Reading Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality

Philippe Van Haute is Professor for Philosophical Anthropology at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and Extraordinary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He has published extensively on the relation between psychoanalysis and philosophy.Herman Westerink is Associate Professor for Philosophy of Religion and Intercultural Philosophy at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and Extraordinary Professor at the KU Leuven, Belgium. He has published many books and articles on Freudian psychoanalysis, sexuality and religion.

"With this remarkable work of scholarship, Van Haute and Westerink continue their pathbreaking project of making visible a largely unfamiliar Freud. Their meticulous readings demonstrate not only the historical and conceptual significance of the first edition of Three Essays, but also its astonishing relevance for contemporary debates about sex and gender." Tim Dean, James M. Benson Professor in English, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA"Philippe Van Haute and Herman Westerink reveal the multi-layered character of this text. Revealing a non-oedipal theory of sexuality in the 1905-edition and highlighting a theory of sexual pleasure in its potential for a radical critique Van Haute and Westerink also remind us that it is us - our reading habits - that turn Freud into a monolithic thinker he has never been." Daniela Finzi, Scientific Director of the Freud Museum Vienna"Van Haute and Westerink present their own systematic reading of Freud’s text through the vicissitudes of its rewriting in no less than four successive re-editions from 1905 – 1924. What is at stake is the radicality of Freud’s 1905 thesis of the polymorphous perverse nature of an infantile sexuality." John Fletcher, Professor Emeritus, University of Warwick, Senior Research Associate, Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London"Intensifying rather than trying to iron out Freud’s contradictions, Van Haute and Westerink allow the critical potential of the Three Essays to come to the fore, with the excavation of those (non-Oedipal, pleasure-based and auto-erotic) elements that work in opposition to the heteronormative, functional conceptions of sexuality that still circulate today." Stella Sandford, Professor of Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University, London

• Introduction; 1. Hysteria and sexuality; 2. The infant’s object choice and development; 3. Beyond Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality; The actuality of Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality