II
There are other perverts whose vices in later life can be traced to the infantile sex life. These are sadists, masochists, exhibitionists and voyeurs. The child's sex life takes place through the pleasures which it creates for itself in the erogenous zones, which are sensitive areas in any part of the body. It gratifies itself mainly on its own body; it is autoerotic. But the sexual life soon derives pleasure through other persons as sexual objects. There are also components or partial impulses, which are: for causing cruelty to others (sadistic), for deriving pleasure from pain to itself (masochistic), for showing itself shamelessly (exhibitionistic), and for peeping at others in nude state (the voyeur's instinct). As a rule these impulses are sublimated very early, but if they persist the perversions govern the individuals for the rest of their lives. Where they are sublimated we have as a result some of the most essential features of our modern cultural institutions.
The child who continued shameless for a few years may become very vain, and as an author write indecent literature. The child who was cruel may later in life love contests and competitions, and write books where cruel scenes or virulent abuse of people abound. The infant who derived pleasure from pain inflicted on it may be interested in solving intricate problems that as a man annoy him with a demand for solution, and he will torture himself in solving them. He also may be a conformist and find pleasure in crucifying himself upon the rack of the church and the state and the home; or become a martyr for an idea. As a writer he would depict martyrs or indulge in self-commiseration.
Literature shows sublimations of these impulses and also gives evidences of the authors' perverse tendencies where these impulses have not been sublimated; they may contrive to exist or be buried in the unconscious.
There are many literary men who have been perverse in their tendencies in later life without knowing it. Often the man who merely thinks he is fighting Puritanism in art when he shows a tendency to describe the nude only, or to describe people in compromising positions, is both an exhibitionist and voyeur. These impulses have been suppressed in him by civilisation and he finds an outlet for his unconscious by his art. Such literature is not so much immoral as indecent. A literary man may become an exhibitionist in his work so as to give play to an impulse he cannot otherwise gratify. A writer may write exhibitionistic books for money or to attract attention or for fun, but his work shows that psychologically he has never completely suppressed the exhibitionistic or peeping tendencies of his childhood. Like the child he is without shame. The feature of the cheap and lascivious literature that is written merely to pander to certain tastes is just in these traits.
But the traits of the exhibitionist and voyeur are found more or less in much of the good literature of the world. In the cases of works, however, like the Arabian Nights, Rabelais, Chaucer, the novels of Sterne, Fielding and many others where great genius, intellect and honesty are displayed, the liberal minded critic is willing to smile and pass over these exhibitionistic blemishes. In the cases of the older works these are due to the general looseness in speech of the times.
The application of psychoanalytic methods puts then in a new light much of the so-called immoral literature. In much of the indecent comic literature, like the Restoration dramatists, Balzac's Droll Tales, Boccaccio's Decameron and La Fontaine's Tales, the object is to arouse laughter by making a person accidentally exhibit himself. The author still finds an outlet for his repressed exhibitionism. There is a distinction between this literature and the "immoral" literature of a writer like Ibsen, who merely differs with the current morality and questions it, and who therefore seems immoral to the conventional man.
Again there is a distinction between exhibitionism in literature and real immoral literature, where an author tries, for example, to defend sexual crimes like rape or seduction.
Exhibitionism then as we find it in literary men points to infantile practices that were never completely suppressed and are finding an outlet. It is true, other motives may enter into the work. There may be a disgust on the part of the writer at his fellowmen's hypocritical and prudish standards of modesty and shame, and he may write to counteract these. But the exhibitionism of writers like Apuleius, Petronius, Gautier or Zola does not interfere, nay, sometimes enhances the artistic value of their works.
Another form of sublimation of exhibitionistic traits leads to works in which the author is always boasting or showing off, directly or indirectly. Sometimes the sublimation process is not complete and we have examples of the exhibitionistic traits alongside of the egotism. The reader will at once think of Montaigne's Essays and Rousseau's Confessions, two of the greatest works in the world's literature. Among ancients two of the vainest men were Cicero and Cæsar, whose writings show that exhibitionistic traits of their infancy were strong.
We here may consider the effects of infantile sexual investigation. Freud says its activity labours with the desire for looking, though it cannot be added to the elementary components of the impulses. Many readers may refuse to follow Freud here, where he concludes that the great desire for knowledge in later life may be traced to this infantile sexual curiosity. But that there must be some connection cannot be doubted. A child who has never displayed any curiosity as to where it came from must be one in whom the desire for knowledge has not been and probably never will be strongly developed. The child is the father of the student man. Freud asserts in his study of Leonardo da Vinci that there are three sublimations in later life of this curiosity, the most important and rarest being where a pure scientific investigation replaces the sexual activity and is not occupied with sexual themes. Thus he explains the scientific work of Leonardo and his chaste life.