ABSTRACT
If it were asked which of the manifold items that psychoanalysis has unearthed had been shown to be the most vitally important factor, the answer would be, without hesitation, the mental revolt against the sexual implication involved in the primary relation of the infant in respect to the maternal organism - the reaction recognised under the name of the Incest-Awe. At the furthest extreme from this biological position there is the more widely accepted psychological statement. According to this account, the incest-awe is due to the interdictions of society, to the universal ban of convention and of civilisation. The relation between the mother and the suckling infant is primary and biological. It is unitary, harmonious, homogeneous. For the infant, the relationship is an essentially subjective one. Objectivation returns upon the very self from which it set out. The self becomes its own object and consciousness is, as it were, infolded.
