' As I grow older
and understand women's natures better, I can see almost at once which
relation it is a woman has to her husband, or any given man. It is this
feeling, and not sex passion, that keeps woman from being free." Not only
is there a sexual association in the impulse to foster and protect, there
would appear to be a similar element also in the response to that impulse.
Freud has especially insisted on the partly sexual character of the
child's feelings for those who care for it and tend it and satisfy its
needs. It is begun in earliest infancy; "whoever has seen the sated infant
sink back from the breast, to fall asleep with flushed cheeks and happy
smile, must say that the picture is adequate to the expression of the
sexual satisfaction of later life." The lips, moreover, are the earliest
erogenous zone. "There will, perhaps, be some opposition," Freud remarks
(_Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie_, pp. 36, 64), "to the
identification of the child's feelings of tenderness and appreciation for
those who tend it with sexual love, but I believe that exact psychological
analysis will place the identity beyond doubt. The relationship of the
child with the person who tends it is for it a continual source of sexual
excitement and satisfaction flowing from the erogenous zones, especially
since the fostering person--as a rule the mother--regards the child with
emotions which proceed from her sexual life; strokes it, kisses it, rocks
it, and very plainly treats it as a compensation for a fully valid sexual
object.
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