Page:Fielding - Sex and the Love Life.pdf/46

—undesirable companionship, or otherwise—tends to stimulate sexual curiosity, the latent period may not take place. In this event, the child will continue without interruption in the conscious expression, although possibly well concealed, of its sexual interests.

It is undoubtedly the usual latent period, combined with repression, that is responsible for the common tendency of people to forget their early childhood sexual feelings and experiences. This infantile amnesia (loss of memory) which shuts us off from the memories of our earliest childhood, is encountered in every case of psycho-analytical treatment.

Childhood's Sex Interests Repressed. Repression is undoubtedly an important factor in this "forgetting." It is about this time that the child invariably is most subjected to the "don'ts," and "mustn'ts," and "shames" in relation to its sexual life. In addition to the normal development away from crude infantile expressions of sexual interest, there is instilled a feeling that there is something inherently indecent about it, so that the taboo reacts upon the early sexual memories by gradually and effectively forcing them out of the field of consciousness.

The progress of the child in its course of development is well described by Dr. William A. White (The Mental Hygiene of Childhood^[1]) in the following words:

"The amoral, asocial child of the period of infancy, guided solely by its instincts, undergoes changes at about five years of age, the object of which is to bring the instincts into the service of cultural aims (moral and social). How much these changes are inherently necessary, and thus are independent of outside influences, and how much such influences are responsible for them, it is impossible to state because all children seem

1. Mind and Health Series, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1919