On the whole, however, the amatory manifestations of childhood are of brief duration. Separation at first gives rise to spiritual pain, but this is as a rule soon forgotten; similarly when the beloved one is snatched away by death, the child's grief is not enduring. Commonly such painful emotions speedily pass away; and whether the parting is due to death or to other causes, a new passion is apt shortly to replace the old. In exceptional cases, however, the death of the beloved one, or separation otherwise effected, may, even in the child lead to suicide or to severe nervous disturbances.
Hitherto I have spoken of the processes of detumescence and contrectation as isolated manifestations. As regards the relationships between these respective processes, there are various possibilities. In the first place, one may exist when the other is absent, that is to say, the phenomena of detumescence or the phenomena of contrectation may appear in isolation. Secondly, the two processes may be in complete association each with the other. A boy of thirteen years feels the impulse to draw near to a girl, and to kiss her; when this close contact takes place, erection ensues. Of all the cases known to me, the earliest age at which such a phenomenon occurred is given in a case published by Féré.[37]
Two cousins, boy and girl, were playmates from the time they were both about three years old. They played at being man and wife; and when they were not actually together, the boy's imagination was occupied with the subject. He thought continually about it, and when he was in bed at night erection occurred, accompanied by an agreeable sensation. He went to sleep, and dreamed that other persons got into bed with him and touched him. Among these persons was the little girl, his cousin. Such dreams recurred very frequently; the girl, moreover, was constantly in his waking thoughts. As he grew older, his fondness persisted; but when at the age of seventeen he made up his mind to tell his cousin of his love for her, she became engaged to someone else. Consequently he suffered from severe nervous shock.
In the third place, the two processes, contrectation and detumescence, may occur simultaneously, without the detumescence being associated with the object of the contrectation impulse. Thus cases occur in which boys experience organic sensations in the genital organs leading them to masturbate, and at the same time love someone; and yet when in the company of, and even when embracing the beloved, such a boy will not experience any specific sensations in the genital organs, nor will any impulse arise towards sexual contact with the beloved person.
When the two processes are associated in such a manner that proximity to the object of the contrectation impulse arouses the phenomena of detumescence, sexual acts between the two persons are very likely to result—provided, of course, that the affection is reciprocal. In this way many of the sexual acts effected between children originate; and the same is true of those in which children at times very readily lend themselves to the gratification of the sexual passion of adults. We learn from experience that in such cases attempts at actual intercourse may be made by children, usually accompanied by erection, but in most cases without ejaculation. I append a brief report of one case which came under my own observation.
Case 4.—X., twenty-one years of age, apparently sprung from a healthy family, and at least free from hereditary taint, declares that his first experience of sexual sensations occurred at the early age of five or six years; at this age he became enamoured of a servant girl, who caressed him very frequently, and pressed her genital organs against his body. Later, when eight or nine years old, he fell in love with a girl of about the same age, and made attempts at coitus. He remembers quite distinctly that he then had erections, and also a kind of voluptuous sensation, but no ejaculation. After continuing this practice for a considerable time, he became aware, being very religiously brought up, that he was behaving very wrongly. He therefore gave up all attempts at sexual congress, and lived quite chastely until he attained the age of nineteen. Throughout this time he neither masturbated, nor endeavoured to effect coitus, nor practised any kind of sexual act. At the age of nineteen, however, the sexual impulse becoming very powerful, he began to masturbate, and has continued to do so up to the present time—- once, twice, thrice, or even four times weekly. Once he did not masturbate for as long as three months, but this was the only prolonged continent interval. He experiences a normal impulse towards members of the other sex. Prostitutes are repulsive to him; he is attracted chiefly by girls of exceptional intelligence. He feels quite certain that to kiss and embrace such a girl would be very pleasurable to him, although he is not aware of any definite impulse towards coitus. Masturbation has always been practised by him as a purely physical act, unaccompanied, that is to say, by any imaginative ideas.
