On Latency

THE PERIOD OF LATENCY WAS ONE OF BERTA BORNSTEIN'S CENTRAL interests and she made the most important contributions to our understanding of latency since Freud first described it in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905). I shall review some of her ideas.

The child enters the latency period with the partial resolution of the oedipus complex and the establishment of the superego. Throughout the latency period he is engaged in a struggle to ward off incestuous wishes and the temptation to masturbate. While this overall task remains, Berta Bornstein discerned two major divisions: early latency, roughly from 5½ years to 8 years, and the second period of latency, roughly from 8 to 10 years.

We can marvel at the complicated changes that are set in motion in the two to three years of the first phase of latency and be amazed that such changes occur in such a short time. Incestuous attachments are partially replaced by identifications with the incestuous objects. The ego is modified by this identification and adopts the task of observing the demands of the drives and the outside world—the superego is formed. The child takes over the regulation of conflicting demands by inner threat rather than outside threat—guilt appears. The ego develops its set of defenses against the drives and external hurts. Character development and sublimations are on their way toward consolidation.

In the first period of latency the self-regulating mechanisms are new and undependable. The superego is at times inordinately strict