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\markboth{Sigmund Freud}{ON THE UNIVERSAL TENDENCY TO DEBASEMENT
IN THE SPHERE OF LOVE}
%On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love} 
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\title{ON THE UNIVERSAL TENDENCY TO DEBASEMENT\\ 
IN THE SPHERE OF LOVE\\
(CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE II)}
\author{Sigmund Freud}
\date{1922}
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\section{}

\begin{multicols}2
\textsc{If} the practising psycho-analyst asks himself on account of what
disorder people most often come to him for help, he is bound to
reply---disregarding the many forms of anxiety---that it is psychical
impotence. This singular disturbance affects men of strongly
libidinous\footnote{[`Libidinos.' Here `libidinous', as contrasted
    with the technical `libidinal'.]} natures,  
and manifests itself in a refusal by the executive organs of sexuality
to carry out the sexual act, although before and after they may show
themselves to be intact and capable of performing the act, and although
a strong psychical inclination to carry it out is present. The first
clue to understanding his condition is obtained by the sufferer himself
on making the discovery that a failure of this kind only arises when
the attempt is made with certain individuals; whereas with others there
is never any question of such a failure. He now becomes aware that it
is some feature of the sexual object which gives rise to the inhibition
of his male potency, and sometimes he reports that he has a feeling of
an obstacle inside him, the sensation of a counter-will which
successfully interferes with his conscious intention. However, he is
unable to guess what this internal obstacle is and what feature of the
sexual object brings it into operation. If he has had repeated
experience of a failure of this kind, he is likely, by the familiar
process of `erroneous connection',\footnote{[This seems to be
    an allusion to the slightly differently termed `false connection'
    already described in \emph{Studies on Hysteria} (1895d),
    \emph{Standard Ed.,} \textbf{2,} {67n.}]} to decide that the
recollection of the first occasion evoked the disturbing anxiety-idea
and so
caused the failure to be repeated each time; while he derives the first
occasion itself from some `accidental' impression.
 
Psycho-analytic studies of psychical impotence have already been carried
out and published by several
writers.\footnote{Steiner (1907), Stekel (1908), Ferenczi
  (1908). [Freud had written 
a preface to Stekel's book (Freud, 1908f) and wrote one later to a
book of Steiner's on the same subject (Freud, {1913e}).]} Every
analyst can confirm the explanations provided by 
them from his own clinical experience. It is in fact a question of the
inhibitory influence of certain psychical complexes which are withdrawn
from the subject's knowledge. An incestuous fixation on mother or
sister, which has never been surmounted, plays a prominent part in this
pathogenic material and is its most universal content. In addition
there is the influence to be considered of accidental distressing
impressions connected with infantile sexual activity, and also those
factors which in a general way reduce the libido that is to be directed
on to the female sexual object.\footnote{Stekel (1908, 191 ff.).}
 
 
When striking cases of psychical impotence are exhaustively
investigated by means of psycho-analysis, the following information is
obtained about the psychosexual processes at work in them. Here
again---as very probably in all neurotic disturbances---the foundation of
the disorder is provided by an inhibition in the developmental history
of the libido before it assumes the form which we take to be its normal
termination. Two currents whose union is necessary to ensure a
completely normal attitude in love have, in the cases we are
considering, failed to combine. These two may be distinguished as the
\emph{affectionate} and the \emph{sensual} current.
 
The affectionate current is the older of the two. It springs from the
earliest years of childhood; it is formed on the basis of the interests
of the self-preservative instinct and is directed to the members of the
family and those who look after the child. From the very beginning it
carries along with it contributions from the sexual
instincts---components of erotic interest---which can already be seen more
or less clearly even in childhood and in any event are uncovered in
neurotics by psycho-analysis later on. It corresponds to \emph{the
  child's primary object-choice.} We
learn in this way that the sexual instincts find their first objects by
attaching themselves to the valuations made by the ego-instincts,
precisely in the way in which the first sexual satisfactions are
experienced in attachment to the bodily functions 
necessary for the preservation of
life.\footnote{[The `attachment' (or `anaclitic') type of
    object-choice was discussed more fully in Freud's later paper on
    narcissism (1914c).]} The `affection' shown by the child's
parents and those who 
look after him, which seldom fails to betray its erotic nature (`the
child is an erotic plaything'), does a very great deal to raise the
contributions made by
eroticism to the cathexes of his ego-instincts, and to increase them to
an amount which is bound to play a part in his later development,
especially when certain other circumstances lend their support.
 

