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The research upon which this paper is based was carried out in the Research Nursery in the Division of Child Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. We wish to acknowledge the important contributions of the many staff members to this work, particularly Dr. Jan Drucker, who assisted in data analysis, and Ms. Catherine Shapiro, head teacher, who has been responsible for the functioning of the Nursery for the past five years.
ARE-EVALUATION OF FREUD'S IDEAS concerning early sexuality must take into account new findings from a variety of sources, such as studies of normal children, genetically and hormonally deviant ones, and those who are emotionally disturbed, as well as the changes in psychoanalytic thinking that have taken place under the impact of ego psychology over the past twenty years. We agree with Lichtenstein (1961) that sexuality has been relegated to the position of only one among several variables from the special and exemplary role in development that Freud (1905), (1940) had originally assigned to the sexual drive organization. Lichtenstein, in arguing against this general trend, maintains that sexuality is the most archaic mode, closely related to the primary process and therefore uniquely capable of conveying the emotional truth of personal existence, while only later on do other modes establish, in thought, th conception that one does in fact exist. In this respect, he follows Freud's views concerning the centrality of sexuality among the other variables of