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

PSYCHOLOGY OF SEXdifferences are due to definitely different hereditary antecedentsit is not always easy to say. On the whole it wouldappear, as we should expect, that the child of sound andexcitable in childhood, andsolid ancestry is less sexuallythe child of more unsound heredity or of hypersexualparents more precociously excitable. This is definitelysuggested by Dr. Hamilton's inquiries which indicate thatthe later sex life begins the more satisfactory marriageturns out.The subject becomes more complex when we go beyondlocalized genital phenomena of sex. And here we en*counter the libido of the psycho-analysts. In early daysthat met with violent opposition when applied to infancyand childhood, nor can it be said that the opposition hasbeen entirely overcome. It is now recognized, however,that much depends on the way in which we define theterm libido. Like many Freudian terms, it was not happilychosen, and it is not easy to dissociate it from the Englishterm 'libidinous/' Jung, the most distinguished psychoanalystoutside the Freudian school, dissociates libido, indeed,from any special connection with sex and takes itin a wide sense as "psychic energy** corresponding to the"elan vital" of Bergson, or, in English, "vital urge," whichis the term some people would like to use, for there isno doubt that we cannot dissociate the term "libido" fromdefinitely sex energy. Freud has wavered in his view oflibido and itsdevelopment. As he remarks in his illuminatingessay on the "Infantile Organization of theLibido" (1923), at one time he emphasized its early pregenitalorganization, though later he came to accept aclose approximation of the sexuality of childhood to adultsexuality. But the infantile genital organization, he goeson to say, really involves the primacy of the phallus, whichhe regards as the only genital organ recognized in child-[84]