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The author discusses Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality , focusing especially on Part I, “The Sexual Aberrations.” He asks why Freud did not start his treatise with the chapter on infantile sexuality, which would have been more plausible from a psychoanalytic point of view. Dannecker maintains that, by starting with sexual aberrations, Freud wanted both to show the superior explanatory power of psychoanalytic theory over the scientific discourse on sexuality of his time, and to question the popular hegemony of heterosexuality.
Dannecker outlines how Freud deconstructs the idea of sexual normality in the following ways: (1) by showing the pervasiveness and variety of homosexual manifestations in everyday life (behaviorally manifested in those who are absolute and occasional homosexuals or bisexuals, and in those with an emotional homosexual inclination not manifested in homosexual behavior); (2) locating the roots of the term perversion in normal infantile sexuality, and claiming that healthy persons make so-called perverse additions to the normal sexual aim; and (3) emphasizing the mental forces of shame, disgust, and morality (which are socially constructed) as factors inhibiting a less repressed sexuality.