impossible to assert anything definite concerning the impulses if one
did not take the trouble of mentioning these presuppositions.

[28] One should here think of Moll's assertion, who divides the sexual
impulse into the impulses of contrectation and detumescence.
Contrectation signifies a desire to touch the skin.




II

THE INFANTILE SEXUALITY


It is a part of popular belief about the sexual impulse that it is
absent in childhood and that it first appears in the period of life
known as puberty. This, though a common error, is serious in its
consequences and is chiefly due to our present ignorance of the
fundamental principles of the sexual life. A comprehensive study of the
sexual manifestations of childhood would probably reveal to us the
existence of the essential features of the sexual impulse, and would
make us acquainted with its development and its composition from various
sources.

*The Neglect of the Infantile.*--It is remarkable that those writers who
endeavor to explain the qualities and reactions of the adult individual
have given so much more attention to the ancestral period than to the
period of the individual's own existence--that is, they have attributed
more influence to heredity than to childhood. As a matter of fact, it