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

THE SEXUAL IMPULSE IN YOUTHby the now well recognized fact that neither similarity ofsex nor closeness of blood relationship provides any bar tothese manifestations. The adult who succeeds in discerningthe occurrence of such manifestations begins to talksolemnly and pedantically of "homosexuality" and "incest"and the "(Edipus complex," without realizing theabsurdity he isperpetrating. He would indeed be speakingquite rationally if he were dealing with the like phenomenain his own grown-up world. There can T)e nohomosexuality when there is yet no conception of sexuality,and no incest before the barriers of relationship areknown. As a distinguished psycho-analyst, Dr. Jelliffe hassaid of 'this manner of labeling the impulsive activity ofchildhood, "expressingit in terms of conscious adultactivity is nonsense." Even apart from sex, the best psychologistsof childhood (like Stern in his Psychology ofEarly Childhood) are trying to make clear that we mustnot measure children by our psychic powers, but learn tounderstand their different natures. Until we have realizedthis, until we have cleared away the elaborate structureof childhood sexuality erected on the adult pattern byadults who seem to have lost all memory of youth, we shallwander among vain shadows in this field. Here certainlyis a kingdom of knowledge into which only those canenter who become as little children.At this point it is necessary to refer to a psychologicaltrait to which psycho-analysts, above all Freud, who firstcalled attention to it, have in the past,and to some extentfor what we hereby mean psychologicallyissimplystill, attached supreme importance: the so-called CEdipuscomplex. It is not, on the surface, quite happily so called,an attractionof love (a "wish to marry") the parent of oppositesex, on the partof the young child, with a correspondingjealousy of the parent of the same sex. Whereas in