But in their earlier more
religious forms and in their later more obscene forms, they alike
bear witness to the large place which scatalogic conceptions play
in the primitive mind.
It is a notable fact in evidence of the close and seemingly normal
association with the sexual impulse of the scatalogic processes, that an
interest in them, arising naturally and spontaneously, is one of the most
frequent channels by which the sexual impulse first manifests itself in
young boys and girls.
Stanley Hall, who has made special inquiries into the matter,
remarks that in childhood the products of excretion by bladder
and bowels are often objects of interest hardly less intense for
a time than eating and drinking. ("Early Sense of Self,"
_American Journal of Psychology_, April, 1898, p. 361.)
"Micturitional obscenities," the same writer observes again,
"which our returns show to be so common before adolescence,
culminate at 10 or 12, and seem to retreat into the background as
sex phenomena appear." They are, he remarks, of two classes:
"Fouling persons or things, secretly from adults, but openly with
each other," and less often "ceremonial acts connected with the
act or the product that almost suggest the scatalogical rites of
savages, unfit for description here, but of great interest and
importance.
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