midst of this preparatory growth menstruation, the cyclical ebb and flow of fecund woman, starts in earnest. In a few months the child stands just within the portal of physical maturity.
The little girl now again (for the first time since infancy) begins to experience rather strong sexual feelings, and she reacts to them with some anxiety. She may start once more to masturbate clitorally, although this time the act is accompanied by guilt feelings and with apprehension. As I have pointed out, these feelings of apprehension can be thought of as fully justified. Her sexuality is going to lead to motherhood, and this in turn means that she is going to have to face the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth, the biological need of putting her child's welfare ahead of her own. In effect, as we have seen, she is going to suspend the law of self-preservation as it applies to her own person.
The little girl knows this; she knows it with her body and mind, for even the most prudishly reared child cannot be prevented from finding out the facts of life. If her parents have not told her she will soon find out all there is to know from her girl friends.
I have said that the new changes in her cause her apprehension. They also cause her feelings of joy, excitement, and intense curiosity. Throughout her entire puberty she will run between these two states of mind, anxiety on the one hand and feelings of pleasure on the other. At times she will look back in envy at the blissful latency period when she was not bothered by these powerful indications of her biological destiny, which lies immediately ahead. She will hate her developing breasts, her menstrual period, the hair growing under her arms and around her genitalia. At other moments she will be rapturous about these very same changes.
At this point she withdraws from her parents to a large
