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From Laplanche, J. and Pontalis, J.B. (1973). The Language of Psycho-Analysis. Int. Psycho-Anal. Lib., 94:1-497. London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis. pp 287-289.

Oral Stage (or Phase)

= D.: orale Stufe (or Phase).–Es.: fase oral.–Fr.: stade oral.–I.: fase orale.–P.: fase oral.

The first stage of libidinal development: sexual pleasure at this period is bound predominantly to that excitation of the oral cavity and lips which accompanies feeding. The activity of nutrition is the source of the particular meanings through which the object-relationship is expressed and organised; the love-relationship to the mother, for example, is marked by the meanings of eating and being eaten.

Abraham suggested that this stage be subdivided according to two different activities: sucking (early oral stage) and biting (oral-sadistic stage).

In the first edition of the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905d), Freud describes an oral sexuality, whose existence he demonstrates in adults (perverted or preliminary activity) and which he also identifies in children on the basis of the observations of the paediatrician Lindner (masturbatory significance of thumb-sucking) (1a). Yet he no more speaks here of an oral stage or organisation than he does of an anal one.

Nonetheless, the activity of sucking takes on an exemplary value for Freud from this point on, allowing him to show how the sexual instinct, which is at first satisfied by means of an anaclitic* relationship to a vital function, later becomes autonomous and attains pleasure auto-erotically. Furthermore, the experience of satisfaction*, which furnishes the prototype for the fixation of the wish to a specific object, is an oral experience; one may therefore advance the hypothesis that desire* and satisfaction are forever marked by this first experience.

In 1915, after recognising the existence of the anal organisation, Freud describes the oral or cannibalistic* stage as the first stage of sexual life. The source* is the oral zone; the object* is closely associated with that of the ingestion of food; the aim* is incorporation* (1b). Thus the accent no longer falls only upon an erotogenic zone–i.e. upon a specific excitation and pleasure–but also upon a relational mode: incorporation; psycho-analysis reveals that in childhood phantasies this mode is not attached solely to oral activity but that it may be transposed on to other functions (e.g. respiration, sight).

According to Freud the distinction between activity* and passivity which characterises the anal stage does not exist at the oral stage. Karl Abraham seeks to identify the types of relationship in play in the oral period, and is led in the process to distinguish between an early stage of preambivalent* sucking–seemingly closer to what Freud had initially described as the oral stage–and an oralsadistic* stage concurrent with teething in which the activity of biting and devouring implies a destruction of the object; as a corollary of this we find the presence of the phantasy of being eaten or destroyed by the mother (2).

The increased attention paid to object-relationships has led certain psycho-analysts (notably Melanie Klein and Bertram D. Lewin) to describe the meanings connoted by the concept of the oral stage in more complex fashion.

(1) 1 Cf. Freud, S.: a) G.W., V, 80; S.E., VII, 179. b) G.W., V, 98; S.E., VII, 198.

(2) 2 Cf. Abraham, K. ‘A Short Study of the Development of the Libido, Viewed in the Light of Mental Disorders’, in Selected Papers (London: Hogarth Press, 1927), 442-53.

Oral-Sadistic Stage (or Phase)

= D.: oral-sadistische Stufe (or Phase).–Es.: fase oral-sádica.–Fr.: stade sadique-oral.–I.: fase sadico-orale.–P.: fase oral-sádica.

According to a subdivision introduced by Karl Abraham, the second phase of the oral stage*. It is distinguished by the appearance of teeth and the activity of biting. At this point incorporation* has the meaning of a destruction of the object, implying that ambivalence* has come into play in the object-relationship.

In ‘A Short Study of the Development of the Libido, Viewed in the Light of Mental Disorders’ (1924), Karl Abraham differentiates two subsidiary stages within the oral stage: an early sucking stage, which is ‘preambivalent’, and an oral-sadistic stage which corresponds to the teething period; biting and devouring here implies a destruction of the object and instinctual ambivalence makes its appearance (libido and aggressiveness directed towards a single object).

With Melanie Klein oral sadism takes on added importance. Indeed the oral stage for Klein is the culminating point of infantile sadism. In contrast to Abraham, however, she sees sadistic tendencies as playing a part from the outset: ‘… aggression forms part of the infant's earliest relation to the breast, though it is not usually expressed in biting at this stage’ (1). ‘The libidinal desire to suck is accompanied by the destructive aim of sucking out, scooping out, emptying, exhausting’ (2). Although Klein rejects Abraham's distinction between sucking and biting oral stages she considers the oral stage as a whole to be of an oral-sadistic nature.

(1) 1 Klein, M. ‘Some Theoretical Conclusions regarding the Emotional Life of the Infant’ (1952), in Developments, 206, n. 2.

(2) 2 Heimann, P. and Isaacs, S. ‘Regression’ (1952), in Developments, 185-86.