ABSTRACT
It is a century since Sigmund Freud wrote the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and it is still the most difficult of his works to assimilate. Starting from an investigation of the perversions, Freud describes the infantile elements of sexuality that coalesce into various adult forms, and the amnesia that suppresses awareness of the emotions and fantasies that are attached to these bodily sensations. In the developing mosaic of sexuality as Freud conceives it, shame has a pivotal role, acting as a counterweight to sexual expression and, in Freud's hydraulic/electrical metaphor, directing inchoate sexual currents into particular channels or paths. He suggests, at times, that shame is an innate human reaction to infantile sexual drives, as if the infantile drives, left unmoderated, threaten to overwhelm the subject or fragment its fragile sense of cohesion. Like anxiety, to which it has been compared, shame offers a foretaste of the psychic catastrophe that may lie in wait unless the instincts are ‘tamed’ (Freud 1937).
