No matter how one reads the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, this text is permeated by a general and fundamental position: perversion is not a deviation, a deviation of sexuality, but in its very essence, human sexuality is perverse. In other words, the exception, that is to say, perversion, ends up dragging along the norm in its movement. The exception, which should presuppose the existence of a predetermined instinct, a predetermined sexual function with clearly defined rules for its fulfillment, this exception ultimately undermines and dissolves the very concept of the biological norm.

This subversive position of Freud faced fierce reactions and resistances that took place in his time but still persist today. Although the existence of childhood sexuality is now a common place and concepts such as repression, Oedipus, psychic conflict circulate widely, there is always something that resists the idea that sexuality, as a particular dimension of the human condition, lies at the core of psychic functioning. And this concerns not only the general public but also psychoanalytic thought in particular.

The Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, this small yet fundamental and decisively innovative text, which Freud considered along with The Interpretation of Dreams to be his two most important works, attempts a Kantian-type critical reconsideration of the way we understand the issue of human sexuality.