ntile connection between
fighting and sexual excitement acts in many persons as a determinant for
the future preferred course of their sexual impulse.[22]

*Affective Processes.*--The other sources of sexual excitement in the
child are open to less doubt. Through contemporary observations, as well
as through later investigations, it is easy to ascertain that all more
intensive affective processes, even excitements of a terrifying nature,
encroach upon sexuality; this can at all events furnish us with a
contribution to the understanding of the pathogenic action of such
emotions. In the school child, fear of a coming examination or exertion
expended in the solution of a difficult task can become significant for
the breaking through of sexual manifestations as well as for his
relations to the school, inasmuch as under such excitements a sensation
often occurs urging him to touch the genitals, or leading to a
pollution-like process with all its disagreeable consequences. The
behavior of children at school, which is so often mysterious to the
teacher, ought surely to be considered in relation with their
germinating sexuality. The sexually-exciting influence of some painful
affects, such as fear, shuddering, and horror, is felt by a great many
people throughout life and readily explains why so many seek
opportunities to experience such sensations, provided that certain
accessory circumstances (as under imaginary circumstances in reading, or
in the theater) suppress the earnestness of the painful feeling.

If we might assume that the same erogenous action also reaches the
intensive painful feelings, especially if the pain be toned down or held
at a distance by a subsidiary determination, this relation would then
contain the main roots of the masochistic-sadistic impulse, into the
manifold composition of which we are gaining a gradual insight.

*Intellectual Work.*--Finally, is is evident that mental application or
the concentration of attention on an intellectual accomplishment will
result, especially often in youthful persons, but in older persons as
well, in a simultaneous sexual excitement, which may be looked upon as
the only justified basis for the otherwise so doubtful etiology of
nervous disturbances from mental "overwork."

If we now, in conclusion, review the evidences and indications of the
sources of the infantile sexual excitement, which have been reported
neither completely nor exhaustively, we may lay down the