You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
As early as 1915, when the third edition of the Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie appeared, Freud remarked in a footnote: 'This [observation] shows that in human beings there is no such thing as pure masculinity or pure femininity, either in the psychological2 or the biological sense. On the contrary, we find in every individual a combination of the characteristics of his or her sex, as biologically determined, with biological traits belonging to the other sex and a blending of activity and passivity, not only in so far as these psychic2 characteristics depend on the biological but also where they are not so dependent.'
In the Ego and the Id3 Freud says: 'This is one of the ways in which bisexuality takes a hand in the subsequent vicissitudes of the Oedipus complex. The other way is even more important. For one gets the impression that the simple Oedipus complex is by no means its commonest form, but rather represents a simplification or schematization which, to be sure, is often enough adequate for practical purposes. Closer study usually discloses the more complete Oedipus complex which is twofold, positive and negative, and is due to the bisexuality originally present in children: that is to say, a boy has not merely an ambivalent attitude towards his father and an affectionate object relation towards his mother, but at the same time he also behaves like a girl and displays an affectionate feminine attitude to his father and a corresponding hostility and jealousy towards his mother. It is this complicating element introduced by bisexuality that makes it so difficult to obtain a clear view of the facts in connection with the earliest object-choices and identifications, and still more difficult to describe them intelligibly. It may even be that the ambivalence displayed in the relations to the parents should be attributed entirely to bisexuality.'4