Libidinal Co-Excitation

The term “sexual co-excitation” (Miterregung) only appears rarely in Freud's work. We find it essentially in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (Freud, 1905), and then in The Economic Problem of Masochism (Freud, 1924).

In the Three Essays, it is used descriptively. It is a matter of highlighting the sexual excitation concomitant with a certain number of activities of the child. It appears when the internal excitation is too strong. Freud notes its existence in connection with affective, intellectual and motor phenomena, and names this phenomenon “libidinal co-excitation”. He thus places this phenomenon at the crossroads of the psychic and the somatic. Sexual excitation arises, in fact, “as soon as the intensity of those processes passes beyond a certain quantitative limit” (1905, pp. 204-205). Thus, any event of life whatsoever, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, providing it is intense, can give rise to co-excitation.

In The Economic Problem of Masochism, he treats it as a fundamental mechanism of erotogenic masochism. He sees it as an “infantile physiological mechanism which ceases to operate later on” (1924, p. 163) but which can always enter into action again. Co-excitation is thus what makes it possible to bind the destructive impulses thanks to the establishment of erotogenic masochism and therefore of erogenisation.

A very young girl, aged 3½, came for a consultation with her parents, who said they were overwhelmed by her “huge bouts of anger” that left them feeling helpless. They were also worried about how she liked “making dark eyes” and always wanted to play the role of the villains in her games with other children. She exhibited, moreover, quite tight obsessional defences that caused her difficulties at school and in her relationships with others.

She was a very intelligent girl who established good quality contact, but experienced major difficulties in separating, particularly from her mother. The therapy could only really begin when her father