Page:The theory of psychoanalysis (IA theoryofpsychoan00jungiala).pdf/43

 There is no other way but to agree that before and after puberty it is the same libido. Hence, the perversities of childhood have arisen exactly in the same way as those of adults. Common sense will object to this, as obviously the sexual needs of children cannot possibly be the same as those of adults. We might admit, with Freud, that the libido before and after puberty is the same, but is different in its intensity. Instead of the intense post-pubertal sexual desire, there would be first a slight sexual desire in childhood, with diminishing intensity until, as we reach back to the first year, it is but a trace. We might admit that we are biologically in agreement with this formulation. It would then have to be also agreed that everything that falls into the region of this enlarged conception of sexuality is already pre-existing but in miniature; for instance, all those emotional manifestations of psycho-sexuality: desire for affection, jealousy, and many others, and by no means least, the neuroses of childhood.

It must, however, be admitted that these emotional manifestations of childhood by no means make the impression of being in miniature; their intensity can rival that of an affect among adults. Nor must it be forgotten that experience has shown that perverse manifestations of sexuality in childhood are often more glaring, and indeed seem to have a greater development, than in adults. If an adult under similar conditions had this apparently excessive form of sexuality, which is practically normal in children, we could rightly expect a total absence of normal sexuality, and of many other important biological adaptations. An adult is rightly called perverse when his libido is not used for normal functions, and the same could be said of a child: it is polymorphous perverse since it does not know normal sexual functions.

These considerations suggest the idea that perhaps the amount of libido is always the same, and that no increase first occur at puberty. This somewhat audacious conception accords with the example of the law of the conservation of energy, according to which the quantity of energy remains always the same. It is possible that the summit of maturity is reached when the infantile diffuse applications of libido discharge themselves into the one channel of definite sexuality, and thus lose themselves therein. For the moment we must content ourselves with these sug