D. H. Lawrence: Sex, Love, Eros — and Pornography

Abstract

No account of modern eroticism and sexuality would be complete without a consideration of D. H. Lawrence, who took strong positions on these matters. Moreover, he was familiar with the writings of contemporary sexologists, such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing and the early campaigner for homosexual liberation Edward Carpenter. But most significantly, perhaps, in two extended essays, Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious (1921) and Fantasia of the Unconscious (1922), he engaged critically with Sigmund Freud’s emphasis on instinctual repression as the basis of civilization. These two essays indicate a broader opposition to Freud, and to the implications of the word ‘sexologist’, in so far as Lawrence’s underlying objection was not just to Freud’s specific interpretations, but to his claim to scientific authority.’ If early twentieth-century thought and culture represented some liberation of Eros from puritanical repression, and did so partly in the name of science, it also threatened to contain the power of the erotic within an even more controlling discourse of science.