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Two fundamental insights into the understanding of symptoms of sexual deviation were provided by Freud11 in his observation of the phenomena of infantile sexuality and in his noting that the sexual activities of adults suffering from perversions are similar to those of normal children in general. In terms of the latter, for example, we find20 sexual intercourse is not at all frequent among pedophile offenders—the act instead generally consisting of the sex play commonly found among children, such as looking, showing, fondling, and being fondled (representing, as it were, the pedophile's reaching out to another immature sex object on his own fixated developmental level).
Freud's dictum that “perverted sexuality is nothing but infantile sexuality, magnified and separated into its component parts”12 is also followed by Havelock Ellis7: “Every normal man in matters of sex, when we examine him carefully enough, is found to show some abnormal element, and the abnormal man is merely manifesting in a disordered, or extravagant shape, some phase of the normal man.” Fenichel8 later made this same point, including a still broader implication for human nature. “Since the aims of perverse sexuality are identical with those of infantile sexuality,” he wrote, “the possibility