The book of the it : psychoanalytic letters to a friend / [Georg Walther Groddeck].

  • Georg Groddeck
Date:
[1935]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The book of the it : psychoanalytic letters to a friend / [Georg Walther Groddeck]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    onanism, which first affects the life of the individual. Pleasure, once enjoyed, longs after fresh pleasure, and since the way to self-pleasure is barred, the instinct abandons itself even more fully to similar enjoyments which will be continued by the hand of another, by the mother’s hand in washing and bathing, in urinating, and in every other way which necessity and the all¬ covering sanctity of mother love makes possible and free. The erotic ties with the mother are strengthened through the prohibition of masturbation, the passion for the mother is all the greater. And the stronger that is, the stronger also will be the resistance against this purely sexual, physical love, until finally it reaches its limit in the express command against incest with the mother. A new outlet is now sought, which leads by way of the symbolic resemblance, Mutter, Gebarmutter (mother, womb), to the impulse to have connection with some other woman. The right time for this connection is when the womb is ardent, during the period. But precisely at this time there breaks in between the wish and its fulfilment a “No,” which has the force of law in the Hebraic civilization, as well as in many others. Obviously Nature (Gottnatur) makes use of such pro¬ hibitions, which are framed in such or such a manner, as need arises. Our own age, for example, instead of for¬ bidding connection during the period, has chosen the form of excluding, under legal penalties, from every sexual act except masturbation, certain years, and those are the very years of puberty when passion is hottest. Perhaps it would interest you to think out the conse¬ quences of such a prohibition. For one thing is clear: the prohibition can indeed repress the wish, can drive it out of its path, but it does not destroy it. It merely forces it to seek out other means of fulfilment. These it finds in a multitude of ways, in every activity of life that you can think of; in the inven¬ tion of chimneys or of steamships, in the use of spade and plough, in poem and in reflection, in the love of God and of nature, in crime and heroism, in good deeds and in evil, in religion and in blasphemy, in the staining of the tablecloth and the breaking of the glass, in heartbeats,
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