NERVOUS CHILDREN AND EDUCATION ON SEXUAL MATTERS
In this chapter I approach with diffidence a subject which is rightly
enough occupying a great deal of attention at the present time: the
instruction of our children in the nature, meaning, and purpose of
sexual processes. It is a subject filled with difficulties. Every
parent would wish to avoid offending the sense of modesty which is the
possession of every well-trained child, and finds it difficult to
escape the feeling that discussion on such matters may do more harm
than good. There is certainly some risk at the present time that,
putting reticence on one side, we may be carried too far in the
opposite direction. The evils which result from keeping children in
ignorance are well appreciated. We have yet to determine the effect
upon them of the very frank and free exposure of the subject which is
recommended by many modern writers. Nevertheless, it must be granted
that it is not right to allow the boy or girl to approach adolescence
without some knowledge of sex and the processes of reproduction. If
nothing is said on such subjects, which in the nature of things are
bound to excite a lively interest and curiosity in the minds of older
children, evil results are apt to follow. Because parents have never
mentioned these subjects to their child, they must not conclude that
he is ignorant of all knowledge concerning them. It is not unlikely
that the question has often occupied his thoughts, and that his
speculations have led him to conclusions which are, on the whole,
true, although perhaps incorrect in matters of detail. Most children,
unable to ask their mother or father direct questions upon matters
which they feel instinctively are taboo, have pieced together, from
their reading and observation, a faulty theory of sexual life. The
pursuit of such knowledge, in secret, is not a healthy occupation for
the child. His parents' silence has given him the feeling that the
unexplored land is forbidden ground. In satisfying his curiosity he is
most certainly fulfilling an uncontrollable impulse, but he has been
forced to be secretive, and to look upon the information he has
acquired as a guilty secret. So far even the best of children will go
upon, the dangerous path. If training has been good, and if the child
has responded well to it, he will go no further. Though he can hardly
be expected to refrain from constructing theories and from testing
them in the light of any chance information which may come his way, he
will instinctively feel that the subject is one best left alone. He
will not talk of it with other boys--not even with those who are older
than himself and whose superior knowledge in all other matters he is
accustomed to respect. We need not be surprised, however, that the
majority of children do not attain to this high standard of conduct,
and that the interest and excitement of exploring the unknown and the
forbidden proves too great. Children will consult with each other
about such matters, and knowledge of evil may spread rapidly from the
older to the younger. In some schools, as is well known, there may
grow up with deplorable facility an unhealthy interest in sexual
matters. On the surface of school life all may seem fair enough, but
beneath, hidden from all recognised authority, lies much that is
unspeakable. If the boy has not been taught to have clean thoughts
upon matters which are essentially clean, if he has not learned to
know evil that he may avoid it, he may not escape great harm. The
fault in us which kept him in ignorance will recoil upon our own
heads. He will maintain the barrier which was erected in the first
place by our own unhappy reticence, and we may find it a hard task to
penetrate behind it and prevent his constant return to secret thoughts
and imaginings or secret habits and practices. Certain physiological
processes come to have for him an unclean flavour which is yet
perniciously attractive. He knows little of the real meaning of sexual
processes or of the great purpose for which they are designed. It is
only that an unhealthy interest becomes attached to all subjects which
are scrupulously avoided in general conversation. In secret he
develops a wrong attitude to all these matters.
Oliver Wendell Holmes[4] tells us that in religion certain words and
ideas become "polarised," that is to say, charged with forces of
powerful suggestion, and must be "depolarised."
[Footnote 4: _The Professor at the Breakfast Table_, Oliver Wendell
Holmes.]
* * * * *
"I don't know what you mean by 'depolarising' an idea, said the
divinity-student.
"I will tell you, I said. When a given symbol which represents a
thought has lain for a certain length of time in the mind, it
undergoes a change like that which rest in a certain position gives to
iron. It becomes magnetic in its relations--it is traversed by strange
forces which did not belong to it. The word, and consequently the idea
it represents, is polarised.
"The religious currency of mankind, in thought, in speech, and in
print, consists entirely of polarised words. Borrow one of these from
another language and religion, and you will find it leaves all its
magnetism behind it. Take that famous word, O'm, of the Hindoo
mythology. Even a priest cannot pronounce it without sin; and a holy
Pundit would shut his ears and run away from you in horror, if you
should say it aloud. What do you care for O'm? If you wanted to get
the Pundit to look at his religion fairly, you must first depolarise
this and all similar words for him. The argument for and against new
translations of the Bible really turns on this. Scepticism is afraid
to trust its truths in depolarised words, and so cries out against a
new translation. I think, myself, if every idea our Book contains
could be shelled out of its old symbol and put into a new, clean,
unmagnetic word, we should have some chance of reading it as
philosophers, or wisdom-lovers, ought to read it--which we do not and
cannot now, any more than a Hindoo can read the 'Gayatri' as a fair
man and lover of truth should do."
