time, to awaken the sexual impulse, it must be assumed that
some other but similar process would have been competent to effect this.
In any case, the association theory alone will not suffice to account
for these cases; and the possibility cannot be excluded that in cases of
sadism there is a specific abnormal disposition of the sexual impulse,
and that the experiences during childhood influence the matter only in
so far as they may determine the special manner in which the sadistic
tendency will subsequently manifest itself. It is, in fact, very
remarkable how often some particular act of cruelty will, in a certain
individual, exercise throughout life a sexually exciting influence: in
one person the desire to strike may be associated with sexual
excitement; in another it may be the desire to stab or to cut; in one
individual sexual excitement results from the sight of a fowl being
killed; in another, when the victim is a fish, and so on. Although we
encounter some in whom the particular cruel act associated with sexual
excitement changes many times during life; yet, on the other hand, we
find that there are many persons in whom sexual excitement is aroused by
some special sadistic practice, and by that alone; and on careful
inquiry we ascertain that even in childhood such an act was associated
with voluptuous excitement.

I will take this opportunity of explaining very briefly that there is
still another possible way of explaining these enduring associations as
being based upon impressions received during childhood, without the
supposition that these impressions of childhood are the exclusive
determinants; this is the assumption that there exists a congenital
weakness of the rudiment of the normal sexual impulse, and that it is
owing to this primary defect that the paths of nervous conduction
involved in the activity of the normal sexual impulse so readily become
impassable.

No further discussion of such disputed problems of the sexual life can
now be attempted. What has been said should suffice, on the one hand, to
prove that the experiences of childhood have important relationships to
the occurrence of sexual perversions; and, on the other, to put the
reader on his guard against numerous exaggerations. I will merely add
that whilst the examples I have given concern only homosexuality and
sadism, similar considerations will be found to apply, _mutatis
mutandis_, to other sexual perversions.

Notes of a few cases w