The Sexual Life of the Child

by Albert Moll

• Introduction
• Preface
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8

Original Footnotes

17. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, Leipzig, 1906, p. 384.

18. Geschlecht und Krankheit (Sex and Disease), Halle, 1903.

19. Die Hysterie im Kindesalter (Hysteria in Childhood), 2nd ed., Halle, 1906.

20. Die Hysterie des Kindes (Hysteria in the Child), p. 8, Berlin, 1905.

21. Vorlesungen über Störungren der Sprache (Lectures on Disturbances of Speech), p. 105, Berlin, 1893.

22. Hautkrankheiten und Sexualität (Diseases of the Skin in Relation to sex). Reprinted from the Wiener Klinik, 1906.

23. William Douglas Morrison, Jugendliche Uebeltäter (Youthful Delinquents), p. 28, Leipzig, 1899.

52. In the German language the word castration is used of both sexes; i.e., it signifies removal of the ovaries as well as removal of testicles.--Translator's Note.

53. A record of such cases will be found in the article on "Menstruation," p. 700 of the Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales, Dechambre, Paris, 1873.

54. Kisch, The Sexual Life of Woman, pp. 79-80, English translation by M. Eden Paul; Rebman, London, 1910.

55. Traité de Physiologie, vol. i. p. 260, Paris, 1869.

56. The reference will be found in the Jahresbericht über die Leistungen und Fortschritte auf dem Gebiete der Erkrankungen des Urogenitalapparates, second year of issue, Berlin, 1907.

57. Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis (Researches into the Nature of the Sexual Impulse), Berlin, 1897, chap. iii.

58. Paris, 1883, vol. i. p. 91.

59. S. Hall, "The Early Sense of Self," Am. Journ. of Psych., April 1898.

60. Sexualbiologie, Berlin, 1907, p. 48 et seq.

61. Union médicale, May 1877.

62. Psychopathologie légale, Paris, 1903, vol. ii. p. 169.

63. Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. v., "Erotic Symbolism, &c.," p. 53 et seq.

64. The Early Sense of Self," American Journal of Psychology, April 1898, p. 361.

65. Moll, Die konträre Sexualempfindung, Case 20, 3rd ed., Berlin, 1898.

66. Neugebauer, Hermaphroditismus beim Menschen (Hermaphroditism in the Human Species), Leipzig, 1908.

67. L'Hygiène sexuelle et ses Conséquences morales, p. 26, Paris, 1895.

68. Jacobus X----, Lois Génitales, p. 16, Paris, 1906.

69. Albert Moll, Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis (Studies concerning the Sexual Impulse), p. 256 et seq., Berlin, 1897.

70. Émile (at the beginning of Book IV.).

71. Magister Laukhards Leben und Schicksale, von ihm selbst beschrieben, bearbeitet von Viktor Petersen (The Life and Fortunes of Master Laukhard, described in his own words, and edited by Viktor Petersen), vol. i. p. 15, Stuttgart, 1908.

72. Monsieur Nicholas, vol. i. p. 51, Paris (Liseux), 1884.

73. Kinderleben in der deutschen Vergangenheit (Child Life in Old Germany), p. 112, Leipzig, 1900.

74. Die geschlechtlich-sittlichen Verhältnisse der evangelischen Landbewohner im Deutschen Reiche, dargestellt auf Grund der von der Allgemeinen Konferenz der deutschen Sittlichkeitsvereine veranstalteten Umfrage (The State of Sexual Morality among the Protestant Inhabitants of the German Empire, as shown by an Inquiry instituted by the General Conference of the German Societies for the Promotion of Public Morals), vol. ii. pp. 562-3, Leipzig, 1897. The collective investigation made by Wagner, Wittenberg, and Hückstädt, as a part of the inquiry instituted by the General Conference of the German Societies for the Promotion of Public Morals, to certainly the most exhaustive of which any record at present exists.

75. Wie der Geschlechtstrieb des Menschen in Ordnung zu bringen usw. (How to Control the Human Sexual Impulse, &c.), Brunswick, 1791.

76. Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. iii.; Analysis of the Sexual Impulse, pp. 59-60 and footnote, Davis, Philadelphia, 1908.

