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...