[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

time for this transference to be accomplished; during which the young wife remains
anesthetic. This anesthesia may become permanent if the clitoris zone refuses to give up
its excitability; a condition brought on by abundant activities in infantile life. It is known
that anesthesia in women is often only apparent and local. They are anesthetic at the
vaginal entrance but not at all unexcitable through the clitoris or even through other
zones. Besides these erogenous causes of anesthesia there are also psychic causes
likewise determined by the repression.
If the transference of the erogenous excitability from the clitoris to the vagina has
succeeded, the woman has thus changed her leading zone for the future sexual activity;
the man on the other hand retains his from childhood. The main determinants for the
woman's preference for the neuroses, especially for hysteria, lie in this change of the
leading zone as well as in the repression of puberty. These determinants are therefore
most intimately connected with the nature of femininity.
THE OBJECT-FINDING
While the primacy of the genital zones is being established through the processes of
puberty, and the erected penis in the man imperiously points towards the new sexual aim,
i.e., towards the penetration of a cavity which excites the genital zone, the object-finding,
for which also preparations have been made since early childhood, becomes
consummated on the psychic side. While the very incipient sexual gratifications are still
connected with the taking of nourishment, the sexual impulse has a sexual object outside
its own body in his mother's breast. This object it loses later, perhaps at the very time
when it becomes possible for the child to form a general picture of the person to whom
the organ granting him the gratification belongs. The sexual impulse later regularly
becomes autoerotic, and only after overcoming the latency period is there a resumption of
the original relation. It is not without good reason that the suckling of the child at its
mother's breast has become a model for every amour. The object-finding is really a re-
finding.[5]
The Sexual Object of the Nursing Period. However, even after the separation of the
sexual activity from the taking of nourishment, there still remains from this first and most
important of all sexual relations an important share, which prepares the object selection
and assists in reestablishing the lost happiness. Throughout the latency period the child
learns to love other persons who assist it in its helplessness and gratify its wants; all this
follows the model and is a continuation of the child's infantile relations to his wet nurse.
One may perhaps hesitate to identify the tender feelings and esteem of the child for his
foster-parents with sexual love; I believe, however, that a more thorough psychological
investigation will establish this identity beyond any doubt. The intercourse between the
child and its foster-parents is for the former an inexhaustible source of sexual excitation
and gratification of erogenous zones, especially since the parents or as a rule the mother
 supplies the child with feelings which originate from her own sexual life; she pats it,
kisses it, and rocks it, plainly taking it as a substitute for a full-valued sexual object.[6]
The mother would probably be terrified if it were explained to her that all her tenderness
awakens the sexual impulse of her child and prepares its future intensity. She considers
her actions as asexually "pure" love, for she carefully avoids causing more irritation to
the genitals of the child than is indispensable in caring for the body. But as we know the
sexual impulse is not awakened by the excitation of genital zones alone. What we call
tenderness will some day surely manifest its influence on the genital zones also. If the
mother better understood the high significance of the sexual impulse for the whole
psychic life and for all ethical and psychic activities, the enlightenment would spare her
all reproaches. By teaching the child to love she only fulfills her function; for the child
should become a fit man with energetic sexual needs, and accomplish in life all that the
impulse urges the man to do. Of course, too much parental tenderness becomes harmful
because it accelerates the sexual maturity, and also because it "spoils" the child and
makes it unfit to temporarily renounce love or be satisfied with a smaller amount of love
in later life. One of the surest premonitions of later nervousness is the fact that the child
shows itself insatiable in its demands for parental tenderness; on the other hand,
neuropathic parents, who usually display a boundless tenderness, often with their
caressing awaken in the child a disposition for neurotic diseases. This example at least
shows that neuropathic parents have nearer ways than inheritance by which they can
transfer their disturbances to their children.
Infantile Fear. The children themselves behave from their early childhood as if their
attachment to their foster-parents were of the nature of sexual love. The fear of children is
originally nothing but an expression for the fact that they miss the beloved person. They
therefore meet every stranger with fear, they are afraid of the dark because they cannot
see the beloved person, and are calmed if they can grasp that person's hand. The effect of
childish fears and of the terrifying stories told by nurses is overestimated if one blames [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]