Sigmund Freud, “Civilized Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness,” in the Standard
Edition, volume 9
181
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Freud cites von Ehrenfels
o Natural morality or that which is great for “lasting possession of health and
activity.”
o “Civilized morality, “spurs men on to intense and productive cultural activities.”
Yet, Freud says, it is not difficult to imagine that “under the dominance of a civilized
sexual morality… individuals… may be liable to impairment and that this is ultimately
injurious to them, caused by the sacrifices imposed upon them.”
Given this, “the cultural aim in view may be endangered as well.”
Indeed von Ehrenfels says civilized morality is bad because “the demands made of
women are also carried over to the sexual lives of men.”
In other words, monogamy.
182
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But, the trouble here is that “the differences between the sexes” makes this difficult.
Indeed, we must visit the lapses of men with “less severity.”
Given this, there is a “double morality, as such.
And, given this, people are not chosen “by virility.”
Note: In other words, since people are stuck in marriages, forced arrangements, etc., this is bad
from an evolutionary perspective.
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And, such a morality must induce
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Concealment of the truth.
False optimism
Self-deception
Deception of others
Freud, though, insists one of the worst effects of “modern nervous illness.”
Freud sees this as modern epidemic endemic, and it is spreading.
Note: Indeed, this theme seems like Heidegger, in “A Question Concerning Technology.”
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The conflict is caused by the demands of modern civilization, generally speaking.
183
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Freud quotes Erb and then others. Erb says we have greater achievements, greater
efficiency, greater needs, and demands for pleasure. And, of course, all the is very taxing
on it.
Erb quotes lots of other things, such as irreligion.
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And, better communication systems.
Indeed, “city life is constantly becoming more sophisticated and more restless. The
exhausted nerves seek recuperation in increased stimulation.”
184
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Freud goes on to quote Binswanger and then, von Kraft-Ebing. The latter insists that
given all our changes in the political, social, mercantile lives, there have been great social
changes.
And these, he says, “at the expense of the nervous system, which is called upon to meet
the greater demands by a greater expenditure of energy.
Note: So, the general point is clear: civilization, increased energy, hard on nervous system.
185
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Freud, though says that
The problem I have with the foregoing… opinions is not that they are mistaken but
that they prove insufficient to explain the details of nervous disturbances…they leave
out precisely the most important of the etiological factors involved.
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The damage, he says, is caused by “the harmful suppression of sexual life of civilized
people.”
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Freud distinguishes neuroses from psychoneuroses.
Concerning neuroses, he says, they “show their effects in somatic or mental functioning,”
and are toxic.
Indeed, he says, they are “commonly grouped together as neurasthenia,” and are caused
by sexual things.
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Note: Neurasthenia, which he gets from Beard, who cited it to explain WW1 soldiers and then
said modern civilization causes it (as noted in Freud: the Development of his Thought, by Fine)
is a mechanical weakness of the nerves.
186
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Psychoneuroses, Freud says, are caused “more by heredity.” Such neuroses are things
like hysteria and obsessional neurosis.
Freud says they are psychogenic.
And, he says, they and “depend on operation of unconscious (repressed) ideational
complexes.”
Indeed, such neuroses
…spring from the sexual needs of people who are unsatisfied and represent for
them a kind of substitute satisfaction.
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Freud says, anticipating Civilization and its Discontents that “civilization is built up on
the suppression of instincts. Each individual has surrendered part of his possessionssome part of the sense of omnipotence or of the aggressive or vindictive inclinations in
his personality.”
Indeed, he says, from this, grows our ideal of “common possession of material and ideal
property.”
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Note: This last point is confusion. Yes, we give much up. Perhaps Freud is suggesting, as in
Group Psychology, we, as a secondary sort of satisfaction, identify with people in common
projects, friendship, etc., and so, think of notions like justice, etc. If we cannot own things,
everyone must have access, equally.
187
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Freud notes that “family feelings,” also, have “induced people to make this
renunciation.”
Originally, he says, this renunciation was sanctioned by religion.
Note: In a footnote, Strachey admits this paragraph is unclear, and refers us to a letter to Fleiss
and to Moses and Monotheism
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Next, Freud says the sexual instincts are “probably more strongly developed” in man,” as
a species.
At least, they are “more constant.”
However, this has an effect
It places an extraordinary large amount of force at the disposal of civilized activity;
and it does this by virtue of its especially marked characteristic of being able displace
its aim without reducing its intensity.
