The role of breast-feeding in psychosexual development and the achievement of the genital phase.

Abstract

1. The role of the neurohormone oxytocin is a physiological factor in the reproductive cycle of coitus, birth, breast-feeding, the milk-ejection reflex, nipple erotism, and female sexual responsiveness. 2. The capacity for "motherliness," the attributes of empathy, consideration, confidence, and love are dependent on the level of psychosexual, ego, and superego maturity of the mother as well as on the pattern of mothering she experienced as a child. 3. The satisfaction of the oral hunger-satiation cycle is essential. Without it, even the most satisfactory maternal environment proves insufficient and results in serious ego constriction. 4. Bottle-feeding, as breast feeding, may offer a relatively satisfactory solution to the basic, physiological, hunger-satiation cycle and may fulfill, to a limited extent, the libidinal requirements of the crucial oral phase, depending on the psychosexual maturity and ego and superego development of the mother. 5. However, breast-feeding alone provides the experience of the original primal scene on which the later primal scene is based. 6. The breast-feeding capacity in itself is no more an indication that psychosexual maturity and the genital phase have been achieved than is the ability to achieve vaginal orgasm (or genital orgasm, in the male). 7. Sherfey's (1966) findings notwithstanding, Freud's (1925) statement that the elimination of clitoral primary (not participation) is essential for the development of femininity remains valid.