The sexual enlightenment of children

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"The new-born infant brings sexuality with it into the world."One of the many idea with which Freud startles the world was that even very young children are aware of sexual impulses and occupied with sexual problems. Furthermore, he said, neuroses in adults stem from the sexual fears and frustrations experienced at an early age. The essays collected here show how Freud developed that theory by exploring the mental life of children, their sexual fantasies and phobias. A famous and frequently amusing case history, that of "Little Hans," reveals how Freud cured a small boy of his fear that a horse—a symbol for his father—would castrate him. Other papers describe the sexual awareness of children, the fantasies they make up to account for their birth, their erotic daydreams about their parents, and the love-motives behind the lies they tell. In all these writings Freud is witty, incisive, and refreshingly frank as he explains the dangers of ignoring or abusing a child's sexual curiosity.