360 people reported more than 1,700 cases. With few exceptions those
who reported had had experience in teaching. 355 gave accounts of
their own childish love affairs. The other five stated that they did
not recall any such experience in their own lives. The 1,700 cases
include the confessions. Added to the 800 cases of my own collection
there are in all more than 2,500 cases that form the basis of this
study.
It will be seen that the syllabus calls for data of three kinds,
viz., concerning (1) observed love between children of opposite sex
about the same in age, (2) observed love between persons of opposite
sex with disparity in ages, (3) personal confessions. The first two
kinds of data were obtained by the objective method, while the last
is obtained through retrospection. Having both observations and
confessions many errors that could not otherwise be detected are
eliminated since the two classes of material act, to a degree, as
mutual controls. Each kind of data according to the first named
classification has its particular virtue. The confessions (1) exhibit
the continuity in the development of the emotion during the life-span
of the individual as he sees it himself (enough cases (355) were
given to make a reasonable allowance for individual variations); (2)
they indicate the general prevalence of the emotion during childhood;
(3) they reinforce observation in the same way that introspection
always reinforces the objective method of study. In estimating the
value of these confessions one must be mindful of the common defect
of most auto-biographical statements, viz., that they are influenced
by the almost irresistible tendency to write about one's self in a
literary way and so touch plain facts as to make them less prosaic.
The observations help us in eliminating this element of error. The
data concerning the love that children have for adults of the
opposite sex throw valuable light upon the nature of jealousy in
children as it is much accentuated in these cases. They also show the
effect of forcing the development of an emotion by a stimulus that is
chronologically prior to the normal period of development. In the
cases showing the love of the adult for a child are revealed facts
bearing upon some forms of sexual perversion. In these cases the
child is used as a means of escape for suppressed love. Love that
normally should go out to an adult, is through some real or supposed
necessity suppressed until it finally seeks quiescence through
discharge upon a child or pet animal. This is not infrequent among
women whose relatively passive role decreed by nature in love affairs
has been exaggerated by society. The observations concerning love
between children of opposite sex and about the same age aid us in
determining the phase of the emotion's development that normally
belongs to any given period of life; _i. e._, there are many
observations upon children who are five years old, or six, seven,
eight, nine, etc., respectively, and these reveal the nature of the
emotion that normally belongs to those years. The various kinds of
observations extend over the entire periods of infancy, childhood,
and into adolescence, and are very well distributed in number among
the years of these periods, although more cases were reported for the
years 4 to 8, and 12 to 15, both inclusive, than for the years of the
period between 8 and 12. The reason for this becomes clearly apparent
later.
Analysis of the data contained in all of this material reveals the
fact that the emotion of sex-love may appear in the life of the child
as early as the middle of the third year. From its appearance at this
early age it can be traced in its development through five more or
less well marked stages whose time limits are as follows: the first
stage extending, as a rule, from the age of three years to the age of
eight years; the second from eight to fourteen; the third from
fourteen to maturity at about twenty-two in women and twenty-six in
men; the fourth from maturity to senescence, whose limits vary
widely; the fifth extending through senescence. Not every individual
passes through all five stages. Individual differences also keep the
time limits of the stages from being exact.