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In other words, sublimation.
Yet as Freud notes, sexual strivings can “exhibit a particularly obstinate fixation.”
And this renders them, their energy, “unserviceable.”
Freud notes the obvious, and says “the original strength of the sexual instinct probably
varies in the individual. Certainly, the proportion which is suitable for sublimation
varies.”
188
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In fact, Freud says, as individuals, it is our “initial innate constitution” that decides.
Beyond this, “the effects of experience and intellectual influences” change things for
each of us.
Still, no one can avoid sex.
…a certain amount of sexual satisfaction seems indispensable for most
organizations, and a deficiency in this amount is visited by a phenomena which,
given their detrimental effects on functioning and subjective quality of
unpleasure, can only be regarded as illness.
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Originally, in infancy, the sexual instinct is not about reproduction.
Instead, it concerns organ pleasure, the erotogenic zones, as such.
Yet to linger in this autoerotic stage “would make the sexual instinct uncontrollable and
unserviceable” later on.
So we grow out of it.
In other words, we proceed to “object choice.”
And, erotogenic zones give way to the genitals, as the place for pleasure.
189
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Given this, Freud says, reproduction interests rule.
In other words, such excitation from erotogenic zones is “unserviceable to the
reproduction function and in favorable cases is brought to sublimation.”
Plainly, we do not consciously realize this.
Still, sublimating such forces is a necessary precursor to free energy that can be used for
“cultural activities.”
Next, Freud mentions three stages of coming to terms with civilization.
o Sexual instinct may be freely exercised.
o “All of the sexual instinct is repressed except that which serves the function of
reproduction.”
o Only “legitimate” function is reproduction.
In the second stage, Freud is just recapitulating what he said above, how we get out of the
autoerotic stage and choose objects.
Yet, as he says, not everyone develops properly.
o Perverts, I whom there is an “infantile fixation to a preliminary sexual aim has
prevented the primacy of the reproductive function.”
o Homosexuals, in whom the object choice is the same sex.
190
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However, Freud says, such people may still function just fine.
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This mitigation is ascribed precisely to the complex way in which the sexual
instinct is put together, which makes is possible for a person’s sexual life to reach
a serviceable final form even if one or more of the components of the instinct
have been prevented from developing.
Still, “more pronounced forms” make such people “socially useless and unhappy.
Even this second stage, then, can be too much for some.
Freud next maps out some options.
If such people that have sexual instincts that are weak, they can succeed in “totally
suppressing” them.
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However, “from an ideal point of view, this is all they succeed in achieving; for, in order
to succeed in the suppression of their sexual instincts, they use up the forces they would
otherwise employ in cultural activities.”
Note: Perhaps, but one can imagine that such weakly sexual people would just have a great deal
of energy, otherwise. And so, they would overcome their perversions, and also do a great deal,
otherwise.
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Now, if sexual instincts are strong, either
o Person remains a pervert
o Or, suppression is indeed achieved, but it is “no suppression at all.”
191
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In the latter case, when the suppression is achieved, the perversions “find expression in
other ways, which are quite injurious to the subject, which make him quite useless.”
What are these?
Freud says they are nervous illness, or psychoneuroses.
Indeed, this is a failure.
Neurotics, then
…are the class of people who, since they possess a recalcitrant organization, only
succeed, under the influence of cultural requirements, in achieving a suppression
of their instincts which is apparent and which becomes increasingly unsuccessful.
They only collaborate with cultural activities at a great expenditure of force and at
the cost if internal impoverishment.
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Indeed, these neuroses “manifest from the unconscious parts of the mind.”
Freud points out how we all have our individual “constitutional” limits, such that if one
has too much sexual instinct, no control, and one is subject to too many restrictions, one
will fall victim to neuroses.
192
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Given all this, Freud launches a main theme.
…it is one of the obvious social injustices that the standard should demand from
everyone the same conduct in sexual life.”
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Plainly, some people can adhere to these, but for others demands “the greatest psychical
sacrifices from others.”
Still, as he says
…injustice is as a rule wiped out by disobedience to the injunctions of morality.
Note: Yet, this is not really so. Perhaps Freud is speaking loosely here, since disobeying such
injunctions is themselves very psychically heavy. Obviously, few would want to do disobey, if
they could act freely, without threats.
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Freud says we have been speaking of stage two of civilization, merely choosing people as
objects.
