COMPLETE - NEW EDITION - FULL ENGLISH TRANSLATION - WITH INTRODUCION
Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex
Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
Second Edition
By
Sigmund Freud
Vienna
Authorized Translation By A.A. Brill
Clinical Assistant, Department Of Psychiatry And Neurology, Columbia University; ASSISTANT IN Mental Diseases, Bellevue Hospital; Assistant Visiting Physician, Hospital For Nervous DISEASES
With Introduction By James J. Putnam
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, sometimes titled Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, is a 1905 work by Sigmund Freud which advanced his theory of sexuality, in particular its relation to childhood.
The Three Essays underwent a series of rewritings and additions over a twenty-year succession of editions -- changes which expanded its size by one half, from 80 to 120 pages. The sections on the sexual theories of children and on pregenitality only appeared in 1915, for example, while such central terms as castration complex or penis envy were also later additions.
As Freud himself conceded in 1923, the result was that "it may often have happened that what was old and what was more recent did not admit of being merged into an entirely uncontradictory whole", so that, whereas at first "the accent was on a portrayal of the fundamental difference between the sexual life of children and of adults", subsequently "we were able to recognize the far-reaching approximation of the final outcome of sexuality in children (in about the fifth year) to the definitive form taken by it in adults".
Jacques Lacan considered such a process of change as evidence of the way that "Freud's thought is the most perennially open to revision...a thought in motion".