Freud—and his opinion may not be put aside—holds that in all young children there is present a sexual life more or less subconscious, which may be exaggerated and even perverted by any carelessness, neglect, or repression. It is believed that certain manifestations of infantile activity, notably the excretory functions and feeding, as also the common habit of thumb-sucking and biting of the nails, are closely connected with the sexual impulse.
In normal children the sexuality of this infantile period, which lasts until the third or fourth year, then passes into more or less complete oblivion. There follows a happy play period during which sex is latent, and this lasts until puberty approaches. It is during this period of sexual latency that the psychic forces of the child develop—forces which, in later years, act as inhibitions on the sexual life and narrow and direct its expression like dams. But in nervous children, where frequently there is sexual precocity, this order is very likely to be disturbed. And the danger may be increased by the over-fondling of an unwise and voluptuous mother, by an ignorant nurse, or the suggestion of an older and vicious child, with very detrimental results. A wrong direction may most easily be given to the child’s sexual development in its earliest years. Neurotic manifestations such as hysteria, obsessions, and many sexual perversions, are traced back by Freud to the influence of the wrongly directed or repressed erotic experiences of childhood. It seems to be quite clear that any repression of the instinctive and subconscious infantile sexuality makes for evil; that the only safe course to follow is the culture of a healthy and right expression. Freud goes the length of saying that obsessions are in every case transformed reproaches which have escaped from the attempted repression and are always connected with some pleasurable sexual feeling aroused in childhood.
Now, before I go on further to point out the line of action, and the change in our attitude to this question, that must follow inevitably from our knowledge of the early existence in the child of the sexual impulse, I would wish to underline as strongly as I am able the facts that we have learnt: (1) _Every child is born with a sexual nature_; (2) _this infantile sexuality furnishes the groundwork of the later sexual life_; (3) _and the individual’s sexual conduct and health will depend, in part at least, on the peculiarities of this early period of infancy and childhood_; (4) _therefore, the sexual desires and instincts with which the child is born cannot safely be left alone; they must be dealt with in some way_; (5) _for a wrong direction to these instincts may most easily be given by any mistake or neglect on the part of the mother or those connected with the child_; (6) _lastly, and most important of all, repression of sex is always dangerous; any efforts made in this direction are very likely to lead to evil in the later life of the child_.