(Accepted for publication 15 March 2016)

Through a re-examination of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), this paper reveals a fundamental tension in Freud's thinking on the nature of the individual and of his sexuality. In this text Freud portrays the individual and sexuality as inherently object-related and at the same time as inherently independent of such relatedness. The way in which Freud presents these contradictory ideas suggests that he was not merely undecided on object-relatedness and sexuality but rather that the contradiction was integral to this thinking. The paper offers an explanation of the meaning of this contradiction, of why it has been neglected in the analytic literature, and of some implications for contemporary psychoanalysis and its approach to sexuality.