Of course, the sex life of the child is different from that of the adult. Sexual functions, from the very beginning until they assume those ultimate forms which are well known to us, undergo a process of complicated development. Many component urges, each driving in a different direction, eventually consolidate, ultimately to serve the purpose of propagation. Not all of the individual component urges prove of equal value, in view of the ultimate task they are called upon to serve. Many of them have to be “re-routed,” refashioned, partially subdued. Such a protracted process of development cannot always be pursued smoothly, without obstacles arising here and there and without engendering partial fixations in the course of the earlier stages. Wherever, in later life, sexual functions are blocked by obstacles of some kind, sexuality—the libido, as we call it—will show a decided tendency to gravitate towards such early fixations. The study of the sex life of the child and its transformations, until full maturity, has also yielded to us the key for the understanding of so-called sexual perversions. These, while generally spoken of with profound disgust, up to then had remained obscure as to their origin. Although this phase of sex life is extraordinarily interesting, it does not serve our present purpose to dwell upon it in detail. To understand all these ramifications of sex life, it is not only necessary to possess sufficient anatomical and physiological information, but also that knowledge which cannot be acquired in medical schools, i. e., a thorough acquaintance with the history of civilization and mythology. “Up to now, I am still unable to gain a clear conception of the sex life of the child.” I shall, then, dwell on this phase further. To be perfectly frank with you, I should really hate not to go into it further. The most remarkable thing in the sex life of the child, to my mind, is the fact that its whole, extensive development is completed in the course of the first five years of life. From then, until the beginning of puberty, there is a time when sex remains latent, a time during which—normally—sexuality is not progressing but rather losing in intensity. During these years, the child is liable to abandon and forget much that he has practised and known before. It is during this period after the first bloom of sex life has withered, that such conceptions of the “I” develop as shame, disgust, morality, destined to serve as support later on, in the storm and stress of puberty, and to direct newly awakened sexual tendencies. This new, second phase of sex life plays a very important part in the inception of nervous disturbances. Apparently, it is only in man that this twofold onset of sex life prevails. It is, perhaps, this which is one of the contributing factors to the truly human prerogative to indulge in neuroses.