* * * * *
Now in the minds of many boys and some girls certain words and ideas
connected with certain physiological processes become polarised. It is
the parents' duty to depolarise them. It is a task which cannot well
be deputed to others; nor can much help be derived from books, though
many have been written with the object of initiating children into the
mysteries of sex. No one but a parent is likely to be on sufficiently
intimate terms with the child to enable the subject to be approached
without restraint or awkwardness, and no book can adapt itself to the
varying needs of individual children. An exposition in cold print, or
a single formal lecture on the subject, is apt to do more harm than
good. I have seen instructions to parents to deliver themselves of set
speeches, examples of which are given, which seem to me well
calculated to repel and frighten the nervous child. Still more
dangerous is the advice to make sexual hygiene a subject for class
study. The task requires that parents should be upon very intimate
terms with their children, and on suitable occasions, when this
feeling of intimacy is strong, children should be encouraged to speak
freely and to ask for explanations. By a judicious use of such
opportunities piece by piece the whole may be unfolded. In order that
the child may approach the subject in the proper spirit we may
stimulate interest by a few lessons in Natural History. A child of
eight or ten years of age is not too young to learn a little of the
outlines of anatomy and physiology. If he is told a few bald facts
about the skeleton, about the circulation and the processes of
digestion such as any parent can teach at the cost of a few hours'
study of a handbook, this will lead naturally enough, in later
lessons, to a similar talk upon the excretory organs, reproduction,
and the anatomy and processes of sex, suitable to the individual. To
achieve "depolarisation," there is nothing more efficacious than the
frankness and explicitness of scientific statement, however
elementary. Later a little knowledge of Botany and Zoology will enable
a parent to sketch briefly the outlines of fertilisation and
reproduction. The child may grasp the conception that the life of all
individual plants and animals is directed towards the single aim of
continuing the species. He can be told how the bee carries the male
pollen to the female flower, how all living things habitually
conjugate, the lowest in the scale of development as well as the
highest, and how the fertilised egg becomes the embryo which is
hatched by the mother or born of her. As the child grows older and
understands more and more of these natural processes an opportunity
can be used to make the presentation of the subject more personal. He
can be told that during childhood his own sexual processes have been
undeveloped, but that as he grows older they will awake. That with
their awakening in adolescence new temptations to self-indulgence in
thought or action may assail him, but that these temptations are
delayed by the wisdom of Nature until his understanding has grown and
his man's strength of character has developed. A high ideal of purity
should be set before boy and girl alike, and the conception of sex
from the beginning should be associated in their minds with the high
purpose to which some day it may be put. Before the boy goes to a
boarding-school he should have imbibed from his father the desire for
moral cleanliness, the knowledge of good and of evil, and a cordial
dislike for everything that is sensual, self-indulgent, or nasty.
Talks on such subjects should be very infrequent, but I believe that,
if "depolarisation" is to be achieved, they must be repeated every now
and then during later childhood and in adolescence. To attempt to
impart all this interesting information in a single constrained and
awkward interview is to court failure, or at least to run the risk
that the explanation is not fully understood, so that the child is
mystified, or even offended in his sense of propriety.
I have dwelt at some length upon this question of sex education,
because it is one of especial difficulty when we have to deal with a
child of nervous inheritance, or with a child in whom symptoms of
neurosis have developed in a faulty home environment. Misconduct in
sexual matters is a sign of deficient nervous and moral control, and
when the conduct in other respects is ill-regulated, the development
of sexual processes must be watched with some anxiety. There are those
who see a still more intimate relationship between errors of conduct
or symptoms of neurosis in childhood and the sexual instincts.
It is perhaps necessary here briefly to refer to the teaching of
Sigmund Freud of Vienna, because his views have attracted a great deal
of attention in this country and have become familiar to a great part
of the reading public. Freud believes that the origin of many abnormal
mental states and of the disturbances of conduct which are dependent
upon them is to be traced back to forgotten experiences, the
recollection of which has faded from the conscious mind, but which are
still capable of exerting an indirect influence. He regards the
process of forgetting, not as merely a passive fading of mental
impressions, but as an active process of repression, by which the
experience, and especially the unpleasant experience, is thrust and
kept out of consciousness. There thus arises a mental conflict between
the forces of repression and the forces which tend to obtrude the
recollection into consciousness, and at times the energy engendered in
this conflict escapes from the censorship of the repressing forces and
finds vent in the production of abnormal mental states or disorders of
conduct. Thus to take a simple example, a business man who has had a
trying day at the office, on returning home in the evening may succeed
in thrusting out of his consciousness the thought of his
disappointments and worries, yet the disturbance in his mind may show
itself in quarrels with his wife or complaints of the quality of the
cooking at dinner.
