ABSTRACT
In the Three Essays, Sigmund Freud describes sexuality as being composed of "drives". A drive is an "endosomatic, continuously flowing source of stimulation". Drives have no subjective, first-person aspect. They are not mental contents. They are simply a "demand made upon the mind for work". Sexual drives are drives that impel us to obtain sensuous pleasure through the stimulation of those areas of our bodies that Freud called "erotogenic zones". Sex was commonly believed to awaken first at puberty. Freud argued that sexuality has a pre-history: childhood, too, possesses its own distinctive erotic forms. The concept of infantile sexuality was by no means a Freudian novelty. It was discussed quite extensively during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, but Freud's approach to the subject was striking in its naturalistic and non-judgemental tenor. Freud was never satisfied with his story of female sexual development, although he energetically defended it against psychoanalytic critics.