Yet, it gets worse in stage three, “which bans all sexual activity outside marriage.”
Given this, the numbers of people of strong natures who oppose this will increase
dramatically, as well the ones with weak ones.
Indeed Freud says that such people, “faced with the contradiction between the pressure of
cultural influences and the resistance of their constitution, take flight into neurotic
illness.”
193
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So, given this, three questions:
o What does the third stage demand?
o Can sex in this situation compensate for sacrifices?
o What are the injuries?
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Concerning the first question, Freud notes that abstinence is really what it is after.
However, this is harmful.
…the task of mastering…the sexual instinct by any other means than satisfying it is
one that can call upon the whole of mans forces.
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Indeed, this cannot be done by many
Mastering by sublimation, by deflecting the sexual instinctual forces away from their
sexual aim to higher cultural aims, can be a achieved by a minority and then only
intermittently.
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Freud says most are “constitutionally unfit” for abstinence.
194
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Even those otherwise healthy people, succumb to neuroses.
Indeed, this third stage makes neurotics.
The psychical value of sexual satisfaction increases with its frustration. The
dammed up libido is now put in a position to detect or one other of the weaker
spots which are seldom absent in the structure of sexual life, and there to break
through and to obtain substitute satisfaction.
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Indeed, the sexual instinct seeks an outlet, and looks for weak places.
Note: In this, Freud vent his libido theory, as seen in Instincts and their Vicissitudes, etc.
Instincts are mobile, can change objects, seek release, and when they do so, they look for weak
spots to vent, places the ego has not protected against.
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Concerning the second question, about sexual compensation in marriage, the “the reply is
clearly in the negative.”
Even in marriage, it restricts.
Sex only for procreation, which is almost never.
Given this, “satisfying sexual intercourse takes place in marriage only for a few years,”
subtracting periods of abstinence after children, too.
Indeed, marriage is a failure concerning the “promised satisfaction of sexual needs.”
Freud goes farther.
Indeed, he says devices of contraception “hurt the fine susceptibilities of both sexes” of
sex for both parties, and may “even cause illness.”
Even worse, what if they fail?
Given this possibility, couples are always worried, which ruins all the fun.
Unfortunately, this all means that
…fear of the consequences of sexual intercourse first brings a married couples
physical affection to an end; and then, as a remoter result, it usually puts a stop as
well to the mental sympathy between them, which should be been the successor to
their passionate love.
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Freud notes how all this deprivation ironically places both partners “back in the state they
were before their marriage.”
But now, they are “poorer for being deprived of an illusion.”
195
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However, men typically avail themselves of sexual freedoms.
Yet, only through reluctance and in secrecy.
However, as Freud says
…this double sexual morality which is valid for men…is the plainest admission
that society does not itself believe in the precepts which it itself has laid down.
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But women “are only endowed in small measure with the gift of sublimating their
instincts, and who, though they may find a sufficient substitute for the sexual object in an
infant at the breast…do not find in a growing child.”
Note: In other words, women, when grown up, are dissatisfied too.
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Given this, women
…when they subject to the disillusionments of marriage, fall ill of severe neuroses
which permanently darken their lives.
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Freud says that cheating, really, would help. However, he also says that “the more
strictly a woman has been brought up…and submitted to the demands of civilization, the
more afraid she is of taking this way out.”
Given this conflict between her desires and her sense of duty, she “once more seeks
refuge in neurosis.”
Neurosis, ironically, “protects her virtue.”
196
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Yet, remember question three, about any cultural gain.
Is there sufficient gain?
Of course, some argue for a gain.
Freud, though, is skeptical.
I am unable to balance gain against loss correctly on this point, but I could advance a
great many considerations on the side of loss.
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Obviously, there are practical concerns, since young people cannot support their own
children.
So they need not to have sex.
Perhaps, also, it forms “character.”
Yet, after youth, abstinence leads to other injuries.
Still, Freud says
In the vast amount of cases the struggle against sexuality eats up the available energy
in a character…when a young man is most in need of in order to win a share and
place in society.
Note: Perhaps Freud is being cynical here, especially considering is later comments on how
society is built. If young people were out having sex, then they would not sublimate much, and
be less motivated to engage in professions, science, etc. However, as he quickly says, it is all an
individual matter.
