The philosophy of sex is a curiously under-explored region of the philosophical landscape. Love it or hate it, Freud’s five-decade-long exploration into the nature and power of human sexuality is something that any philosopher of sex needs to contend with.

对很多人来说，“西格蒙德·弗洛伊德”这个名字会让人联想到一个被可卡因弄糊涂了的人，他的大脑痴迷于性。弗洛伊德确实非常强调性冲动。他认为我们都是性感的野兽，性在我们生活中扮演的角色比我们大多数人认为的要重要得多，性存在于我们的梦境中，它凶猛而不羁，有让我们发疯的力量。但弗洛伊德的观点既不像他的批评者想让我们相信的那样逆行，也不像他想让我们相信的那样古怪。

弗洛伊德喜欢破坏他认为真正属于一起的事物之间的传统区分。他喜欢越界。别人看到的是尖锐的边缘和坚硬的边界，弗洛伊德看到的是一个事物逐渐变成另一个事物的阴影。这一点在他关于性的理论中表现得最为明显。

Freud’s most sustained discussion of sexuality is hisThree Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, first published in 1905. He introduces the commonplace notion of a sexual instinct in the very first paragraph, and then goes on to say:

大众对这种性本能的性质和特征有相当明确的看法。人们通常认为，在童年时期是没有这种感觉的，而在青春期时就开始了……并表现为一种性别对另一种性别的不可抗拒的吸引力，或者(在任何情况下)朝这个方向发展的行为。然而，我们有充分的理由相信，这些观点对真实情况的描述是非常错误的。如果我们仔细研究一下，就会发现它们有许多错误。

This paragraph sets the tone for the whole book. In it, he paints a picture that’s far removed from what we can call the Normal View of sex—a picture in which all human beings are inherently bisexual, in which there’s no hard and fast distinction between the so-called perversions and “normal” sexuality, and in which children have sexual lives just as much as adults do.

Let’s start (as Freud does) with the topic of sexual orientation. He tells us that back in the day (remember, this is 1905) physicians regarded homosexuality as an innate degenerative disorder. But Freud pushes back against this view, arguing that homosexuality isn’t an illness, and that it’s “found in people whose efficiency is unimpaired, and who are indeed distinguished by especially high intellectual development and ethical culture.” He’s also skeptical of the claim that sexual orientation is something that’s “innate,” because “the choice between ‘innate’ and ‘acquired’ is not an exclusive one.” In other words, whatever a person’s sexual orientation happens to be, the crude distinction between “born that way” and “made that way” isn’t adequate to explain it. The form of each person’s sexuality is forged from complex developmental processes in which “nature” and “nurture” are deeply, inseparably entangled, and it’s these looping contingencies that determine whether our inherently bisexual disposition takes one route or the other, or both, or neither.

Taking this general approach further, Freud argues that what’s true of sexual orientation is also true of lots of other sexual variations. The so-called “perversions” (a term which Freud thought should never be used in a derogatory way) are just magnifications of components found in virtually everyone’s sexual fantasies and behavior. You may not be a voyeur, but get pleasure from looking at your lover’s body. And you might not be into sadomasochism, but still get turned on by a little rough and tumble in the bedroom. There’s no sharp line to be drawn, Freud thought, between many of the more exotic modes of erotic pleasure and the more vanilla ones.

Moving on to topic of childhood, the Normal View has it that sexuality suddenly appears at puberty, when human beings abruptly switch from an asexual condition to a sexual one. In contrast, Freud argues that what happens at puberty is the culmination of a long, slow developmental process going right back to earliest infancy—hence his notion ofinfantile sexuality. A lot of people have the misconception that he meant that adult-style sexual urges exist in early childhood (as one of my students recently expressed it, “Freud thought that kids want to bang their parents”). This is way off base. Freud thought that infantile sexuality is… well… infantile! It’s about cuddling, and getting tickled, and sucking mom’s breasts, and peeing, and pooping, and showing off, and rubbing, not about intercourse. He described the sexuality of children (using a phrase that was calculated to shock his contemporaries) aspolymorphously perverse. “Polymorphous” because childish forms of erotic enjoyment haven’t yet been hammered into conformity with a set of rigid, socially-approved-of norms, and “perverse” because it resembles (and is, in fact, connected to) the forms of sexuality that are labeled “perversions” when they’re practiced by adults.

Freud’s contribution to the philosophy of sexuality was complex and layered, and I’ve only been able to describe a little bit of it here. But I hope that I’ve managed to put a few misconceptions to rest, and show that Freud offered an intriguing vision of our human sexual nature that was far removed from the received wisdom of his day, and to some extent still is now.

Read the first four blog posts in this five-part series!