POLYMORPHOUS PERVERSITY : The ability to find erotic pleasure out of any part of the body. According to Freud, a young child is, by nature, "polymorphously perverse" (Introductory Lecturs 15.209), which is to say that, before education in the conventions of civilized society, a child will turn to various bodily parts for sexual gratification and will not obey the rules that in adults determine perverse behavior. Education however quickly suppresses the polymorphous possibilities for sexual gratification in the child, eventually leading, through repression, to an amnesia about such primitive desires. Some adults retain such polymorphous perversity, according to Freud.

 

 

 

 

 

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