Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex · Sigmund Freud
THE INFANTILE SEXUAL INVESTIGATION
One of the first of such pregenital sexual organizations is the _oral_, or if we wish, the cannibalistic. Here the sexual activity is not yet separated from the taking of nourishment, and the contrasts within the same not yet differentiated. The object of the one activity is also that of the other, the sexual aim consists in the _incorporating_ into one's own body of the object, it is the prototype of that which later plays such an important psychic rôle as _identification_. As a remnant of this fictitious phase of organization forced on us by pathology we can consider thumbsucking. Here the sexual activity became separated from the nourishment activity and the strange object was given up in favor of one from his own body. A second pregenital phase is the sadistic-anal organization. Here the contrasts which run through the whole sexual life are already developed, but cannot yet be designated as _masculine_ and _feminine_, but must be called _active_ and _passive_. The activity is supplied by the musculature of the body through the mastery impulse; the erogenous mucous membrane of the bowel manifests itself above all as an organ with a passive sexual aim, for both strivings there are objects present, which however do not merge together. Besides them there are other partial impulses which are active in an autoerotic manner. The sexual polarity and the strange object can thus already be demonstrated in this phase. The organization and subordination under the function of propagation are still lacking.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.