... The hair,
no doubt, gives quite unique tactile sensations, both in its own
roots and to hands, and is plastic and yielding to the motor
sense, so that the earliest interest may be akin to that in fur,
which is a marked object in infant experience. Some children
develop an almost fetichistic propensity to pull or later to
stroke the hair or beard of every one with whom they come in
contact." (G. Stanley Hall, "The Early Sense of Self," _American
Journal of Psychology_, April, 1898, p. 359.)
It should be added that the fascination of hair for the infantile
and childish mind is not necessarily one of attraction, but may
be of repulsion. It happens here, as in the case of so many
characteristics which are of sexual significance, that we are in
the presence of an object which may exert a dynamic emotional
force, a force which is capable of repelling with the same energy
that it attracts. Fere records the instructive case of a child of
3, of psychopathic heredity, who when he could not sleep was
sometimes taken by his mother into her bed. One night his hand
came in contact with a hairy portion of his mother's body, and
this, arousing the idea of an animal, caused him to leap out of
the bed in terror.
Pages:
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168