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NARCISSUS IN THE WILDE 53
In every respect, this formulation casts inversion as a reversion of the object
relations that typify anaclitic cathexis. 10 The other receives the authority of the
self; the self in turn is free to function as the other. The formulation again posits
binaristic desire as its subtending narrative, for the difference of narcissism and
inversion is presented as a misprision and refiguring of the cross-gendered
anaclitic cathexis between son and mother. Narcissistic inversion becomes a
sustenance of anaclitic heterosexual object relations for, throughout the life of
the male invert, Freud tells us, his motives will still be determined by a crossgender
libido action: “Their compulsive longing for men has turned out to be
determined by their ceaseless flight from women” (1905:10 n. 1).
The strategy at work here is at once both subtle and obvious. On the one hand,
there is a need to explain the difference of the invert, and this need is met through
the construction of narcissistic cathexis. On the other hand, this alternate
authority becomes prey to what might best be called sexology’s fetishization of
narrative—its desire to subject its “scientific observations” to an explanatory
mimetic principle. Freud succinctly maps and acknowledges this narrative in an
addition he made to his essay “Infantile Sexuality” in 1915. As he states:
The final outcome of sexual development lies in what is known as the
normal sexual life of the adult, in which the pursuit of pleasure comes
under the sway of the reproductive function and in which the component
instincts, under the primacy of a single erotogenic zone, form a firm
organization directed towards a sexual aim attached to some extraneous
sexual object.
(1905:63)
Elsewhere and frequently Freud problematizes the authority of this narrative.
Discussing the relationship between prostitution and polymorphous perversity,
he claims that “it becomes impossible not to recognize that this same disposition
to perversions of every kind is a general and fundamental human characteristic”
(1905:57). Examining “the extraordinarily wide dissemination of the
perversions,” he suggests that
it must also be considered that an unbroken chain bridges the gap between
the neuroses in all their manifestations and normality …the disposition to
perversions is itself of no great rarity but must form a part of what passes
as the normal constitution.
(1905:37)
While explaining the sexual uses of the mucous membranes, Freud inserts a
purely social-constructionist stance into his biologically determined theory: “the
limits of…disgust are, however, often purely conventional” (1905:17). Such
moments reveal a polymorphous flux at play within Freud’s theory; 11 yet this
play is also always at odds with a desire to congeal this fluidity into a mimetic