77. The Sexual Question, Rebman, London. 1908, pp. 485-86.

78. Dreissig Jahre Praxis (Thirty Years of Medical Practice), Würzburg, 1907, p. 305.

79. Quoted by Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. i, 3rd ed., Davis, Philadelphia, 1910, p. 179. The original paper in by C. W. Townsend, "Thigh Friction in Children under One Year," Annual Meeting of the American Pediatric Society, Montreal, 1896. Five cases are recorded by this writer, all in female infants.

80. Regarding the precise significance of the terms masturbation and onanism see the author's footnote 38 on page #. The adjectives corresponding to these words are respectively masturbatory and onanistic. By German writers, onanismus or onanie, and onanistisch, are often used where, strictly speaking, the words are inapplicable, since reference is made to cases in which sexual gratification is obtained by direct manipulation. In this translation, I prefer for such cases to use the words masturbation (i.e. manustupration) and masturbatory; and to limit the use of the terms onanism and onanistic to cases in which no direct use in made of the hand. Where sexual gratification is obtained without any mechanical act at all, it is preferable to speak of psychical onanism, or else to employ the general term introduced by Havelock Ellis for the description of all varieties of self-induced sexual stimulation and sexual gratification--whether mechanical or psychical--viz. auto-erotism (adjectival form, auto-erotic). See Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. i., 3rd ed., 1910, Part III., "Auto-Erotism: A Study of the Spontaneous Manifestations of the Sexual Impulse."--Translator's Note.

81. Kisch, The Sexual Life of Woman, English translation by M. Eden Paul, Rebman, London, 1910, p. 81.

82. "Die Entwicklung der Geschlechtscharaktere," Archiv für Gynäkologie, vol. 1xx. p. 239, Berlin, 1903.

83. Kisch, The Sexual Life of Woman, English translation by M. Eden Paul, Rebman, London, 1910, p. 82.

84. Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie (Three Essays on the Sexual Question), p. 36 et seq., Leipzig and Vienna. [For reference to English translation, see footnote 7 on page #.]

85. Jahrbuch für Kinderheilkunde, 1879.

86. Die Masturbation, p. 50, Berlin, 1899.

87. L'Hygiène sexuelle, Paris, 1895, p. 23.

88. "Die Beziehungen des sexuellen Lebens zur Entstehung von Nerven- und Geisteskrankheiten" ("Relationships of the Sexual Life to the Causation of Nervous and Mental Diseases"), Münchener Med. Wochenschrift, No. 37, 1906.

89. "Quelques mots sur l'onanisme" ("A Few Words on Masturbation"), Annales des maladies des organes génito-urinaires, 1905, No. 8.

90. "Schülerselbstmorde" ("Suicide during School-Life"), Zeitschrift für pädagogische Psychologie, April 1907, p. 21 et seq.

91. Du Suicide, 2nd ed., Paris, 1865, p. 139.

92. For a comprehensive account of these views, see Löwenfeld, Sexualleben und Nervenleiden (The Sexual Life and Nervous Diseases), 4th ed., Weisbaden, 1906, chap. xiv.

93. Das Erleiden sexueller Traumen usw." ("The Ill Effects of Sexual Dreams"), Zentralblatt für Nervenheilkunde, November 15, 1907.

94. Seltene und weniger bekannte Tripperformen (Rare and little-known forms of Gonorrhoea), German translation by George Merzbach, Vienna and Leipzig, 1907.

95. La Donna delinquente, la Prostituta e la Donna normale (Woman as Criminal and Prostitute), p. 374, Turin, 1893. [English readers will find an account of this widely-read book in Kurella's Cesare Lombroso, a Modern Man of Science, pp. 55-64, translated by M. Eden Paul; Rebman, London, 1911.--Translator's Note.]

96. Étude médico-légale sur les Attentats aux Moeurs, p. 31, Paris, 1857.

97. Kisch, The Sexual Life of Woman, p. 80, translated by M. Eden Paul; Rebman, London, 1910.

98. L'Onanisme chez l'homme, p. 99, 2nd ed., Paris.

99. Minorenni Delinquenti, p. 184, Milan, 1895.

100. The Sexual Question, p. 482 et seq., Rebman, London, 1908.

101. Op. cit., p. 230.

102. Delinquenza precoce e senile, p. 197, Como, 1901.

103. Les Enfants menteurs, Mémoire lu à la Société médico-psychologique, séances du 13 et 27 Nov. 1882.

104. Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter (Manual for Police Magistrates), Part I, p 110, 5th ed., Munich, 1908.

