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= D.: Latenzperiode or Latenzzeit, or occasionally Aufschubsperiode.–Es.: período de latencia.–Fr.: période de latence.–I.: periodo di latenza.–P.: período de latência.
Period which extends from the dissolution of infantile sexuality (at the age of five or six) to the onset of puberty, constituting a pause in the evolution of sexuality. This stage sees a decrease in sexual activity, the desexualisation of object-relationships and of the emotions (particularly the predominance of tenderness* over sexual desire), and the emergence of such feelings as shame and disgust along with moral and aesthetic aspirations.
According to psycho-analytic theory the latency period has its origin in the dissolution of the Oedipus complex; it represents an intensification of repression which brings about an amnesia affecting the earliest years, a transformation of object-cathexes into identifications with the parents, and a development of sublimations.
The idea of a latency period (α) may be understood in the first instance, in purely biological terms, as a predetermined hiatus between two surges of libidinal ‘’ (Drang) (β). From this point of view no psychological explanation is called for as far as the genesis of the period is concerned: it may be adequately described largely in terms of its effects–and this is what Freud does in the Three Essays on the Theory of (1905) 1a.
Such is Freud's view too when he relates the latency period to the dissolution of the Oedipus complex: ‘… the Oedipus complex must collapse because the time has come for its disintegration, just as the milk-teeth fall out when the permanent ones begin to grow’ 2a. But while the ‘’ of puberty which signals the end of the latency period is an indisputable fact, the biological factor determining the onset of the period is less evident. And Freud notes that there is ‘no need to expect that anatomical growth and psychical development must be exactly simultaneous’.
Thus it is that Freud is led, in order to ac