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The paper is based on the study of psycho-analytical and other literature. The economic explanation of prostitution is refuted and a psychological one demanded. Various religious and folkloristic institutions throughout the centuries shew connections between prostitution and pre-genital impulses. The man's longing for the 'pre-genital' mother leads him to the prostitute on whom he also transfers the hostile components of that relationship as evidenced in his contempt for the prostitute. The emphasis laid on the condition that no child should arise out of the client-prostitute relationship is explained as inherent in the pre-genital constellation of impulses and further due to guilt and the necessity to differentiate between the prostitute and 'the mother of children'. In turn this fact increases the hostility against the prostitute because she frustrates the man's wish for reconciliation with the father through the son. In passing it seems worth mentioning that in the author's opinion the wish for a child is synonymous with that for a son. The essential motives of the prostitute in choosing this profession are the wish to identify with and triumph over the milk-giving mother, oral greed, revenge impulses towards the frustrating father, penis-envy and castration tendencies. Guilt and anxiety for these hostile impulses lead to resign the wish for children although she is supposed to be very fond of children.
The author does not claim to have solved the problem of prostitution, and recommends the psycho-analytical investigation of cases and special problems within the field of prostitution. Prostitution may occur as a passagère neurosis.