ich abolishes a piece of infantile masculinity, and prepares
the woman for the change of the leading genital zones. Lastly, we found
the object selection, tracing it through infancy to its revival in
puberty; we also found indications of sexual inclinations on the part of
the child for the parents and foster-parents, which, however, were
turned away from these persons to others resembling them by the incest
barriers which had been erected in the meantime. Let us finally add that
during the transition period of puberty the somatic and psychic
processes of development proceed side by side, but separately, until
with the breaking through of an intense psychic love-stimulus for the
innervation of the genitals, the normally demanded unification of the
erotic function is established.

*The Factors Disturbing the Development.*--As we have already shown by
different examples, every step on this long road of development may
become a point of fixation and every joint in this complicated structure
may afford opportunity for a dissociation of the sexual impulse. It
still remains for us to review the various inner and outer factors which
disturb the development, and to mention the part of the mechanism
affected by the disturbance emanating from them. The factors which we
mention here in a series cannot, of course, all be in themselves of
equal validity and we must expect to meet with difficulties in the
assigning to the individual factors their due importance.

*Constitution and Heredity.*--In the first place, we must mention here
the congenital _variation of the sexual constitution_, upon which the
greatest weight probably falls, but the existence of which, as may be
easily understood, can be established only through its later
manifestations and even then not always with great certainty. We
understand by it a preponderance of one or another of the manifold
sources of the sexual excitement, and we believe that such a difference
of disposition must always come to expression in the final result, even
if it should remain within normal limits. Of course, we can also imagine
certain variations of the original disposition that even without further
aid must necessarily lead to the formation of an abnormal sexual life.
One can call these "degenerative" and consider them as an expression of
hereditary deterioration. In this connection I have to report a
remarkable fact. In more than half of the severe cases of hysteria,
compulsion neuroses,