197
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Disclaimers aside, Freud makes the sweeping claim that
I have not gained the impression that sexual abstinence helps to bring about
energetic and self-reliant men or original thinkers or bold emancipators and
reformers. Far more often it goes to produce well-behaved weaklings who later
become lost in the great mass of people that tend to follow, unwittingly, the leads
of strong individuals.
Note: Clearly, Nietzsche would approve, here. And surely, Freud is right. But it does seem more
of a personal reflection.
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Moreover, Freud says, sexual abstinence in youth, especially when strict “is not good
preparation for marriage,” for, when those instincts are finally freed, without
development, they can be “permanently impaired.”
Women know this, and prefer to start with experienced men.
Now, for Women, the effect can be even worse.
198
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Society uses drastic tricks on girls, such as teaching that sex is bad, keeping her “ignorant
of the role she is to play,” and squashing any sexual expression that may not lead to
marriage.
Given this, when a girl is to enter marriage, she is not psychologically ready.
Unfortunately, from this “artificial retardation…she has nothing but disappointments to
offer the man who has saved up all his desire for her.
Indeed
In her mental feeling she is still attached to her parents, whose authority has brought
about the suppression of her sexuality; and in her physical behavior she shows herself
frigid, which deprives the man of a high degree of sexual enjoyment.
Note: Clearly, Freud is exaggerating, to some extent. Perhaps the type exists. But often, even
repressed women can discard all such conditioning. Of course, Freud would admit this, since
those women just did not take to the training, were willing to hide their feelings, or had amazing
powers of adaptation.
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Civilized education “breeds” this kind of woman.
Freud says, often enough, when the retardation has finally been overcome, “her relations
with her husband have long since been ruined.”
And at this point, she is left eith
o Unappeased desire
o Unfaithfulness
o Neurosis
199
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Freud notes another, worse, problem.
Women are taught to be shy, demure.
Yet, this easily transfers to the personality as a whole, such that they can “be scared away
from any form of thinking,” knowledge can lose all interest to them.
Note: Of course, Freud is often called a sexist. But here, he notes “I do not believe that womens
physiological feeble-mindedness is to be explained by biological opposition, but… the
undoubted intellectual inferiority of many women can be traced to inhibition of thought
necessitated by sexual suppression.
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Freud makes a short comment on masturbation; that, it conflicts with civilized sexual
morality, anyway.
So it is no help.
And, the indulgence of it can make us without the effort of seduction, relationships, etc
200
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Freud notes that people often engage in other things, such as oral.
However, he objects here too, and says these activities are “ethically objectionable, for
they degrade the relationship between two people to a convenient game, attended by no
risk or spiritual participation.”
Note: Of course, Freud is wrong. This is not so, in any way. People who do such things do not
lack seriousness, etc. It is odd how he can be conservative at times.
201
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Abstinence, thus, “completely ruins the preparation for marriage.”
Freud draws a grand conclusion, that, when men have libidos, by means of lack of
development, masturbation, etc., “habituated to conditions of satisfaction that are not
normal,” then, they have “diminished potency in marriage.”
And, for women, when they listen to their training, they are frigid, or uninterested.
Given this
A marriage begun with a reduced capacity to love on both sides succumbs to the
process of dissolution even more quickly than others.
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And so, about sex
o Sexual intercourse, the source of all their embarrassments, is soon given up, and
with this the basis of married life is abandoned.
202
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Freud note that neurosis, “even if does not total put an end to the subjects capacity for
existence, represents a severe handicap in his life.”
Indeed, it is not just weak people who are affected.
Rather, neuroses “always succeed in frustrating the purposes of civilization.”
Yet how?
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By frustrating civilization, neuroses “when society pays for the obedience to its far
reaching regulations by an increase in nervous illness, it cannot claimed to have
purchased a gain.
Note: Freud gives a long example about a woman who, having gotten married unprepared, does
not love her husband “because she has no reason to love him.” Given her training, “she wants to
love him.” Of course, she suppresses all this, and becomes neurotic. Indeed, where is the gain in
this situation?
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Freud notes that also, with all neurosis, there is an “increase in anxiety.”
And more “fear of death.”
Alas, this “interferes with the individuals enjoyment” of life, and even with our ability to
face death.
 Freud says, given all this, a “diminished inclination to beget children is the result.”
 And, as he says, the community or group people do this is “excluded from any share in
the future.”
204
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Freud ends by questioning whether civilized sexual morality is “worth the sacrifice it
imposes on us.”