In James Joyce’s A Portrait of An Artist As A Young Man, the main character, Stephen Dedalus, struggles between his natural instincts, or what Bakhtin calls the “internally persuasive discourse” that “[is not] backed up by [an] authority at all”, and his learned response, reinforced by the “authoritative discourse” of religion. To Stephen’s “internally persuasive discourse”, his natural sex drive is not ‘wrong’. It is only after he succumbs to the “authoritative discourse” of religion that he learns that such a natural human drive is ‘bad’. Thus, he learns that it is wrong to succumb to sex: he does not think that it is bad on his own. In this case, the “authoritative discourse” that considers sexual drive to be ‘bad’ becomes Stephen’s “internally persuasive discourse”. He learns that his natural urges are wrong and, as a result, he learns to deny them and pretend them to be nonexistent. This is how the “authoritative discourse” becomes Stephen’s “internally persuasive discourse”.
	
The evidence that Stephen relies on his senses is best shown by the description of how much he has to deny his senses in order to reach the “discourse” of religion.

Each of his senses was brought under a religious discipline. In order to mortify the sense of sight he made it his rule to walk in the street with downcast eyes, glancing neither to right nor left and never behind him. His eyes shunned every encounter with the eyes of women (162-3).

However, there is a natural impulse from which he cannot escape: and that is his sense of touch. He may try to deny it in all possible ways but he cannot wholly escape it. This sense of touch is what causes Stephen to realize that he is “fallible” to his natural drives and that he cannot wholly accept the “authoritative discourse” of religion as truth. This struggle also causes Stephen to realize the futility of the fight between his “internally persuasive discourse” of natural drives and the “authoritative discourse” of religion. His awareness of being “fallible” to his sense of touch causes Stephen to realize that his natural drives take a stronger hold of him than do the constraining norms of religion.

But it was to the mortification of touch that he brought the most assiduous ingenuity of inventiveness (163).
	
It is the most difficult task for Stephen to deny his sense of touch. His sense of touch requires him to come up with “the most […] inventiveness”. This is shown in Stephen’s forcing himself to endure the raw morning wind on his way to the Mass: the cold air scorches him and, thus, by feeling the raw air, Stephen wishes he did not have to feel at all. He also punishes himself for such a strong sense of touch when he attempts to sleep without movement in his bed. It is not surprising, however, that Stephen does these masochistic things to himself: he does it because he has been taught that any expression of a natural inclination is labeled ‘wrong’ by the society, or by the “authoritative discourse” of religion. By restricting his senses, Stephen does not only lose his identity, since his reliance on his senses constructs his personality, but he also imprisons himself in a world, which he needs eventually to escape.
	
From an early age, Stephen learns that any natural, whether spontaneous or artistic, expression of emotion, such as a declaration that he is going to marry Eileen (a Protestant girl) will result in punishment from the stern members of his family. Thus, Stephen’s natural fondness of Eileen, or his “internally persuasive discourse” of worshipping women, is condemned. It is condemned because the Catholic faith of the “authoritative discourse” teaches that a good catholic should be ignorant of other faiths and that includes the ‘worship’ of women.
	
Here, or in Chapter 1, Stephen is only a boy, but his sensitive artist’s nature realizes that he is growing up in a world where he will be forced to suppress his ‘natural’ feelings and conform to society’s rules and threats. The discourse of a Catholic faith teaches him to repress his natural feelings of liking the opposite sex and worship no one God. It teaches him to transcend his human urges in order to reach that impossible ideal of becoming a good Catholic. It is very difficult for someone who relies on his senses for guidance in life to totally deny them and, thus, Stephen being someone like that, loses a central core of his identity.
	
Stephen is pulled between his desire “to express [himself] as freely as [he] can and as wholly as [he] can.” and his desire to conform to the “authoritative discourse” of the society. At one point, Stephen wants to seek pleasure and succumb to his natural feelings and, at another, he feels guilty for seeking pleasure because he realizes that, according to the “authoritative discourse” of religion, everyone who seeks sexual pleasure gets punished. Thus, Stephen is pulled between the two “discourses”; but, mostly, his natural impulses are stronger than his religious duty and he feels angry with himself for succumbing to his natural urges. He is angry that he cannot overcome them and, thus, fulfill his religious duty, a duty that takes a great hold over him, a duty with which he constantly struggles. Stephen’s anger and guilt about his failure to overcome his natural urges is shown in the following passage:
A figure that had seemed by day demure and innocent came towards him by night through the winding darkness of sleep, her face transfigured by a lecherous cunning, her eyes bright with brutish joy. Only the morning pained him with its dim memory of dark orgiastic riot, its keen and humiliating sense of transgression (105).
	
Here Joyce uses white/dark imagery to express Stephen’s emotional turmoil. The light color symbolizes the brutal knowledge of reality and the dark color symbolizes the terror of sin, or the terror of the deadly consequences of “transgression”. Here the “figure”, or the prostitute, symbolizes “transgression” or sin. This sense of “transgression” is further reinforced by such phrases as “her face transfigured by a lecherous cunning” and “her eyes bright with brutish joy”. The word “lecherous” suggests that the prostitute has an untamed sexual desire. She is tempting Stephen with that desire and he becomes a victim of that desire. That she is tempting is shown by the phrase “lecherous cunning”: she is manipulating him with her untamed, or excessive, sexual desire and he finds it impossible for him to resist her. This way, Stephen is freeing himself from all responsibility for his weakness of submersion into sex and putting all responsibility on her. After all, she is the one who is “cunning” him into a sinful act. The white color, by contrast, is a symbol of being aware of the truth; it is a symbol of ‘awakening’ to the truth and seeing with fresh eyes the bright light of reality. That is why Joyce admits that the morning “pained [Stephen] with […] its keen and humiliating sense of transgression”.
	
The reason why Stephen constantly struggles between his natural impulses and his desire to fulfill his religious duty is because the “authoritative discourse” of religion that is instilled in him. A crucial part of that “discourse” is the presence of ‘women’ in it. All the women knows: saints (the Blessed Virgin), martyrs (his mother) and sinners (Parnell’s girlfriend) teach Stephen that sin is ‘bad’ and that sin, ultimately, leads to eternal damnation. As a result, Stephen is suffocated with unresolved guilt and develops an iron-like repression of his natural sex impulses. This leads Stephen to an endless circle of sinning and confessing and ‘purging’ his sins until he decides to ‘free’ himself from these restrictions and find himself through an exile.