In 1905, Sigmund Freud published a short
work that redefined the modern understanding of sexuality. Earlier
experts like Havelock Ellis
and Richard von Krafft-Ebing were
convinced that sexual orientation is hereditary, but according to Freud,
a child is born with a sexual drive that lacks direction. Instead
of heredity, Freud wrote, it is a child's upbringing that determines the nature and direction of the
sexual drive. Thus, according to Freud, a child is born polymorphously
perverse.
