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23 Dec. 17
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
Dear Frau Andreas
Happy Christmas, as far as that is possible!
With regard to the little girl, I will gladly pay the pound since I have hit the nail on the head with the penny.
On principle I think your scruples are unjustified.
‘Bist mit dem Teufel du und duUnd willst dich vor der Flamme scheuen?’98
There is nothing wrong with masturbation in itself. If one only had the choice between it and the anxiety consequent upon its suppression, there would be no doubt as to the right decision. It is essentially a question of what libido-displacements find relief in the act of masturbation, not whether the act itself is inhibited or not. If the clitoris becomes ‘habituated’ to this function and then at a later stage of development becomes recalcitrant, then that is just the expression of the fixation of the psyche on certain libidinal complexes; and as a precaution for the future we cannot do better than prevent the prohibition and later repression of these complexes. If the transformation of anxiety back into libido involves from time to time a more vigorous discharge of the latter in sexual acts, then the therapist should not be put off by this possibility. Otherwise everything remains just as it was, as in the good old pre-analytic days, in which children were just said to be ‘nervous’.
According to the evidence of her dreams the child has deduced and thought about very many facts of genital life. She seems to have undergone a regression to the totemistic object stage and to the non-genital components of sexuality: to the latter, because these were still very active; to the former, because animals no doubt offered to