ABSTRACT
According to Sigmund Freud, the first social framework within which human beings have to cope with the conflict between sexual pleasures and social demands is the family. He attributed to the various stages of infantile sexual development not only erotogenic zones on the body of the child — from which desires are said to originate and where they can be satisfied — but also specific forms in which the child is said to conceive of itself in relation to its parents. The body politics of the family lead up to a stage of sexual development in which the contradiction between desire and society can be overcome in the three ways which are described in the chapter. Freud pointed out that even when children grow up and leave their families in pursuit of heterosexual genital satisfaction, they are not allowed a free sexual life.
