What might have been the future of this brave girl if the father had not acted in that way, if the marriage of the parents had been a happy one, if she had not witnessed that terrible scene which impressed her the more painfully because she had no inkling whatever of the brutal side of sexuality? I make bold to assert that she would have developed into a quiet pleasant housewife and she would have given vent to her homosexual tendencies along quiet and innocent paths. But as it was she devoted herself to girls and avoided men more and more. She did permit herself to be attracted by men. But they had to be married and unattainable. Thus there could be no danger for her. When the husband of a friend of hers of whom she also was very fond declared that for her sake he would be willing to divorce his wife, she fled and presently found some other unreachable ideal to which she attached herself. All her ideals were practically desexualized while her sexuality she exercised exclusively on women. _The love among women loomed up in her mind as pure and elevating, while the love of men she considered brutal. Even coitus seemed to her a disgusting brutal act._ The traumatic incident occurred after puberty yet it had a very tremendous effect. The question rises whether the traumas occurring during childhood may also influence the particular direction of sexual development. This question has long since been solved in harmony with _Binet’s_ view and psychoanalysis has taught us some additional facts regarding the influence of traumas. The narrower Freudian school has gone so far as to overvalue the influence of traumas and has designated as traumas certain relatively trivial experiences which do not deserve that designation. I want to sound again a warning against underestimating the role of traumas. Certain minor fetichistic tendencies are easily and sometimes fairly satisfactorily explained on that basis, although the more complicated forms of fetichism, such as we shall study later, are not to be explained solely upon the theory of traumatic causation. Here the association hypothesis of _Binet_ completely breaks down. We must bear in mind that the neurotics conceive many traumas which in reality did not occur and that their phantasy turns innocent incidents into alleged traumas whenever it suits the trend of their emotions to do so. The neurotic’s memory serves him poorly and that is also true of the homosexuals who construct a purely homosexual life history for themselves. But are not first impressions of fundamental determinative value for future development? _Jean Paul_ very appropriately declares: “_All first impressions persist forever in the child!_” * * * * * I wish to add here a couple of observations which we owe to _Bloch_ and which illustrate very well the influence of first sexual impressions: