“My sexual feelings asserted themselves at a very early age. I remember that when I was seven years old I played with myself before father, without any feeling of shame, because I did not know that it was wrong. Father scolded me and forbade me doing this. But his threats only had the effect of forcing me to continue under cover what I tried to do openly before him. I believe that my power of concentration and my ability to work were impaired already at that time. From playing I merged quickly into systematic masturbation, a habit in which I indulged excessively. At ten years of age we had at school a regular ring of masturbators and we carried on all sorts of things jointly. Nor did we limit ourselves to manual handling.... “At about that time I had terrible nightmares. I saw wild animals, was overcome or bitten by them, thieves wanted to kidnap me, and in my dreams I often saw my father coming after me with a great long stick. These nightly dreams tortured me considerably, every night I was feverish and bathed in sweat. “In the morning I had an ‘all gone’ feeling. I gazed blankly before me at school always holding my hand on the penis,—in fact, I often masturbated during class. I became less and less able to concentrate on the work or to carry on my school tasks. In various ways I attempted first to keep up with the work and then I tried all sorts of makeshifts to avoid my school duties. As early as at that age it was characteristic of me that what interested me I had no difficulty in doing. I learned easily but only subjects which I was not taught in school. Thus, for instance, as a boy I became interested in mineralogy, astronomy and botany, and I acquired quite a fund of information on these topics. I should have never learned a hundredth part of what I knew about the subjects if they had been drilled into me at school.... Everything that was a duty seemed unbearable to me. Work was a hard duty and always unpleasant. Therefore I got along rather poorly in school. I reached the status of a one-yearling (the privilege to do but one year military duty) only with the aid of home coaching and by the use of influence. And I attained that privilege only at the last moment, during my twentieth year, when I faced the danger of having to serve three years. In a few weeks I prepared and crammed, so as to pass my examinations because I knew that, unless I did, I would be in trouble. I always went to extremes that way, the midway never appealed to me. I would pour over my astronomical books for five hours at a stretch or devote myself uninterruptedly to my plants and my collection of stones, but if I spent a half hour upon my school lessons it made me mad and in my fury I tore the note book.