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PARTISAN REVIEW
both sexual impulses and the constraining structures are open to in–
fluences from the outside, are affected by experience and education;
and the final form which they will take will bear upon it the marks of
such influences.
Freud begins with the phenomenon of thumb-sucking or sensual
sucking. This early behavior itself refers back to a still earlier one, of the
mother's breast, and is a search for a pleasure that is remembered.
Later on, or when the mother is not present, the child's need
to
repeat this pleasure becomes .• detached from the need for taking
nourishment." The child then can take a part of his own body-his
thumb-to suck on and recapture the pleasure. The pleasure is there–
fore autoerotic, which leads Freud to remark that at first the sexual
instinct in childhood is without an object-a speculative construction
of considerable theoretical depth and resonance.
The oral phase is followed by activities at the other end of the
alimentary canal. The anal zone is the second area of erotogenic plea–
sure. As with the oral phase, the persistence of significance into later
life of the erotogenic importance of this zone has a determining influ–
ence on what character or personality will be like. The third erotogenic
zone in children is the genitals. This zone is also connected with a vital
function, urination. Although it is not the site or vehicle of the oldest
sexual impulses, it is "destined to great things in the future."
It
should be noted that although Freud represented infantile
sexuality from the very beginning as a matter of overlapping periodi–
cities and interlocking phases, in 1905 he was not yet able to particular–
ize with full concreteness what those periodicities and phases are and
when they specifically occur. One corollary of this uncertainty was that
he put his theoretical system together in such a way that revisions of,
deletions from, and additions to it could be conveniently and easily
made. This combination of openness to new experience and material
with genuine systematic coherence at a high level of abstract theoretical
generality is one of the identifying qualities of Freud's thinking, as is
the similar alliance in him of a simultaneous commitment to the idea
of the determination, and overdetermination, of all events and devel–
opments in mental and sexual life , along with the idea that such events
and developments are also contingent upon accidents of both disposi–
tion and experience. An essential part of the distinction of this text is to
be found in the poised equilibrium in it of the open-ended and the