105. Aprosexia is the technical term for inability to fix the mind upon any subject.

106. In the first book of Les Confessions.

107. Strodtmann, H. Heines Leben und Werke, vol. i. p. 27 et seq., Berlin, 1873.

108. Fisilogia del Amore.

109. Les Femmes homicides, Paris, 1908, p. 39 et seq.

110. "Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Lebens- und Entwicklungsbedingungen der Inder" ("Contributions to our Knowledge of the Conditions of Life and Development of the Natives of India"), Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, 1907, p. 839 et seq.

111. Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, 1906, p. 916.

112. We are irresistibly reminded, in this connexion, of the reputed higher morality of age as compared with youth, of which La Rochefoucauld says (Maxim 192): "When our vices leave us, we flatter ourselves that it is we who leave them."--Translator's Note.

113. Esquirol refers to this in his great work on Mental Disorders.

114. Die Sittlichkeitsverbrecher (Offenders against Sexual Morality). See also Vierteljahrsschrift für gerichtliche Medizin und offentliche Sanitätswesen, Third Series, xxix. 2.

115. The custom of taking in a man as a night-lodger in crowded working-class tenements appears, unhappily, to be commoner in the large towns of Germany and Austria than it is in this country. See, for instance, Adelheid Popp's Jugendgeschichte einer Arbeiterin (3rd ed., Reinhardt, Munich, 1910, pp. 19, 20). But such lodgers are by no means unknown in the overcrowded quarters of English towns.--Translator's Note.

116. Psychiatrische Vorlesungen, Leipzig, 1892, p. 41.

117. Compare George Meredith on the male egoist's demand for "innocence" (The Egoist, p. 105): "The capaciously strong soul among women will ultimately detect an infinite grossness in the demand for purity infinite, spotless bloom." The frequency with which young widows remarry suggests that the demand for "innocence" in women is largely "a result of conventional opinions."--Translator's Note.

118. La Prostitution Clandestine, p. 41 et seq., Paris, 1885.

119. The Intermediate Sex, Swan Sonnenschein, London, 1908, p. 86.

120. Werthauer, Sittlichkeitsdelikts der Grosstadt (Offences against Morality in Large Towns), p. 78 et seq., Berlin and Leipzig, 1908.

121. Verbrechen und Vergehen wider die Sittlichkeit. Entführung. Gewerbsmässige Unzucht (Crimes and Misdemeanours against Morality. Abduction. Professional Unchastity), p. 115. Reprint from the Vergleichende Darstellung des Deutschen und Ausländischen Strafrechts (Comparative Statement of German and Foreign Criminal Law).

122. Das Geschlechtsleben in der Völkerpsychologie (The Sexual Lift in Folk-Psychology), p. 557, Leipzig, 1908.

123. Béraud, Les Filles Publiques de Paris, Paris, 1839.

124. For fuller details, see Mittelmaier, cp. cit., p. 116.

125. "Ueber die klinisch-forensische Bedeutung des perversen Sexualtriebes" ("The Clinical and Legal Significance of Perversions of the Sexual Impulse"), Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie und psychisch-gerichtliche Medizin, vol. xxxix, p. 220 et seq., Berlin, 1883.

126. See footnote 132 on page #.

127. Compare Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. vi.; Sex in Relation to Society (Philadelphia, 1910, p. 368): "But altogether outside theoretical morality, or the question of what people 'ought' to do, there remains practical morality, or the question of what, as a matter of fact, people actually do. This is the really fundamental and essential morality. Latin mores and Greek xxxx both refer to custom, to the things that are, and not to the things that 'ought to be.'" The etymological connexion, of which Dr. Moll speaks, between the words morality (or ethics) and custom, thus subsists through the intermediation of the dead languages. But in German, the etymological connexion between Sitte (custom) and Sittlichkeit (morality) is immediately apparent.--Translator's Note.

