mpulse later regularly becomes autoerotic, and only after overcoming
the latency period is there a resumption of the original relation. It is
not without good reason that the suckling of the child at its mother's
breast has become a model for every amour. The object-finding is really
a re-finding.[5]

*The Sexual Object of the Nursing Period.*--However, even after the
separation of the sexual activity from the taking of nourishment, there
still remains from this first and most important of all sexual relations
an important share, which prepares the object selection and assists in
reestablishing the lost happiness. Throughout the latency period the
child learns to love other persons who assist it in its helplessness and
gratify its wants; all this follows the model and is a continuation of
the child's infantile relations to his wet nurse. One may perhaps
hesitate to identify the tender feelings and esteem of the child for his
foster-parents with sexual love; I believe, however, that a more
thorough psychological investigation will establish this identity beyond
any doubt. The intercourse between the child and its foster-parents is
for the former an inexhaustible source of sexual excitation and
gratification of erogenous zones, especially since the parents--or as a
rule the mother--supplies the child with feelings which originate from
her own sexual life; she pats it, kisses it, and rocks it, plainly
taking it as a substitute for a full-valued sexual object.[6] The mother
would probably be terrified if it were explained to her that all her
tenderness awakens the sexual impulse of her child and prepares its
future intensity. She considers her actions as asexually "pure" love,
for she carefully avoids causing more irritation to the genitals of the
child than is indispensable in caring for the body. But as we know the
sexual impulse is not awakened by the excitation of genital zones alone.
What we call tenderness will some day surely manifest its influence on
the genital zones also. If the mother better understood the high
significance of the sexual impulse for the whole psychic life and for
all ethical and psychic activities, the enlightenment would spare her
all reproaches. By teaching the child to love she only fulfills her
function; for the child should become a fit man with energetic sexual
needs, and accomplish in life all that the impulse urges the man to do.
Of course, too much parental tenderness becomes harmful beca