The end of the first stage and the beginning of the second (which, you will recall, will last to about ten years of age) begins with a remarkable psychological event: the early infantile sexuality goes completely underground. The little girl "forgets" that she ever went through such sensual experiences, that there was anything the least bit erotic in her former attachments. Her masturbation stops, under normal circumstances, and she enters into approximately a five-year period of total non-sexuality.
However, you must understand that when I use the word "forget" I do not mean it literally. In psychiatry we use the word "repression" to describe this kind of forgetting. It means the ability of the human mind to push anything it does not wish to recall out of awareness, into a part of the mind called the unconscious. When we repress something, a memory or experience, we do not remember that it ever happened with our conscious mind. However, it remains quite intact in our unconscious mind and can and does exert an influence upon us that we are not aware of. Too, it can be revived in the conscious mind by later experiences, or, even if it does not revive, later experiences can be very much influenced by the "forgotten" memory.
The new stage into which the young girl now enters is called the "latency period," because the sexual feelings of the earlier period have become repressed, or latent.
The latency period is chiefly characterized by an attempt on the part of the little girl to understand and master her environment. It is marked by a tremendous growth physically and mentally. She is interested in everything, in everything that gives her a chance to advance herself physically: rope-jumping, doll-playing, ball-playing, swimming, climbing, running; there is sometimes very little that she does, feels, or thinks in this period that distinguishes her in any very important manner from a little boy of the same age.
