Complicated principles which seem important right now #127

Generally, Freud tends to speak of sexual excitement as if it were something like an itch, or an urge to sneeze. But in sex preceding discharge, the analogy with the itch no longer holds. We scratch, after all, to remove an itch, but – to hold on one more moment to the analogy – now we have an itch that seeks nothing better than its own prolongation, even its own intensification.

Leo Bersani, The Freudian Body - Psychoanalysis and Art