Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex | Page 3

hears the psychoanalytic method referred
to as if it was customary for those practicing it to exploit the sexual experiences of their
patients and nothing more, and the insistence on the details of the sexual life, presented in
this book, is likely to emphasize that notion. But the fact is, as every thoughtful inquirer
is aware, that the whole progress of civilization, whether in the individual or the race,
consists largely in a "sublimation" of infantile instincts, and especially certain portions of
the sexual instinct, to other ends than those which they seemed designed to serve. Art and
poetry are fed on this fuel and the evolution of character and mental force is largely of the
same origin. All the forms which this sublimation, or the abortive attempts at sublimation,
may take in any given case, should come out in the course of a thorough psychoanalysis.
It is not the sexual life alone, but every interest and every motive, that must be inquired
into by the physician who is seeking to obtain all the data about the patient, necessary for
his reeducation and his cure. But all the thoughts and emotions and desires and motives
which appear in the man or woman of adult years were once crudely represented in the
obscure instincts of the infant, and among these instincts those which were concerned
directly or indirectly with the sexual emotions, in a wide sense, are certain to be found in
every case to have been the most important for the end-result.

JAMES J. PUTNAM.
BOSTON, August 23, 1910.
[1] Translated by A.A. Brill, NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE MONOGRAPH
SERIES, NO. 4.
[2] Translated by A.A. Brill, The Macmillan Co., New York, and Allen & Unwin,
London.
[3] Translated by A.A. Brill, The Macmillan Co., New York.
[4] Translated by A.A. Brill, Moffatt, Yard & Co., New York.
[4a] Translated by A.A. Brill, Moffatt, Yard & Co., New York.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
Although the author is fully aware of the gaps and obscurities contained in this small
volume, he has, nevertheless, resisted a temptation to add to it the results obtained from
the investigations of the last five years, fearing that thus its unified and documentary
character would be destroyed. He accordingly reproduces the original text with but slight
modifications, contenting himself with the addition of a few footnotes. For the rest, it is
his ardent wish that this book may speedily become antiquated--to the end that the new
material brought forward in it may be universally accepted, while the shortcomings it
displays may give place to juster views.
VIENNA, December, 1909.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
After watching for ten years the reception accorded to this book and the effect it has
produced, I wish to provide the third edition of it with some prefatory remarks dealing
with the misunderstandings of the book and the demands, insusceptible of fulfillment,
made against it. Let me emphasize in the first place that whatever is here presented is
derived entirely from every-day medical experience which is to be made more profound
and scientifically important through the results of psychoanalytic investigation. The
"Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex" can contain nothing except what
psychoanalysis obliges them to accept or what it succeeds in corroborating. It is therefore
excluded that they should ever be developed into a "theory of sex," and it is also quite
intelligible that they will assume no attitude at all towards some important problems of
the sexual life. This should not however give the impression that these omitted chapters
of the great theme were unfamiliar to the author, or that they were neglected by him as
something of secondary importance.
The dependence of this work on the psychoanalytic experiences which have determined
the writing of it, shows itself not only in the selection but also in the arrangement of the
material. A certain succession of stages was observed, the occasional factors are rendered
prominent, the constitutional ones are left in the background, and the ontogenetic
development receives greater consideration than the phylogenetic. For the occasional
factors play the principal rôle in analysis, and are almost completely worked up in it,
while the constitutional factors only become evident from behind as elements which have
been made functional through experience, and a discussion of these would lead far
beyond the working sphere of psychoanalysis.
A similar connection determines the relation between ontogenesis and phylogenesis.
Ontogenesis may be considered as a repetition of phylogenesis insofar as the latter has

not been varied by a more recent experience. The phylogenetic disposition makes itself
visible behind the ontogenetic process. But fundamentally the constitution is really the
precipitate of a former experience of the species to which the newer experience of the
individual being is added as the sum of the