 
 
These affectionate fixations of the child persist throughout childhood,
and continually carry along with them
erotism, which is consequently diverted from its sexual aims. Then at
the age of puberty they are joined by the powerful `sensual' current
which no longer mistakes its aims. It never fails, apparently, to
follow the earlier paths and to cathect the objects of the
primary infantile choice with quotas of libido that are now far
stronger. Here, however, it runs up against the obstacles that have
been erected in the meantime by the barrier against incest;
consequently it will make efforts to pass on from these objects which
are unsuitable in reality, and find a way as soon as possible to other,
extraneous objects with which a real sexual life may be carried on.
These new objects will still be chosen on the model (imago) of the
infantile ones, but in the course of time they will attract to
themselves the affection that was tied to the earlier ones. A man shall
leave his father and his mother---according to the biblical
command\footnote{[\emph{Genesis} ii,
    24.]}---and shall cleave unto 
his wife; affection and sensuality are then united. The greatest
intensity of sensual passion will bring with it the highest psychical
valuation of the object---this being the normal over-valuation of the
sexual object on the part of a man.
 
 
Two factors will decide whether this advance in the developmental
path of the libido is to fail. First, there is the amount of
\emph{frustration in reality} which
opposes the new object-choice and reduces its value for the person
concerned. There is after all no point in embarking upon an
object-choice if no choice is to be allowed at all or if there is no
prospect of being able to choose anything suitable. Secondly, there is
the amount of \emph{attraction}
which the infantile objects that have to be relinquished are able to
exercise, and which is in proportion to the erotic cathexis attaching
to them in childhood. If these two factors are sufficiently strong,
the general mechanism by which the neuroses are formed comes into
operation. The libido turns away from reality, is taken over by
imaginative activity (the process of introversion), strengthens the
images of the first sexual objects and becomes fixated to them. The
obstacle raised against incest, however, compels the libido that has
turned to these objects to remain in the unconscious. The masturbatory
activity carried out by the sensual current, which is now part of the
unconscious, makes its own contribution in strengthening this fixation.
Nothing is altered in this state of affairs if the advance which has
miscarried in reality is now completed in
phantasy, and if in the phantasy-situations that lead to masturbatory
satisfaction the original sexual objects are replaced by different
ones. As a result of this substitution the phantasies become admissible
to consciousness, but no progress is made in the allocation of the
libido in reality. In this way it can happen that the whole of a young
man's sensuality becomes tied to incestuous objects in the
unconscious,\footnote{[In the editions before 1924 the word
    used here is the very unusual \emph{`Unbewusstsein',}
    `unconsciousness'.]} or to put it another way, becomes fixated
to unconscious incestuous 
phantasies. The result is then total impotence, which is perhaps
further ensured by the simultaneous onset of an actual weakening of the
organs that perform the sexual act.
 
