of children the imagination is even more
active than it is in the sexual dreams of adults. All kinds of perverse
dreams may, in children, accompany the emission, even when the
corresponding ideas have no erotic association in the waking state.
Things of which the child has learned from fairy tales, stories of
robbers, of imprisoned or enchanted princesses, princes, fettered
slaves--all may play a part in the psychosexual processes of the
dream-life. Anyone unaware of the fact that in the great majority of
children this tendency disappears spontaneously in the course of the
further development of the sexual life might too readily infer the
existence of some morbid perversion. In such instances we must, indeed,
bear in mind the possibility of sexual perversion, especially in view of
the fact that sexually perverse adults are often able to trace back into
childhood the memory of sexual dreams characteristic of their peculiar
type of perversion. Occasionally the feelings of anxiety of which we
have spoken above may, even in dreams, lead to the occurrence of
involuntary ejaculations. Thus we are told of dreams of pursuit by
robbers or by wild animals, or of dreams of missing a train the dreamer
has been running to catch, in which ejaculations occur. In isolated
cases the dreams of children which are associated with ejaculations may
be quite indistinct; in such cases, just as sometimes in the sexual
dreams of adults, it is impossible to recognise any definite
relationship to the psychosexual feelings of the waking state. In this
connexion no difference between the sexes can be shown to exist, except
this, that, at any rate as far as my own experience goes, nocturnal
ejaculations are much more often absent in girls than in boys.
Occasionally, manual or other artificial stimulation of the genital
organs is effected during sleep; I have myself known several instances
of this, both in boys and in girls. In several cases, at least, there
were satisfactory grounds for believing that we were not concerned with
masturbation practised at night in the waking state, but all the
indications pointed to the fact that the processes wore carried on
unconsciously during sleep. In isolated cases I have had children
watched throughout the night, in order to clear up this point, and my
conclusion was thus confirmed that children do at times play with the
genital organs during sleep.

A classical description of her first nocturnal orgasm is given