages, Freud describes typical behavioural characteristics of each stage. He also proceeds to state that in some cases individuals do not proceed beyond a particular stage, oral, anal or phallic, due to certain critical and peculiar experiences. Such a condition he calls ‘Fixation’. Secondly even when an individual moves from one earlier stage to a later stage, there is a possibility of sliding back to an earlier stage.
Freud names this as Regression. Fixation and Regression, along with Repression forms the three corner stones of the psychoanalytic explanation of neurotic, abnormal or deviant behaviour or even artistic behaviour.
Yet another important premise of the psychoanalytic theory is that early childhood experiences particularly those relating to parent- child relationship are very crucial in determining the course of the developmental process, whether the development would be smooth, complete and normal, or whether fixation or regression are likely.
According to Freud, the first few years of life determine the shape of the adult personality and character. This may be called the principle of primacy of early experiences. Another basic principle is that strong emotional experiences, and wishes of early childhood even though pushed into the unconscious tend to keep on getting reactivated and invade the conscious in a symbolic and disguised form.
This phenomenon is called by Freud as ‘Repetition Compulsion’. Thus the causes of most abnormal behaviour, according to Freud, lie in the childhood, and psychoanalytic therapy aims to delve into the unconscious mind, bring out such strong emotional “childhood life contents” that are pushed into the unconscious and interpret them to the individual at a conscious level.
4. The Theory of Instinctual Motivation and the Sex Instinct:
According to Freud, all human behaviour springs from unconscious instinctual sources which are storehouses of energy. While one can think of many instincts, major, minor, etc., Freud takes a different view. According to him, there are two major groups of instincts in the human individual which are vitally significant from the psychological or behavioural point of view.
The two groups are named as life Instincts (Eros) and death instincts (Thanatos). The life instincts have generally a convergent goal of living, growing and perpetuating life and finding pleasurable experiences. The death instincts work in the opposite or antithetical direction of destroying, terminating, and dying which includes one’s own death – a tendency to return to the state of non-living, a state of non-existence.
The sex instinct or sex urge according to Freud is the most powerful instinct among the Life Instincts. While satisfaction of this instinct may not be basically essential for mere survival, nevertheless, all activities involving a psychological and social content are centered around or predominantly influenced by the development and satisfaction of the sex urge.
It has its own specific fund of energy which Freud termed libido. In the early stages of life when the “Sex Apparatus” of the body is not fully developed, this instinct finds expression and outlet through other activities like eating, excreting, etc., and consequently even these activities, apparently purely connected with the survival assume sexual significance, value and meaning.
Now, what is the end or goal of the sex urge? According to Freud, the broad goal and aim of the sex urge is to get “touch pleasure” or pleasure of contact with certain parts of the body called the “erotic zones”. Generally erotic zones are those regions of the body where the skin and the mucus membrane blend, like the tongue, genital organs, excretory organs, etc.
Another observation of Freud is that any object or activity associated with such pleasant contact or touch pleasure can also acquire “sexual value” or what he calls “cathexis”. Such transfer of “sexual value” is regulated by the operation of the traditional laws of association, of similarity, proximity and contiguity and also functional substitution.
Thus Freud listed a lot of objects or activities which can function as symbols or substitutes for the actual sexual organs. The eyes, the ear and the addition of even other inanimate objects can serve as sex symbols. This leads us to another property of sex behaviour. It can be aroused or satisfied by a symbolic object also. In fact individual dreams and mythology of a culture are full of such sexual symbols and activities.
Dimensions and Development of the Sex Instinct and Behaviour:
In describing the scheme of development of the sex motivation and its expression in terms of the various stages, Freud identifies three dimensions.
These dimensions are, the zone or the region of the body, the mode or the kind of activity and the object whose contact results in satisfaction. This is presented in a tabular form. The actual age levels corresponding to these deceprental stages, however, vary from culture to culture, in particular, the practices of socialisation.
Here it may be seen that at the oral stage there are two modes, sucking when the teeth have not developed and biting when the teeth develop and the act of biting provides more active contact, and at this stage the child bites any solid object.
Similarly at the anal stage there are two stages marked by two modes, expulsion in the initial stage and retention in the later stage when the sphincter muscles have developed and the act of retaining gives touch pleasure.
At the phallic stage, the child derives pleasure from stimulating one’s own genitals and thus becomes auto sexual. In fact, psychologically this is a very important stage.
At this stage, the child discovers that he is no more dependent on other persons like mother or other objects to achieve sex pleasure, but to some extent self-reliant in finding sexual satisfaction. The phallic period is followed by a prolonged period of latency when libidinal activity is relatively dormant. The child reaches school stage, and participates in vigorous play activities.
The onset of puberty or maturity of the sex glands brings about a change and to some extent disturbs the balance achieved during the latency period. The ushering in of this final stage ‘genital stage’ directs the attention towards a member of the opposite sex, but still full genital sexual capacity is achieved only after a few years.
It may be interesting to mention here that even when adult genital stage is reached, the earlier modes and regions still retain their potentiality as sources of pleasure and in almost all cases of adult heterosexual interactions, the earlier modes still form a part, though, perhaps not all of them for example, auto excitation of the phallic stage may be there. But the object is the partner of the other sex. It is in view of this involvement of different regions and multiple modes Freud described sexual behaviour as polymorphous perverse.
While the above scheme represents the normal pattern, some people remain fixated at any of the earlier stages and not reach the final adult stage, while others may reach the adult stage only partially and are susceptible to ‘regression’ or reverting back to an earlier stage.
Complete development involves shifting of the zone or region of the body, the mode or type of activity and finally the object. In many cases, there may be a change in any one or two of the three dimensions. In such cases the result will be immature or inadequate sexual behaviour.
The Oedipus complex and Castration Anxiety:
In the above paragraphs an attempt has been made to present an account of the course of the development of the “sex motive” and its expression from infancy to maturity, as outlined by Freud. The various stages through which this developmental process passes have also been indicated.
While the passage from one stage to another is connected with the overall biological growth and development on the one hand, the experiences of the child in relation to the parents, and the larger social cultural factors on the other, result in individual variations.
At the same time Freud did envisage certain “knotty” problems which are universal and crucial. One of them is named the Oedipus complex and its accompanying emotion of anxiety known as castration anxiety.
The reader must have noted that both for the male child and the female child, the mother is the primary sex object or love object. But in a society which is primarily ‘male oriented’, the male child in particular is faced with the necessity of giving up its almost exclusive attachment to the mother and shift to the male model, to be more specific the father or another male authority figure.
Thus this stage can result in complication and can create a conflicting situation between a strong internal urge to continue to be attached to the mother and the demand of the society to shift one’s attachment to the father.
This social demand is perceived by the male child in many ways; his perception of the male authority as all powerful, through indirectly communicated norms; and sometimes even direct pressures from those around. According to Freud, this situation creates a lot of tension and anxiety, with a complex of emotions, including resistance to wean oneself away from the mother and also fear and aggressive tendencies against the father.
At the same time, along with fear and aggression, the father is also an object of admiration because he symbolizes strength, power and authority. It is this complex condition through which every male child passes (unconsciously of course) which Freud calls, Oedipus anxiety or complex.
The name itself was adopted by Freud, from one of the Greek dramas of Sophocles, where the hero a prince named (Oedipus) falls in love with his mother and marries her without the knowledge that she was his mother and also kills his father. Later on, he experiences a strong sense of guilt and blinds himself.
According to Freud every male human child in his fantasy and imagination unconsciously experiences, whatever Oedipus experienced. Such a situation of deep sexual attachment to the mother and hostility to the father is also accompanied by the factors of guilt, fear and anxiety about possible punishment and retaliation by the father.
This particular state occurs during the end of the phallic stage where the zone of sex pleasure is the phallus and the mother continues to be the object. In view of this the fear and anxiety take the form of a fear of being ‘castrated’ or the phallus being cut off Thus came into use the term ‘castration anxiety’.
The castration anxiety acts as a force pulling the child away from a continued dependence and attachment to the mother towards the father. At the same time, the admiration for the father as a “strong and powerful” individual serves as a “push force”.
