anaclitism

Meanings

1. The pattern of deriving adult sexual arousal from objects that one was exposed to as an infant. The fetish value often stems from tactile stimulation similar to that experienced by the infant before it could see well.
2. In Freudian theory, the relation between bodily functions in early childhood and the later development of the sexual instinct. The infant's bodily function of simple hunger, to take a primary example, is at first attached solely to the act of suckling at mother's breast.

Etymology

See anaclisis.