Cindy M. is right that in many ways Freud promoted a healthy attitude to sexual matters, but he was not entirely alone in this. Bry and Rifkin have documented that, alongside more prudish views, there was a liberalization of attitudes toward sex in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century across a wide range of society. But Freud also held some more doubtful ideas. That old favourite of his, Fliess's nasal 'spot', crops up in the "Dora" case history, where he writes that gastralgias (gastric pains) caused by masturbation can be "interrupted by an application of cocaine to the 'gastric spot' discovered by [Fliess] in the nose, and�cured by the cauterization of the same spot." Freud was still referring to the possible deleterious effects of masturbation in a discussion on the subject held by the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society in 1912. More generally, in "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" he maintained that the effects of infantile masturbation around the age of four had a profound influence on an individual's future development, determining "the development of his character, if he is to remain healthy, and the symptomatology of his neurosis, if he is to fall ill after puberty." As Sulloway notes, it is not appreciated "how integral [Freud's] medical views on masturbation were to his overall theory of the neuroses", and that by the early 1900s "his theory of the neuroses became, in significant part, a theory about infantile sexual masturbation."
Allen Esterson London References: Bry, I. and Rifkin. A. H. (1962). Freud and the history of ideas: primary sources, 1896-1910. In Science and Psychoanalysis (pp. 6-36), ed. J. H. Masserman. Vol. 5. New York: Grune and Stratton, pp. 25-26.. Freud, S. (1905a). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. In Standard Edition, vol. 7. London: Hogarth, p. 189. Freud, S. (1905b). Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. Standard Edition, vol. 7. London: Hogarth, p. 78. Nunberg, H. and Federn, E. (1962-75). Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. New York: International Universities Press, vol. 4, p. 93. Sulloway, F. J. (1979). Freud: Biologist of the Mind. New York: Basic Books, p. 185. --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
