The Problem of Value and Other Outstanding Issues in Freud's Sexual Theory

Abstract

The author takes up Freud's sexual theory and examines several key issues—narcissism, infantile sexuality, heterosexuality, and gender—in order to reassert the radical aspects of Freud's epistemology. These areas are explored in two broad and interrelated themes, which are characterized loosely as a genealogy of morals and a philosophy of the will to power. Although this moves substantially beyond the formulations used by Freud, the underlying issue in all this material is the problem of value, and the author demonstrates the truly radical arc of Freud's thinking in the way he addresses value in his sexual theory.