ABSTRACT
The foundation stone of the science of psychoanalysis was the discovery that sexual life begins in earliest infancy. Sexual development is eventually completed at puberty, when the infantile sexual drives are combined in the interests of the function of reproduction. Psychoanalysis stressed the fundamental reality of human infantile helplessness. The emphasis on the psychological significance of the presence or absence of the penis was in the mid-1920s considered by analysts to be basic to any discussion of femininity. Psychoanalysis has shown the significance of this infantile attitude and revealed its role both in the final shaping of normal love life and in neurotic illnesses. The chapter mentions some psychoanalytic findings about the early period of sexual life in women.