In most cases, the complete association of the processes of detumescence and contrectation, such as occurs in the impulse towards coitus, first takes place at a somewhat later age. This is so even when the sensory element, which constitutes a part also of the contrectation impulse, has been already clearly manifested. The contrectation impulse does not consist solely in this, that the boy experiences a purely spiritual love for the girl; it may rather happen that certain definite sexual bodily peculiarities in a woman attract him. When such a boy one day unexpectedly sees a girl's breasts, this may exercise on him a powerful stimulus. Similarly, I have known instances in which, in the absence of any evidence of definite seduction, a woman's genital organs have excited a very young boy, without arousing any idea in his mind of contact between his own genitals and those of the woman. Conversely, on many girls, masculine attributes, and especially the male genital organs, sometimes exert a stimulating influence. But in these cases also, the complete fusion of the processes of detumescence and contrectation occurs very gradually. Sometimes the boy himself is greatly astonished to discover that close contact with a person whom he loves leads to erection and even ejaculation. At the outset the impulse is much less definite than it is in adults. It is by gradual stages only that the sense of indefinite longing develops into the impulse towards sexual union in coitus; at first the imagination contemplates pictures of a quite indefinite character.
Although, as we have seen, the processes both of detumescence and of contrectation may manifest themselves primarily in childhood as associated conscious sensations, by far the most common event is for the processes of contrectation to appear separately, before those of detumescence. From an inquiry relating to eighty-six heterosexual men, who to the best of my belief were sexually normal, I ascertained that in more than 75 per cent., the feelings of contrectation appeared first, and not until after this had happened was the boy's consciousness attracted by sensations in the genital organs. This appears rather remarkable, inasmuch as we must assume that in the phylogeny of our species the processes of detumescence appeared earlier. Originally, in the earlier ancestral types, reproduction was effected by fission or gemmation (simple division or budding), without any necessity for conjugation with another individual of the species; and reproduction by gemmation corresponds to the processes of detumescence, to the ejaculation of the spermatozoa by the male. But although in most individuals the processes of detumescence make their appearance in consciousness only in a secondary manner, it does not follow that in the actual course of development they are also secondary. They do not, indeed, enter so early the sphere of conscious impulses, but there is a considerable amount of evidence to show that important processes are going on in the external genital organs long before consciousness is directly affected by these processes—consider, for example, the consequences of early castration.
Case 5.—This is a typical example of the primary awakening of the contrectation impulse, and the secondary superposition of the phenomena of detumescence. The patient is a man thirty-two years of age, somewhat neurasthenic, but, as far as I could ascertain, free from any other morbid manifestations. "At the age of seven I went to school; at first to a private school, in which little boys and girls were co-educated. In our playtime also the sexes were not separated; the girls came as friends to my house, and I visited them at theirs. Soon I became especially intimate with one of the girls; we did our lessons together. Thus it went on until I was nine years old, when I went to a school for boys only. My friendship with the girl at the other school persisted, however; we met from time to time, and all the more readily because a friendship had sprung up between our respective parents; they used to make holiday journeys together, and we children went with them. From the time when we were first at school together, this girl had always been more dear to me than the others, I do not know what it was in her by which I was particularly charmed. Was it that her general appearance seemed sympathetic to me; was it her abundant fair hair, her clear blue eyes, or her frank and natural manner? I do not know. But I remember quite distinctly that this same girl was a favourite with the other boys also, that they preferred to play with her, to have her as their companion. But it was to me that the girl, and perhaps her parents also, gave the preference. There was never any impropriety in our mutual relations; indeed, it is probable that I loved her too much for anything of the kind to be possible. Every night, before I went to sleep, I prayed to God to watch over this girl. As I have said before, my fondness was reciprocated; we often spoke to one another about our love, and of our dreams of the happy days to come, when we should be grown up, and should become man and wife. This was quite a settled matter; we had arranged every detail, how the wedding should be conducted, and whom we should invite to the ceremony. With this girl I shared all my possessions, although before I knew her I had been considered close-fisted. I was often angry when in games with the other girls she failed to win. In a word I can truthfully