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Oral aggressiveness in early infancy does not have to be connected with a primary destructive aim. It may be a mere active grasping and holding of the breast. Frustration of this activity may raise it to an aggressive attack. During and after the teething period there is a true oral-aggressive and sadistic stage of the instinctual development. Why do infants passing through a most active state of oral organization, and especially through that called oral sadism, usually not bite themselves? The destructive instinct is deflected from the baby's own body and self by the pain barrier which is in operation from birth on. From the third month onward this is reinforced by a progressive libidinization of the body (infantile narcissism). The mother likes to identify with the infant's heightened narcissism and her love can be conceived as a third protective barrier.
Failure of these protective mechanisms is demonstrated in the case of a mentally defective daughter of a manic-depressive woman. The child was observed—with one interruption of nine months' duration—between the ages of three and a half months and three and a half years. From the sixth month on she would bite her hands most violently and with visible effect.
The paper was presented at the sixteenth Psychoanalytic Congress in Zurich, August 1949. It is very condensed due to the time limit imposed on such presentations.