, and the
preparatory action in question takes the place of the normal sexual aim.
Experience shows that such a hurtful condition is determined by the fact
that the erogenous zone concerned or the corresponding partial impulse
has already contributed an unusual amount of pleasure in infantile life.
If other factors favoring fixation are added a compulsion readily
results for the later life which prevents the fore-pleasure from
arranging itself into a new combination. Indeed, the mechanism of many
perversions is of such a nature; they merely represent a lingering at a
preparatory act of the sexual process.

The failure of the function of the sexual mechanism through the fault of
the fore-pleasure is generally avoided if the primacy of the genital
zones has also already been sketched out in infantile life. The
preparations of the second half of childhood (from the eighth year to
puberty) really seem to favor this. During these years the genital zones
behave almost as at the age of maturity; they are the seat of exciting
sensations and of preparatory changes if any kind of pleasure is
experienced through the gratification of other erogenous zones; although
this effect remains aimless, _i.e._, it contributes nothing towards the
continuation of the sexual process. Besides the pleasure of
gratification a certain amount of sexual tension appears even in
infancy, though it is less constant and less abundant. We can now
understand also why in the discussion of the sources of sexuality we had
a perfectly good reason for saying that the process in question acts as
sexual gratification as well as sexual excitement. We note that on our
way towards the truth we have at first enormously exaggerated the
distinctions between the infantile and the mature sexual life, and we
therefore supplement what has been said with a correction. The infantile
manifestations of sexuality determine not only the deviations from the
normal sexual life but also the normal formations of the same.

THE PROBLEM OF SEXUAL EXCITEMENT

It remains entirely unexplained whence the sexual tension comes which
originates simultaneously with the gratification of erogenous zones and
what is its nature. The obvious supposition that this tension originates
in some way from the pleasure itself is not only improbable in itself
but untenable, inasmuch as during the greatest pleasure which is
connected with the voiding of sexual substance there is no production of
tensio