infantile sexuality

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1. the characteristic quality of the male and female reproductive elements.
2. the constitution of an individual in relation to sexual attitudes or activity. This is a broad concept that includes aspects of the physical, psychological, social, emotional, and spiritual makeup of an individual. It is not limited to the physical or biological reproductive elements and behavior, but encompasses the manner in which individuals use their own roles, relationships, values, customs, and gender.
human sexuality in the omaha system, the sexuality of human beings.
infantile sexuality in freudian theory, the erotic life of infants and children, encompassing the oral, anal, and phallic phases of psychosexual development.

in·fan·tile sex·u·al·i·ty

in psychoanalytic personality theory, the concept concerning psychosexual development in infants and children; encompasses the overlapping oral, anal, and phallic phases during the first 5 years of life.

in·fan·tile sex·u·al·i·ty

(in'făn-tīl sek'shū-al'i-tē)
psychoanalysis The body of theories concerning psychosexual development in infants and children; encompasses the overlapping oral, anal, and phallic phases during the first 5 years of life.
References in periodicals archive ?
In her catalogue of Lawrence's reading, Rose Burwell notes that it is difficult to determine exactly which of Freud's writings Lawrence actually read, and how far his knowledge of Freud was based on close readings of Freudian texts or on discussions with Frieda, who was Otto Gross's lover in 1907, and with his friends, David Eder and Barbara Low, who were psychoanalysts (256).(4) Since the theory of the erotogenic zones was the cornerstone of Freud's account of infantile sexuality, one must assume that Lawrence was well acquainted with what Laplanche and Pontalis call this "fundamental datum of psycho-analytic experience" (155).
Yet the sexual context itself, so seductively laden with innocence, like the turtles she imitates, quickly recovers the psychoanalytic relevance of the theory of infantile sexuality as an explanation.
In Egyptology, Freud found support for his interest in infantile sexuality in his "Leonard da Vinci and a Memory of Childhood," certainly not a Freud text for which many have continued to share Lewiecki--Wilson's high regard.
Unfortunately, I suspect they have done: not because the judges read Freud or have acquired knowledge of his writings through some process of osmosis (as they have Bowlby, according to the authors); but because they allowed |psy' professionals to propagate Freudian theories of infantile sexuality as if they were scientific knowledge.
of the Breuer/Freud literature.) Boyarin offers an all-embracing explanation for Freud's controversial switch from the seduction theory to the theory of instinctual infantile sexuality as well as his development of the "phallic" ideas of oedipal conflict, castration anxiety, and penis envy.

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