roducing makes itself noticeable to the child even during the sucking
age, and thus awakens desire for its repetition. When we review all the
actual arrangements, and bear in mind that the measures for cleanliness
have the same effect as the uncleanliness itself, we can then scarcely
mistake nature's intention, which is to establish the future primacy of
these erogenous zones for the sexual activity through the infantile
onanism from which hardly an individual escapes. The action of removing
the stimulus and setting free the gratification consists in a rubbing
contiguity with the hand or in a certain previously-formed pressure
reflex effected by the closure of the thighs. The latter procedure seems
to be the more primitive and is by far the more common in girls. The
preference for the hand in boys already indicates what an important part
of the male sexual activity will be accomplished in the future by the
impulse to mastery (Bemaechtigungstrieb).[15] It can only help towards
clearness if I state that the infantile masturbation should be divided
into three phases. The first phase belongs to the nursing period, the
second to the short flourishing period of sexual activity at about the
fourth year, only the third corresponds to the one which is often
considered exclusively as onanism of puberty.

The infantile onanism seems to disappear after a brief time, but it may
continue uninterruptedly till puberty and thus represent the first
marked deviation from the development desirable for civilized man. At
some time during childhood after the nursing period, the sexual impulse
of the genitals reawakens and continues active for some time until it is
again suppressed, or it may continue without interruption. The possible
relations are very diverse and can only be elucidated through a more
precise analysis of individual cases. The details, however, of this
_second_ infantile sexual activity leave behind the profoundest
(unconscious) impressions in the persons's memory; if the individual
remains healthy they determine his character and if he becomes sick
after puberty they determine the symptomatology of his neurosis.[16] In
the latter case it is found that this sexual period is forgotten and the
conscious reminiscences pointing to them are displaced; I have already
mentioned that I would like to connect the normal infantile amnesia with
this infantile sexual activity. By psychoanalytic investigation it is
possible to bring to cons