SUBSTITUTIONS

An organ is une machine, an engine, that can be put to multiple uses. The mouth of an infant, with its strong jowls, couples onto the maternal breast and draws in the milk, but also takes in air, drools, slobbers, excites a nipple, kisses, hisses, pouts, spits, vomits, murmurs, whistles, sings, chatters, will formulate arguments and libertine sophisms. The anus ejects excrement but also holds it in, can absorb suppositories and medicines, releases gases, acquiesces, pouts, threatens, mocks, defies, and defiles. Body parts substitute for one another. An insect whose leg gets broken substitutes another and does not limp. When a patient born blind has vision given to his eyes with a corneal transplant, he does not at first, like the rest of us, see a visual field where the light leads but is not seen for itself; he has a visual field organized tactually, he uses his eyes like hands. During toilet training the column of fæces hardening and advancing is the new anal pleasure felt by the infant; when he learns to harden his penis it will substitute for that pleasure. Sometimes one wakes up in the morning with an erection and wonders what orgasmic fantasies dreamt had provoked it, until one goes to the toilet and feels the voluptuous sliding of a large stool. For Freud, substitution in the anal zone, substitution of blockage for movement, of the pleasure of retention for the pleasure of release, of delayed for immediate gratification, of public praise for private comfort, results in the constitution, paid for by praise and rewards and love from the outside, of the anus into a private part and the first private property.