declare that I have hardly ever since loved so fondly and so sincerely as I did then. When I went to the boys' school, it was no longer possible for us to be together as much as before. Thus it came to pass, that the less we saw of one another, the less were my thoughts occupied with this girl. But I cannot remember that my fondness for her was ever replaced by a similar passion for a boy; nor, speaking generally, can I recall having ever at any time had any kind of sexual inclination towards one of my own sex. I would not venture absolutely to deny that this ever occurred; but, bearing in mind what I have learned from you on several occasions, I have carefully taxed my memory, and can only repeat what I told you at first, that I remember nothing of the kind. Somewhat later, in my dreams, boys occasionally played a part, but I cannot recall that these dreams about boys had any sexual complexion. They were vague images of boys sympathetic to me, but these dreams were not accompanied by any excitement of the genital organs, or by any other sexual manifestation. When I was thirteen years of age, my parents and those of my girl-friend had taken us to spend the summer at a seaside resort. The girl and I played together on the seashore, and occasionally, though we were now somewhat old for such an amusement, we dug sand-castles. As small children we had from time to time embraced one another, but a kiss had been the most intimate contact we had experienced. One day we were playing on the shore—I remember it very distinctly—and were rolling about together in the sand; thus occupied we came into close physical contact, and thereupon I had an erection. I remember too that the sensation of this was very agreeable. I cannot describe this agreeable feeling with precision, but there was no sense of sexual gratification, nor definite voluptuous sensation. From this time forward I always had the desire for close bodily contact with the girl. Moreover she was continually in my thoughts, and this to a much greater extent than formerly. It was my desire to gain a harmless pleasure by being always with her; it was impossible for me to imagine that we should ever be separated. I had naturally heard a great deal about marriage. With these and with similar thoughts I was occupied, but I cannot recall my thoughts in a more detailed manner. But to this day I remember very clearly my desire that the girl and I should never be separated from one another. We returned home, and in the ensuing winter, as in previous winters, we met at intervals. Naturally, physical contact was now much more difficult. One night I had a dream with seminal emission. Then, as for a long time before, I had been thinking a great deal about the girl; I dreamed of one of the scenes on the seashore which I have just described; it was in this dream that I had my first seminal emission. My fondness for the girl persisted. Only when she left the day-school in the town, and was sent away to a boarding-school, did my passion gradually abate. At first when she went away, I felt very unhappy and very lonely. My parents forced me to go out for walks with other boys and to play with them; I did so only with the greatest reluctance. Later, the girl did not disappear completely from my circle of acquaintances, but I lost all interest in her. From school I went to the university, having just before begun to masturbate. From the time I went to the university until the present day I have occasionally had intercourse with women, and my sexual development has been perfectly normal."
In so far as in what has gone before I have described the individual processes, there appear to be no important differences between the boy and the girl, over and above those dependent upon the different structure of the genital organs in the respective sexes. But one notable difference must now be indicated. Just as in adult life in the female sex sexual anæsthesia is very frequently observed, so that in coitus the specific voluptuous sensation is wanting, and indeed often enough the impulse to coitus itself is actually in abeyance (whereas in men the sexual impulse and sexual pleasure are very rarely absent), so also in the case of children a similar difference between the sexes is conspicuous. In female children the peripheral processes of the sexual impulse are, comparatively speaking, far less active than in the case of males. Thus it happens that, although in the girl the phenomena of the contrectation impulses are hardly, if at all, less conspicuous than they are in the boy, and appear at as early an age in the former as they do in the latter, yet in respect of detumescence there is an important distinction between girls and boys. A girl who has fallen in love with a boy will be greatly interested in all his doings, and will gladly embrace and even kiss him; but she will be far less disposed to proceed to actions in which the genital organs play a part than would a boy with a like affection for a girl. The same rule holds good when, in the undifferentiated stage of the sexual impulse, homosexual sentiments and practices ensue. In such cases, when girls are concerned, caresses of all kinds will follow, but the genital organs will in all probability not be involved; whereas in the case of an analogous fondness between two boys, manipulation of the genital organs is very likely to occur. Homosexual intimacies between girls are far more often platonic than similar intimacies between boys.