 
Less severe conditions are required to bring about the state known
specifically as psychical impotence. Here the fate of the sensual
current must not be that its whole charge has to conceal itself behind
the affectionate current; it must have re mained sufficiently strong or
uninhibited to secure a partial outlet into reality. The sexual
activity of such people shows the clearest signs, however, that it has
not the whole psychical driving force of the instinct behind it. It is
capricious, easily disturbed, often not properly carried out, and not
accompanied by much pleasure. But above all it is forced to avoid the
affectionate current. A restriction has thus been placed on
object-choice. The sensual current that has remained active seeks only
objects which do not recall the incestuous figures
forbidden to it; if someone makes an impression that might lead to a
high psychical estimation of her, this impression does not find an
issue in any sensual excitation but in affection which has no erotic
effect. The whole sphere of love in such people remains divided in the
two directions personified in art as sacred and profane (or animal)
love. Where they love they do not desire and where they desire they
cannot love. They seek objects which they do not need to love, in order
to keep their sensuality away from the objects they love; and, in
accord ance with the laws of
`complexive sensitiveness'\footnote{[This term is borrowed from Jung's
    word-association 
experiments (Jung, 1906), and is also used by Freud in the `Rat Man'
case history (1909d), \emph{Standard Ed.,} \textbf{10,} 210.]} and of the
return of the  
repressed, the strange failure shown in psychical impotence makes its
appearance whenever an object which has been chosen with the aim of
avoiding incest recalls the prohibited object through some feature,
often an inconspicuous one.
 
 
The main protective measure against such a disturbance which men have
recourse to in this split in their love consists in a psychical
\emph{debasement} of
the sexual object, the overvaluation that normally attaches to the
sexual object being reserved for the incestuous object and its
representatives. As soon as the condition of debasement is fulfilled,
sensuality can be freely expressed, and important sexual capacities and
a high degree of pleasure can develop. There is a further factor which
contributes to this result. People in whom there has not been a proper
confluence of the affectionate and the sensual currents do not usually
show much refinement in their modes of behaviour in love; they have
retained perverse sexual aims whose non-fulfilment is felt as a
serious loss of pleasure, and whose fulfilment on the other hand seems
possible only with a debased and despised sexual object.
 
 
We can now understand the motives behind the boy's phantasies
mentioned in the first of these `Contributions' (above, p.\ 171), which
degrade the mother to the level of a prostitute. They are efforts to
bridge the gulf between the two currents in love, at any rate in
phantasy, and by debasing the mother to acquire her as an object of
sensuality.
\end{multicols}

\section{}

\begin{multicols}2 

In the preceding section we have approached the study of psychical
impotence from a medico-psychological angle of which the title of this
paper gives no indication. It will how ever become clear that this
introduction was required by us to provide an approach to our proper
subject.

We have reduced psychical impotence to the failure of the affectionate
and the sensual currents in love to combine, and this developmental
inhibition has in turn been explained as being due to the influences of
strong childhood fixations and of later frustration in reality through
the intervention of the barrier against incest. There is one principal
objection to the theory we advance; it does too much. It explains why
certain people suffer from psychical impotence, but it leaves us with
the apparent mystery of how others have been able to escape this
disorder. Since we must recognize that all the relevant factors known
to us---the strong childhood fixation, the incest-barrier and the
frustration in the years of development after puberty---are to be found
in practically all civilized human beings, we should be justified in
expecting psychical impotence to be a universal affliction under
civilization and not a disorder confined to some individuals.

It would be easy to escape from this conclusion by pointing to the
quantitative factor in the causation of illness---to the greater or
lesser extent of the contribution made by the various elements which
determine whether a recognizable illness results or not. But although I
accept this answer as correct, it is not my intention to make it a
reason for rejecting the conclusion itself. On the contrary, I shall
put forward the view that psychical impotence is much more widespread
than is supposed, and that a certain amount of this behaviour does in
fact characterize the love of civilized man.

If the concept of psychical impotence is broadened and is not
restricted to failure to perform the act of coitus in circumstances
where a desire to obtain pleasure is present and the genital apparatus
is intact, we may in the first place add all those men who are
described as
psychanaesthetic: men who never fail in the act but who carry it out
without getting any particular pleasure from it---a state of affairs that
is more common than one would think. Psycho-analytic examination of
such cases
discloses the same aetiological factors as we found in psychical
impotence in the narrower sense, without at first arriving at any
explanation of the difference between their symptoms. An easily
justifiable analogy takes one from these anaesthetic men to the immense
number of frigid women; and there is no better way to describe or
understand their behaviour in love than by comparing it with the more
conspicuous disorder of psychical impotence in men.\footnote{I am at
  the same time very willing to admit that frigidity in  
women is a complex subject which can also be approached from another
angle. [The question is examined at length in `The Taboo of Virginity'
(1918a), p.~201 {ff.}~below.]} 
 
