Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXwhom only five could recall no experienceof that kindfrom their own childhood, a fact which indicates thatit is a mistake to suppose that repression of such earlyexperiences is common; when repressionoccurs it is evidentlyabnormal and probably due to inborn peculiarities.Bell found that emotion of this kind may be witnessedas early as the middle of the third year, and that in thenature of its manifestations there tend to be several stagesof which the first usually continues to the age of eight,and the second to the age of fourteen. In the first stage theboy is usually more modest and less aggressive than thegirl. The emotion is detected by a number of little signswhich it is difficult to avoid assigning to sex origin. Atendency to hug and kiss common isbut does not alwaysoccur, and there isfrequentlya desire to conceal theemotion from its object and from any one else. While someform of touch contact isfrequently sought it is not generallyspecifically sexual, and when it is Bell was inclinedto regard the case as precocious. The erethism, as he wellremarks, is not usually (thoughitmay be)the sex organs, but it is distributed throughoutmanifested inthe entirebody, especially the vascular and nervous systems. Springis the period of the year when these manifestations aremost likely to occur.Students of childhood, psycho-analytic and others, havesince confirmed and elaborated these observations. Freudhas again and again dealt with the matter, and OskarPfister, in his extensive and discursive work on love inchildren and its defects of development, comes to theconclusion that there is an amazing and unsuspected multiplicityof manifestations in the love sentiments ofchildren.It is, as already indicated, characteristic of the sexual orpseudo-sexual interests of children that they should[88]