You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
It is surprising to find in the psychoanalytic literature the statement that if infants and children are reared in a culture that permits them uninhibited sexual activity they do not develop an Oedipus complex. This is a belief which I am certain is also held by many anthropologists.
In a recently published article, A. McF. Johnson states: 'We have held the view that freedom in sexual play with themselves or each other in children would on the whole not decrease the inevitable phylogenetically determined sexual need for the parent. Anthropology so far lends little if any support to this view.'1
Anthropology, however, provides factual evidence which cannot be simply disregarded, and the following data speak for themselves.
'Children and adults sometimes play with the penes of dogs until an ejaculation takes place while children are allowed usually to indulge their whims without rebuke. They swear at their mothers or another woman on the least provocation: e.g., at Yiralla where the reiterated words, "Long Vulva, Long Vulva", were commonly heard at all hours of the day and night. They are invited by a mother, older brother or sister or some other person to indulge in sexual intercourse with an adult or a child of the same age standing nearby; their sexual organs may be fingered and played with or their sexual potentialities discussed exhaustively in front of them by other people.'2