If however we turn our attention not to an extension of the concept of
psychical impotence, but to the gradations in its symptomatology, we
cannot escape the conclusion that the behaviour in love of men in the
civilized world to-day bears the stamp altogether of psychical
impotence. There are only a very few educated people in whom the two
currents of affection and sensuality have become properly fused; the
man almost always feels his respect for the woman acting as a
restriction on his sexual activity, and only develops full potency when
he is with a debased sexual object; and this in its turn is partly
caused by the entrance of perverse components into his sexual aims,
which he does not venture to satisfy with a woman he respects. He is
assured of complete sexual pleasure only when he can devote himself
unreservedly to obtaining satisfaction, which with his well-brought-up
wife, for instance, he does not dare to do. This is the source of his
need for a debased sexual object, a woman who is ethically inferior, to
whom he need attribute no aesthetic scruples, who does not know him in
his other social relations and cannot judge him in them. It is to such
a woman that he prefers to devote his sexual potency, even when the
whole of his affection belongs to a woman of a higher kind. It is
possible, too, that the tendency so often observed in men of the
highest classes of society to choose a woman of a lower class as a
permanent mistress or even as a wife is nothing but a consequence of
their need for a debased sexual object, to whom, psychologically, the
possibility of complete satisfaction is linked.
 
 
I do not hesitate to make the two factors at work in psychical
impotence in the strict sense---the factors of intense incestuous
fixation in childhood and the frustration by reality in
adolescence---responsible, too, for this extremely common characteristic of 
the love of civilized men. It sounds not only disagreeable but also
paradoxical, yet it must nevertheless be said that anyone who is to be
really free and happy in love must have surmounted his respect for
women and have come to terms with the idea of incest with his mother or
sister. Anyone who subjects himself to a serious self-examination on
the subject of this requirement will be sure to find that he regards
the sexual act basically as something degrading, which defiles and
pollutes not only the body. The origin of this low opinion, which he
will certainly not willingly acknowledge, must be looked for in the
period of his youth in which the sensual current in him was already
strongly developed but its satisfaction with an object outside the
family was almost as completely prohibited as it was with an incestuous
one.
 
In our civilized world women are under the influence of a similar
after-effect of their upbringing, and, in addition, of their reaction
to men's behaviour. It is naturally just as unfavourable for a woman if
a man approaches her without his full potency as it is if his initial
overvaluation of her when he is in love gives place to undervaluation
after he has possessed her. In the case of women there is little sign
of a need to debase their sexual object. This is no doubt connected
with the absence in them as a rule of anything similar to the sexual
overvaluation found in men. But their long holding back from sexuality
and the lingering of their sensuality in phantasy has another important
consequence for them. They are subsequently often unable to undo the
connection between sensual activity and the prohibition, and prove to
be psychically impotent, that is, frigid, when such activity is at last
allowed them. This is the origin of the endeavour made by many women to
keep even legitimate relations secret for a while; and of the capacity
of other women for normal sensation as soon as the condition of
prohibition is re-established by a secret love affair: unfaithful to
their husband, they are able to keep a second order of faith with
their lover [cf. p. 203].
 
The condition of forbiddenness in the erotic life of women is,
{I} think,
comparable to the need on the part of men to debase their sexual
object. Both are consequences of the long period of delay, which is
demanded by education for cultural reasons, between sexual maturity and
sexual activity. Both aim at abolishing the psychical impotence that
results from the failure of affectionate and sensual impulses to
coalesce. That the effect of the same causes should be so different in
men and in women may perhaps be traced to another difference in the
behaviour of the two sexes. Civilized women do not usually transgress
the prohibition on sexual activity in the period during which they have
to wait, and thus they acquire the intimate connection between
prohibition and sexuality. Men usually break through this prohibition
if they can satisfy the condition of debasing the object, and so they
carry on this condition into their love in later life.
 
