When in the course of events any individual is possessed of a conviction with reference to any set of circumstances, a conviction so strong that it guides his thinking, his feeling, and his acting into definite channels, and perhaps determines the future course of his life, we have to understand that the only way of interpreting such a conviction is by an analysis of this individual's past complete enough to cover those aspects of it which include the various components which entered into the formation of his conviction. It is from some such point of view that the author undertakes to introduce his study of the development of the sexual impulses by a discussion of the impulses of the organism in general, and the mechanisms,