A child is beaten1

(Freud, Anna, and the repression of autosexuality2)

(Français : Un enfant est battu (Freud, Anna et la répression de l'autosexualité)

"Feelings of pleasure, because of which it has been reproduced innumerable times, are at-
tached to this fantasy... At the height of the represented situation, onanist satisfaction almost
regularly occurs..."
A fantasy accompanied by autosexual enjoyment.
"The confession of this fantasy is consented only with hesitation, the memory of its first appear-
ance is uncertain, an unequivocal resistance opposes the analytical treatment of this object,
shame and feeling of guilt are stirred on this occasion perhaps more forcefully than in similar
communications dealing with early memories of sex life."
A fantasy whose confession is accompanied by shame (shame is commonly
linked to autosexuality).
"The people who provided the material for these analyses were rarely beaten in their childhood
and in any case had not been bred by the rod."
A fantasy unrelated to parental violence.
"… Such a fantasy, which arose in early childhood perhaps on fortuitous occasions and main-
tained for the sake of auto-erotic satisfaction, can only be conceived as a primary trait of perver-
sion."
Freud describes it as perverse as, for him, autosexuality.
."... by what means the now sadistic fantasy in which foreign and unknown boys are beaten be-
comes the now lasting possession of the little girl's libidinal aspiration?"
A common fantasy.

For Freud, "a child is beaten" is an original fantasy. This is obvious, since the re-
pression of autosexuality is the primary source of the formation of the unconscious. How-
ever, the powerful repression of autosexuality of which, circumcised, he has been the vic-
tim of, makes him favour an interpretation in terms of Oedipus complex (where he sees
the nucleus of neurosis), sadomasochism and/or feminine or masculine position. This
prevents him from the following interpretation, based not on who beats or is beaten, but
on why the beat.

We hypothesize that this fantasy caricatures and ridicules the repression of auto-
sexuality, which would show that the nucleus of neurosis predates the Oedipus complex
and would predispose to its failure.

Freud criticized her autosexuality to his daughter until late in the teenage life of
the poor girl. She was perhaps the first to tell him about the existence of this fantasy, the
source of his 1919 article. The fact that this fantasy is enjoyable makes it an ironic revolt
against the parental repression of autosexuality. The fantasmatization of the repression
replays it whilst mocking it, while, precisely, the pleasure experienced proves its ridicule
(nature takes its rights back). It expresses the trite idea that parents are hypocritical to
ban autosexuality. Therefore, this fantasy dear to adolescents is more a fantasy of pro-
vocation of adults than a masochistic or sadistic fantasy.

In his article, as in those it aroused, Freud, a victim like Lacan of the repression of
autosexuality, ratiocinates; we pretend to stay in the real.

Modern religion: psychoanalysis, makes infantile sexuality its cornerstone but is

still affected by the taboo of taboos. In his youthful intuitions, Freud rightly made the re-
pression of infantile sexuality a major element of the “nodal complex of neuroses” 3. He
will later affirm that it would be the Oedipus complex that would be that nucleus. He did
not long rely on this brilliant intuition and was less assured during the session of Febru-
ary 7, 1912 of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society where he stated the following tauto-
logy, quickly countered by Stekel who was probably not circumcised:
“If we consider infantile sexuality as the pathogenic factor in neuroses, we cannot say that mas -
turbation is harmless because it is nothing other than the emanation of infantile sexuality.”4

Circumcised, Freud cannot know what true autosexuality is and, like him, many of
the participants in this meeting saw in autosexuality an abnormal behaviour. All his life,
he remained fixed on the idea that it would be neurotic, pathogenic. But only the repres-
sion of infantile sexuality is neurotic. Being guilty about autosexuality, at least in her ad-
olescence, his daughter was the victim of his false beliefs, survivors of Judaism. At eigh-
teen, she wrote to the inventor of infantile sexuality:
“Neither do I want it to take me back because I want to be, or at least become, someone reas-
onable (according to the paternal model) ... I cannot always get by on my own, when, long ago,
I had something like that in Vienna, I used to talk about it to Trude and everything was fine
again.” 5

and asks his father when finishing his letter:

“… Please write to me again soon, then I will become reasonable if you help me a little.”

Despite that beautiful filial assertion that pure love could supplement sexuality (in the ex-
changes between father and daughter, “being unreasonable” meant to practise autosexu-
ality), it is appalling that they were both dependent on the current discourse about auto-
sexuality. Freud acted as spiritual adviser; he said to his daughter in the previous letter:

“You are hiding something from us.”,

and scolded her:

 “… You don't have to stay a child forever.”,

as if autosexuality was the mark of permanence in childhood, when it only means that the
soul mate has not yet been met. He noted the result of that intellectual and moral repres-
sion in his letter of May 11, 1927, to Lou Salomé:

“Anna is passionately related to female friends. She is beautiful and intellectually independent.
But she has no sex life. What will she do without her father?”

As if she had a sexual life with him! On the part of the one who collected from her the
fantasy in question, the last question is frightening of unconscious Oedipal relationship.
This fantasy shows that Anna was a repressed autosexual because she was morally
repressed in her autosexuality.
Therefore, Freud’s discourse on autosexuality remains very socially correct. We
cannot but see here the postulate of a circumcised unconscious of the sexual ravages of
circumcision. His couple's sexual misery was such that, unable to use condoms, due to is
circumcision, of course, he was forced, from the birth of Anna, that is for thirty years, to
choose abstinence as a contraceptive method6 . This is why the inventor of infantile sexu-
ality was unable to draw all the consequences of his condemnation of circumcision and
to reject outright the taboo of autosexuality. Quite contrary, the possible neurotic effect of
autosexuality is precisely due to the repression and the societal and parental reprobation,
which are reflected in the banal term that designates it; it refers to trouble and turpitude.
It is precisely that repression that makes Freud consider autosexuality as vice:

“... (masturbation) ... predisposes to the many forms of neurosis and psychosis conditioned by
the regression of sexual life to its infantile forms. Masturbation is far from meeting the ideal re-
quirements of civilized sexual morality, ... It also corrupts character by bad habits, in several
ways: first, because it teaches to reach high goals without pain and easily rather than by ener -
getic efforts…. Second, because fantasies that accompany that satisfaction (it is not necessarily
the case) elevate the sexual object to an excellence hardly found in reality.” according to 7

The first sentence is a tautology. This is a highly fantasmatic and pseudo-scientific form
of the traditional Puritan discourse. It is sad to see that a pleasure as banal as drinking
and eating is considered a bad habit. For us, it's: "Don't touch that!" and circumcision, to
say nothing of excision, which are pathogenic.
1
Freud S. Un enfant est battu. 1919.
2
Paul Denis uses the term (Le narcissisme, Paris : PUF, Que sais-je ? 2015.)
3
The rat man. 1909. London: The Hogarth press; 1955. S.E., X., p. 208, n., 2nd §.
4
The first psychoanalysts, minutes of the Vienna psychoanalytical society. New York: International university
press; 1975. IV, p. 39.
5
13 February 1911 letter. Sigmund Freud – Anna Freud. Correspondance 1904-1938. Ingeborg Meyer-Palmedo.
6
Roudinesco E. Préface de Correspondance Sigmund Freud – Anna Freud, 1904 – 1938. Paris: Fayard ; 2012. p.
12.
7
Freud S. La morale sexuelle "civilisée" et les maladies nerveuses modernes. 1908. Paris : PUF ; 2007. O. C. VIII.
p. 215.