#object choice

It must be understood that each individual, through the combined operation of his innate disposition and the influences brought to bear on him during his early years, has acquired a specific method of his own in his conduct of his erotic life – that is, in the preconditions to falling in love which he lays down, in the instincts he satisfies and the aims he sets himself in the course of it. This produces what might be described as a stereotype plate [ein Klischee] (or several such), which is constantly repeated – constantly reprinted afresh – in the course of the person’s life, so far as external circumstances and the nature of the love-objects accessible to him permit.

–Freud, The Dynamics of Transference