At first sight, psychoanalytic studies may seem to work against the view both that childhood is so plastic and that it is so beautiful. Certainly these studies are sobering. After making due deduction for speculation that expresses itself as statement of fact, and for an almost mythological symbolism that spreads a fog of fatalistic mysticism over simple and controllable facts, there is still excellent reason for growing sober. But the reason is the one already given for regarding as portentous our new knowledge of the possibilities that reside in early mind-sets. These possibilities are both portentous and heartening, we have said, and there is nothing in the ascertained facts of psychoanalysis that goes against this statement. Sex-tangles can start in infancy, and they can persist into maturity, thwarting life at almost any point. Attitudes of dependence upon a parent may be so overwrought, or they may be continued so long, that again the mature person never quite comes to himself. But these are not fated tragedies; they are errors that can be prevented. Psychoanalysts are clear upon this point. There remains, then, no difficulty unless it be the shock that some persons experience upon hearing that small children are capable of sex response and that their sex attraction may be towards a parent. If such persons will only take notice that psychoanalysts employ the term “sex” in an exceedingly broad manner, sometimes making it as inclusive as the term “affection”; and if they will further reflect that there is nothing unclean in sex as such, so that a psychically sexless child would be no more “innocent” than one psychically sexed, the psychoanalytic view, even if it be wholly true, will be seen not to rob childhood of any spiritual beauty.