Let us assume then that all children are susceptible to erotic stimuli and that such stimulation may harm them. For the later a person’s conscious sexual life begins the greater the prospects of his becoming a healthy, mentally well-balanced individual. Among the factors capable of permanently arousing erotic emotions we must include excessive affection. Between the affections of one who loves and of a mother there are really no differences. Both kiss, caress, fondle, hug, embrace, pet, etc. That the excitement is transmitted to the same central organs is obvious.
In this way the child receives its first erotic sensations from its nurse. Interpret it as we may the nurse, the attendant, the mother, the father are the child’s first love, the first erotic love, as our psychoanalysis has convincingly demonstrated. But this must not be interpreted to mean that I wish to condemn the affectionate management of children. On the contrary! A certain quantity of affection is, as a matter of fact, essential to the normal development of the individual. But the affection lavished on them must not be excessive. For if it is the child will be prematurely brought into a condition of erotic overstimulation. It grows older and begins to feel the power of education. To restrain and curb the force of the natural impulses powerful inhibitions are erected. As a reaction to the premature sexual stimulation there begins a remarkable process which may be designated as “sexual repression.” This repression may succeed so well that even the child forgets its early experiences or the repression does not succeed and the individual’s erotic requirements grow from year to year. In the latter case there develops in the child a serious psychic conflict between sexual longing and sexual renunciation and thus the soil in which a neurosis may grow is prepared. Perhaps the conflict is the neurosis.
We shall mention only in passing that such exaggerated affection begets in many children the habit of securing for themselves a certain amount of pleasurable sensations by way of certain auto-erotic actions. It is not possible, nor necessary, to enter into a detailed discussion of these matters here. For most people know that our experiences in childhood influence our whole life. But it is a tragic commentary on human strivings that excessive parental love may bring sickness upon the child, that a happy present is replaced by an unhappy future, that the roses a mother strews in her child’s path only later show their thorns.