ABSTRACT
The discovery of infantile sexuality resulted in the observation of erotic phenomena long before puberty—practically from the moment of birth and, on the other hand, the inclusion of activities such as those of orality and anality within the frame of sexuality. The publication of The Freud-Klein Controversies1941–1945, showed how phallic and genital sexuality was reinterpreted by Klein in the light of the oral fixations that go back to the child’s relation to the breast, thus profoundly altering S. Freud’s views and those of his immediate followers. Broadly speaking, one can maintain that the analytic community recognised, after Freud, the importance of the depressive phase beyond the limits of the Kleinian groups. Biological sexuality entails a series of stages which cause various factors to take effect during development: chromosomal, gonadic, and hormonal sex, with primary sexual characteristics, and then—at puberty—the secretions which produce the changes leading to secondary sexual characteristics.