128. For details, see Rosenbaum, Geschichte der Lustseuche (History of Venereal Disease), Halle, 1893, p. 52 et seq.

129. It is surprising that the author makes no reference to the close association, in many cases, of the sentiment of disgust with unpleasant smells. The earth-worm, the cockroach, and the bed-bug are regarded as peculiarly disgusting, and all have a particularly offensive odour. The unpleasant smell of the alvine evacuations is assuredly a large element in the disgust these inspire.--Translator's Note.

130. Die seelische Entwichlung des Kindes (The Mental Development of the Child), 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1908, p. 90.

131. For fuller details, see the work of Rudeck, Geschichte der öffentlichen Sittlichkeit in Deutschland (History of Public Morals in Germany), 2nd ed., Berlin, 1905, p. 4 et seq. Cf. also, Alfred Martin, Deutsches Badewesen in vergangenen Tagen (German Bathing Customs in Former Days), Jena, 1906.

132. A German law dealing with offences against sexual morals.--Translator's Note.

133. I owe to private information, most kindly given me by Dr. Bohn, my knowledge of numerous details bearing on this question.

134. Romantische Liebe und persönliche Schönheit (Romantic Love and Personal Beauty), 2nd ed., Breslau, 1894, vol. ii. p. 58.

135. This does not conflict with the fact that in these circles also much hypocrisy is practised--much more certainly than in our own country (Germany). To a still greater extent is this true of England, where also in many circles all illegitimate sexual intercourse is proscribed, thus leading to the practice of hypocrisy. Because a large proportion of the population does not practise illegitimate intercourse, those who do indulge in it are led to conceal as far as possible their own illegitimate intercourse; as a result of this we find side by side and simultaneously in the same circle, on the one hand a prohibition of illegitimate intercourse based upon genuine conviction, and on the other a hypocritical condemnation of such intercourse. Further, we have to admit that the question is an exceptionally difficult one, precisely on account of the hypocrisy and lies in which the sexual life is enveloped. Naturally, where illegitimate intercourse is forbidden, those who do indulge are far more careful, and especially in guarding against venereal infection, lest the illness should betray them to others. A communication made to me very recently suggests the need for great caution in our judgment in these matters. A foreign university professor gives his students very fine lectures on the sexual life, laying great stress on the beauty and importance of sexual abstinence. The lecturer was convinced that as a result of his lectures his students were exceptionally chaste and abstinent. But a colleague of this same professor at the university is no less firmly convinced, and this as the result of reports from members of his friend's audience, that the assumed chastity of the students in purely imaginary, and that in actual fact their lives are just an loose as those of students in general.

136. See the article on "Coeducation" in Buch vom Kinde (The Book of the Child), edited by Adele Schreiber, vol. ii., Leipzig, 1907, p. 48.

137. Versuch einer Charakteristik des weiblichen Geschlechts (Attempt at a Characterisation of the Female Sex), Hanover, 1797, vol. i. p. 95.

138. Pougin, Dictionnaire du Théâtre, Paris, 1885, p. 715.

139. The description of such a mental state will be found in a diary, shown to Nyström by a young friend of his, and published by the former in his work on The Sexual Life and its Laws (Das Geschlechtsleben und seine Gesetze), Berlin, 1904, p. 129.

140. Moll, Aerztlicke Ethik, Stuttgart, 1902, pp. 220-31.

141. Theologians are not agreed as to when the "age of reason" is attained. Gousset, in his Moraltheologie zum Gebrauch der Pfarrer und Beichtväter (German translation of the seventh edition of a French work, Moral Theology for the Use of Priests and Father-Confessors), Aix, 1852, vol. ii. p. 244, demands that children should go to confession as soon as they are seven years of age; other authorities consider that the "age of reason" begins only in the last years of childhood.

142. L'Amour, 5th ed., Paris, 1861, p. 72.

143. From what has been said before, it will have become evident that the question has different aspects in different strata of the population. I have attempted merely to formulate general principles, not to furnish an answer for every possible concrete question. Differences between town and country, between richer and poorer, between cultured and uncultured, must be given due consideration. In the case of those belonging to the less cultured and the poorer strata of society, a special use in this connexion may be found for those social institutions which have of late come into being in various localities as the fruit of voluntary effort [corresponding to our Children's Care Committees, &c., in England--Translator], and conducted by women of the cultured and well-to-do classes. These institutions may be utilised for imparting the sexual enlightenment, at any rate in so far as they permit of an individual study of the child-psyche.

