Changes
The LinkTitles extension automatically added links to existing pages (https://github.com/bovender/LinkTitles).
<blockquote>The period of [[life]] from the end of the fourth year to the first manifestations of [[puberty]] at [[about]] eleven.<ref>{{C&AE}} Ch. </ref></blockquote>
{{Freudian Dictionary}}
{{!}}
=Below=
The [[latency]] period is the [[stage]] of suspension of [[psycho]]-[[sexual]] [[development]] between the age of five and six and puberty. During this period, sexual [[activity]] and interest tends to decrease, a consequence of [[repression]], secondary identifications and the establishing of the [[superego]], resulting in the [[resolution]] or the waning (Untergang) of the [[Oedipus]] [[complex]]. As the [[drives]] slow their pace, inhibitions surface, the product of the building of [[moral]] and aesthetic dams ([[shame]], disgust, and [[modesty]]) through reaction [[formations]] (countercathexes). By the same token, with [[sublimation]], there is a [[change]] of [[goal]] in [[drive]] [[discharge]] toward socially acceptable and valorized activities, together with the [[formation]] of an [[ideal]], while in [[object]] relations [[feelings]] of tenderness (aim-[[inhibition]]) take precedence over [[oedipal]] eroticization.
[[Freud]] articulated this [[concept]] (1905d) based on his [[clinical]] observations, emphasizing its [[significance]] for the later normalcy of the [[individual]] [[subject]] and his insertion into the [[culture]]. The latency period is also important for the [[progress]] of [[civilization]].
Beyond the descriptive point of view and the [[psychic]] mechanisms at [[work]] within it, the [[notion]] of a latency period seems like a [[logical]] [[necessity]] for posing certain questions. Through it [[infantile]] [[sexuality]] is approached from the perspective of [[future]] [[neurosis]] or normalcy, highlighting what Freud later called "the two-[[phase]] start" of [[human]] sexual development. In earlier writings he had already stressed the importance of sexuality in the etiology of [[neuroses]]. He had to mark the connection of neuroses with infantile experiences, the notion of deferred [[action]] and discontinuities in the evolution of sexuality. He also developed the notion of infantile amnesia through what he termed "[[screen]] [[memories]]."
Freud claimed to have borrowed the term "latency period" from Wilhelm [[Fliess]], although [[nothing]] of the sort can be found in their known correspondence. It seems that the term Latenzeit first surfaced in Fliess's work in 1909, but it meant something else in that context; also, its definition was not consistent conceptually with Krafft-Ebing's use years earlier ("sexuelle Latenzperiode").
Although latency appeared to be a keystone concept in his [[theoretical]] edifice, Freud did not make much of an effort to develop it. Nevertheless, in his later writings, he alluded to it frequently, although without adding anything substantial to its explanation.
However, he did make two elucidations about the latency period: In 1924 Freud affirmed that he had "no [[doubt]] that the [[chronological]] and causal relations described here between the [[Oedipus complex]], sexual intimidation (the [[threat]] of [[castration]]), the formation of the [[super-ego]] and the beginning of the latency period are of a typical kind" (1924d, p. 179); and in 1926 he emphasized that the [[struggle]] against the temptation of onanism is a major task, a combat ordinarily productive of [[symptoms]] like [[rituals]] or ceremonies. Subsequently he singled out the emergence of [[anxiety]] in response to the imperatives of the superego as characteristic of the latency period.
[[Other]] [[concepts]] in Freud's works can be useful in [[understanding]] latency, although he did not specifically link [[them]] to it: primary and secondary [[thought]], the [[pleasure]] [[principle]] and the [[reality]] principle, the pre-[[conscious]], [[fantasy]], [[literary]] creation and [[games]], daydreams and the [[family]] romance, the notions of psychic work and [[working]] through.
Throughout his work, in [[order]] to explicate this period, Freud oscillated between phylogenetic and [[biological]] formulations and formulations conditioned by the ontogenetic [[model]] and education, causal agents that he sometimes superimposed upon one [[another]], as in the note he added in 1935 to An Autobiographical Study: "The period of latency is a [[physiological]] phenomenon. It can, however, only give rise to a [[complete]] interruption of [[sexual life]] in [[cultural]] organizations which have made the [[suppression]] of [[infantile sexuality]] a part of their [[system]]" (1925d [1924], p. 37).
Defined as an anodyne stage between two major periods of sexuality, the latency period has not been studied very much. Rodolfo Urribarri reformulated certain notions, insisting less on the [[temporal]] aspect than on the basis of the [[construction]] of the superego, which obliges the ego to cover itself by means of [[symbolization]] and [[displacement]] in order to allow drive discharge through the operation of various mechanisms under the [[control]] of sublimation, while utilizing diverse [[external]] resources, a [[process]] he [[terms]] the "work of latency." Urribarri also stressed modifications that occur in thought and [[language]], the preponderant [[role]] and the functionality of the [[preconscious]] and of formations proper to it, like daydreams and the [[family romance]]. He also was able to [[identify]] sex differences in the representations of the [[body]] in games and drawing, which can be explained as a way of distinguishing functionality and [[genital]] differences. This in a way is typical of the work of latency, which precedes and [[conditions]] the [[masculine]]-[[feminine]] differentiation.
In this organization of latency, the psychic [[apparatus]] evolves while becoming more complicated by affording an outlet to the drives and expanding the subject's resources and the range of his [[social]] [[participation]], and also extending [[psychosexual]] evolution in a disguised and subtle manner.
RODOLFO URRIBARRI
See also: Bornstein, Berta; [[Genital stage]]; Infantile amnesia; [[Libidinal]] development; [[Moses]] and [[Monotheism]]; Oedipus complex; [[Psychology]] of [[Women]]. A [[Psychoanalytic]] [[Interpretation]], The; [[Psychosexual development]]; Puberty; Stage (or phase); [[Three]] Essays on the [[Theory]] of Sexuality.
[[Bibliography]]
* Freud, Sigmund. (1905d). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. SE, 7: 123-243.
* ——. (1924d). The dissolution of the Oedipus complex. SE, 19: 171-179.
* ——. (1925d [1924]). An autobiographical study. SE, 20: 1-74.
* ——. (1926d [1925]). Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety. SE, 20: 75-172.
[[Category:Enotes]]
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
[[Category:Terms]]