Thus there is an unconscious drama of pull and push. According to Freud, the resolution of the Oedipus complex is the most complex problem in the process of psychosexual or libidinal development and if this is achieved, successfully, then the remaining steps are gone through peacefully.
In fact the latency period, where there is an ‘auto sexual’ fixation is in a way a strategy in resolving this complex. Freud, also postulated a corresponding situation of Electro Complex or Electra Anxiety in the case of the girl child, but this was done on a rather low key. The Oedipus complex is thus controlled and overcome to a large extent because of castration fear or castration anxiety.
The concept of Oedipus complex has come in for very severe criticism from all quarters, including from some who otherwise tend to agree with some of the major views of Freud. A number of objections have been raised, particularly to Freud’s assertion that it is universal.
It has been pointed out that even according to his own views it depends on the social, cultural movements and the severity of the society’s objection to continuing to be attached to the mother as a sex object.
Secondly, the concept of Oedipus complex does not appear to hold in matriarchal societies. But in this presentation it is not our intention either to support or pass a judgement on Freud’s views. What is being attempted is only a brief presentation of his views.
In the case of some individuals, the process of psychosexual development may remain “fixated” at one of the earlier stages like oral, anal or phallic and may not run through the entire course of development and maturation. It was also mentioned that fixation can be partial or total.
Now the reader may wonder why does fixation occur! Freud answers this questions as follows. According to Freud, fixation is likely to occur, if there is a prolonged and over satisfaction of the libidinal urges at a particular stage. Thus, there can be an oral fixation, if breast feeding continues for a long period; fixation can also occur over indulgence.
At the other extreme, fixation can also occur, if the libidinal satisfaction at a particular stage is very much below normal or if there is extreme under satisfaction. This can happen if weaning takes place too early and maternal care is not warm enough or long enough.
Another causative factor is the ‘occurrence’ of a traumatic or violent and emotionally disturbing experience. Abrupt and sudden weaning and sudden separation from the mother or any other traumatic experience can result in fixation. Fixation at any of the earlier stages renders the person susceptible to regression and as pointed out earlier both can be partial or total.
5. Narcissism or Self-Love:
Another term or concept advanced by Freud is narcissism which is sometimes popularly and wrongly interpreted as self-love. The infant at birth does not have a sense of distinction between ‘self and reality’. In fact, it has no concept of self or self-identity.
Such a sense of identity has to await the beginning of the development of the ego. This, however is dependent on the individual’s confrontation with the environment, and meeting with ‘negation’ or non-satisfaction of libidinal satisfaction.
If the stage of oral satisfaction is prolonged and weaning is delayed and there is a high degree of over indulgence, then that results in a delayed sense of awareness of reality and a subjective feeling of ‘exaggerated self strength – a sense of one’s own omnipotence’.
Such a psychological condition or ‘mental state’ is called narcissism. Some of the indications of narcissism are a lack of awareness of reality, a high intensity of the pleasure principle and as a result, the belief that whatever one wishes would happen, omnipotence of the wish or thought.
Perhaps, all individuals to some extent or other pass through this stage. But in some individuals this state gets exaggerated and fixed – Freud named this mental condition as primary narcissism – the term narcissism again being adopted from a Greek legend where a prince Narcissus looks at a reflection of his own image in a stream of water and falls in love with it.
Freud also discussed a second stage called secondary narcissism which comes about at the phallic stage when the child discovers he can himself be a source of libidinal satisfaction, and need not depend on other objects including the mother.
Normally, people overcome these stages and how far they are able to overcome the ‘narcissistic’ condition depends on a whole lot of factors, primary among them being the process of socialisation and child rearing, etc.
The general behavioural attributes of narcissism are over-optimism, lack of a sense of realism, a sense of exaggerated self-importance and an inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality, and wish and fact. From the point of view of sex behaviour, it may result, in a ‘lessened attractions’ for the members of the opposite sex, and also a lack of enthusiasm in heterosexual union.