 
In view of the strenuous efforts being made in the civilized world
to-day to reform sexual life, it will not be superfluous to give a
reminder that psycho-analytic research is as remote from
tendentiousness as any other kind of research. It has no other end in
view than to throw light on things by tracing what is manifest back to
what is hidden. It is quite satisfied if reforms make use of its
findings to replace what is injurious by something more advantageous;
but it cannot predict whether other institutions may not result in
other, and perhaps graver, sacrifices.
The fact that the curb put upon love by civilization involves a
universal tendency to debase sexual objects will perhaps lead us to
turn our attention from the object to the instincts themselves. The
damage caused by the initial frustration of sexual pleasure is seen in
the fact that the freedom later given to that pleasure in marriage does
not bring full satisfaction. But at the same time, if sexual freedom is
unrestricted from the outset the result is no better. It can easily be
shown that the psychical value of erotic needs is reduced as soon as
their satisfaction be comes easy. An obstacle is required in order to
heighten libido; and where natural resistances to satisfaction have not
been sufficient men have at all times erected conventional ones so as
to be able to enjoy love. This is true both of individuals
and\footnote{Floerke (1902, 16).}
 of nations. In times in which there were no
difficulties standing in the way of sexual satisfaction, such as
perhaps during the decline of the ancient civilizations, love became
worthless and life empty, and strong reaction-formations were required
to re store indispensable affective values. In this connection it may
be claimed that the ascetic current in Christianity created psychical
values for love which pagan antiquity was never able to confer on it.
This current assumed its greatest importance with the ascetic monks,
whose lives were almost entirely occupied with the struggle against
libidinal temptation.
 
 
One's first inclination is no doubt to trace back the difficulties
revealed here to universal characteristics of our organic instincts. It
is no doubt also true in general that the psychical importance of an
instinct rises in proportion to its frustration. Suppose a number of
totally different human beings were all equally exposed to hunger. As
their imperative need for food mounted, all the individual differences
would disappear and in their place one would see the uniform
manifestations of the one unappeased instinct. But is it also true that
with the satisfaction of an instinct its psychical value always falls
just as sharply? Consider, for example, the relation of a drinker to
wine. Is it not true that wine always provides the drinker with the
same toxic satisfaction, which in poetry has so often been compared to
erotic satisfaction---a comparison acceptable from the scientific point
of view as well? Has one ever heard of the drinker being obliged
constantly to change his drink because he soon grows tired of keeping
to the same one? On the contrary, habit constantly tightens the bond
between a man and the kind of wine he drinks. Does one ever hear of a
drinker who needs to go to a country where wine is dearer or drinking
is prohibited, so that by introducing obstacles he can reinforce the
dwindling satisfaction that he obtains? Not at all. If we listen to
what our great alcoholics, such as
Bocklin, say about their relation to wine, it sounds like the most
perfect harmony, a model of a happy marriage. Why is the relation of
the lover to his sexual object so very different?

It is my belief that, however strange it may sound, we must reckon with
the possibility that something in the nature of the sexual instinct
itself is unfavourable to the realization of
complete satisfaction. If we consider the long and difficult
developmental history of the instinct, two factors immediately spring
to mind
which might be made responsible for this difficulty. Firstly, as a
result of the diphasic onset of object-choice, and the interposition of
the barrier against incest, the final object of the sexual instinct is
never any longer the original object but only a surrogate for it.
Psycho-analysis has shown us that when the original object of a wishful
impulse has been lost as a result of repression, it is frequently
represented by an endless series of substitutive objects none of which,
however, brings full satisfaction. This may explain the inconstancy in
object-choice, the `craving for
stimulation'\footnote{[\emph{`Reizhunger.'} This term
    seems to have been 
  introduced by Hoche and Bloch. See Freud's \emph{Three Essays}
  (1905d), \emph{Standard Ed.,} \textbf{7,} 151n.]} which is so often a 
feature of the love of adults.
 
