two years. By that time she had put the matter out of her conscious mind, or at least held the memory very much in abeyance.
This seduction was not difficult for Molly to recall, however, but she found it hard to recapture other feelings which had been associated with the experience, primarily the feeling of guilt.
Now let us take the matter step by step. Why, in the first place, did Molly react with excitement rather than shock to this whole experience? There are two reasons. In the first place, the seduction was done by a person who was loved by the child. He was a friend of the family, no less acceptable or trustworthy to the little girl than her own father and mother.
In the second place, Molly had not yet passed completely through the stage of infantile sexuality into the latency period, when normally sex goes underground until puberty. She was still able to be excited by sensual experiences. A year or two later she might not have accepted the situation, probably would have reacted to it with shock or horror; it might have contributed to a different kind of frigidity, perhaps the anesthesia of total frigidity.
It was clear, however, that she had felt guilty about her reactions. She had not communicated the experience to her parents—a clear indication of guilt feelings. And later she had separated the seduction and its sensual pleasures from her conscious mind, made no connection between it and her later unconventional behavior. If she had not experienced guilt she would have had to make no such separation.
While Molly had no further sexual experiences in her latency period, she began to behave differently from the other girls in her group very early. At twelve she began to pet with a boy next door and was certain that she would have had intercourse with him had he not been so frightened of her