There is however, a distinction between primary narcissism and secondary narcissism. While the former is characterised by an inability to distinguish between reality and wish, and Cinderella dreams, the latter is characterised more by pride and an exaggerated feeling of self-sufficiency of one’s ability to succeed.
6. Sadism and Masochism:
According to Freud, the wish to die or the death wish is as fundamental as the sex instincts. While the two instincts may be antithetical, in their goals or means of gratification, there are also some points of similarity.
Both are innate and are present from infancy. Both are of a generalized and then undifferentiated nature and polymorphous. Like the sex instinct, aggressive impulses can find expression, in overt action, verbal aggression or at the fantasy level.
According to Freud the two tendencies can often get fused and find expression concurrently, though this sounds irrational and illogical. But nature is not bound to follow human logic or rationality.
It is because of this that one finds that ‘sex’ behaviour often involves aggression. This involvement can result in two types of tendencies, the first one being sadism where the person derives libidinal satisfaction by being violent, aggressive and inflicting pains on the sexual partner.
The opposite of this is termed as masochism, where pleasure is derived from pain, aggression, violence being inflicted on oneself. There are people who entertain dreams and fantasies of being ‘sexually assaulted’; here the aggression is termed on oneself. Of course, while sadistic and masochistic tendencies can find fusion with sex behaviour, in fact they are more general tendencies and predispositions operating even under ‘non-sexual’ contexts.
The world has witnessed a number of sadists who derive pleasure from barbaric and inhuman treatment of human beings, animals and even non-living bodies. The sadist enjoys destroying, humiliating and hurting. On the other hand we have also seen some so called martyrs who torture themselves.
In the above paragraphs, an attempt has been made to discuss Sigmund Freud’s views on sex and sex behaviour at some length. But the fact remains that ‘psychology of sex’ centres around the views of Freud.
The entire credit for focusing the attention of psychologists and even other social scientists on the crucial role played by ‘sex motivation’ in the lives of individuals as well as of society goes to Freud. It was only Freud who brought out the crucial importance of the sex instinct, its nature, its all embracing nature, its role, not only as a ‘physiological urge’ but also its psychological, social and cultural implications, not only in contemporary society, but also in terms of human history.
Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis in general and more particularly, his views on sex, were revolutionary, comparable to that of Galileo, Darwin and Karl Marx. Another accomplishment of Freud is that he could, with his genius, bridge the gap between the micro and macro levels of behavioural analysis. Similarly, he could bridge the gap between the biological and social sciences.
While one need not agree with everything that Freud has said, at the same time one cannot deny that he was a very shrewd observer, who integrated the micro-events with a macro- vision.
He was a free and liberated thinker, who was not bound by the prudery and ignorance of the past or more recent pseudo sex radicalism. He was very comprehensive in his thinking, taking into account different approaches and observations of human life. Above all, he had a deep concern for ‘human effectiveness’.
The best testimony to his objectivity as a scientist comes from the fact that all opposed him, the ‘orthodox’, the religious bigots, scientists with narrow specialisation, the Roman Catholic Church and almost every section of the society.
Of course, professional psychologists belonging to the different schools also raised their eye-brows. At the same time he was also able to gather around him a band of brilliant, committed and highly competent professional doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists.
Some of them however, parted company, differing from him on certain basic principles of psychoanalysis. Of course, over the years, new schools of thought emerged, which, while sharing some of the basic views of Freud, however differed from him on certain issues.
It is not the intention of the authors at this point to go into the merits of Freudian psychoanalysis or its defects. But one cannot help observing that Freudian psychoanalysis, particularly his views on ‘sex’ revolutionized academic psychology, psychiatry and clinical psychology and even anthropology and social sciences.
Many of his observations both perceptibly and imperceptibly made their way into other social sciences, into art and literature, and above all played a crucial role in changing society’s attitudes towards sex motive and sex behaviour.
Poetry, drama, painting and in fact every aspect of art has been influenced by the views of Freud. We may, at this point, bring to a close our discussion of the view of Freud and psychoanalysis on sex motivation and sex behaviour. Today, however, we may see that sex occupies a central place in life. There can be no cinema without sex.