Page:The theory of psychoanalysis (IA theoryofpsychoan00jungiala).pdf/33

 fully-developed system, and special names are not generally given to more or less rudimentary formations.

After all, the objections to the terminology do not spring so much from objective arguments, as from those tendencies which lie at the base of moral indignation. But then no objection can be made to the sex-terminology of Freud, as he rightly gives to the whole sexual development the general name of sexuality. But certain conclusions have been drawn which, so far as I can see, cannot be maintained.

When we examine how far back in childhood the first traces of sexuality reach, we have to admit implicitly that sexuality already exists ab ovo, but only becomes manifest a long time after intrauterine life. Freud is inclined to see in the function of taking the mother's breast already a kind of sexuality. Freud was bitterly reproached for this view, but it must be admitted that it is very ingenious, if we follow his hypothesis, that the instinct of the preservation of the race has existed separately from the instinct of self-preservation ab ovo and has undergone a separate development. This way of thinking is not, however, a biological one. It is not possible to separate the two ways of manifestation of the hypothetical vital process, and to credit each with a different order of development. If we limit ourselves to judging by what we can actually observe, we must reckon with the fact that everywhere in nature we see that the vital processes in an individual consist for a considerable space of time in the functions of nutrition and growth only. We see this very clearly in many animals; for instance, in butterflies, which as caterpillars pass an asexual existence of nutrition and growth. To this stage of life we may allot both the intrauterine life and the extrauterine time of suckling in man. This time is marked by the absence of all sexual function; hence to speak of manifest sexuality in the suckling would be a contradictio in adjecto.

The most we can do is to ask if, among the life-functions of the suckling, there are any that have not the character of nutrition, or of growth, and hence could be termed sexual. Freud points out the unmistakable emotion and satisfaction of the child while suckling, and compares this process with that of the sexual