Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 2.djvu/37

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THE CASTRATION COMPLEX 193

only appear peculiar and unconnected with reality through the difference between infantile and adult thought. Thus in a previous article I have specially singled out defaecation in the infant as that situation from which the later delusion of persecution is derived: the original persecutor is found in the imago (counter- world) of the engram complex, from which scybalum and nurse are later formed as separated thought contents. ^

In a similar manner I now particularly single out as the pri- mitive castration the withdrawal of the mother's nipple from the infant who is not fully satisfied. The fact that this may happen at each nursing and is a constant fact at the weaning accounts for the universal occurrence of the castration complex.

I consider this fragment of infantile sexual theory just dis- cussed sufficiently important to add a few more remarks to it. The mammary and papillary erotism, according to its character, belongs to Freud's earliest pregenital organisation stage of sexu- ality. It forms the object-erotic supplement of the mouth erotism and the commencing hand and smell erotism. Its relation to the castration complex is so important that it must be looked upon as its real root, and compared with it other sources recede into the background.

Freud three years ago in his work "Cber Triebumsetzungen, insbesondere der Analerotik''^ referred to defaecation (and mic- turition) as an extra-genital origin of the castration complex". « On page 128 he writes: "Defaecation brings about in the child the first differentiation between a narcissistic and an object-loving attitude". On page 130: "Another part of the connection is far more clearly recognised in the man; it is established when the child's sexual investigation has discovered the absence of the penis in the woman. The penis is therewith looked upon as a part of the body that can be detached, analogous to excrement, which was

i > Jntemat Zdtschrift f. Psychoanalyse, Bd. V, S. 285.

» Freud: "tJber Triebumsetzungen, insbesondere der Analerotik". Intsr- nat. Zeitsckrift f. Psychoanalyse, Bd. IV, S. 125 et seq.

» These factors are also represented in my material, although I have not called special attention to them.