You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Psycho-analytic literature has always assigned an important place to infantile sexual theories occupied with birth and with the hidden and suspected activities of the parents. The infantile sexual phantasies are built in accordance with the currently predominant level of erotogenicity; or, earlier fixated impressions are used retroactively in the so-called 'understanding and explanation' of newly acquired factual knowledge.
Although the importance of the earliest, the oral, phase is universally accepted, there appears to be a scarcity of oral sexual 'theories' dealing with an exclusive mouth-on-mouth activity. Theories exist that father and mother kiss each other and thus make a child These theories must have been formed at a much later level and are expurgated and socialized. True early mouth-to-mouth phantasies must be scarce, as this type of activity is entirely unknown to the infant.
Combinations of oral and phallic (or genital) phantasies have been reported far more frequently in the analytic literature. The acting out of these phantasies in cunnilingus and fellatio occurs from a relatively early age onwards and continues through physiological maturity (35).
The use of the mouth (in foreplay and perversion) in connection with the genitals of the homo- or heterosexual partner is exceedingly widespread. (It belongs (e.g. in the U.S.A.) to the crimes against nature, punishable by law, though rarely prosecuted. Apart from the rational attitude with regard to procreation, this legal tabu may be due to a connection with incest.) What is the reason for this preference? Apart from rationalized motives, e.g. avoidance of pregnancy, it seems that the preference is due to a fixation to an early phantasy, an ideal image of sexual intercourse. I think that this image is founded on the first dim recognition that the breast does not belong to the infant. (This phase seems to correspond to one described by Eidelberg (8) in which the child would 'try to save his megaloma