144. Sexuelle Belehrung der aus der Volksschule entlassenen Mädchen (The Sexual Instruction of Girls Leaving the Elementary School), Leipzig, 1907.

145. Among others by K. Höller: "Die Aufgabe der Volksschule" ("The Task of the Elementary School"), Proceedings of the Third Congress of the German Society for the Suppression of the Venereal Diseases, at Mannheim, in the Year 1907. In these Proceedings, which were published as the seventh volume of the Zeitschrift zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten (Journal for the Suppression of the Venereal Diseases), the reader will find a vast amount of material bearing upon this question.

146. Briefe über die wichstigsten Gegenstände der Menschheit (Letters Concerning Matters of the Utmost Importance to Mankind), written by R., and published by S. I. Teil, Leipzig, 1794, p. 100 et seq. To all who are interested in the subject under discussion, I strongly recommend the perusal of this book, which seems to-day to have been entirely forgotten.

147. For example, Max Oker-Blom: Beim Onkel Doktor auf dem Lande. A book for parents, 2nd ed., Vienna and Leipzig, 1906.--An English version, How my Uncle the Doctor Instructed me in Matters of Sex, has been published by the American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, 33, West 42nd Street, New York. [A list of a number of such books will be found in a footnote to p. 684 of my translation of Bloch's The Sexual Life of Our Time. As Oker-Blom himself says of this vital matter of sexual enlightenment, "Better a year too early than an hour too late."--Translator.]

148. Affektivität, Suggestibilität, Paranoia, Halle, 1906.

149. Anthropologisch-kulturhistorische Studien über die Geschlechtverhältnisse des Menschen (Anthropological and Historical Studies concerning the Sexual Life of Mankind), 2nd ed., Jena, 1888, p. 106.

150. There is one bearing of the use of alcohol in relation to irregular sexual intercourse, the importance of which Dr. Moll appears to me largely to ignore in his discussion of the subject, and that is the effect which even moderate doses of alcohol have in blunting the finer sensibilities, and in disturbing the balance of the judgment. (The author's only reference to the subject is on page #, where he writes, "if so much alcohol is taken as to interfere with the natural psychical inhibitions, sexual practices may occur that would not otherwise have occurred.") To take the woman's point of view first, it is, I believe, a common experience with prostitutes that, in the earlier days at any rate, they find it difficult to ply their trade unless under the influence of alcohol. Turning to the man's point of view, there is quite a considerable proportion of young men who, however strong their sexual impulse, object to meretricious intercourse at once on ethical and aesthetic grounds. The ethical ground is that intercourse with a prostitute infringes the elementary principle of civilised morals, that one human being should not use another as a mere means to the ends of the former, but that each of us must treat all human beings as ends in themselves; considering the general character of prostitution, the fact that obligations to the individual prostitute are supposed to be discharged by a conventional money payment, does not countervail the fact that this moral principle is infringed. On the aesthetic objections to prostitution, it is hardly necessary to enlarge; they have been felt by all men with refined sensibilities. But it is precisely these refined sensibilities which are blunted by even moderate doses of alcohol--doses insufficiently great to abate the sexual impulse itself. I do not mean to suggest that prostitution would not continue, in the present economic and social conditions, were there no intoxicants in the world; but I think an evening spent in quiet observation in the "promenade" of a "fashionable" London music-hall will convince most people that the above-described effects of alcohol are by no means purely imaginary.--Translator's Note.

151. The arguments against raising the Age of Consent for women beyond the age of sixteen now specified in the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, as ably summarised by Havelock Ellis, should be consulted in this connexion. See his Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. vi., Sex in Relation to Society, pp. 528-30. Davis, Philadelphia. 1910.--Translator's Note.

152. "Die Anfänge einer Erziehung zu geistiger und körperlicher Gesundheit während des ersten Lebensjahres" ("The Beginnings of an Education for the Maintenance of Mental and Bodily Health, as applied during the First Year of Life"), Fortschritte der Medizin, 1908, No. 21.