Course Schedule
September 15 — October 6, 2026 (4 consecutive weeks)
Tuesdays, 6:30-9:30pm
Instructor: Danielle Drori
Sigmund Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality places sexuality at the heart of psychic development. Insisting on a sexual drive with a perverse core, Freud’s theory affirmed the existence of sexuality in children while rejecting its ostensible foundations in heteronormative love and biological reproduction. First published in 1905, the Three Essays underwent repeated revisions, as Freud added and rewrote full paragraphs to share new findings and reply to critics (who found many of his ideas, in particular that of infantile sexuality, ludicrous). Was it the unruly nature of sexuality itself that led Freud to return compulsively to Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality? Did he know that psychoanalysis, the field he founded, would never stop wrestling with his ideas about the centrality of sex and sexuality to human behavior?
In this course, we will read Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality in an attempt to make sense of both the text itself and the very idea of sexuality as a force that is both constructive and destructive. Sense may fail us, but we will learn, through close readings and an attention to contradictions, about the Oedipus Complex, the anal and oral developmental stages, universal bisexuality, sadism, masochism, and perversion. We will examine Freud’s views on female sexuality and homosexuality, engaging major critiques by feminist and gender theorists. Finally, we will distinguish between sex and sexuality and ask how Freud’s ideas may throw light on contemporary debates on trans desire, trad wives, and gender neutral bathrooms.
Brooklyn Institute for Social Research is an interdisciplinary teaching and research institute that offers critical, community-based education in the humanities and social sciences. Holding courses both online and in-person (in New York City and beyond), we integrate rigorous but accessible scholarly study with the everyday lives of working adults and re-imagine scholarship for the 21st century.