 
Secondly, we know that the sexual instinct is originally divided into a
great number of components---or rather, it develops out of them---some of
which cannot be taken up into the instinct in its later form, but have
at an earlier stage to be suppressed or put to other uses. These are
above all the coprophilic instinctual components, which have proved
incompatible with our aesthetic standards of culture, probably since,
as a result of our adopting an erect gait, we raised our organ of smell
from the ground.\footnote{[Cf.{} two long footnotes to Chapter VI of
    \emph{Civilization
    and its Discontents} (1930a).]}  The
same is true of a large portion of the sadistic urges which are a part
of erotic life. But all such developmental processes affect only the
upper layers of the complex structure. The fundamental processes which
produce erotic excitation remain unaltered. The excremental is all too
intimately and inseparably bound up with the sexual; the position of
the genitals---\emph{inter urinas et faeces}---remains the decisive and
unchangeable factor. One might say here, varying a well-known saying of
the great Napoleon: `Anatomy is destiny.' The genitals themselves have
not taken part in the development of the human body in the direction of
beauty:
they have remained animal, and thus love, too, has remained in essence
just as animal as it ever was. The instincts of love are hard to
educate; education of them achieves now too much, now too little. What
civilization aims at making out of them
seems unattainable except at the price of a sensible loss of pleasure;
the persistence of the impulses that could not be made use of can be
detected in sexual activity in the form of non-satisfaction.
 
 
Thus we may perhaps be forced to become reconciled to the idea
that it is quite impossible to adjust the claims of the sexual instinct
to the demands of civilization; that in consequence of its cultural
development renunciation and suffering, as well as the danger of
extinction in the remotest future, cannot be avoided by the human race.
This gloomy prognosis rests, it is true, on the single conjecture that
the non-satisfaction that goes with civilization is the necessary
consequence of certain peculiarities which the sexual instinct has
assumed under the pressure of culture. The very incapacity of the
sexual instinct to yield complete satisfaction as soon as it submits to
the first demands of civilization becomes the source, however, of the
noblest cultural achievements which are brought into being by ever more
extensive sublimation of its instinctual components. For what motive
would men have for putting sexual instinctual forces to other uses if,
by any distribution of those forces, they could obtain fully satisfying
pleasure? They would never abandon that pleasure and they would never
make any further progress. It seems, therefore, that the irreconcilable
difference between the demands of the two instincts---the sexual and the
egoistic---has made men capable of ever higher achievements, though
subject, it is true, to a constant danger, to which, in the form of
neurosis, the weaker are succumbing to-day.

It is not the aim of science either to frighten or to console. But I
myself am quite ready to admit that such far-reaching conclusions as
those I have drawn should be built on a broader foundation, and that
perhaps developments in other directions may enable mankind to correct
the results of the developments I have here been considering in
isolation.
\end{multicols}
\vfill
\noindent\emph{\large Source:
\textnormal{\url{http://www.ncf.edu/hassold/FinDeSiecle/freud_debasement.htm},}
among the webpages of a professor of art history.  The text is apparently taken
from Vol.~11, pp.~177--190 of Freud's \emph{Complete Works}.  There
are some trivial errors---especially gaps within
words---that I, David Pierce, have tried to correct without reference
to a printed book.  Also, for example, since the
\textnormal{\url{html}} text appears to
lack a superscript 10 for the corresponding footnote, I have inserted
this note at the place where the text 
%\begin{center}
\textnormal{\textbf{S.F. xi---N}}
%\end{center}
appears; however, perhaps this strange text was a printer's mark at
the bottom of a page, and whole text was transcribed by
machine with no human editing.  I have also guessed that there is a
second numbered section, as indicated above.}  



\end{document}
