and nurses which is revived at puberty and similarly directed by the
incest barriers against these persons which have been erected in the
meantime. If on account of pathological heredity and accidental
experiences, this amalgamation of the excitations springing from various
sources and its application to the sexual object does not occur, then
there result the pathological deviations of the sexual instinct,
determined in part by earlier processes, such as a preservation of a
definite part of the original polymorphous-perverse tendency. The
perversions are thus developed from seeds which are present in the
undifferentiated tendencies of the child and constitute in adults a
condition of arrested development.
Thus we see that the sexual impulse does not suddenly emerge as a new
phenomenon at the age of puberty, but that the form assumed at this
period is gradually evolved from rudimentary elements present even in
the earliest years of life. Sexuality is not absent in the child, it is
merely different, being unorganized and imperfectly adapted to its later
functions. All this primordial mass of pleasurable activities enumerated
above, undergoes profound modifications as the result of growth and
education. One part only becomes selected and differentiated so as to
form the adult sexual impulse in the narrower sense. A greater part is
found to be incompatible with social observance, and is repressed,
buried, forgotten. The repressed impulses, however, do not die; it is
much harder to kill old desires than is sometimes thought, they continue
throughout life to strive toward gratification. This they cannot do
directly, and are thus driven to find indirect, symbolic modes of
expression. The energy is transformed into these secondary, more
permissible forms of activity, and furnishes a great part of the
strivings of mankind that lead to social and cultural interests and
development in general--sublimation. (Jones.)
I don't know whether I have succeeded in putting clearly enough the
Freudian views of sexuality, limited as I have to be in my expositions
of his theories. I do wish, however, to leave the impression which one
must gain from two sentiments frequently expressed by various authors,
namely, "Man sexualizes the universe," and "Man is what his sex is."
_Sexuality and Criminality._--A method of psychological analysis which
aside from its originally restricted field has already thrown so much
light upon various cultural a
|