al or complete
sexual latency. During this period, which is normally interrupted at
about the third or fourth year, as result of organic evolutionary
processes and the indispensable help of education, those mental forces
are formed which appear later as inhibitions to the sexual instinct and
narrow its course like dams; mental forces such as disgust, the feeling
of shame, the esthetic and moral standards of ideas. During this "latent
period" a part of these sexual energies is separated from the sexual aim
and applied to cultural and social ends, a process which Freud has
designated by the name sublimation as important for culture, history and
the individual.

Sublimation or the socialization of the sexuality therefore is the
transformation and utilization of certain components of the sexual
instinct for aims no longer sexual in nature. At the end of the latency
period the child's sexuality reappears, frequently but not necessarily
induced prematurely by seduction. In addition to the autoerotic
gratifications spoken of above, the child is now capable of the choice
of a love-object accompanied by erotic feelings. Because of the
dependency of the child this first choice of a love-object is directed
towards parents and nurses either of his own or of the opposite sex.
"Incest complex"--Now too the child under the influence of occasional
seduction may become polymorphous-perverse, that is, may become subject
to any form of sexual perversion. He likewise shows a preference in the
selection of his love-object for his own sex, homo-sexuality.

At puberty two significant changes take place in the psycho-sexuality of
the individual. First the primacy of the genital zone asserts itself,
and second, the heretofore autoerotic character of the sexual activity
is lost and the instinct finds its object. In order that the former
change may be successfully brought about, there is necessitated an
amalgamation of all instinctive tendencies which proceed from the
erogenous zones and a subordination of all the erogenous zones to the
primacy of the genital zone. All this is facilitated by the development
of the genital organs and the elaboration of the seminal secretion. To
these conditions there is also added at puberty that "pleasure of
gratification" of sexuality which ends the normal sexual act, the end
pleasure. The second function, the choice of a love-object, is
influenced by the infantile inclination of the child towards its parents