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Although those authors who are inclined to assume a stronger erogenicity of the vagina in the little girl than is generally admitted frequently base their arguments on clinical experience (1), there has never been undertaken a systematic report on the case studies from nonanalytic sources upon which this study is based.1 The data to be discussed by no means support any specific theory. At most they indicate that one theory is more probable than others. An attempt will be made to show what rôle in theoretical discussion the hypothesis of an infantile shifting of vaginal drives might play, and what difficulties such an hypothesis might remove.
Infant female sexual development culminates first, in the turning away of the little girl from her mother and the formation of a passive libidinal attachment to her father; second, cathexes and sensitivity are shifted from the clitoris to the vagina. These two phenomena are often considered separately, although it seems to me that there is an intimate connection between them and that the former cannot be adequately discussed without definite assumptions concerning the latter.
The rich literature on the development of female sexuality does not supply us with clear conceptions to account for the process of the turning away from the mother. Freud states that the girl's turning to the father is more than a mere change of objects (2), since her relation to the mother ends in enmity. It seems like a partial change of objects: the love emotions are directed towards the father, the emotions of