ABSTRACT
From the psycho-analytic point of view, mouth activities can be classified into three main groups. The first of these, and by far the most completely understood of the three, is comprehended in the familiar phrase – the oral stage of libido development. Second includes the laying down of certain mechanisms which determine and help to delimit the corporeal ego, afterwards providing a basis for character formation. We might say that these activities constitute the oral stage of ego-development, were it not for the fact that throughout a large part of the period involved it is scarcely accurate to talk of a distinct ego-formation. The third group coincides with the significant period of mouth activity after birth, but cannot be immediately distinguished by direct observation. It includes the isolation or fusion through preservative or libidinal channels of the impulses to destruction which, as Freud has shown, represent one side of the primary instinct antithesis of life.
