It would not be difficult to show you the connections between perversion and neurosis in a much more detailed manner, but I believe that I have said enough for our purposes. We must beware, however, of overestimating the frequency and intensity of the perverse tendencies in mankind, after these revelations of their importance in the interpretation of symptoms. You have heard that _privation_ in normal sexual satisfactions may lead to the development of neurosis. In consequence of this privation in reality the need is forced into the abnormal paths of sexual excitation. Later you will be able to understand how this happens. You will at any rate understand that a “collateral” damming-up of this kind must swell the force of the perverse impulses, so that they become more powerful than they would have been had no hindrance to normal sexual satisfaction been present in reality. Incidentally, a similar factor may be recognized also in the manifest perversions. In many cases they are provoked or activated by the unduly great difficulties in the way of normal satisfaction of the sexual instinct which are produced either by temporary conditions or by permanent social institutions. In other cases, certainly, perverse tendencies are quite independent of such conditions; they are, as it were, the natural kind of sexual life for the individual concerned. Perhaps you are momentarily under the impression that all this tends to confuse rather than to explain the relations between normal and perverted sexuality. But keep in mind this consideration. If it is correct that real obstacles to sexual satisfaction or privation in regard to it bring to the surface perverse tendencies in people who would otherwise have shown none, we must conclude that something in these people is ready to embrace the perversions; or, if you prefer it, the tendencies must have been present in them in a latent form. Thus we come to the second of the new evidential observations of which I spoke. Psycho-Analytic investigation has found it necessary also to concern itself with the sexual life of children, for the reason that in the analysis of symptoms the forthcoming reminiscences and associations invariably lead back to the earliest years of childhood. That which we discovered in this way has since been corroborated point by point by the direct observation of children. In this way it has been found that all the perverse tendencies have their roots in childhood, that children are disposed towards them all and practise them all to a degree conforming with their immaturity; in short, _perverted sexuality_ is nothing else but _infantile sexuality_, magnified and separated into its component parts.