Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/154

 146 BOOK REVIEWS

called "interstitial cells" of the testicle, i. e. the cells in the tissue between the small canals of the testicle, which represent that internal secretory organ "whose task it is to bring to maturity the physical and psychical sexual characteristics and to preserve them in a state of maturity". The totality of these cells forms an organ in itself, an internal secretory gland, to which Steinach gave the name of the male puberty gland.

The female puberty gland of mammals consists of connective tissue epitheloid cells in the Thela interna of the shrinking follicle and epithelial cells of the Granulosa, with in addition periodically after a definite age the corpora lutea of menstruation or pregnancy. (On the whole the histological and functional findings in the male sex are much clearer and more convincing. Reviewer.)

An important fact that the author of this work, Dr. Lipschiitz, has established compels us to refer again to a result of the Freudian theory. We know that Freud on the basis of his analyses of the neuroses was impelled to assume two great thrusts of development of the libido, corresponding to the two efflorescences of infantile (perverse) and juvenile sexuality ; between these a period of relative sexual quiescence is interpolated, the so-called latency period, in which the entire instinctive force of the human being is placed in the service of asexual tendencies (in the psyche, of "sublimations"). It is sufficiently well known what indignation the Freudian assumption of an infantile sexuality provoked in our psychologists. All possible kinds ol unscientific polemics were mobilised against it, including scorn and derision, calumny, personal attacks, theological, moral, even psychological and biological pseudo- arguments, only so as to protect the amnesia prevailing in childhood regarding infantile sexual processes, to hang round it more closely a scientific veil and to save the ideal of a childhood "unsullied" by sexuality. But what does the unbiassed experimental biologist show us ? Nothing less than the "exact" confirmation of the Freudian assumptions.

"The much discussed sexuality of the child" — it runs on page 127 in reference to psycho-analysis — "and the sexual perversions of adults can be considered as infantile fragments of sexuality, to which normally new components are added during further development under the influence of the sex glands". This confirmation is carried further even into details. It could be established that in the male foetus the puberty gland is markedly hypertrophied, so that it occupies the greater part of the testicle ; a second significant increase of the interstitial cells takes place at puberty, so that really there are two acmes in the development of the puberty glands. Lipschiitz saw he was compelled to assume that changes take place in the organism in the early embryonic period, which qualitatively are similar to those that occur in the period of puberty. He then distinguishes two "great phases" of puberty or sexual