ABSTRACT

In the year 1898, Freud made a third great discovery. He showed that our sexual life begins at birth, and not, as had generally been supposed, at puberty. This contention aroused intense and universal indignation in the camp of the enemies of truth. In later years, Freud has frequently declared that the fact that children have a sexual life is so obvious that we ought rather to be ashamed of ourselves for our failure to notice it than proud because we have found it out. There are a good many children in the world, and a good many grown-ups to watch the children. Why was it that no one, before Freud, noticed that infants have erections and that they masturbate; that children have an urgent desire to get into bed with father and mother; that at a very early age they display an interest in their own genital organs and in those of their playmates; that they are affected by the mental conflicts of love, suffering from jealousy, from the longings and torments of love, suffering intensely, though their sufferings are in this respect less vocal than those of adults?