1912

THE SEXUAL ENLIGHTENMENT OF CHILDREN

(AN OPEN LETTER TO DR. M. FÜRST)

Dear Dr. Fürst,

When you ask me for an expression of opinion on ‘the sexual enlightenment of children’, I assume that what you want is not a regular, formal treatise on the subject which shall take into account the excessive mass of literature that has grown up around it, but the independent judgement of an individual doctor whose professional activities have offered him special opportunities for concerning himself with sexual problems. I know that you have followed my scientific efforts with interest and that, unlike many of our colleagues, you do not dismiss my ideas without examining them because I regard the psychosexual constitution and certain noxae of sexual life as the most important causes of the neurotic disorders that are so common. My Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, too, where I have described the way in which the sexual instinct is compounded and the disturbances which may occur in its development into the function of sexuality, have recently had a friendly reception in your journal.

I am expected, therefore, to answer questions on the following points: whether children ought to be given any enlightenment at all about the facts of sexual life, at what age this ought to happen and in what manner it should be carried out. Let me admit to you at once that I find a discussion of the second and third points perfectly reasonable, but that to my mind it is quite incomprehensible how there could be a difference of opinion on the first point. What can be the purpose of withholding from children - or, let us say, from young people - enlightenment of this kind about the sexual life of human beings? Is it from a fear of arousing their interest in these matters prematurely, before it awakens in them spontaneously? Is it from a hope that a concealment of this kind may retard the sexual instinct altogether until such time as it can find its way into the only channels open to it in our middle-class social order? Is it supposed that children would show no interest or understanding for the facts and riddles of sexual life if they were not prompted to do so by outside influences? Is it thought possible that the knowledge which is withheld from them will not reach them in other ways? Or is it genuinely and seriously intended that later on they should regard everything to do with sex as something degraded and detestable from which their parents and teachers wished to keep them away as long as possible?