If a man has been his mother’s undisputed darling he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in success, which not seldom brings actual success with it.

This remark comes from Freud’s early psychoanalytic writings on childhood development and adult character. In discussing how a child’s earliest emotional attachments shape later confidence and ambition, Freud points to the special status of a mother’s favored son as a formative experience. The line appears in his 1905 work on sexuality and psychosexual development, where he links early family dynamics—especially the mother–child bond—to enduring feelings of self-assurance and expectations of success. Freud frames the observation as a recurring clinical and cultural pattern rather than a moral prescription, using it to illustrate how unconscious residues of childhood can influence adult striving and achievement.

Freud links early maternal favoritism to a durable adult sense of entitlement and efficacy. The “undisputed darling” grows up with an internalized assurance—an expectation of being chosen, protected, and rewarded—that can function as a psychological advantage in competitive social life. In Freud’s frame, this confidence is not merely a pleasant feeling but a formative residue of childhood attachment and narcissistic investment: being the mother’s special object becomes a template for later self-regard. The remark also implies a self-fulfilling mechanism: confidence shapes risk-taking, persistence, and social presentation, which can “bring actual success” by eliciting opportunities and reinforcing achievement.