50 Part II Psychodynamic Theories
years of research into the feminine soul is ‘What does a woman want?’ ” (E. Jones,
1955, p. 421). Such a question posed after many years of theorizing suggests that
Freud regarded women not only as quite different from men, but as enigmas, not
comprehensible to the male gender.Latency Period
Freud believed that, from the 4th or 5th year until puberty, both boys and girls
usually, but not always, go through a period of dormant psychosexual development.
This latency stage is brought about partly by parents’ attempts to punish or discour-
age sexual activity in their young children. If parental suppression is successful,
children will repress their sexual drive and direct their psychic energy toward
school, friendships, hobbies, and other nonsexual activities.
However, the latency stage may also have roots in our phylogenetic endow-
ment. Freud (1913/1953, 1926/1951b) suggested that the Oedipus complex and
the subsequent period of sexual latency might be explained by the following
hypothesis. Early in human development, people lived in families headed by a
powerful father who reserved all sexual relationships to himself and who killed
or drove away his sons, whom he saw as a threat to his authority. Then one day
the sons joined together, overwhelmed, killed, and devoured (ate) their father.
However, the brothers were individually too weak to take over their father’s her-
itage, so they banded together in a clan or totem and established prohibitions
against what they had just done; that is, they outlawed both killing one’s father
and having sexual relations with female members of one’s family. Later, when
they became fathers, they suppressed sexual activity in their own children when-
ever it became noticeable, probably around 3 or 4 years of age. When suppression
became complete, it led to a period of sexual latency. After this experience was
repeated over a period of many generations, it became an active though uncon-
scious force in an individual’s psychosexual development. Thus, the prohibition
of sexual activity is part of our phylogenetic endowment and needs no personal
experiences of punishment for sexual activities to repress the sexual drive. Freud
(1926/1951b) merely suggested this hypothesis as one possible explanation for
the latency period, and he was careful to point out that it was unsupported by
anthropological data.
Continued latency is reinforced through constant suppression by parents and
teachers and by internal feelings of shame, guilt, and morality. The sexual drive,
of course, still exists during latency, but its aim has been inhibited. The sublimated
libido now shows itself in social and cultural accomplishments. During this time
children form groups or cliques, an impossibility during the infantile period when
the sexual drive was completely autoerotic.Genital Period
Puberty signals a reawakening of the sexual aim and the beginning of the genital
period. During puberty, the diphasic sexual life of a person enters a second stage,
which has basic differences from the infantile period (Freud, 1923/1961b). First,
adolescents give up autoeroticism and direct their sexual energy toward another