Was That Your Mother That I Saw You With Last Night?

 

Freud with phallic symbol.

According to Sigmund Freud, we all have a suppressed desire to have sex with our Mum. Or our father, if we are on the female side of the binary. And the evidence is that we tend to marry someone who physically resembles our parent of the opposite sex.

Except, no. Not me. My mother was short and blonde. I married two women, both with black hair. Both were taller than average, at least for their community. The thought of sex with a women who closely resembles my mother actually provokes feelings of disgust.

And what about those other Caucasian men taking Asian wives? Or those girls who for centuries have run off with the visiting sailor or the Italian piano teacher?

In fact, evolution should select for exogamy, and seems to. Similar genes are bad for the species: higher chance of a harmful mutation. So we instinctively desire someone unlike ourselves, or our parent, in appearance, and are instinctively repelled by incest. This is why opposites attract.

So when we have a strong sexual preference, like a preference for red hair, or for black men, where does it come from?

To some extent, no doubt, from this instinct for exogamy. But that does not seem enough. Either red hair or black hair would be fully different from my mother’s blonde hair. So why do I prefer black to red? Either Asian men or African men would be fully different in appearance from a European father; so why do North American women so often favour African men specifically?

I think we know why. When we hear of a fetish, we do often assume it comes from one’s first sexual experience. It has to do with the first person with whom you achieved orgasm. You see a woman with black hair, a check mark in the back of your mind. A little taller than average. Check. Foreign. Check. Approach with interest.

Humans are hardwired to be monogamous. We can posit this from evolution. Human children take a lot of time and investment to develop. Monogamy, two parents staying together, is the inevitable evolutionary strategy to preserve and advance the species. And so, as soon as we first have sex, we are imprinted, like a baby duck when it hatches and first sees its Mom.

Of course, we are not beings of instinct, like ducks. It is not that obvious, and can be superseded by other concerns. But a switch is tripped. We are meant to be with that first one for the rest of our lives.

When we recognize this, we can recognize the grave harm of the sexual revolution. We recognize why all societies but our own put a high value on female virginity. If your wife has had sex with someone else, you will always be number two. The bond and the commitment will never be complete. Sex for you or her will never be what it is supposed to be.

This is equally true for men, at least in emotional terms; but for men, there is no good way to tell. Men have no hymen.

Surely this is why evolution has produced the hymen; it is mildly dangerous, and painful. It seems to perform no other function. It is there as a seal and certification.

This also explains the traditional prohibition in most societies on homosexual sex.

We have been told gays are “born this way”; but this is evolutionarily impossible. Since homosexuals, barring exceptional measures, do not breed, a gay gene would be bred out in one or two generations.

No, people must become gay because their first orgasm was with some member of the same sex.

Older gays face extremely limited choices in sex partners. Ninety-eight percent of all adults who might appeal to you will reject your advance, perhaps angrily. That must be tough. The obvious strategy is to seduce some young person. A young person will not be fully aware of what is going on, and may not struggle. If they are repulsed, or complain, at least until recent years, nobody is likely to listen. If they listen, a young person may not understand well enough to lodge any complaints. They may even feel too guilty, not understanding what has happened.

The genetic programming to be attracted instead and only to the opposite sex must be quite strong. Evolution would make it so. Most of us are repulsed, not in the least attracted, to the thought of sex with another man or another woman. But if the first sexual encounters are with a same-sex partner, you now have another instinct, a sexual imprint, pulling you in the opposite direction. The longer and more intimate the initial relationship, the more likely the gay urge is to stay and grow.

Wise societies will therefore condemn homosexual sex, and perhaps pass laws against it. Homosexuality is contagious, every new gay means children not born, and that polis will decline over time.

And few citizens will want their own children to be made homosexual, for it means their own family line ends.

So where did Freud get the opposite idea, that people usually marry someone who resembles their parent? For he does not assume this, he cites it as evidence.

It must be from his patients.

Neurotic people, then, at least in upper class Victorian Vienna, are likely to violate a basic instinct for exogamy, and marry someone like their parents.

If this can only be caused by their first orgasmic experience, this suggests that people become neurotic because their parents made incestuous advances on them in childhood or adolescence.

This flips Freud’s idea of the Oedipus complex. It is not that Sonny wants to do it with Mum. It’s that Mum has done it, like it or not, with Sonny.

This was in fact Freud’s original assumption, his “seduction theory”: mental illness came parents who used their own children for their sexual pleasure. He claimed for years to find memories of this in every single case who came to his office.

Then he swapped the seduction theory suddenly for the “Oedipus complex,” without much explanation. He said he was simply too horrified by the implications. He decided the sex must have been purely imaginary. If imaginary, coming from the child, not the parent.

Looks like he was right the first time.

Not, I think, that this stands as the direct cause of all mental illness. Rather, mental illness is caused by a parent who sees their child as an object, there for the parent’s benefit. It is caused by a lack of parental love. Incest is one likely consequence. Emotional abuse is another: kick the family dog to make yourself feel better.

Incest is presumably not natural to the parents of the mentally ill any more than to us. But if you are sufficiently depraved, your own child is always available as a sex object, after all. This may have been more important in Victorian Vienna, where eager sex partners outside of marriage were thinner on the ground.