Freud has called attention to the part which the suppressed and
long-forgotten experiences of early childhood play in the production
of neuroses of all sorts at a later date, and he has laid especial
emphasis on sexual experiences as peculiarly fruitful causes of such
disturbances. Those who have embraced Freud's teaching have gone even
farther than he in this direction, and by psycho-analysis--that is to
say, by attempting in intimate conversation to arouse the dormant
memory and lay bare the buried complex, the suppression of which has
produced the conflict in the mind of the sufferer--will seldom fail to
discover the influence of sexual forces and sexual attractions which,
while capable of causing disorders of mind and of conduct, show
themselves only obscurely and indirectly, as, for example, in dreams
or in symbolic form.
So far as the nervous disorders of children are concerned, much that
is written to-day upon the influence of repressed sexual experiences
may be dismissed as grotesque and untrue. The conclusions to which the
psycho-analyst is habitually led, and which he puts forward with such
confidence, can be convincing only to those who have replaced the
study of childhood by the study of the writings of Freud and his
school. Thus it is common enough to find a mother complaining that her
child of two or three years of age is bitterly jealous of the new baby
who has come to share with him his mother's love and attention.
According to the views of Freud, we are to recognise in this jealousy
an exhibition of the sexual instincts of the older child, who scents a
possible rival for the affections of his mother. Even if we give to
the term sexual the widest possible meaning, it is difficult for a
close observer of children to detect any truth in this conclusion. The
behaviour of the older child to the newly born will be determined
mainly by the attitude adopted by the grown-up persons around him and
by the unconscious suggestions which his impressionable mind receives
from them. If the mother is fearful of what may happen, and refuses to
leave the children alone, she will find it hard to hide from the older
child her conviction that danger is to be apprehended from him. If
this suggestion acts upon his mind, and if the reputation that he is
jealous of the new baby becomes attached to him, he will assuredly not
fail to act up to it, and her daily conduct will appear to prove the
justness of his mother's apprehension. Fortunately, mothers are
commonly able to divest themselves of such fears as these. The older
child is brought freely to the baby to admire him, to bestow caresses
on him, and to speak to him in the very tones of his elders. In a few
days his reputation is established, that he is "so fond of the baby,"
and to this reputation too he faithfully conforms. We have seen in an
earlier chapter that constantly and ostentatiously to oppose a child's
will is to produce a counter-opposition which because of its
persistence and vigour appears to have behind it the strongest
possible concentration of mind and power of will. Yet if we cease to
oppose, the counter-opposition which appeared so formidable at once
dissolves, and the difficulty is at an end. We took as an example the
child's apparent determination to approach as near as possible to the
fire, the one place in the room which our fear of accident forbids
him. The difficulty with the new baby is but another example of the
same tendency. If he does not know that the ground is forbidden, if we
do not concentrate his attention on the prohibition, he will show no
particular desire to approach it. His apparent jealousy of his little
brother is the result not of the rivalry of sex, but of bad
management.
Again, it is occasionally a subject of complaint that children will
apparently dislike their father, that they will shrink from him or
burst into tears whenever he approaches them. There is no need to see
in this the child's jealousy of the father as a rival in the
affections of his mother, which is the explanation proffered by the
school of Freud. Every action and every occupation of the child during
the whole day can be made a pleasure or a pain to him, according to
the attitude of his nurse and mother towards it. Eating and drinking
should be pleasant and are normally pleasant. The same forces which
are sufficient to make every meal-time a signal for struggling and
tears, are sufficient to produce this dislike, apparently so
invincible, to the father of his being.
Although the nervous troubles of infancy are not commonly due, as
Freud and his numerous followers would have us believe, to suppressed
sexual desires or experiences, it is clear that in the sensitive mind
of the child the reception of a severe shock may have effects long
after the memory of it has disappeared from consciousness. In a
medical journal there was recently recounted the case of an officer of
the R.A.M.C. who all his life had suffered from claustrophobia--the
fear of being shut up in a closed space. By skilful questioning, the
remembrance of a terrifying incident in his childhood was regained. As
a child of five he had been shut in a passage in a strange house by
the accidental banging to of a door, unable to escape from the
attentions of a growling dog. A complete cure was said to follow upon
the discovery that in this incident lay the origin of the phobia.
Nevertheless, observation would lead me to lay the greater stress not
upon any one particular shocking or terrifying experience, but upon
the attitude of parents and nurses in focusing the child's attention
upon the danger, and in sapping his confidence by showing their own
apprehensions and communicating them to him.
As a method of treatment for neuroses of childhood, psycho-analysis is
not only unsuccessful, it has dangers and produces ill effects which
far outweigh any advantage which may be gained from it.
There can be no doubt that Freud has exaggerated the part which sexual
impulses play in causing neurosis. It will be sufficient for us to
recognise that for the nervous child the sexual life has especial
dangers, and we should redouble our efforts to prevent his ideas on
the subject becoming "polarised." For the child whose environment has
been well regulated and who has developed strength of character,
self-control, and self-respect, there need be no fear.