Maternal refers to the physical and psychological care given to another person on the model of a needy infant. For Freud ever since the Project for a Scientific Psychology (1950c [1895]), the ambiguity of the maternal for the infant was inherent in its ambiguous nature: breast-object or person-mother, total/partial, satisfying needs (mixed with the quality of care dispensed and the sensations procured), internal/external, protective shield/seduction.

Freud isolated an essential component in these dualities: the care associated with the protective shield and intended to satisfy needs also awakens partial sexual drives in the erotogenic zones. Supported by the self-preservation drives, they manifest themselves in auto-eroticism. The infant stimulates the erotogenic zone freed from need, creating a second erotogenic zone. This is accompanied by fantasy activity, which then replaces this self-production of pleasure. The...